THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 IN THE 
 
 MODERN WORLD 
 
 THE SIXTH SERIES OF JOHN CALVIN MCNAIR LECTURES 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 IN 1913 
 EXPANDED AND REVISED
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 IN THE 
 
 MODERN WORLD 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY 
 
 PLUMMER PROFESSOR OF CHRISTMJf MORALS 
 (EMERITUS) IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1914 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1914. 
 
 NoriuooB 
 
 J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 TO G. W. P. 1 
 
 IN VIGILS PROSTRATE AND WITH FASTINGS FAINT, 
 HER VISIONS OF THE CHRIST SUSTAINED THE SAINT, 
 AND NO RUDE NOISE OF WORLDLY WANT OR CARE 
 DISTURBED THE STILLNESS OF THE CONVENT'S PRAYER. 
 " WHERE, LORD," ONE ASKED, " MAY THEY WHO LOVE 
 
 THEE MOST 
 
 BEHOLD THY COUNTENANCE ERE THEY DEPART ? " 
 " SEEK ME," THE SAVIOUR ANSWERED, " IN THE HOST 
 OR ON THE ALTAR OF SAINT GERTRUDE'S HEART." 
 
 NO MYSTIC VOICES FROM THE HEAVENS ABOVE 
 NOW SATISFY THE SOULS WHICH CHRIST CONFESS ; 
 THEIR HEAVENLY VISION IS IN WORKS OF LOVE, 
 A NEW AGE SUMMONS TO NEW SAINTLINESS. 
 BEFORE TH* UNCLOISTERED SHRINE OF HUMAN NEEDS 
 AND ALL UNCONSCIOUS OF THE WORTH OR PRICE, 
 THEY LAY THEIR FRAGRANT GIFTS OF GRACIOUS DEEDS 
 UPON THE ALTAR OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 
 
 1 Saint Gertrude of Eisleben (1256-1302) passed her entire 
 life from five years of age in a convent, where she was permitted 
 to see many visions of the Saviour. When another suppliant 
 asked where Christ might be found, the Saviour answered: 
 " Either on the altar or in the heart of Gertrude." (Man moge 
 ihn entweder im Tabernakel oder im Herzen Gertrud's suchen.) 
 The "Revelations" of Saint Gertrude (Insinuationum divina 
 pietatis exercitia) were published in many editions during the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE . . i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY . 37 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN BUSINESS 
 
 WORLD 76 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY . 106 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY . 135 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE . 161 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH . 195 
 
 INDEX 229 
 
 vii
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE 
 
 MODERN WORLD 
 
 i 
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 IN one of the most vigorous as well as the short- 
 est Letters of the New Testament, the Apostle, 
 writing to Titus, his "own son after the common 
 faith," reenforces his general doctrine of Christian 
 ethics by a special application to the circumstances 
 in which Titus finds himself at Crete. The Chris- 
 tian life, the Apostle says, is practicable even there. 
 The Cretans, among whom Titus had been left 
 "to set in order the things that are wanting," 
 were, it was true, "liars, beasts, and gluttons." 
 "This witness," the writer agrees, "is true"; but 
 this truth is precisely what gives an opportunity 
 for Titus to teach the Cretans a "healthy" doc- 
 trine of chastity, discretion, and gravity. "The 
 grace of God that bringeth salvation hath ap- 
 peared to all men." Crete was a good place 
 for a Christian to "adorn the doctrine of God." 
 " For this cause left I thee in Crete." The problem 
 of the Christian life was not to run away from a bad 
 place, but to serve it and save it. The purpose of
 
 2 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 God was to train one to live "soberly, righteously, 
 and godly," not in a world of his own choosing, but 
 "in this present world." l Soberly as concerns one's 
 self, righteously as concerns one's neighbor, piously 
 as concerns one's God, these three principles 
 made, according to the Apostle, a practicable rule 
 of conduct for a young man of the first century in 
 a vicious and pleasure-loving world. 2 
 
 But could a Christian teacher speak so confi- 
 dently now ? Is the Christian life practicable in 
 this present world? Is it possible to live in the 
 world as it now is, accepting its methods, partici- 
 pating in its business, involved in its social, eco- 
 nomic, and political machinery, and at the same 
 time to lead a sober, righteous, and godly life, fit 
 to adorn the doctrine of God? Under what con- 
 ditions can the ideals of the Christian religion sur- 
 vive? Amid the licentiousness and commercial- 
 ism of modern society can a domestic life be so 
 maintained that it may be with reasonable accuracy 
 described as a Christian family ? Amid the brutal 
 competitions of modem industry can trade be 
 administered and profit be made in ways which 
 are consistent with Christian discipleship ? Amid 
 
 1 Titus I, 4; II, 12; " irai8vov(ra ^/tas " (Zuchtigt uns; 
 Luther). " Die Gnade Gottes hat einen padagogischen Zweck," 
 Heydenbach, in Meyer, " Kommentar iiber das N.T."; 1866, 
 ute Abth. s. 339. 
 
 1 Bernard, Serm. XI : " Sobrie erga nos, juste erga proximum, 
 pie erga Deum " ; cited in the detailed note of Alford, " The Greek 
 Testament," etc., 1865.
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 3 
 
 the plottings of national politics and the colli- 
 sions of international interests can we fairly speak 
 of a Christian civilization ? And to ask an 
 even more searching question does the Chris- 
 tian Church itself, in its present condition of con- 
 ventional conformity and ecclesiastical limitation, 
 provide a congenial environment for the practice of 
 that simplicity which is " toward Christ " ? On 
 what terms is it possible to live a Christian life in 
 a modern world? Must not one take his choice 
 between the two ? Is the Christian religion a 
 practicable faith among the inevitable conditions 
 of modern efficiency and happiness; or is it the 
 survival of an idealism which, however beautiful 
 it may once have been, has become impracticable 
 to-day ? 
 
 These questions have created in many thoughtful 
 minds a profound sense of perplexity, and even of 
 alarm. The world which confronts a modern man 
 is very different from the provincial and primitive 
 environment of the New Testament teaching; 
 but even though this new world is less likely than 
 that of Crete to produce "liars, beasts, and glut- 
 tons," it seems quite as hard to adjust to the 
 maxims of the Christian Gospel. A modern man, 
 for example, finds himself compelled by circum- 
 stances to devote two -thirds of his waking hours 
 to the making of his living and the securing of a 
 margin of income, but when he turns, in some 
 hastily snatched interval, to the New Testament,
 
 4 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 he reads the unqualified command of Jesus Christ, 
 "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." 
 Another man is trained in habits of economy and 
 thrift, and is met by the peremptory counsel: 
 "Sell that thou hast and give to the poor." A 
 student of modern methods in charity is taught to 
 distrust as a social menace the practice of indis- 
 criminate relief, and then finds his science con- 
 fronted by the saying, "Give to him that asketh 
 thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn 
 not thou away." An unjustified attack is made on 
 one's self or one's country, and resistance to it has 
 to meet the words, which to Tolstoi made the cen- 
 tral teaching of the Gospel, "Whosoever shall 
 smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other 
 also." Must one not choose between the idealism 
 of the Gospels and the utilitarianism of modern 
 life ? Must he not frankly confess that the Chris- 
 tian law of conduct and the demands of commer- 
 cial or political stability "in this present world" 
 are irreconcilably opposed to each other, and that 
 under the circumstances of modern civilization, 
 which one can neither escape nor for the present 
 transform, the Christian character has become an 
 impracticable dream ? 
 
 The issue differs from many that have been 
 regarded as serious in that it is irreparable and 
 absolute. Whether Church or State should be su- 
 preme, whether priest or preacher should direct, 
 whether liberty or conformity should prevail,
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 5 
 
 these controversies of the past might be deter- 
 mined without a final catastrophe. But whether 
 contemporary life and historical Christianity are 
 incompatible with each other, whether the choice 
 must be made between the ancient faith and 
 the modern world, that is a fundamental ques- 
 tion. If that choice must be made, it would 
 be made, by the great majority of thoughtful 
 minds, without hesitation, though often with much 
 distress. It might be hard to live without the 
 comforts and consolations of Christianity, but it 
 would be impossible to live in a world that is gone. 
 One might sigh for a beautiful past, but he must 
 live and work in a real, even though it be an ugly, 
 present. The Christian life must be frankly sur- 
 rendered if one is forced to the conclusion that its 
 demands and ideals are impracticable in a modern 
 world. 
 
 This conclusion, which shakes the very pillars 
 of Christian loyalty, and leaves of Christian ethics 
 nothing more than a picturesque ruin, overthrown 
 by the earthquakes of modern change, is practically 
 reached by two groups of inquirers, who in other 
 respects have nothing in common and stand at 
 opposite poles of opinion and sympathy, but who 
 agree in forcing this issue between Christian ideal- 
 ism and contemporary facts. On the one hand 
 are the critics of Christianity who condemn it as 
 incompatible with modern life ; on the other hand 
 are the apologists for Christianity who defend it as
 
 6 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 an alternative to modern life. As to the first of 
 these conclusions, one has but to recall in the lit- 
 erature and philosophy of the present day the note 
 of disillusion, or even condescension, which may 
 be frequently heard concerning religion in general 
 and the Christian religion in particular. "None 
 of us are Christians," a distinguished Eng- 
 lish philosopher has affirmed, "and we all know, 
 no matter what we say, we ought not to be. ... 
 We have lived a long time now the professors of a 
 creed which no one can consistently practise and 
 which, if practised, would be as immoral as unreal." l 
 "We are," an Oxford tutor has written, "official 
 Christians and not real Christians. . . . Let us 
 have done with pretence. Let us cease to call our- 
 selves Christians when we do not follow Christ. . . . 
 The last sixty years have witnessed a kind of col- 
 lapse of Christianity." 2 " It must be plain," Profes- 
 sor Rauschenbusch remarks, "to any thoughtful 
 observer, that immense numbers of men are turning 
 away from traditional religion. . . . Many of its 
 defenders are querulously lamenting the growth 
 of unbelief. They stand on a narrowing island 
 amid a growing flood, saving what they can of the 
 wreckage of faith." 3 
 
 Thus, from many quarters, from friendly, in- 
 
 1 F. H. Bradley, International Journal of Ethics, October, 1894. 
 2 Garrod, "The Religion of All Good Men," 1906, pp. 154, 
 iS9, 65. 
 
 "Christianizing the Social Order," 1912, pp. 117-120.
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 7 
 
 different, and hostile critics, comes this confession 
 of an imperilled or a defeated Christianity. " Even 
 the unprejudiced observer," Eucken concludes, "is 
 constrained to admit, that Christianity no longer 
 holds its old position. It has been driven from its 
 status of undisputed possession and forced into an 
 attitude of defense." 1 "The men in whom the 
 religious instinct is strongest," Mr. Lowes Dickin- 
 son affirms, "move farther and farther from the 
 Christian postulates." 2 Finally there is heard the 
 bitter protest of Nietzsche against the decadent 
 and anaemic ethics of Christian sentimentalism : 
 " Christianity is the one great curse, the one great 
 spiritual corruption." " It is our more strenuous 
 and instinctive piety which forbids us to continue 
 Christians." 3 
 
 When one passes from these conclusions of 
 academic minds to the utterances of social revo- 
 lutionists, he finds the same sense of impractica- 
 bility given an equally unmeasured expression. 
 A generation ago Marx wrote: "For a society 
 whose economic relations consist in the dealing 
 with its products as commodities and values . . . 
 Christianity, with its cult of the abstract man, 
 especially in its bourgeois development as Protes- 
 tantism, Deism, etc., is the most appropriate 
 form of religion. . . . This religious reflection 
 
 1 " Can We Still Be Christians?" tr. 1914, p. 48. 
 
 *" Religion: a Criticism and a Forecast," 1905, p. 67. 
 
 1 " Sammtliche Werke," 1895, VIII, 270; XIII, 317.
 
 8 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 of the real world will only then finally vanish 
 when the conditions of practical work-a-day life 
 establish rational relations with man and with 
 nature," * and Bebel, with still firmer assurance, 
 taught: "Religion will not be abolished or God 
 dethroned. . . . Without attack of force or sup- 
 pression of opinion of any kind, religion will of itself 
 vanish. It is the transcendental reflection of the 
 existing social order." 2 To the same purport, in 
 answer to an inquiry lately made concerning the 
 prospects of the Christian religion, a leader of the 
 Social Democracy of Holland has frankly replied : 
 "The process of evolution involves the dissolution 
 of the religious sentiment," and a representative of 
 the same party in Russia has added, "The progress 
 of humanity is the death-sentence of religion." 3 
 
 If, on the other hand, one turns from these 
 critics of Christianity to those who conceive them- 
 selves to be its defenders, the same conclusion of 
 impracticability is not infrequently promoted by 
 the form of apologetics employed. To precipitate 
 an issue between religion and modern life, to set 
 religion in conflict with the principles of modern 
 research, may be a heroic enterprise ; but its effect 
 upon the modern mind cannot be anything but a 
 pathetic sense of impracticability. When, for ex- 
 
 1 "Das Kapital," ate Aufl., I, 1872, s. 56, 57. 
 * "Die Frau und der Sozialismus," xote Aufl., 1891, s. 313, 314. 
 3 Matthieu, "Das Christentum und die soziale Krise der 
 Gegenwart," 1913, s. 89, note.
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 9 
 
 ample, an eloquent English priest maintains that 
 the "scientific temperament" is "opposed to any 
 such scheme as the Christian"; that over against 
 the scientific view of the universe stands the 
 "magical view," and that one must take his choice 
 which way to go, 1 what impression does his 
 brilliant dialectic make on the modern mind? 
 One hears the argument as from afar, as a visitor 
 to some cathedral hears the chanting of the monks 
 behind the choir-screen. To conclude, "I cannot 
 doubt that it is truer to say that Christianity runs 
 counter to our civilization than that it fulfils it," 
 is to surrender the cause of Christianity. A 
 religion which runs counter to our civilization 
 will be run over by our civilization. If civilization 
 stands at the crossroads, where one way leads to 
 the "scientific temperament," and another to the 
 "Christian scheme," then there can be little doubt 
 which way the movement of serious thought will 
 go. Christianity and modern men will soon find 
 themselves so far apart that they cannot even hear 
 each other's voices; and Christian apologists will 
 be defending a position so remote from the interests 
 of modern life that it is not even attacked. 
 
 Or, when again, a distinguished philosopher, ap- 
 proaching "the problem of Christianity," conceives 
 that problem to have been hidden from the mind 
 of Jesus himself, and disclosed only to the later 
 Church, so that "the mind of Jesus did not make 
 
 1 Figgis, "Civilization at the Crossroads," 1912, pp. 3, 261.
 
 10 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 explicit what proved to be precisely the most char- 
 acteristic feature of Christianity; and the core of 
 faith ... is not in the person or sayings of the 
 founder"; 1 no amount of metaphysical subtlety 
 or literary charm can obscure the fact that this is 
 an impracticable Christianity. It turns the New 
 Testament upside down. The Church, not its 
 Teacher, becomes the object of loyalty. A conse- 
 quence is mistaken for a cause. Japanese Shintoism, 
 with its reverence of ancestors and of the Imperial 
 Throne, is a more conspicuous expression than 
 Christianity of religion as loyalty to a Beloved 
 Community. Christianity, if it is to have any 
 practicability, cannot forfeit the relationship of 
 the individual soul with its personal Master or sub- 
 stitute devotion to the Church for discipleship of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Something of the same impression of imprac- 
 ticability is made on many unsophisticated minds 
 by that interpretation of the New Testament, now 
 much in fashion, which finds its essential character 
 in what are called the eschatological or apocalyptic 
 teachings of the Gospels. It has been of late 
 pointed out, with a fulness never before attempted, 
 that much of the language of the Gospels, and much 
 of the literature which lies behind the Gospels, is 
 colored by the anticipation of an approaching 
 catastrophe, which was to make an end of the 
 existing social order and to usher in the Messiah's 
 
 1 Royce, "The Problem of Christianity," 1913, 1, pp. 415, 416.
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 1 1 
 
 reign. This great expectation made, it is urged, 
 the central motive of the teaching of Jesus, and 
 preparation for this millennial revolution was to 
 the first disciples a supreme concern. 
 
 Many passages of the Gospels go far to confirm 
 this eschatological view. A millennial hope unques- 
 tionably burned in the hearts of the Hebrew people, 
 and the ministry of Jesus no doubt fanned this 
 hope into a flame. "The Son of man shall come 
 in his glory" ; "The time is at hand" ; "There be 
 some standing here which shall not taste of death 
 till they see the Son of man coming in his king- 
 dom " ; "Watch ye therefore " ; these, and many 
 similar prophecies of a world-judgment, repeat the 
 warnings of an impending catastrophe which 
 abound in the Apocalyptic writings. If, therefore, 
 as is confidently argued, the cardinal principle of 
 New Testament interpretation is to be found in 
 this feverish anticipation of the end of the existing 
 world, then the ethics of Christianity must be 
 shaped by this expectation and must be appropriate, 
 not to social conditions which are fixed or perma- 
 nent, but to a fleeting and perishing world. It 
 must be an interim ethics, acceptable to those only 
 whose minds are dominated by the millennial 
 dream. Christian ethics was a product of this early 
 expectation and must share its fate. Interim con- 
 duct, adapted to a world that is to pass away, 
 cannot be appropriate to a world that is perma- 
 nent. "Can any moralist," asks an English critic,
 
 12 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 "firmly persuaded of the imminent dissolution of 
 the world and all things hi it, frame an ethical code 
 adequate for all time? . . . These precepts, 
 literally pursued, mean in any age the dissolution 
 of what is called society. . . . Jesus did not wish 
 to give men something to live by, but something 
 wherewith to face the day of the Son of man." l 
 When, therefore, the dreams of the early Christians 
 proved to be illusory, and the later followers of 
 Jesus were forced to adjust themselves to an un- 
 regenerated world, it became necessary either to 
 abandon the ethical teaching of the Gospels or to 
 transform it into principles which could be rationally 
 obeyed. Christian conduct could not be perma- 
 nently inspired by a manifest, even though a 
 magnificent, mistake. 
 
 This conclusion, though it be defended as con- 
 tributory to orthodoxy, leaves, in fact, little of 
 Christianity as the religion of Jesus Christ. The 
 foundation of faith becomes, not the simple teaching 
 of the Synoptic Gospels, but the mystical visions re- 
 ported after the Master's death. "The final ten- 
 dency of advanced theology," an English theologian 
 does not hesitate to affirm, 2 "is backward . . . and 
 its great act of violence is the driving of a wedge 
 between the Synoptics and the Epistles, between 
 the message of Jesus and the Gospel of his apostles." 
 
 1 Garrod, op. cit., pp. 60, 65, 71. 
 
 *Forsyth, "The Person and Place of Jesus Christ," 1909, pp. 
 133, 168, 169.
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 13 
 
 The Synoptics exhibit, under this interpretation, 
 "an incomplete situation, a raw audience, and an 
 inchoate context of evidence." "It is in the 
 Epistles that we have the essence of Christianity." 
 " The apostolic inspiration . . . takes as much pre- 
 cedence of his earthly and (partly) interim teaching 
 as the finished work is more luminous than the work 
 in progress." As another English writer has said: 
 " Christ must be looked at in two ways ; as the his- 
 torical Jesus, who lived in Palestine, . . . and as 
 the Eternal Christ. . . . When a man discards the 
 claims of the historical Jesus he is guilty of the 
 'minor rejection' ; but when he pushes away from 
 him all desire or acceptance of the Ideal Christ 
 that involves what I may call the 'major excom- 
 munication.'" l 
 
 The first impression made by this new defence 
 of the faith is one of sheer bewilderment. Paul, 
 not Jesus, becomes the founder of the Christian 
 religion. The Epistles, not the Gospels, are its 
 most precious documents. Jesus was not under- 
 stood until he was gone. Indeed, he did not under- 
 stand himself. Orthodoxy may thus become saved 
 at the expense of historicity. The Sermon on the 
 Mount and the Parables are subordinated to the 
 mysticism of Christian tradition. ' ' Non tali auxilio 
 necdefensoribusististempuseget." ' Christian faith is 
 not likely to find itself strengthened by this under- 
 mining of its foundations. The creeds are but ill-de- 
 
 1 Lloyd, "Studies of Buddhism in Japan," 1908, p. 29.
 
 14 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 fended when they are setin contrast with the Gospels. 
 " Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, 
 which is Jesus Christ." Such subversive criticism 
 tempts one to the cynicism of the evil spirit in his 
 answer to the sons of Sceva: "Jesus I know, and 
 Paul I know ; but who are ye ? " l 
 
 Even more obvious, however, is the fact that 
 Christian ethics on these terms becomes for plain 
 people, whose faith rests on the Gospel records 
 of the teaching of Jesus, impracticable. Their 
 simple discipleship of practical obedience is sup- 
 planted by a rapt communion of the spirit which 
 is possible to the elect alone. Phrases like 
 "The imitation of Christ" and "Follow me," lose 
 their meaning in this rarefied theological atmos- 
 phere. "In the Christianity that is to be," it is 
 taught, "we shall hear still, I hope, of the imitation, 
 but more also of the limitation of Christ." 2 Escha- 
 tology thus hi large degree eliminates ethics. 
 "The price demanded," we must conclude with 
 Dean Inge, "is ruinous. . . . To cut off the tree 
 of Christianity from its roots, to accept the cynical 
 conclusion that a great world-religion arose out of 
 the crazy visions of a mistaken enthusiast, all 
 this is to bring desolation, not peace, to the mind 
 of the troubled believer." 3 
 
 Serious, however, as may be the effects of these 
 
 1 Acts, XLX, 15. 
 
 1 Garrod, op. tit., p. 60. 
 
 8 Constructive Quarterly, June, 1913, pp. 319, 304.
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 15 
 
 tendencies in criticism and apologetics, it is not 
 through them that the sense of impracticability 
 for the Christian life is chiefly conveyed. Much 
 more convincing to the great mass of plain people 
 than these discussions of the critics is the evidence 
 of their own observation of contemporary con- 
 duct. What is the practical effect of Christian 
 motives, they ask themselves, on those who pro- 
 fess Christianity? Do their lives testify to the 
 practicability of their faith? Is the Christian 
 religion actually moulding the habits of Chris- 
 tian believers; or are the ideals of Christianity 
 revered much more than they are realized ? Here 
 is the point where the authority of the Chris- 
 tian life seems most difficult to maintain. Its 
 position is undermined by the un-Christian con- 
 duct of Christians. Its defence is more imperilled 
 by treachery than by attack. The reaction from 
 Christianity is not so much intellectual as it is 
 moral. The most threatening enemy of religion is 
 not infidelity but inconsistency. "To a large ex- 
 tent," said John Bright in 1880, "the working 
 people of this country do not care any more for 
 the doctrines of Christianity than the upper classes 
 care for the practice of that religion." * Might not 
 a similar indictment be made to-day? What 
 shall one say of a condition of society where 
 the creeds of the Church are often devoutly 
 repeated without perceptible effect on the prac- 
 ^revelyan, "Life of John Bright," 1913, p. 428.
 
 l6 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 tical conduct of domestic or social affairs, where 
 divorce or gambling may be no bar to social recog- 
 nition, and where the entertainments of the pros- 
 perous may exhibit a vulgarity not tolerated in the 
 dance-halls of the slums? If the current moral 
 standards of Christian believers are no better than 
 those which prevail among other decent people, 
 how can the Christian teaching be regarded as 
 having unique significance ? If self-sacrifice, gener- 
 osity, and integrity are often found quite apart 
 from religious profession, may not the Christian 
 character be regarded as superfluous in modern life ? 
 May it not be probable that the prevailing standard 
 of conventional conduct, the "social ethos," as Pro- 
 fessor Sumner called it, is in fact governing habit and 
 desire, even where religious faith appears to control ? 
 May not many people deceive themselves with the 
 belief that they are disciples of Jesus Christ, when 
 in fact they are children of their own age, or tradi- 
 tion, or race? If one should scrutinize his own 
 conduct, might it not appear that the ideals of 
 Christianity have become impracticable in the life 
 which he is compelled to lead ? 
 
 Even when one turns from these obvious delin- 
 quencies to more heroic lives, a similar impression 
 of impracticability may be felt. When, for example, 
 an exalted nature like that of Tolstoi breaks away 
 from social ties, scorning and rebuking modern 
 civilization in the name of the Christian life, and at 
 last, in the dark and cold of a Russian winter,
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 1 7 
 
 abandons wife and family to secure for his last days 
 Christian peace, what effect does this struggle for con- 
 sistency make upon the modern mind ? Reverence, 
 honor, the hush of criticism in the presence of death 
 all these have been world- wide, but this emotional 
 admiration cannot disguise the hopeless impractica- 
 bility of such a faith. Like the charge of Balaklava, 
 it was magnificent, but it was not war. It did not 
 win the battle of life : it ran away from that battle. 
 The ethics of Tolstoi, instead of facing a conflict 
 with the world, counselled a flight from the world. 
 Europe and Asia, as Harnack has said, met in 
 Tolstoi, and Asia conquered. Oriental quietism 
 became the ideal of the Christian character. In- 
 stead of saving others, Tolstoi fled from others to 
 save himself ; and by a curious Nemesis this final 
 desire for solitary peace was .pitifully frustrated. 
 Never was Tolstoi so much before the eyes of the 
 world, or of so much trouble to his friends, as in 
 his death. The lonely railway station where he 
 lay became a camp where family and disciples 
 guarded his last hours, and a score of reporters 
 watched at the bedside of the old man whose su- 
 preme wish was to die alone. If, then, says the 
 modern man, this is Christian discipleship, it is 
 simply not for me. If this is the sober, righteous, 
 and godly life, then it cannot be lived "in this 
 present world." For me, and for millions like me, 
 there can be no retreat from things as they are. 
 My ethics cannot be those of the runaway. Home
 
 l8 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 and family, money-getting and money-spending, 
 the temptations of commercial and social life 
 these are not to be eluded as snares for my soul. 
 They are the essential conditions under which my 
 soul must be saved, if saved it can be. If the 
 Christian life means non-resistance, asceticism, 
 monasticism, then, however beautiful and un- 
 worldly such saintliness may be, it must remain 
 for me nothing more than an impracticable and 
 unrealizable dream. 
 
 From the impression thus created, either by 
 learning or by life, of the inapplicability of Chris- 
 tian ethics to the modern world, there have fol- 
 lowed two sorts of consequences. On the one 
 hand is the sentimental approval of a faith which 
 cannot be reduced to practice. One may revere 
 the teaching without proposing to obey it. Chris- 
 tian conduct may come to be regarded as a Catholic 
 layman views the vita religiosa of the clerical 
 orders. It is a counsel of perfection which few 
 can accept, but which an unsanctined world may 
 admire from afar. Thus there may ensue a view 
 of the Christian life which is practically that of a 
 looker-on; a conventional conformity which does 
 not even propose to itself a genuine obedience. 
 Certain incidents of experience birth, marriage, 
 and death may be consecrated to God ; but the 
 long years of work and play, of love and struggle, 
 are ruled by motives of the world, the flesh, or the 
 devil. One comes to live on a left-over piety, as
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 19 
 
 he may live on an inherited estate, without much 
 thought of its origin or responsibility. Christian 
 believers, as Lawrence Oliphant once said, fall into 
 two great groups, the wholly worldly and the 
 worldly-holy. The surface of life may be smoothed 
 by Christian ordinances and consolations, while 
 the depths remain unperturbed. Thus one may be 
 in practice a citizen of "this present world," but 
 in theory, or in moments of profound sorrow and 
 joy, a patron of "the sober, righteous, and godly 
 life." "If all things that evil and vicious manners 
 have caused to seem inconvenient . . . should be 
 refused," wrote Sir Thomas More, in words which 
 have a very modern ring, "then we must among 
 Christian people wink at the most part of all those 
 things which Christ taught us. ... But preachers 
 . . . have wrested and wried his doctrine, and 
 like a rule of lead applied it to men's manners, 
 that by some means . . . they might agree to- 
 gether." * 
 
 On the other hand is the more candid and open 
 reaction from a code which is inconsistent with 
 modern life. If, it is argued, all that can be sub- 
 stituted for an incredible theology is an impossible 
 ethics, then, it would seem, the Christian religion 
 must be frankly discarded as an impracticable 
 faith. As the cosmology of Genesis once obstructed 
 the advance of science, so, it is concluded, the eth- 
 ics of the Gospels have now become social obstruc- 
 1 "Utopia," tr, Robinson, 1624, First Booke, p. 38.
 
 2O THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 tions or indorsements of wrong, and those who 
 commit themselves to the modern spirit must 
 turn away, some with sorrow, and some with scorn. 
 Like the men of the parable, they go their ways, 
 one to his farm, another to his merchandise ; or, in 
 a more tragic reaction, bitterness and wrath may 
 possess the soul of one who recalls what was taught 
 him as eternal truth, until he turns on those feeble 
 arguments and slays them. 
 
 It is folly to disguise from one's self the extent 
 of this defection, not only from the theology, but 
 hardly less from the ethics of Christianity. The 
 ominous fact confronts the modern world that a 
 very large proportion, not only of frivolous and 
 superficial people, but also of serious and cul- 
 tivated minds, have simply dropped the motives 
 of religion from among their habitual resources, 
 and are supported in their experiences by sanctions 
 and consolations derived from science or art, from 
 work or play. Much of this modern paganism is 
 due, no doubt, to the reserve of science or to the 
 preoccupation of business, but much is also due 
 to the superfluous refinements of Christian theology 
 and the unreal distinctions of Christian ethics. 
 
 Whatever may be the proportion of these various 
 influences, the result is beyond dispute. We hear 
 much of the alienation of the working-classes from 
 religion, and new ways are bravely devised to reach 
 the masses and to preach the Gospel to the poor. 
 But this defection of the wage-earners, serious as
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 21 
 
 it may be, does not compare in significance with 
 the intellectual neutrality or indifference of great 
 numbers of the privileged and thoughtful. Fifty 
 years ago Huxley, in a touching letter to Charles 
 Kingsley, wrote : " Understand me that all the 
 young men of science whom I know are essentially 
 of my way of thinking. I know not a scoffer or 
 an irreligious man among them, but all regard 
 orthodoxy as you do Brahminism " j 1 and at about 
 the same date, Lowell, in his Essay on Lessing, 
 said: "The world has advanced to where Lessing 
 stood, while the Church has stood stock still, and 
 it would be a curious, were it not a melancholy, 
 spectacle to see the indifference with which the 
 laity look on while theologians thrash their wheat- 
 less straw." 2 
 
 What, a generation ago, was but a half- 
 recognized alienation is now unmistakable and 
 conspicuous. Great numbers of modern minds 
 are not even critical of religion ; they have simply 
 turned their attention another way. One must 
 begin a defence of the Christian life to-day with 
 much the same words which Schleiermacher 
 used a century ago: "It may appear an un- 
 expected and extraordinary undertaking that any 
 one should still venture to demand from those 
 who are conscious of their superiority and are mas- 
 ters of modern learning, any attention for a sub- 
 
 1 "Life and Letters,"' 1900, I, p. 219. 
 
 2 "Prose Works," II, p. 217.
 
 22 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 ject which they have so completely put aside." * 
 A man of science, not long ago, when asked his 
 opinion about religious problems, answered, 
 "We simply do not think of these things at all." 
 On the whole, then, the conclusion seems not 
 unreasonable which was reached in 1903 by a dis- 
 cerning writer : " When the religious history of the 
 nineteenth century comes to be fully understood, it 
 will probably be found that at no period in all the 
 long story of Christianity has the Christian faith 
 been subjected to so great an intellectual strain." 2 
 Here is a situation which must be frankly faced. 
 No cause is safe if it lose the loyalty of the best 
 trained minds; and in spite of much rallying of 
 forces, and reckoning of statistics, and munificence 
 of giving, it can hardly be maintained that the 
 motives and aims which habitually govern the 
 thought and work of the typical man of "this pres- 
 ent world" are chiefly derived from the creed or 
 the code of the Christian Church. If Christian 
 dogma seems to ask more than reason can give, 
 and Christian morals to involve more than social 
 stability can endure, then the chasm between the 
 Church and the world has become permanently 
 impassable. The Church stands apart from the 
 world, like a mediaeval castle on its inaccessible 
 height, picturesque but remote, a noble but un- 
 frequented ruin. 
 
 1 "Reden iiber die Religion," 1799, I, s. i. 
 
 * D. C. Cairns, Contemporary Review, Vol. 84, p. 694.
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 23 
 
 If, then, this impression of impracticability is 
 so general and so undisguised, among both critics 
 and defenders of the Christian religion, must it 
 not be concluded that Christian loyalty may be 
 dismissed from consideration by rational and prac- 
 tical minds? Must it not be confessed that the 
 sober, righteous, and godly life commended to 
 Titus, though practicable in Crete, is incompatible 
 with the inevitable conditions of the modern world, 
 and that new motives must be found for personal 
 and social morals? On the contrary, the con- 
 siderations which have been enumerated indicate 
 with precision where the problem of Christian 
 teaching for the moment lies. What is the funda- 
 mental fallacy in these discouraging conceptions 
 of Christian ethics? It is the confusion of the 
 temporary, occasional, and incidental aspects of 
 the Gospel with its universal, spiritual, and per- 
 manent message. Literalism applied to the New 
 Testament however reverent it may appear 
 to itself to be is essentially unhistorical. It 
 forces each incident or phrase into the foreground 
 of the picture, so that it has no environment of 
 time or place, no shading or perspective, and that 
 is to pervert history in the name of piety. A fact 
 may be distorted quite as easily by false perspective 
 as by false definition. The truth of history, as of 
 nature, is to be found in the proportion and re- 
 lation of facts. 
 
 When, for example, the eschatology of the Gos-
 
 24 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 pels is made the master-key of their meaning, it 
 is not necessary to argue that this Messianic dream 
 did not color the teaching of Jesus. He spoke 
 the language of his own time and race, and he could 
 clothe his spiritual purpose in no other form than 
 that of the national expectation ; but to drag this 
 background of the Gospels into the foreground, 
 and to find in Jesus merely a Hebrew enthusiast 
 announcing a Utopian dream, is to distort the 
 perspective of his teaching and to rob it of unity 
 and insight. Nothing, in fact, is more unlike the 
 teaching of Jesus than the apprehensive, excited, 
 or nervous sense of an approaching catastrophe. 
 His moral maxims are not based on an interim 
 ethics adapted to a transitory world. On the 
 contrary, they are as the common sense of 
 two thousand years has perceived characterized 
 by adaptability, universality, and permanence. 
 "We cannot," Harnack has lately said in one of 
 his conclusive aphorisms, "derive the ethical ideal 
 from the eschatological." * There is nothing of 
 an interim ethics, nothing feverish and evanescent, 
 in humility, forgiveness, purity of heart, sacrifice, 
 or service; yet these, and virtues like these, are 
 the pillars of Christian ethics. The habitual 
 attitude of Jesus in the presence of the great prob- 
 lems of experience has a serenity, assurance, and 
 sympathy, far removed from the excited anticipa- 
 tions of abrupt and final change; and it becomes 
 
 1 "Aus Wissenschaft und Leben," 1911, II, s. 267.
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 25 
 
 quite as probable that the vein of eschatological 
 allusion which runs through the Gospels betrays 
 the preconceptions of the Evangelists as that it 
 reveals the teacher's mind. "Jesus above the 
 heads of his reporters" is, as Matthew Arnold 
 said, a wise canon of New Testament criticism. 
 " If Jesus, " one of the most painstaking modern 
 studies of the life of Jesus concludes, " had been 
 the Apocalyptic that Schweitzer contends, he 
 would not have ended his life on the cross, but 
 somehow in the style of those imaginative works 
 which tell of the end of the world and the secrets 
 of the sky. ... To fail to recognize in him 
 what was the first, the inspiring, the really 
 creative, is to look at things upside down." * 
 The eschatological interpretation of the Gospels, 
 in short, when rigidly followed, confuses color 
 with form, by-product with main intention, and 
 finds the ethics of Jesus impracticable because it 
 sees them out of that perspective which gave them 
 beauty and truth. 
 
 The same conclusion may be reached when one 
 scrutinizes more closely the Christian quietism of 
 Tolstoi. Much there unquestionably was in the 
 teaching of Jesus which encourages a retreat from 
 the complexity of civilization to simplicity, poverty, 
 and solitude. The ascetic life, through all the 
 Christian centuries, has found itself fortified by 
 
 1 Weinel and Widgery, " Jesus in the Nineteenth Century 
 and After," 1914, p. 104.
 
 26 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 many sayings of the Gospels. Unworldliness, 
 serenity, and restraint are conspicuous notes of 
 New Testament ethics. Jesus was an Oriental, 
 and above the turbulent vicissitudes of his life 
 brooded a spiritual calm like a spring sunset above 
 the hills of Galilee. But to confuse Oriental 
 imagery with universal principles, to single out a 
 teaching of non-resistance as the core of the Gos- 
 pels, to retreat from social obligations in the name 
 of one who gladly shared them and was called a 
 friend of wine-bibbers and publicans all this, 
 however heroic it may be, is not only an imprac- 
 ticable discipleship, but a historical perversion. 
 It mistakes the occasionalism of the Gospels for 
 universalism. It pictures Jesus as posing before 
 the glass of the future, proclaiming in every utter- 
 ance a universal law, when in fact he is primarily 
 concerned with the individual case immediately 
 before him, and is applying universal laws to the 
 interpretation and redemption of that single life. 
 
 The same false perspective may be observed in 
 many other modern interpretations of the Gos- 
 pels. Jesus was a friend of the poor and a critic 
 of the rich. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me," 
 he said, " to preach the Gospel to the poor." "How 
 hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
 kingdom of God !" "Woe unto you that are rich ; 
 blessed are ye poor." "It is easier for a camel 
 to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man 
 to enter into the kingdom of God." What, then,
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LITE 27 
 
 it is hotly urged, was Jesus but a prophet of social 
 revolution, a class-conscious socialist; and what 
 was the new religion but an anticipation of the 
 modern programme of a rearrangement in economic 
 production, distribution, and exchange? "Chris- 
 tianity," Professor Nitti has said, "was a vast 
 economic revolution more than anything else." 
 "Most of the great schisms and conflicts by which 
 the Catholic Church has been torn, were economic 
 conflicts." 1 "The democracy of property," ac- 
 cording to an American socialist, "is the larger 
 revelation of Christ . . . The rejection of his 
 social ideal was the crucifixion he carried in his 
 heart." 2 Here again the sayings of the Gospels 
 must be accepted in all their solemn and perma- 
 nent significance. The deceitfulness of riches, the 
 responsibility of talent, the solemn alternatives of 
 the dedication of wealth or its abnegation these 
 warnings or rebukes are as convincing as ever. 
 But it does not follow from these sayings that 
 Jesus was a curbstone agitator, inflaming a class- 
 conscious conflict. The modern revolutionist, if 
 he listen at all to the teaching of the Gospels, 
 hears in it nothing but the confirmation of his 
 own social creed. He seizes on fragmentary ut- 
 terances with no regard for their connection or 
 intention. It is one more instance of literalism 
 distorting the record. It mistakes the by-products 
 
 1 "Catholic Socialism," 1895, pp. 62, 72. 
 
 *G. D. Herron, "The New Redemption," 1893, pp. 63, 80.
 
 28 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 of the teaching for its main intention. Whatever 
 social changes Jesus may have foreseen, his mind 
 was not primarily fixed on economic affairs. He 
 was not a reformer, but a revealer. "Who 
 made me," he said, "a judge or a divider over 
 you?" A changed world might issue from his 
 teaching, but it was to issue from a change of heart. 
 He was not, first of all, a socialist, but a saviour. 
 He came to convert not things, but men. "The 
 preaching of Jesus," Harnack has declared with 
 emphasis in the volume just cited, "and the estab- 
 lishing of a new religious brotherhood, were not 
 essentially a social agitation ; that is, they did 
 not issue from an antecedent class-conflict or annex 
 themselves thereto, and in general had no direct 
 connection with the social revolutions of the ancient 
 world." 
 
 These considerations of the fallacies of literalism 
 point to the conclusion that the Christian religion 
 is a much larger thing than many of its critics, 
 and some of its defenders, have supposed. It as- 
 sumes many forms, but is exhausted by none. Its 
 fragmentary utterances may become impracticable 
 guides, while its total view of life, its general law 
 of conduct, may have permanent practicability. 
 The Gospels are perennially perplexing to the 
 literalist because they say so many different things. 
 If each verse must be regarded as of equal weight, 
 then each should balance and confirm another. 
 The fact is, however, that at many points the
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OP THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 29 
 
 teaching is self-contradictory. At one moment 
 Jesus counsels non-resistance, and at another 
 moment commends soldierliness. At one time 
 he offers peace ; at another he burns with indigna- 
 tion. He blesses the poor without scorning the 
 rich. He welcomes solitude, but serves society. 
 He proclaims the kingdom of God as coming in 
 outward clouds of glory, yet finds that kingdom 
 within the human heart. To one disciple he says, 
 "Come unto me, and I will give you rest"; to 
 another he says, "If any man will come after me, 
 let him take up his cross and follow." In one 
 saying he commends social equality "I will 
 give unto this last even as unto thee" ; in another 
 saying he announces the law of cumulative in- 
 equality "Unto every one that hath shall be 
 given, and he shall have abundance ; but from him 
 that hath not shall be taken away even that which 
 he hath." 
 
 What do these apparent inconsistencies indicate ? 
 Do they condemn the teaching as illogical and 
 wavering, swayed by circumstances rather than 
 steadied by principles? Must one select a single 
 saying, erect it as a monumental teaching, and 
 discard as an interpolation or gloss whatever does 
 not harmonize with this central law? On the 
 contrary, it is precisely at this point that the 
 teaching discloses a character and scope which 
 makes it a practicable guide for modern men. A 
 witty American once said : "It is easy enough to die
 
 30 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IX THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 for an idea, if you have only one idea." The great- 
 ness of Jesus is in his having so many ideas, for 
 any one of which men have been willing to die. 
 His {parking is marked by sanity and poise MM>i ^g 
 solicitations to excess; by many-sidedness, by 
 sympathetic wisdom. The variations in the teach- 
 ing are precisely what give the key to its interpre- 
 tation. They forbid the attempt to fix one say- 
 ing in the centre of the Gospel and all else in its 
 circumference. They correct the reverent but 
 misleading desire to study each ftr *f i!B i > Bi*l saving 
 as a universal truth. They compel one to pene- 
 trate through the nrra<a>M>KRTn of the teaching 
 to the principles which these incidental utterances 
 disclose, and to apply to new and unprecedented 
 conditions a teaching which necessarily used the 
 language and met the needs of its own time; in 
 short, to pass from the letter of the Gospels to the 
 spirit of the Gospels, and to confess, with Paul, 
 that the letter killeth while the spirit giveth fife. 
 "True Christianity," a great English teacher has 
 said/ "is not something which was published in 
 Palestine and which has been handed down by a 
 dead tradition ever since ; it is a living and grow- 
 ing spirit, that learns the lessons of history, and 
 is ever manifesting new powers and leading on to 
 new truths," 
 
 On this conclusion depends the practicability 
 of the Christian life. If the teaching of Jesus were 
 
 1 Edward Quid, "Lay Sennons and Addresses," 1 1907* P* 67*
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 3! 
 
 a fixed deposit of revelation from which successive 
 ages must draw their moral code, then the supply 
 might become exhausted as the demand increased. 
 A teaching fit for Galilee may well become inap- 
 plicable to modern Europe. "Give to him that 
 asketh thee," may be good ethics in the sim- 
 plicity of Nazareth and bad economics in the 
 complexity of London. If the Christian life 
 must be one of literal conformity to the conditions 
 under which the Gospel teaching was originally 
 given, then it is unquestionably true that we are 
 "none of us Christians, and we know we ought 
 not to be." It is, however, misdirected reverence 
 which thus reduces the Christian religion to an 
 unalterable fixity. The purpose of Jesus Christ 
 was to free religion from this asphyxiation by the 
 temporary, the technical, the external, and to 
 give it room to breathe and to grow. What has 
 been depreciatingly called a "reduced Christianity," 
 is in fact a liberated Christianity. The practica- 
 bility of the Christian life depends upon its flexibil- 
 ity, its applicability, its capacity for expansion, the 
 possibility of translating as Martmeau said 
 one Gospel into many dialects, the contagion of its 
 influence, the transmission of its example. " We 
 not only can, but must be Christians," concludes 
 Eucken, " only, however, on the one condition 
 that Christianity be recognized as a progressive 
 historic movement, still in the making." 1 
 
 I 0p. cit.,p. 218.
 
 32 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 As one reads the Gospels there meet him two 
 great words which announce the nature of the 
 teaching, as recurring motifs reiterate a central 
 theme. The first is the word Power; the second 
 is the word Life. The first is the characteristic 
 word of the Synoptic Gospels: "The multitudes 
 glorified God which had given such power unto 
 men"; "His word was with power"; "Until ye 
 be endued with power from on high"; "Till 
 they have seen the kingdom of God come with 
 power." The second is the word of the Fourth 
 Gospel: "I am the bread of life"; "In him 
 was life, and the life was the light of men"; 
 "He that believeth not the Son, shall not see 
 life"; "Ye will not come to me that ye might 
 have life"; "The words that I speak unto you, 
 they are spirit and they are life"; "I am come 
 that they might have life." Power and Life are, 
 however, words, not of opinion or definition, but 
 of expansion, vitality, momentum, growth. They 
 are symbols of a dynamic faith. Power is gener- 
 ated to be applied. Life is given to be transmitted. 
 To restrict power is to waste it ; to save life is to 
 lose it. The Christian life is not a thing to 
 keep, but a thing to give; not an ancient tradi- 
 tion, but a new creation; not a stopping-place, 
 but a way. "I am the way," said Jesus. The 
 first title given to the new religion by its followers 
 was "The Way." It was, according to the Apostle 
 Paul, "the power of God unto salvation"; "the
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 33 
 
 power of our Lord Jesus Christ." "Salvation," a 
 trusted English scholar has said, 1 "is nothing else 
 than the preservation, restoration, and exaltation of 
 life." "The beginning of Christianity," it has 
 been lately urged in a most searching book, "seems 
 to represent the first definite emergence of a new 
 kind of life." 2 
 
 The Christian character is thus a manifes- 
 tation of power, a way of life. The kingdom of 
 God is like leaven, like a great tree; but leaven 
 is a pervasive influence, a tree is an unfolding 
 growth. Christian ethics is a science of spiritual 
 dynamics. It deals with a world hi motion. Its 
 purpose is to communicate Power; its aim is to 
 increase Life. " There is just one religion in the 
 world," it has been lately and finely said by an 
 Anglican teacher, " which has seen in motion the 
 law of human life. . . . No religion that has adopted 
 arrest as its note can do anything for man in move- 
 ment. . . . Only a religion which can hallow and 
 justify motion can be of any use to him." 3 Here 
 one meets the note of emancipation and exhila- 
 ration which is heard throughout the letters of Paul 
 as he feels himself stirred by this new vitality and 
 force. He has escaped from the bonds of the Law 
 to the liberty of the Gospel. He is a minister, 
 not of the letter, but of the spirit. The letter had 
 
 1 Hort, "Hulsean Lectures," 1893, p. 101. 
 
 *E. Underbill, " The Mystic Way," 1913, p. 43 ff. 
 
 8 H. S. Holland, Constr. Rev., June, 1914, pp. 248, 250. 
 
 D
 
 34 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 killed; the spirit gives life. His earlier faith 
 had set a veil between God and himself, but the 
 veil is taken away in Christ. Where the spirit 
 of the Lord is, there is liberty. With unveiled 
 face he sees the glory of the Lord. His strength 
 is made perfect in weakness. The power of Christ 
 rests upon him. His life is hid with Christ in 
 God. 
 
 When the Council of Trent explicitly anath- 
 ematized the opinion that "Christ was given to 
 mankind as a Redeemer, and not also as a legis- 
 lator," it made this fundamental issue clear. The 
 Christian religion as a form of legislation stands 
 forever over against the Christian religion as a 
 way of redemption. On the one hand is the im- 
 perial conception of the Church of Christ, on the 
 other the spiritual conception. A form of gov- 
 ernment, a legislating hierarchy, has in its very 
 nature the qualities of inflexibility and fixity. A 
 Life, a Power, a redemptive force, has in its 
 very nature perennial possibilities of expansion 
 and adaptation. "Truth," said Milton, "is com- 
 par'd in Scripture to a streaming fountain. If 
 her waters flow not in a perpetuall progression, 
 they sick'n into a muddy pool of conformity and 
 tradition." 1 
 
 We are brought through these considerations to 
 a most obvious, yet a most challenging and 
 humbling conclusion. "Not even now," said 
 1 " Areopagitica," ed. Hales, 1909, p. 38.
 
 THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 35 
 
 John Stuart Mill, "would it be easy, even for 
 an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the 
 rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete 
 than to endeavour so to live that Christ would ap- 
 prove our life." 1 Do not these reverent words 
 disclose the nature of Christian ethics and the 
 permanent practicability of the Christian life? 
 It is a " translation from the abstract into the con- I 
 crete"; the acceptance, not of a teaching, but 
 of a teacher ; not of a word recorded in documents, { 
 but of a word made flesh. The characteristic \ 
 mark of the Christian life is this personal relation- I 
 ship. It is the intimacy of companionship, the 
 loyalty of discipleship. Behind all the teachings 
 of Jesus Christ concerning problems of God and 
 man, of eschatology or ethics, lies his supreme 
 concern for the individual life to which he may 
 give power; and behind all questions which the 
 study of the Gospels may raise concerning the 
 universe or the social order lies the response of 
 the individual will to the summons of a Master, 
 who translates the rule of virtue from the abstract 
 into the concrete. This relation of character to 
 character emancipates the modem Christian from 
 all that is contemporary or incidental in the teach- 
 ing of Jesus. One does not expect a teacher of 
 another age to speak the language or answer all 
 the problems of the modern world. His message 
 must be given to his own time and colored by the 
 
 *" Three Essays on Religion," 1874, p. 255.
 
 36 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 habits of thought which then prevailed. But the 
 teacher behind the teaching, the influences which 
 he described as those of Power and Life, remain 
 independent of historical conditions and are ap- 
 plicable to all ages. Personality, character, spiritu- 
 ality, idealism, vision, communion with God, have 
 in them a quality of timelessness, and are capable 
 of expansion, transmission, and utilization in all 
 the varied conditions of a changing world. The 
 problems of life shift with the passing years, but 
 the nature of life remains unchanged, and responds 
 to the Life which is the light of men. On these 
 terms, and on these alone, the Christian life be- 
 comes practicable in the modern world. The 
 machinery of civilization must be renewed and 
 amplified with each generation; but the power 
 which makes that machinery move towards spirit- 
 ual ends remains the same as in the ancient days 
 when the multitude glorified God who had given 
 such Power unto men. The machinery halts 
 till the power is applied, and as that power finds 
 its way, like the mysterious force of electricity, 
 along all the avenues of life, and enters the homes 
 and work and darkness and cold of the modem 
 world, the question of the practicability of the 
 Christian life is supplanted by the question of its 
 utilization; and it is as though the wires which 
 carry the Power sang above our heads, "I am 
 come that they might have Life, and that they 
 might have it more abundantly."
 
 n 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 
 
 THE general conclusions which have been reached 
 concerning the practicability of the Christian life 
 open the way to the consideration of more limited 
 and definite problems. As one surveys his relation 
 to the modern world, he finds its various interests 
 surrounding him like a series of concentric circles, 
 of which, in the interpretation of his own experience, 
 he is the centre. Nearest him, and with the 
 shortest radius of social responsibility, is the group 
 of the family. It is the elementary expression of 
 social relationship, the innermost circle of social 
 experience, into which by the very conditions of 
 human birth and training he enters. Outside the 
 circle of the family, but concentric with it, is the 
 sphere of the industrial order, with its new forms 
 of combination and competition, and its conflict 
 of self-interest with the demands of the common 
 good. Still larger in its sweep, and holding the 
 family and the business world within itself, is 
 the circle of the State, with its many unsolved 
 problems of national politics and international 
 peace. Still more inclusive, and, to the Christian, 
 all-comprehending, is the circle of the Christian 
 Church, with its schemes of universal evangeliza- 
 
 37
 
 38 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 tion and its dreams of the coining of the Kingdom 
 of God. Out along these radii moves the Christian 
 life, and as it reaches each circle in succession it is 
 met by the problem of adjustment between its 
 religious ideals and the inexorable conditions of 
 the modern world. On what terms, and within 
 what limits, can the Christian life still be per- 
 petuated in the family, in business, in the State, 
 and in the Church? Must family life, under the 
 inevitable conditions of modern society, either 
 frankly abandon or unconsciously outgrow the 
 principles of Christian discipleship, and adjust 
 itself to new standards of obligation or desire ; 
 or is it possible, even in a social atmosphere poisoned 
 by selfishness and worldliness, to maintain the 
 Christian life in a modern home ? Is the business 
 world to-day irretrievably involved in a debasing 
 commercialism, so that, as has been said, "Our 
 industrial order is the disordering of nature, a 
 profane traffic in human flesh and blood"; 1 or 
 is there, even in an economic world so manifestly 
 imperfect, a place for the Christian life in business, 
 and a redemptive work for it to do ? Are national 
 politics and international negotiations hopelessly 
 committed to partisanship in legislation, intrigue 
 in diplomacy, and the tragedy of war, or is there a 
 place in modern politics for statesmen who are 
 idealists, and for diplomatists whose weapons are 
 candor, justice, and the desire for equitable peace ? 
 1 G. D. Herron, "The New Redemption," 1893, PP- 2 9> 6 4-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 39 
 
 And, finally, as the most humbling question of 
 all, does the Christian Church, in its prevailing 
 practices and conspicuous undertakings, provide 
 an unobstructed channel for the stream of the 
 religious life ; or does organized Christianity often 
 divert that living stream from its natural course, and 
 sweep it into eddies of turbulent controversy and 
 shoals of arid conformity, where the Christian 
 life is obstructed in its fertilizing flow ? 
 
 These are not remote or abstract questions which 
 concern theologians or philosophers alone. They 
 are practical problems which multitudes of thought- 
 ful people find it essential for their peace of mind 
 to meet. They want to be Christians, but they 
 still more seriously want to be consistent and 
 sincere. Whatever other rebukes of Jesus Christ 
 they may deserve, they wish to escape his "Woe 
 unto you, hypocrites!" Many modern teachers 
 tell them that their homes are economic ventures 
 built on the sands of shifting desire ; that business 
 is a form of warfare and piracy, where the unscru- 
 pulous win and the honorable lose ; that politics 
 is an instrument of personal ambition and organized 
 greed ; and that the Church is a refuge of mediae- 
 valists or a club of capitalists. What reassurance 
 may they gain by a reconsideration of the teaching 
 of Jesus Christ? What justification is left for 
 their Christian idealism under the conditions of 
 the modern world? Is the Christian life practi- 
 cable now ? Must the home be paganized, or may
 
 40 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 it be Christianized ? Must business be brutalized, 
 or may it be spiritualized? Does modem states- 
 manship offer a field for Christian idealists? Is 
 the Christian Church a fertile or a sterile soil for 
 the Christian life ? These are the questions which 
 may now be briefly considered. 
 
 The first test which thus confronts the Christian 
 life is in that inner circle which is created by the 
 organization and maintenance of a family; and 
 this test has become, under the conditions of modern 
 civilization, by no means easy to accept. Domestic 
 life has grown unprecedentedly shifting and un- 
 stable. The institution of the family is threatened 
 on two sides, on the one hand by those who 
 abuse it, and on the other hand by those who 
 abandon it; by degradation of its purpose, and 
 by emancipation from its bonds; by undertaking 
 it as a commercial speculation, and by breaking 
 it as a temporary contract. The number of 
 divorces annually granted in the United States 
 is increasing, not only at a rate unequalled in any 
 other country, but also at a steadily advancing 
 rate. Between 1870 and 1905 the population of 
 the country doubled, while the divorce movement 
 increased sixfold. In 1870 the proportion of 
 divorces for each hundred thousand of the popula- 
 tion was 28; in 1900 it was 73. Between 1870 
 and 1900 the married population of the United 
 States about doubled, but divorces increased five- 
 fold. In 1870 there were thirty- three marriages
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 41 
 
 to one divorce; in 1880 there were twen ty- three ; 
 and, according to the National Bureau of Statistics 
 and Labor, " at the present time [1909] the chances 
 are that not less than one marriage in sixteen will 
 be ultimately dissolved by divorce, and it seems 
 reasonable to suppose that the ratio is nearer one 
 to twelve." 1 
 
 It is still further maintained by many advocates 
 of social revolution and with increasing candor 
 and confidence that this movement toward 
 instability in the family is not only inevitable, 
 but desirable. The family, it is taught, has had 
 its period of development and dominance, and is 
 now passing to its era of decline. As a social 
 institution it has been a symbol of private property, 
 and with the overthrow of capitalism the relations 
 of the family will acquire new flexibility and free- 
 dom. The economics of social revolution will 
 both promote and require a new status for woman, 
 and the economic independence she will thus attain 
 will, it is said, "undermine or convert marriage 
 sanctions or laws." "The family of the private 
 individual," Mr. H. G. Wells with entire frankness 
 announces, "must vanish." "The socialist no 
 more regards the institution of the family as a 
 permanent thing than he regards a State or com- 
 petitive industrialism as a permanent thing." 2 
 
 x " Special Report on Marriage and Divorce," 1909, Part I, 
 p. 22. 
 
 2 "Socialism and the Family," 1908, pp. 32, 39.
 
 42 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 "Marriage and the family are perennially fluctu- 
 ating institutions and probably scarcely anything 
 in modern life has changed and is changing so 
 much." * "Woman," the leader of the German 
 Social Democracy wrote, "is to be both socially 
 and industrially absolutely independent. She is 
 to be subjected to no semblance of ownership or 
 exploitation, but to stand over against man, free 
 and equal, the mistress of her fate." 2 
 
 Facts and teachings like these reopen the ques- 
 tion of the practicability of the Christian family. 
 Is the ideal which the Christian tradition has per- 
 petuated to be regarded as anything more than 
 the survival of a beautiful but outgrown faith? 
 Must one not adjust himself to a new world where 
 domestic relations shall be loose and domestic 
 affections transitory? Will not the economic 
 changes of the future involve a new attitude tow- 
 ard domestic duty and maternity? "Economic 
 independence," an English scholar has said, "is 
 essential to all humans. . . . The current type 
 of sex-relationship which confines the wife to the 
 house is inconsistent with this economic indepen- 
 dence and therefore is a type destined to extinc- 
 tion." 3 The consequences which this view in- 
 volves concerning children are not evaded. "When 
 sex-relationship results in children," the same 
 
 1 "First and Last Things," 1908, p. 211. 
 
 2 A. Bebel, "Die Frau und der Sozialismus," lote Aufl., 1891, 
 
 s- 337- 
 
 3 Karl Pearson, "The Ethic of Free Thought," 1888, p. 437.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LITE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 43 
 
 writer proceeds, "the State will have a right to 
 interfere. ... On an average three births to a 
 woman has been found sufficient at any epoch to 
 maintain the limit of efficient population. . . . 
 A birth beyond the sanctioned number would 
 receive no recognition from the State." In short, 
 the institution of the family would be maintained 
 with the same impersonal and scientific regulations 
 which govern a well-conducted stock-farm. 
 
 How far, then, is this elimination of human 
 affinity and permanent unity to go ? Is the family 
 to be merged in the larger unity of the State, and 
 what is called the " exclusiveness " of marital rela- 
 tions subordinated to the interests of communal 
 welfare? In a remarkable book, written by an 
 Englishman in German, and but tardily translated 
 into English, the author expresses the opinion that 
 the difference between Greek and Roman influence 
 upon social history and institutions may be traced 
 to different estimates of the institution of the 
 family. "The Romans based their State," he 
 says, "and its law on the family" ; the Greek, on 
 the other hand, "took as his starting-point the 
 State, his ideal being always the organization of 
 the 'Polis.'" While Greece, therefore, was in- 
 comparably superior to Rome in creative imagina- 
 tion and philosophical thought, she "shared in 
 the great civilizing work of the perfection of law 
 solely through the medium of the Roman." "The 
 family became in Rome a firm, indissoluble unit,
 
 44 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 and it is essentially to this that we are indebted 
 for the particular form of the Roman State and 
 Roman law." * In the light of such historical 
 suggestions what is likely to be the future of 
 civilization? Is the unity of the family which 
 made Rome strong to be surrendered to the domi- 
 nation of the State which left Greece weak ? Can 
 the Christian ideal of the family maintain itself 
 under the conditions of the modern world ? What 
 is the Christian doctrine of the family? These 
 questions cannot be answered by multiplying legal 
 restrictions or ecclesiastical regulations. They 
 are not primarily concerned with courts of divorce 
 or conventions of Churches. What is at stake is 
 the very existence of a social institution which 
 through the ages of human evolution has been the 
 unit of civilization. On what terms, one must 
 ask, can the family survive, and what contribution 
 to its survival is to be made by the traditions and 
 ideals of the Christian life? 
 
 When one turns with these questions to the 
 teaching of Jesus Christ, he is at once impressed 
 by the central position assigned hi that teaching 
 to the institution of the family. Jesus, through- 
 out his public career, was singularly homeless. 
 "The Son of man hath not where to lay his head." 
 His own family seem to have been actively con- 
 
 1 Houston Chamberlain, " Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahr- 
 hunderts," ite Aufl., 1898; "The Foundations of the Nineteenth 
 Century," 1912, pp. 158, 119.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 45 
 
 cerned to deter him from his mission, and with 
 the most touching solitariness of spirit he " stretched 
 forth his hand toward his disciples and said, 'Be- 
 hold, my mother and my brethren!" Yet the 
 religion of this homeless teacher was, in its char- 
 acter and symbolism, a religion of the home. 
 God was a father; man was his child; and the 
 communion of man with God was the intimacy 
 of child with parent. The self-reproach of sin 
 was nothing else than homesickness ; and the first 
 utterance of a repentant life was : "I will arise and 
 go to my father." The homeless Jesus entered 
 with equal sympathy the homes of the humble 
 and of the prosperous. He came "into Peter's 
 house"; "into the ruler's house"; "into the 
 Pharisee's house and sat down to meat." In the 
 quiet household at Bethany he welcomed the 
 symbolism of sacrifice; and to the rich Zaccheus 
 he said: "This day is salvation come to this 
 house." "Go home to thy friends," he tenderly 
 says to the man from whom the demon had de- 
 parted. "In the same house remain," he bids 
 his disciples; "Go not from house to house." 
 The parables of Jesus also are, for the most part, 
 stories of home. The shepherd lays the lost sheep 
 on his shoulder and brings it home; the woman 
 sweeps her house to find the lost coin; and the 
 joy with which she calls her friends and neighbors 
 together is like that "of the angels of God over one 
 sinner that repenteth."
 
 46 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 This acceptance of the family as the type of 
 God's Kingdom becomes still more impressive 
 when one recalls the affection of the childless Jesus 
 for little children. In these unspoiled hearts he 
 found the perfect expression of discipleship. When 
 the disciples asked: "Who is the greatest in the 
 Kingdom of Heaven?" the teacher called a little 
 child and set him in the midst of them, and said, 
 "Except ye be converted and become as little chil- 
 dren, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of 
 Heaven." And, again, when they brought young 
 children to him for his blessing, he said : "Whoso- 
 ever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a 
 little child, he shall not enter therein." He took 
 the children on his knees and caressed them ; or, 
 as the passage has been suggestively translated: 
 " He took them in his arms and blessed them 
 lovingly, one by one." 1 He watched them as 
 they played together, and made of their little 
 games a text for his great discourse. "Where- 
 unto shall I liken the men of this generation? 
 They are like unto children sitting in the market- 
 place and calling one to another and saying : 'We 
 have piped unto you and ye have not danced ; 
 we have mourned to you and ye have not 
 wept ? ' ' Thus the teaching of Jesus is es- 
 sentially domestic. His theology is parental; 
 his sociology is fraternal. The whole of human 
 
 1 Mark X, 16; in Weymouth, "The New Testament in Mod- 
 ern Speech," 1902.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 47 
 
 experience is, in his mind, covered by the relations 
 of the family. To the disciple of Jesus the world 
 becomes a home, where a Father's love is the 
 assurance of social stability and a child's obedience 
 is the condition of spiritual peace. Here is the 
 foundation of Christian ethics. Whatever larger 
 opportunities and obligations may meet one in 
 larger circles of social life, they are all to be in- 
 terpreted in terms of the home. The Kingdom 
 of God for which Christians pray is but the ex- 
 pansion of the family into a world of unconstrained 
 and personal love. 
 
 When one turns, however, from this explicit 
 teaching to the history of Christian conduct, he is 
 confronted by an abrupt change of opinion, even 
 within the Christian Church itself, concerning the 
 institution of the family. The life of the home 
 soon becomes relegated to a subordinate and 
 merely tolerated place in Christian society. The 
 higher life, the vita religiosa, is attainable by celi- 
 bates only; and the family becomes regarded 
 as a concession to the frailty of the flesh. 
 Chastity is joined with poverty and obedience 
 as a mark of Christian consecration. A man 
 and woman rearing their children, however de- 
 voted and affectionate they may be, are from 
 this point of view engaged in a less meritorious 
 enterprise than a monk or nun who has abandoned 
 the responsibilities of a home to serve the cause of 
 Christ. Oriental asceticism thus came to sup-
 
 48 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 plant family affection as the ideal of Christian 
 conduct ; and the life of the home became regarded 
 as a bondage of the spirit from which a Christian, 
 if he would be perfect, must at any cost tear him- 
 self free. 
 
 The most immediate consequence of this 
 depreciation of the family was soon reached in 
 the doctrine of the virgin-birth of Jesus, reenforced 
 eighteen centuries later by the further dogma of 
 the virgin-birth of the Virgin herself, so that a 
 miraculous spotlessness was secured for two genera- 
 tions. Quite apart from the problems of New 
 Testament criticism involved, the omission 
 of the story by two Evangelists, the diversity 
 of account in the other two, the admission of 
 Joseph's dream as convincing evidence, the 
 acceptance of Isaiah's assurance to Ahaz as a 
 prophecy fulfilled after seven hundred years; 1 
 not to speak of the artless claim, with which the 
 New Testament begins, that Jesus was the son of 
 David and Abraham through " Joseph, the husband 
 of Mary" ; the story has proved peculiarly unac- 
 ceptable to great numbers of devoted Christians 
 because of its apparent indictment of married life as 
 unsanctified and impure. A child born in wedlock, 
 it seems to teach, cannot be perfectly holy. The 
 relations of the flesh stain the whiteness of the 
 soul. To be immaculate one must be de-human- 
 ized. The logical corollary of the dogma of the 
 Us. VII, 14; Matt. I, 23.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 49 
 
 immaculate conception is reached in the monastic 
 system and the rule of a celibate priesthood. Yet 
 nothing can be more remote from such a teaching 
 than the spirit of the Gospels. Not without the 
 friction and discipline of family life, but through 
 them, the Christian character, according to the 
 teaching of Jesus, gets momentum and effective- 
 ness. Not by retreat from the normal conditions 
 of life, but by converting those conditions into 
 instruments of spiritual education, the way of 
 discipleship is found. Jesus takes the world as 
 it is and makes it the material out of which the 
 better world may be framed. He asks of his 
 followers, not first of all a change of circumstances, 
 but first of all a change of heart. The institution 
 of the family may, if abused, be a peril to the 
 flesh and a slavery of the will ; but accepted and 
 utilized as Christian consecration demands, it 
 becomes, both in form and spirit, the very symbol 
 of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Dismissing, therefore, from consideration the 
 ecclesiastical reaction from the ideal of the family, 
 there remains the practical question of adjusting 
 this normal way of life to the necessary conditions 
 of the modern world. How shall a young life, 
 inextricably involved as it must be in the habits 
 and demands of the existing social order, approach 
 the problem of marriage? What considerations, 
 drawn either from science or from experience, 
 should modify or fortify one's affection or desire ?
 
 $0 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 In the great summary of the Law and Prophets 
 which Jesus draws from the earlier Scriptures, it 
 is written that one should love God, not only with 
 the heart and soul, but also with the mind. Is it, 
 then, possible to apply to the instinct of love the 
 rule of reason? Can rational principles be in- 
 dicated for the guidance of love ? Must the family, 
 because it is based on love, be left to the control 
 of accident or passing whim or fleshly passion; 
 or may one love, not only with the heart and soul, 
 but also with the mind ? 
 
 These questions must, of course, meet 
 very varied answers under different circum- 
 stances of modern life. One set of temptations 
 to domestic instability is provided by con- 
 ditions of poverty, and another by conditions of 
 luxury. Congested living, economic want, igno- 
 rance and thriftlessness threaten the homes of the 
 humble; overstrained nerves, economic excess, 
 social ambition and vulgar ostentation attack the 
 domestic unity of the privileged. Both of these 
 extremes of condition lie, however, along the mar- 
 gins of American civilization. No picture of 
 social life hi the United States could be more dis- 
 torted than to fancy it completely given over to 
 domestic dissensions and the scandals of divorce. 
 The great proportion of homes are, on the contrary, 
 unscathed by these disasters, and unaffected, ex- 
 cept with curiosity, by the pathological symptoms 
 which the newspapers so industriously record.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 51 
 
 Such families occupy neither slums nor palaces, 
 and are comparatively free from the temptations 
 both of destitution and of prodigality. They 
 have been fitly called "the forgotten millions," 
 the unobserved yet overwhelming majority of 
 self-respecting and self-supporting lives. Even 
 if one accept the shocking statistics of divorce, 
 it remains true that twelve to fifteen families 
 maintain stability where one suffers disruption. 
 A social disease, even though it be serious and in- 
 fectious, should not be permitted to create a panic 
 when ninety-two homes in every hundred are 
 comparatively immune. It is sufficient, therefore, 
 for the present purpose to consider the case of 
 the normal and healthy-minded American home. 
 What are the hindrances to domestic happiness 
 which such a typical family is likely to meet? 
 How shall the Christianization of such homes be 
 promoted and secured? What is the history of 
 a normal modern family, from its formation to 
 the end of its course ? 
 
 At the threshold of such a history one is met, 
 first of all, by the problem of the family as a physical 
 creation, and the obligation to take account of 
 the physical conditions which may promote or 
 obstruct its welfare. One often hears at the be- 
 ginning of the ceremony of marriage a solemn 
 exhortation that the union shall not be "lightly 
 or unadvisedly enterprised or taken in hand"; 
 but when one recalls the thoughtless levity and
 
 52 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 even the criminal recklessness with which the new 
 relations are often assumed, it may well seem 
 as if a note of irony might sometimes be heard in 
 the succeeding phrase : "but reverently, discreetly, 
 soberly, and in the fear of God." Much apprehen- 
 sion has of late been expressed because so many 
 young persons, from motives either of self-interest 
 or professional ambition, are inclined to postpone 
 the thought of marriage : but a not less justifiable 
 apprehension may be felt when one observes how 
 many young people commit themselves to com- 
 panionship hi marriage with little more reflection 
 than to partnership in a dance, and either ignorantly 
 or carelessly defy every principle of physical dis- 
 cretion. It has been demonstrated that a decreas- 
 ing number of children in many families threatens 
 the race-suicide of desirable stocks ; but it is not 
 less obvious that a still more perilous race-degen- 
 eration threatens many family stocks through dis- 
 regard of well-known physical laws. There are 
 many families where domestic happiness is blighted 
 by the evasion of child-bearing : but there are also 
 many families where children ought not to have 
 been born at all. One escape from race-suicide 
 may, therefore, be found in multiplying the popu- 
 lation without regard to quality; but a more ef- 
 fective escape would be found by selecting and 
 propagating those qualities which are physically 
 and morally fit to survive. In other words, young 
 persons who propose to establish a Christian family
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 53 
 
 in the modern world are called upon to consider 
 with a new degree of candor and gravity some of 
 the solemn facts which have created the new science 
 of Eugenics, or the promotion of sound family stocks. 
 To link unchastity with chastity, to blight inno- 
 cent lives by inherited taints, to multiply perilous 
 tendencies by an inbreeding which would be pro- 
 hibited even in a stable, to beget children fore- 
 ordained to be crippled or defective, all this is 
 not only short-sighted, cruel, and productive of 
 the bitterest self-reproach, but it is not less dis- 
 loyal to every profession of discipleship to him 
 who found in healthy and happy childhood the 
 type of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Eugenics, like all new sciences, tempts its advo- 
 cates to claims which are extravagant, and to pre- 
 ventive or protective measures which may be 
 inexpedient, but the general conclusions now reached 
 concerning the physical conditions of desirable mar- 
 riage are beyond dispute. No intelligent person 
 can remain unaware of the devastating consequences 
 of certain diseases, and their effects in sterility, 
 mental disturbance, and paralysis. The existence 
 of such diseases in an active stage should be an ab- 
 solute bar to marriage ; and even in the latent 
 period, while marriage may under certain conditions 
 be permissible, the fact of infection and the possi- 
 bilities involved should be known to the contracting 
 parties, and the conduct of life controlled by this 
 hereditary peril as distinctly as in cases where
 
 54 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 susceptibility to tuberculosis or to intemperance 
 exists. In well-conducted life-insurance com- 
 panies these diseases are regarded either as pro- 
 hibiting insurance, or as greatly increasing its 
 risk ; and the pretence of consecrating as Christian 
 marriage what is in fact and with terrific certainty 
 the beginning of physical misery and transmitted 
 taint, is as grim a mockery of religious sanctions 
 as the sight of Mephistopheles kneeling by the 
 church porch. Nor can these rational considera- 
 tions of physical welfare be safely postponed 
 until the moment of decision arrives. To be 
 effective at this point they must have become a 
 habit of mind acquired by early training and in 
 the confidential intimacy of a candid and loving 
 home. The physical conditions of a happy mar- 
 riage must have been learned, not from the base 
 allusions of the street, but from the lips of parents, 
 teaching by example even more than by precept, 
 what happiness a union of healthy bodies and loving 
 minds may attain. 
 
 Approaching thus the creation of a family, the 
 disciple of Jesus Christ is next confronted by the 
 teaching of the Gospels concerning the perpetuity 
 and indissolubility of the marriage tie. "They 
 twain," said Jesus, quoting from the Book of 
 Genesis, "shall be one flesh." With a reiteration 
 unparalleled in the case of any other social problem, 
 his doctrine of the family is set forth in all three 
 of the Synoptic Gospels and leaves little doubt
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 55 
 
 concerning his special apprehension and desire. 
 It is, therefore, a most curious fact that the atten- 
 tion of scholars has been for the most part devoted, 
 not to that teaching in which all the Gospels 
 coincide, but to the divergencies which may be 
 discovered among them. The first Gospel, in its 
 reference to divorce, inserts an exceptive clause : 
 "Saving for the cause of fornication"; the two 
 other Gospels omit even this permissive clause. 
 The problem thus presented, of marriage as in- 
 dissoluble or as terminable for a single cause, has 
 been hotly debated by ecclesiastics and theologians. 
 This problem, however, which is perhaps by 
 the very nature of the evidence incapable of an 
 absolute reply, has obscured the more fundamental 
 purpose of the teaching. Jesus was not primarily 
 dealing with the wreckage of domestic life and 
 inquiring how it could be patched together, as 
 though the first question in contracting marriage 
 should be that of the terms of possible divorce. 
 He was speaking of normal human lives, and the 
 temptations and sins which most easily beset them ; 
 and he observed the invasion of the family by il- 
 legitimate and seductive affections, which subor- 
 dinate unity to the vacillations of fleshly desire. 
 It was the spiritualizing of the union quite as much 
 as its legalizing which he had in mind. Unregu- 
 lated and wandering impulses seemed to him a 
 primary cause of the rupture of marriage. With 
 a definiteness, therefore, which made its mark on
 
 56 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 all three of the Gospel records, he dealt, not merely 
 with the question of separation, but also with that 
 of remarriage. "Whosoever shall put away his 
 wife and shall marry another," say all the passages. 
 Alienation of affection, he knew, is chiefly pro- 
 moted by the assurance that it involves no per- 
 manent penalty, so that remarriage becomes easier 
 than restraint. His doctrine of the family, 
 therefore, and it is certainly a severe and dis- 
 ciplinary doctrine, is one of permanence. Young 
 people may not enter the union experimentally 
 or temporarily, assuming that the way out is as 
 easy as the way in. When the inevitable tests of 
 temper or disposition arrive after marriage, they 
 are not to be regarded as suggesting dissolution, 
 but on the contrary as compelling considerateness 
 and self-control. One does not put away his 
 mother or his children because of domestic differ- 
 ences, but, even when grave differences of taste 
 or temperament exist, assumes the relationship 
 to be permanent and adjusts himself to it as best 
 he can ; and in the vast majority of instances the 
 necessity for adjustment promotes permanent 
 affection. It is the same with a husband and wife. 
 Nomadic and shifting desires are to be sternly 
 excluded when one enters into the relations of a 
 family. "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust 
 after her hath committed adultery with her al- 
 ready in his heart." 
 The family thus becomes, not a temporary
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 57 
 
 resort for the satisfaction of passion, or a form 
 of restraint from which on the least provo- 
 cation one may escape, and, as the Gospel says, 
 "put away his wife and marry another," but a 
 school of character, where the capacity for ripening 
 affection is trained and amplified by the sense of 
 continuity and permanence. The first concern 
 of the disciple of Jesus Christ in considering the 
 problem of marriage is not, as some of the discussions 
 of the present time seem to suggest, an estimate of 
 the chances of being free. The Christian doctrine 
 of marriage is not based on refinements of exegesis, 
 or on the authority of an exceptive clause. These 
 debates of scholars concerning stringency or evasion 
 speak a foreign language to normal and unspoiled 
 young people who have come to love each other 
 and want to share each others' lives. They do 
 not anticipate that the experience of a family 
 is to be without jars ; they expect occasional fric- 
 tion and temporary misunderstandings. Yet it 
 does not occur to them that the escape from dis- 
 agreement is to run away. They have set themselves 
 to the more difficult task of forgiveness and self- 
 reproach. They have not married like pairing 
 animals, to satisfy their passions, but as human 
 beings in whom the monogamic instinct has sup- 
 planted the shifting desires of the herd. The 
 command of Jesus: "What therefore God hath 
 joined together, let not man put asunder," has 
 in fact nothing to do with the problems of divorce
 
 58 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 and remarriage with which it is commonly and 
 solemnly associated. It deals with the much more 
 fundamental problem of helping each other to 
 bear a common load. The "joining together" of 
 which Jesus spoke was a figure derived from the 
 yoking of a pair of cattle in the harvest field ; but 
 this yoking was not like the chain of a prisoner 
 or the badge of a slave. It was the union of two 
 lives so that each might pull the better. The 
 yoke of marriage is not a punishment, but a help. 
 It distributes the strain ; it evens the load, so that 
 two can do with ease what both could not have 
 done if each had pulled alone. 1 
 
 Unity in marriage, therefore, does not mean 
 uniformity, or identity, or subordination; but 
 harmony in diversity, the convergence of 
 capacities, the pulling together of lives which 
 might be otherwise pulled apart. Diversity 
 in disposition, while it may strike fire by 
 collision of wills, often kindles thereby the 
 flame of mutual appreciation. Incompatibility 
 of temper, Mr. Chesterton has said, is the only 
 basis of a happy marriage. The conflict of judg- 
 ments, or habits, or temperaments, which is often 
 regarded as perilous to the home, may be precisely 
 what saves it from monotony and stagnation. 
 The yoke of marriage evens up these divergent 
 qualities so that they pull together, the poetic 
 
 1 Matt. XIX, 4 ff., i 6w 6 Oeto <rwtfrvtev. The use of the 
 singular suggests, not a union, but a unit.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 59 
 
 with the prosaic, romance with common sense, 
 impulsiveness with caution, eagerness with re- 
 straint. A union without differences may be 
 saved from the storms of contention only to be 
 wrecked on the sands of dulness. 
 
 Here is one characteristic of modern instability 
 in marriage which may, in some degree, encourage 
 social hope. Young people have come to demand 
 more of each other than marriage once involved. 
 The education of women brings with it a new claim 
 for intellectual as well as physical companionship. 
 A new range of desire excites a new discontent, 
 which may, in the end, promote, not social deca- 
 dence, but social reconstruction. The new ideal 
 which involves temporary maladjustment may 
 issue into a firmer unity, as the first gusts from a 
 new quarter are threatening, but are succeeded by 
 a steadier and favoring breeze. 
 
 Still more contributory to stability is the beneficent 
 use of imagination in fortifying the new relationship. 
 People who love each other are apt to find in each 
 other finer traits than others can see, and by this 
 faith in each other quicken, or even create, the 
 qualities in which they believe. Many a man or 
 woman who appears to others hopelessly unin- 
 teresting thus becomes through the idealizing 
 touch of imagination, or the creative faith of a 
 loving partner in marriage, the one person in all 
 the world to be desired and cherished. Excellence, 
 nobility, even beauty, which may be altogether
 
 60 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 hidden from other eyes, is discerned by love. The 
 normal affection of a married pair, like the love 
 of which the Apostle Paul writes, suffereth long 
 and is kind, hopeth all things, endureth all things, 
 and never faileth. Faith, hope, and love, he con- 
 cludes, are the abiding principles of human society ; 
 but the greatest of these is love. 
 
 The family, thus affectionately and reverently 
 created, has next to meet the problem of its chil- 
 dren. Not to want children in marriage, and 
 not to care for them when they are given, is, un- 
 less the marriage itself be physically or morally 
 unjustifiable, a sure sign of social degeneration. 
 Love of children in normal human beings is at 
 least as imperative as sexual love itself; and in 
 many women the maternal desire precedes uncon- 
 sciously the marital consent. It is sometimes 
 felt that children are to be regarded as a domestic 
 extravagance, incompatible with a decent stand- 
 ard of living ; and there are certainly circumstances 
 where prudence in child-bearing becomes an eco- 
 nomic obligation. Yet no early mistake in marriage 
 is more likely to be calamitous than the securing, 
 by needless limitation of child-bearing, of present 
 ease at the cost of future satisfaction. Children 
 are likely to be better, both morally and physically, 
 in the companionship of a large family ; and chil- 
 dren of rare gifts are more likely to be of the late- 
 born than of the first-born in a family. Still 
 further, children may be the most profitable in-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 6 1 
 
 vestment of care and money which parents can 
 make. The interest on the investment, though 
 deferred, is cumulative. Poor people thoroughly 
 understand this truth, and anticipate from large 
 expenditure in the first years of married life a 
 correspondingly large return to parents in their 
 old age. Prosperous people, on the other hand, 
 being more tempted by present opportunities, are 
 apt to be less concerned for the future, and may 
 easily find themselves in later life with a full bank- 
 balance and an empty home. "How can you call 
 that man rich ?" one of the cleverest of American 
 writers has said of one of the richest of his country- 
 men, "He has only one son !" Finally, it should 
 be observed that childless marriages, which might 
 appear to promise a higher degree of comfort and 
 of harmony, are in fact less likely to be stable 
 than marriages with children. According to the 
 statistics of divorce in the United States two dis- 
 ruptions- of the family occur in cases without chil- 
 dren to one where children exist. The care of 
 children, which might seem to exhaust the patience 
 and vitality of parents, is precisely what refreshes 
 their affection. Many a home threatened by 
 marital incompatibility has been saved by parental 
 responsibility, and has learned by its own ex- 
 perience the meaning of the ancient promise: "A 
 little child shall lead them." 
 
 The history of the normal family which we are 
 tracing reaches a further stage when the care
 
 62 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 and training of its children become the supreme 
 objects of solicitude and devotion. How is religion 
 to be made genuine and wholesome for children 
 under the conditions in which they find themselves 
 in the modern world? How may they grow up 
 without a sense of compulsion from which they 
 will soon be inclined to rebel? How shall the 
 habits of religion resist the unprecedented assaults 
 which are now directed against the modern 
 home from the three strategic points occupied by 
 the World, the Flesh, and the Devil ? There are, 
 it must be answered, many ways of instruction 
 and exhortation which parents may use, and which 
 the Church, the Sunday school, and the day-school 
 may supplement, to plant the seeds of faith hi a 
 child's mind ; but the roots of religious experience, 
 if they are to be safe from drought and from storm, 
 must be set deep in the associations and memories 
 of a reverent and disciplined home. It is not 
 enough to say that parents ought to be good ex- 
 amples to their children. Too many parents 
 fancy that religion is a kind of pose, which they 
 may assume for their children's sakes. "When 
 our children are old enough," they say, "to appre- 
 ciate our example, we shall go to church; mean- 
 time it is enough to send them to the Sunday 
 school, and to be for ourselves free for indolence 
 or sport." But the fact is that the capacity of 
 children to discern between a fictitious and a real 
 religion is developed much earlier than most
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 63 
 
 parents believe, and those who are more concerned 
 with the appearance of behavior than with the 
 reality of faith find, as a rule, their efforts grow- 
 ing intermittent and futile, and finally delegate 
 the whole question of religious education to the 
 minister, or schoolmaster, or other expert in this 
 special field. The religious influence of the home 
 on children begins, in other words, long before 
 either children or parents know that it exists. 
 Family life which is habitually self-indulgent, 
 frivolous, or contentious cannot be redeemed by 
 bedside prayers or compulsory catechisms. Family 
 life where religion is indigenous and assimilated 
 creates a soil where reverence and worship are 
 native growths, so that the child does not know 
 when the roots of religion first fastened themselves 
 in his life, and only realizes their force when they 
 expand into branches of idealism. Thus the family 
 is not only, as the Gospels describe it, a symbol 
 of the Kingdom of God, but in its normal expe- 
 rience of unconstrained affection it is also the germ 
 of that Kingdom. What Jesus wanted the world 
 to be, that to the little child is his loving and loyal 
 home; and what the parent is to the child, that 
 is the work of a fatherly God in a world of trouble- 
 some, yet not wholly unpromising, children. 
 
 A good example of this unconscious influence of 
 early association is to be found in the religious use 
 of literature. A parent sets his child to the memo- 
 rizing of passages of Scripture, or of religious poetry,
 
 
 64 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 as part of the discipline of Sunday, or better, 
 applies himself to such studies with his child, 
 and he is right in believing that this habit may 
 prove to be an open door into religious experience. 
 The Sermon on the Mount, the Parables, the verses 
 of Whittier, or Longfellow, or Bryant, the hymns 
 of Faber, or Newman, or Hosmer, or Gill, in 
 short, all lyrical utterances of the religious life, 
 uncomplicated by dogma, reach the heart of child- 
 hood with peculiar penetration, and are perhaps 
 appreciated more completely than by the sophis- 
 ticated minds of the more mature. "I thank thee, 
 O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou 
 hast hid these things from the wise and prudent 
 and hast revealed them unto babes." But there is 
 more than appropriateness to childhood in the 
 poetry of religion. This early intimacy with ideal- 
 ism, like early intimacy with noble people, may 
 enrich and color all one's later life. Even though 
 the child may not perfectly understand what he 
 learns and perhaps the better because he does 
 not fully understand it the lyrical note may 
 stir his imagination, the melody or swing of verse 
 may touch his heart ; and years afterwards, when 
 experience has taught him the truth which the poet 
 expressed, the man may be supported among the 
 complex conditions of life by these early admira- 
 tions and half-understood sympathies. The Ger- 
 man teaching of religion begins most judiciously, 
 not with dogma, but with the memorizing of large
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 65 
 
 sections of Luther's Bible, and of the hymns and 
 lyrics which perpetuate German piety. Out of 
 the heart come the issues of life. One may often 
 recognize by the very vigor and richness of his 
 diction a man who has had the advantage of learn- 
 ing, not merely by rote, but by heart, the best of 
 Christian literature in his childhood's home. 
 
 A further step is taken in this story of domestic 
 life when the problems of education must be more 
 definitely met. How shall children be trained to 
 meet the conditions of modern life? How much 
 can be accomplished by the home and how much 
 must be delegated to the school ? Are the habits 
 of social life in our great cities, and the luxury and 
 frivolity of many homes, so perilous to children 
 that they must be deported, while still unscathed, 
 to the more healthful environment and the firmer 
 discipline of boarding-schools in the country ? The 
 apprehensions of many parents at this point, and 
 their confession of helplessness amid the prevailing 
 tendencies of business and society, have encouraged 
 a new disintegration of family life, and the substitu- 
 tion of schoolmasters for parents as the chief 
 instruments of moral education. Some parents, 
 indeed, seem reduced to a state of moral impotency 
 concerning the care of their children ; and though 
 competent to cope with the most intricate ques- 
 tions of finance or of learning regard themselves as 
 quite incapable of bringing up their own families 
 with discretion and success. There are often, it 
 i
 
 66 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 must be admitted, great advantages in this system 
 of delegated parenthood. A good school is a 
 better place for a child than a bad home. A 
 schoolmaster endowed with Christian idealism 
 is a better influence than a father absorbed in 
 money-making all day, or a mother absorbed in 
 social dissipation all night. The wholesome con- 
 ditions of a well-ordered school are better than the 
 luxury and the preoccupation of a self-indulgent 
 home. Yet it is evident that this transfer of func- 
 tion is the abnegation of parenthood. It may be 
 forgiven when the imperative conditions of business 
 make a continuous or healthful home impossible ; 
 but when as often happens it is frankly ad- 
 mitted that the habits of one's home are undesirable 
 for one's children, there could hardly be a more 
 guilty self-confession. In a remarkable book on 
 the physical aspects of human development, a 
 distinguished man of science discusses the biological 
 considerations which affect the function and main- 
 tenance of the family, and concludes : " It is difficult 
 to picture a less intelligent and more grossly anti- 
 biological idea than that which would separate 
 parents and children. An equally anti-social 
 means can hardly be conceived, for to separate a 
 family from the people naturally best endowed 
 to rear them would be to rob the community of 
 the human qualities that make most strongly for 
 the civilization based on individual development." 1 
 
 1 C. A. Herter, "The Biological Aspect of Human Problems," 
 
 IQII, p. 222.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 67 
 
 Nothing, then, short of physical necessity or moral 
 incompetency, would seem to justify parents in any 
 anti-biological system which subordinates the home 
 to the school. 
 
 The rapidly increasing tendency in the United 
 States to this delegated parenthood is in large part 
 an imitation of the English practice, but the con- 
 ditions are, with some exceptions, so different in the 
 two countries that imitation may be little more than 
 an imported fashion. The English Public School is 
 a natural consequence, in part of the English habit 
 of living on large rural estates, and in part of the 
 migration of many parents to the colonies. A 
 home-life remote from the opportunities of educa- 
 tion makes the deportation of children to schools 
 a social necessity. A landed aristocracy and a 
 World-Power must be supplied with places of 
 safe-deposit for children. The American inclina- 
 tion to accept the same system has, however, as a 
 rule, had a precisely opposite origin, the move- 
 ment of the prosperous, not toward isolation, but 
 toward aggregation; not to the country or the 
 colonies, but to the city, where plain habits, fresh 
 air, and resources of play are lacking, and where 
 children are likely to suffer because of the business 
 interests or the social tastes of their parents. The 
 boarding-school becomes thus a ransom paid for 
 the privilege of living in the city. The parents 
 love their children, but not enough to adjust their 
 own lives to the welfare of their children. Indeed,
 
 68 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 the children often find themselves happier away 
 from home than in it. Such a situation may be 
 inevitable, but it must suggest to many parents 
 keen self-reproach ; for they are not only confessing 
 that their circumstances or habits are inconsistent 
 with the rearing of children, but are forfeiting the 
 best chance which life can give for the enrichment 
 and refining of their own characters. "There is 
 no task," a distinguished Englishman has said, 
 "which life brings with it, at least to the average 
 man, calculated to raise him so much as the task 
 of educating his own children." l 
 
 It is interesting to observe, still further, that the 
 principle of deportation thus applied to the children 
 of the prosperous does not essentially differ from 
 the principle long accepted by scientific charity as 
 appropriate to the children of the destitute. A 
 generation ago it was discovered that the children 
 of the street must be transferred to the healthier 
 environment of the country if their moral and 
 physical restoration were to be seriously under- 
 taken ; and the placing-out system has become the 
 prevailing practice of child-saving charities. The 
 same method is now applied to the children of the 
 luxurious; but there is one important difference. 
 The placing-out system for the waifs of the street 
 is essentially a family-system. It removes the 
 child from an institution and puts him in a home. 
 
 1 Sir J. Seeley, "Roman Imperialism and Other Lectures and 
 Addresses," 1871, p. 284.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 69 
 
 "An institution boy," Jacob Riis has said, "makes 
 the worst of apprentices; he is saved from being 
 a tough by becoming an automaton." To place 
 the child in a home, even with foster-parents, is 
 now the accepted principle of child-saving, which 
 has emptied the asylums and refreshed the country. 
 The opposite of this procedure, however, still 
 prevails in the backward science of child-saving 
 among the rich. Instead of deportation from in- 
 stitutionalism to family life, there is an increasing 
 placing-out under institutional conditions, and the 
 difficult problem is thus presented to the school of 
 converting itself into the kind of home which the 
 child's own home ought to be. It seems not un- 
 reasonable, therefore, to suggest that the time 
 has come when the children of the prosperous may 
 have the same scientific treatment which has been 
 for years applied to the children of the slums; 
 and that the function of the family in the develop- 
 ment of civilization should not be forgotten even 
 by the most privileged class. "God setteth the 
 solitary in families" was a sociological fact which 
 made the Psalmist sing, " Let the righteous be 
 glad ; let them rejoice before God." Admirable 
 characters may be, and often are, created 
 by devoted teachers, but much more often they 
 are unconsciously inherited from parental sacrifices 
 and domestic love. To be too busy to bring up 
 one's children may be a sincere confession, but it 
 is certainly a pitiful one ; and it should not be a
 
 70 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 surprise if the training of a school, even though it 
 engender a self-confident will and a healthy body, 
 may develop with difficulty the instincts of con- 
 siderateness and self-denial which are the natural 
 and unconscious products of a good home. 
 
 If, then, a home reverently accepts responsibility 
 for its children and declines to forfeit the happi- 
 ness of association with youthful minds and the 
 formation of youthful characters, what guidance 
 may be found among these decisions and counsels, 
 so that they may be, not a daily perplexity and 
 weariness, but a constant inspiration and joy? 
 There is needed, first of all, a point of view, a prin- 
 ciple of action, a philosophy of the family; and 
 this general law of life is provided by the teaching 
 of Jesus Christ. Why is it that the family is re- 
 garded by him with such peculiar interest as the 
 symbol of a Kingdom of God? It is because, in 
 that group, each individual comes most directly 
 and immediately to self-consciousness and self- 
 realization. Within the problem of the family 
 stands always the problem of the person, the 
 parent, or the child, and the mutual discipline 
 in self-development and self-restraint which the 
 relations of parents and children involve make of 
 the family the primary school of human character. 
 The teaching of Jesus moves round two foci, 
 his vision of the Kingdom, and his faith in the 
 individual. The one is the end he seeks ; the other 
 is the means he uses. The Kingdom is a family ;
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 71 
 
 but a family is made of persons. Jesus, in other 
 words, had what the author of "Ecce Homo" called 
 a passion for personality. He detects the possi- 
 bilities of each single life and draws out its latent 
 powers; he believes in people before they believe 
 in themselves, and by his faith in them makes of 
 them what he desires them to be. 
 
 This relation of the teaching of Jesus to 
 the individual gives to each family the key of 
 its own problem. To discover what each 
 member of the family has in him, of resources 
 and capacity, and to draw out by persuasion 
 and example those potential and often unsus- 
 pected gifts, becomes the problem of Christian 
 education. Thus the training of children is, from 
 its very outset, a highly specialized and delightfully 
 diversified undertaking. No two children are alike ; 
 their characters are as distinct as their faces. 
 However much they may inherit of taste or in- 
 clination, they never reproduce with precision the 
 aims or temperaments of their parents. Nothing 
 is more dramatic in parental experience than the 
 sense of baffled surprise with which one observes 
 in his children impulses and forces quite unfamiliar 
 to himself. One wonders how it is possible for his 
 own child to think and feel in such novel ways. 
 Yet this unpredictable element in the child is pre- 
 cisely what gives to any thoughtful parent a peren- 
 nial interest and joy. Each new life is a new prob- 
 lem. General principles of training have their
 
 72 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 place ; but must be given flexibility in application. 
 Rigid rules must bend to fit dispositions or talents. 
 What has seemed obviously best to the parent may 
 be less imperative for the child. The rearing of 
 children anticipates in a very curious degree 
 what modern education calls the elective system. 
 Ways to truth, which parents might distrust 
 as untried, may be the best way for the 
 child to go. The distinction between lower and 
 higher vocations becomes abolished. The only 
 question is whether a real vocation, a calling, a 
 disclosure of the ideal to the young life, is found. 
 A good man of business is better than a weak 
 preacher. Greek is as desirable as chemistry, but 
 not more obligatory. The purpose of each election 
 is to sift out the best that is in the individual and 
 to sow that sifted grain in favoring soil. 
 
 Finally the time arrives when the difficult duty is 
 laid upon parents of giving to their children the right 
 to their own lives, and of repeating, not without a 
 profound sense of solitude and self-denial, the great 
 words of the Master to his disciples: "It is ex- 
 pedient for you that I go away ; for if I go not 
 away, the Comforter will not come unto you. . . . 
 Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, he 
 will guide you into all truth." The decisions of 
 youth may be different from those which a parent 
 might desire, but if the parents have not vitiated 
 those decisions by bad example or distorted them by 
 undue pressure, the choices of youth may be wiser
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 73 
 
 than the desires of age. "Your old men," it is 
 written, " shall dream dreams, your young men shall 
 see visions" ; and many a parent should be on his 
 guard lest the dreams which he cherishes for his 
 child shut out the visions which the child sees for 
 himself. 
 
 We come then, last of all, to that stage of 
 domestic experience which succeeds the upbringing 
 of children, when the parents, if both have sur- 
 vived so long, are left together to face the sunset 
 of their lives. Here, in this normal case of family 
 history which has been described, there arrives a 
 most surprising and beautiful experience, like that 
 of a long calm afternoon with lengthening shadows 
 and softening light. The absorbing preoccupations 
 of business and the multifarious interests of chil- 
 dren have slackened in their demands ; the circle 
 of friendships has been reduced by the touch of 
 death ; and the two lives, which have endured the 
 friction of the years and the moulding discipline 
 of common joys and sorrows, find themselves re- 
 newing, with a curious reiteration, their early 
 experiences of mutual devotion, sufficiency, and 
 romance. As each grows of less importance to the 
 busy world each grows more precious to the other. 
 What was once a union built on hope now finds 
 new resources in memory. The troubles and griefs 
 which they have shared unite them quite as inti- 
 mately as the hopes and joys to which they once 
 looked forward. As the things which are seen
 
 74 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 prove to be temporal, so the things which are un- 
 seen prove themselves permanent possessions ; and 
 among the treasures which they find most secure 
 from loss are the treasures which are gone. They 
 have come out upon the higher ground of their 
 journey together, where the view of life is not shut 
 in by the details of passing experiences, but where 
 the large outlines of the road behind and before 
 become, not only visible, but colored with the 
 evening light. They see how strangely they have 
 been led, through perils which seemed disastrous, 
 and by ways which they did not mean to go ; and 
 the few steps which will now lead them into the 
 dark bring no alarm, as they recall how their way 
 thus far has been more wisely directed than they 
 could have asked or dreamed. So, at the end of 
 the road, they part, with the tranquil assurance 
 that the surprises of the future will be as full of 
 blessings as the surprises of the past; and that 
 heaven will seem to them like home because home 
 with all its vicissitudes has seemed like heaven. 
 
 Is such a family, thus created, thus maintained, 
 and thus remembered, impracticable or visionary ? 
 On the contrary, this is the simple story of the 
 normal American home. The ideals derived from 
 the Christian tradition, and perpetuated by the 
 spirit of the Gospels, are, in fact, of real authority 
 to millions of inconspicuous modern lives. The 
 scandals of courts and the outrages of libertines, 
 which are reported in their nauseating details
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN FAMILY 75 
 
 by the sensational press, are as remote from these 
 experiences of the typical American family as a 
 revolution in China or a war in Tripoli. The 
 "forgotten millions" still find in the experiences 
 of the home the essential meaning of life, and in 
 the teaching of Jesus its best interpreter.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 
 
 THE practicability of the Christian life meets 
 its second test when one passes from the problems 
 which confront the institution of the family under 
 the conditions of the modern world, and faces the 
 still more serious and perplexing problems presented 
 by the world of money-making and wage-earning, 
 of modern business and the modern industrial order. 
 Is it possible to maintain the ideals of Christian 
 duty amid the greed and scramble, the merciless 
 competition and exploitation of the commercial 
 world ? Can one in these days make a living and 
 at the same time make what may be reasonably 
 called a life? Can one gain the world without 
 losing his own soul ? On what terms may a disciple 
 of Jesus Christ participate in the conflicts and 
 competitions of modern business? Must not a 
 modern man, if his business is not to be wrecked 
 or his ideals drowned, construct his life in water- 
 tight compartments, so that his faith may hold up 
 his business without invading it, and his business 
 float without dependence on his faith ? 
 
 It is not uncommon, at the present time, to hear 
 these questions answered by an indignant and 
 
 76
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 77 
 
 passionate assertion that a Christian life in the 
 business world is no longer possible. Conviction 
 on this point has become so deep and intense as to 
 be an important article in the creed of social revo- 
 lution. The prevailing and inevitable forms of all 
 trade, it is confidently urged, are essentially im- 
 moral; in small affairs a form of gambling; in 
 large affairs a form of war. One cannot touch the 
 pitch of modern business without being defiled. 
 Gain to one man is necessarily loss to others. 
 Prosperity for the few involves destitution for the 
 many. As the rich grow richer, the poor grow 
 poorer. "It is only the densest ethical ignorance," 
 one such indictment of modern society reads, 
 "that talks about a Christian business life, for 
 business is now intrinsically evil. . . . There is 
 no such thing as an ethical bargain. . . . There 
 are no honest goods to buy or sell. The hideous 
 competitive war makes the industrial order seem 
 like the triumph of hell and madness on the earth." 1 
 "To-day," another advocate of social revolution 
 says, "every successful business man is an extor- 
 tioner. . . . The business man who is not willing 
 to be a wolf cannot remain in his business." 2 
 "Competitive commerce," a much more controlled 
 and judicial observer of the times has remarked, 
 "pits men against one another in a gladiatorial 
 
 1 G. D. Herron, "Between Caesar and Jesus," 1899, pp. 26, 27. 
 2 Bouck White, "The Carpenter and the Rich Man," 1914, 
 pp. 59, 60.
 
 78 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 game in which there is no mercy and in which ninety 
 per cent of the combatants finally strew the arena. 
 . . . The gentlest and kindliest friends and neigh- 
 bors . . . will drain the strength of their men and 
 pay their female employees wages on which no girl 
 can live without supplementing them hi someway." 1 
 Such a condition of inevitable criminality a disciple 
 of Jesus Christ must pledge himself to overthrow. 
 "The worst charge that can be made against a 
 Christian," it is said, "is that he attempts to justify 
 the existing order. . . . Revolution is the Chris- 
 tian's business." 2 Economic revolution becomes 
 the necessary antecedent of a revival of religion. 
 A practicable Christianity must be postponed until 
 the existing structure of modern business is over- 
 thrown, and a new world built on its ruins. 
 
 It must be at once admitted that many signs of 
 the business world go far to justify these demands 
 for radical change. Business is often conducted 
 as though efficiency compelled participation in a 
 pitiless and insolent war. The greed of employers 
 or the indifference of absentee owners may be 
 responsible for the physical or moral ruin of the 
 employed; and, on the other hand, the reck- 
 less hate or inflammable ignorance of wage- 
 earners may wreck the very business on which 
 their income depends. With still more op- 
 
 1 W. Rauschenbusch, " Christianity and the Social Crisis," 
 1908, p. 265. 
 
 1 G. D. Herron, "The New Redemption," 1893, pp. 141, 143.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 79 
 
 pressive effect the forces of employers and em- 
 ployed, instead of fighting with each other, not in- 
 frequently combine in a conspiracy against the 
 consumers of their product, and extort from a 
 non-combatant public the price of industrial 
 peace. Thus the various incidents of war, 
 alliances, treaties, strategy, raids, and pitched 
 battles, are reproduced in the story of labor 
 conflicts; and the industrial ideal, now frankly 
 accepted by many leaders as satisfactory, is a state 
 of organized opposition between two disciplined 
 armies, each with its own class-consciousness, its 
 own weapons, its authority to arbitrate, and its 
 securing of peace, like the nations of Europe, by 
 maintaining a fighting force too strong to be 
 attacked. Finally arrives the practical application 
 of this creed of hostility in the " direct action " 
 of the modern Syndicalist. " Capital," it is pas- 
 sionately maintained, " has no rights which labor 
 is bound to respect. We produce everything ; we 
 mean to have everything. . . . Ours is a constant 
 war, and the end of it is the overthrow of society 
 and the abolition of the private ownership of 
 capital." 1 
 
 Here, then, is a test of the Christian life 
 which is unquestionably very severe. The 
 processes of business are so beset by solicitations 
 to oppression and fraud; the habit of acquisition 
 is so hard to supplement by the habit of distribution ; 
 
 1 The Survey, Apr. 6, 1912, p. 80.
 
 
 8o THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 the prehensile hand becomes so reluctantly the open 
 palm ; the rewards of illegitimate success are so im- 
 mediate and alluring, while the rewards of integrity 
 seem so remote and intangible ; that the man of 
 business must be regarded as the most directly 
 and gravely tempted of modern men. The solemn 
 warning of Jesus Christ is verified in the business 
 world to-day on a scale and with a conspicuousness 
 which were inconceivable in Galilee: "Children, 
 how hard is it for them that trust in riches to 
 enter into the Kingdom of God." 
 
 Yet, even when the severity of this test is 
 frankly recognized must it be regarded as one 
 which it is impossible to meet ? Is modern business 
 essentially and incurably evil ? Must the disciple of 
 Jesus Christ either re treat from it to some communis- 
 tic organization of uncompetitive living, or else trans- 
 form it by social revolution into an industrial order 
 which is consistent with the Christian life ? And 
 even if that economic transformation were ac- 
 complished, would it insure a purification of the 
 motives and emancipation from the self-interest and 
 greed which taint and blight the business world to- 
 day ? Is the human inclination to compete a mere 
 product of capitalistic society which would vanish 
 with the nationalization of industries and the aboli- 
 tion of the wage-system ? Is it certain that, as Bebel 
 once said, "To accomplish the expropriation of the 
 instruments of production is to lay a new founda- 
 tion for society. Not only industry, agriculture,
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 8 1 
 
 commerce and education, but marriage, science, 
 art, society, in short, all human life will then 
 be transformed." l 
 
 When one turns with these questions to 
 the teaching of Jesus Christ he finds, it is 
 true, many affirmations concerning the spirit- 
 ual risks of a business life which are as unmeasured 
 as those of any modern revolutionist. "Lay not 
 up for yourselves treasures upon the earth " ; "Sell 
 that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt 
 have treasure in heaven"; "Thou fool . . . that 
 layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich 
 toward God." When, however, one inquires for 
 the way of deliverance from competitive greed and 
 degrading commercialism, he hears in Jesus a note 
 quite distinct from that of economic change. 
 "Cleanse first," he says, "that which is within the 
 cup and platter." "From within, out of the heart 
 of man, proceed . . . thefts, covetousness, deceit, 
 pride, foolishness." "The Kingdom of God 
 cometh not with observation ... for behold, 
 the Kingdom of God is within you." The fun- 
 damental evils of industrialism, in other words, 
 are not mechanical, but ethical; not primarily 
 of the social order, but of the unsocialized 
 soul. No rearrangement of production and dis- 
 tribution can of itself abolish the commercial in- 
 stincts of ambition and competition, or even the 
 baser desires of theft, covetousness, and deceit. 
 
 1 "Die Frau und der Sozialismus," zote Aufl., 1891, s. 261. 
 G
 
 82 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 "Out of the heart of men" these sins have pro- 
 ceeded, and in the heart of man they must be sub- 
 dued. The old order of industry is tottering be- 
 cause it has not been ethically maintained ; the new 
 order could not survive a year unless administered 
 by unselfish minds and cooperative wills. Through 
 whatever door the better future may be entered, the 
 master-key is not that of circumstance but that of 
 character. + 
 
 Thus, the fallacy of the socialist programme is 
 not in its radicalism, but in its externalism. It 
 proposes to accomplish by economic change what 
 can be attained by nothing less than spiritual re- 
 generation. Its programme depends for efficacy 
 on unselfishness, brotherliness, and love of ser- 
 vice, but no way for the training of these virtues 
 is provided, or indeed advised. The transforma- 
 tion of business methods would, it is assumed, 
 convert the same people who are now brutally self- 
 seeking and cynically cruel, into agents of mag- 
 nanimity, fraternity, and justice. To Jesus, on the 
 
 other hand, the root of commercial wrongs is in 
 commercialized desire. The force of competition 
 
 is not one which can be abolished, but it is one 
 which can be converted. It is the natural expres- 
 sion of the desire to achieve, to accomplish, to 
 measure one's powers, to do one's best. If not 
 directed to money-making, it may be directed to 
 the attainment of place or power ; and an indus- 
 trial order which prohibited commercial competi-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 83 
 
 tion might offer an unprecedented opportunity for 
 political or administrative strategy. The only 
 practical problem, therefore, is to apply the prin- 
 ciple of competition to beneficent ends. It is like a 
 rushing stream which may work disaster but which 
 may be transformed by science and industry from a 
 source of peril into a source of power. Better ma- 
 chinery may ease the burden of production, but 
 that machinery must have as its engineers better 
 men. Business under any conceivable economic 
 readjustment will remain a scene of contention and 
 self-seeking unless it be lifted to the level of a spir- 
 itual opportunity and utilized as an instrument for 
 the Kingdom of God. 
 
 These considerations lead the disciple of Jesus 
 Christ to a renewal of interest in the world as it is, 
 with all its manifest failings and sins, its iniquity 
 and injustice, its excessive wealth and its grievous 
 need. The creation of a more favorable environ-\ 
 ment remains the task of economic reform, in which ! 
 the Christian life eagerly cooperates. Better , 
 housing, better conditions of labor, better sanita- 
 tion and education, the protection of childhood, 
 disability and old age, the checking of the drink- 
 habit and of commercialized vice, all these, and 
 many other ways of social amelioration invite the 
 participation of those who look for the "new heaven 
 and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." 
 Yet, however loyally the disciple of Jesus Christ 
 may enlist for this campaign of social change, and
 
 84 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 however vividly he may dream of a new industrial 
 order more consistent with Christian fraternalism, 
 he finds in the teaching of Jesus no encouragement 
 to delay discipleship until that better world arrives. 
 On the contrary, he finds set before him the much 
 more difficult task of creating the characters which 
 may utilize the better order when it comes. 
 
 Here is no issue between environment and 
 personality as factors in social progress. The 
 material and the spiritual, the external and the per- 
 sonal, are as essential allies as hands or wings. 
 The teaching of Jesus is not a substitute for hygiene 
 or recreation or industrial partnership ; but it re- 
 calls a generation which fancies that external change 
 will insure moral redemption to the spiritual condi- 
 tions of effective reform. Character, it teaches, is 
 a creator as well as a product. To postpone the 
 Christian life until a propitious environment arrives 
 is to surrender the right to create that environ- 
 ment. If a new social order must be the 
 preliminary condition of a practicable Christianity, 
 then it would seem probable that the new social 
 order could get on without Christianity. If the 
 Christian life is to be practicable anywhere, it 
 must be so here. "Now is the accepted time; 
 now is the day of salvation." The Christian's 
 primary business is not to anticipate that a change 
 in economic conditions will relieve him of the prob- 
 lem of social redemption ; but to apply himself to 
 the much more arduous and audacious task of
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 85 
 
 redeeming the world as it is, and of justifying the 
 promise of those "great voices in heaven saying, 
 'The kingdoms of this world are become the King- 
 dom of our Lord and of His Christ.' " One of the 
 most wholesome propositions with which the prob- 
 lems of the industrial world have been approached 
 is that which the late Pope Leo XIII announced 
 in 1891 at the beginning of his Encyclical on the 
 condition of labor. "Let it be laid down in the 
 first place," he said, "that humanity must remain 
 as it is. It is impossible to reduce human society 
 to a level. There is nothing more useful than to 
 look at the world as it really is." 
 
 Assuming, then, that humanity is to remain for 
 the present as it is, one may proceed to inquire 
 how the men and women of this present world 
 may conduct their business, make their commer- 
 cial decisions, estimate their successes, win their 
 rewards, and adjust themselves to the indus- 
 trial order, in ways which might commend them- 
 selves to the mind of Jesus Christ. 
 
 When one turns for an answer of this question 
 to the Gospels, he must, first of all, be on his 
 guard against excessive expectations. The world in 
 which Jesus worked and taught was in its form 
 and method two thousand years away from the 
 business world of to-day. The provincial life of 
 Galilee, the racial exclusiveness of Jerusalem, and the 
 habits of a primitive peasantry, which created the 
 industrial environment of the Gospels, make it
 
 86 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 impossible to find in them specific instructions 
 concerning the unprecedented problems of the mod- 
 ern industrial world. Rights of combination and 
 organization, adjustments of trusts and unions, the 
 scope of private initiative and the need of collective 
 control, these critical problems of the twentieth 
 century would have been completely unintelligible 
 to a man of the first century. To construct a 
 science of "Christian economics" in the sense of 
 regulating modern industry by the specific direc- 
 tions of the Gospels, is as impracticable a task as to 
 plan that the multiplying millions of Jews in 
 the United States shall return to the primitive 
 conditions of Palestine. Each age has to meet 
 its own economic problems ; and each land has set 
 before it the new task of becoming, in due time, 
 a Holy Land. 
 
 It must be still further recognized that, however 
 weighty and significant the social message of the 
 Gospels may be, it was not to this end that the 
 teaching of Jesus Christ was specifically directed. 
 "The mind of the Teacher was primarily turned 
 another way. . . . His social teaching was a by- 
 product of his religious mission." 1 "Neither the 
 teaching of Jesus," as Troeltsch has said, in begin- 
 ning his exhaustive study of Social Christianity, 
 "nor the growth of the early Church, is the product 
 of a social agitation or the consequence or corollary 
 
 1 Cf. F. G. Peabody, "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," 
 1900, pp. 75-79.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 87 
 
 of a class-conflict. . . . The great redemptive 
 hope of the Kingdom of God on which the teaching 
 is based and which inspires the whole Church, is 
 not the hope of a perfected social condition . . . 
 but the moral and religious ideal of a world under 
 God's unobstructed rule, where all true values of 
 the spiritual life will have their justification and 
 recognition. . . . Here is the fundamental truth 
 from which one's study must proceed." 1 
 
 These qualifications, however, do not make the 
 teaching of Jesus concerning the business world 
 either obsolete or unimportant. On the contrary, 
 they are precisely what give to that teaching its 
 quality of universality. The remoteness of his 
 career frees his message from local limitations ; its 
 spiritual nature lifts it above the economic issues 
 of the modern world. Specific regulations for/ 
 the conduct of business are not prescribed by 
 him; but the much more important teaching 
 of an attitude toward business, a habit of mind, 
 a principle of interpretation to be applied to busi- 
 ness, is a distinct and unmistakable element oi, 
 the Gospels. 
 
 In the first place it should be noticed 
 that the teaching moves with a peculiar 
 sympathy among the problems and interests 
 of trade and labor, and finds in the business of 
 
 X E. Troeltsch, "Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirche," 
 1912, s. 15. The long foot-note (ss. 17-19) elaborates this 
 view and examines others.
 
 88 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 the world abundant illustrations and types of 
 Christian discipleship. When with reiterated 
 emphasis and varied figures of speech Jesus de- 
 scribes the Kingdom of God which it is his mission 
 to found, it is the workers of the world, doing their 
 daily business, who seem to him most typical of 
 the kingdom and its aims. The sower in the field, 
 the shepherd leading his flock, the merchant buy- 
 ing pearls, the fisherman casting his net, the 
 laborer waiting to be hired, the householder dig- 
 ging his wine-press, these, and people like these, 
 stand out in his teaching, not as though concerned 
 with secular and unsanctified vocations from which 
 they have to free themselves if they would enter 
 the Christian fellowship, but as witnesses of the 
 sanctity of labor, as types of the practical religion 
 of a working world, as concerned with tasks not in- 
 consistent with discipleship. In other words, the 
 attitude of Jesus to the world of business is not 
 that of an economist, or a revolutionist, but that 
 of an idealist, who discerns behind the ordinary prac- 
 tices of productive labor and commercial exchange 
 the possibility of a spiritual enterprise. Precisely 
 as the life of the family, which may represent noth- 
 ing more than a petty collision of self-seeking wills, 
 is taken up into the idealism of Jesus and becomes 
 his symbol of God's love for man, so the buying and 
 selling, the hiring and producing, of the business 
 world, though it may abound in sordidness and 
 brutality, is taken up into the same idealism of
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 89 
 
 Jesus and becomes a school of character, a field for 
 the religious life, a parable of the Kingdom. The 
 monastic ideal of the Christian life dictated an 
 abandonment of the work of the world for the 
 saving of one's own soul. The ideal of Jesus, on 
 the other hand, proposes a utilization of the work 
 of the world for the saving, not of one's own soul 
 alone, but of the world itself. Not the rejection, 
 but the consecration of work ; not a retreat from 
 the world, but a victory over the world; not an 
 ascetic, but an athletic religion, is the teaching 
 of the Gospels. "I must be about my Father's 
 business," said Jesus at the beginning of his career ; 
 and at the end he says again, "I have finished 
 the work which Thou gavest me to do." 
 
 Here, then, is at least a starting-point for the 
 disciple of Jesus Christ in his estimate of business 
 life. The forms of industrial activity change with 
 each successive age. Invention, discovery, ma- 
 chinery and organization, revolutionize business 
 methods in ways which the teaching of Jesus could 
 not anticipate or judge. The Gospels are not a 
 text-book of mechanics, but a source-book of power. 
 The teaching of Jesus was not commercial, but 
 spiritual. The purpose of Jesus was not to make 
 rules, but to make men. The New Testament is 
 not a Book of Laws, but a Book of Life. And yet, 
 through the constantly changing mechanism of 
 business may work the unchanging power of the 
 Christian life. What the sower and fisherman, the
 
 QO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 steward and hired servant, were to Jesus in Galilee, 
 that the inventor and manufacturer, the trustee 
 and the wage-earner, may be to-day. Through 
 their business, and not apart from it, or round it, 
 is the way of their discipleship. If a practicable 
 Christianity is to be discovered under the conditions 
 of the modern world, it must be found within the 
 forms of business which are essential to the work 
 of modern men. 
 
 What, then, one may ask, is that aspect of busi- 
 ness which in any age may encourage the faith of 
 the idealist and may give to the concerns of 
 trade a touch of dignity and even of beauty? 
 It is, according to the teaching of Jesus, the 
 part which the business world may take in 
 fulfilling the supreme law of the Christian life, 
 the Law of Service. Here is the great word in 
 which the social ideal of Jesus is disclosed. "Who- 
 soever will be chief among you, let him be your 
 servant, even as the Son of man came not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister." Success, leader- 
 ship, distinction, that is to say, are all to be esti- 
 mated by their contribution to service. One's life 
 is not one's own, but is committed to one's keeping, 
 to be used and accounted for as by a trustee. 
 "It is as a man travelling into a far country who 
 called his own servants and delivered unto them his 
 goods." One does not own the talents entrusted 
 to him, he owes them. "After a long time the Lord 
 of those servants cometh and reckoneth with them."
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 91 
 
 The teaching is applied to the whole of life, 
 to the responsibilities of thought, duty, or 
 affection, as much as to those of trade. Yet the 
 language which Jesus chooses to express this com- 
 prehensive thought is that of business life. 
 "Unto one he gave five talents, to another 
 two, and to another one ; to every man accord- 
 ing to his several ability." The doctrine of 
 service, therefore, is primarily and immediately 
 applicable to the business world. Money is not 
 owned, but owed. The man of business must 
 be able to repeat his Master's saying, "I am 
 among you as one that serveth." The condem- 
 nation of the man with one talent was not because 
 he had misused it or wasted it, but because he had 
 not set it to serve. He had fancied his duty dis- 
 charged when he returned the loan undiminished. 
 " Lo, there thou hast that is thine." But the owner 
 demands the utilization of his capital, "Thou 
 oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers." 
 A talent hidden means a service unfulfilled. It 
 is the sin, as Browning says : 
 
 "... Of each frustrate ghost, 
 The unlit lamp and the ungirt loin." 
 
 The business world, then, must submit to this 
 test of service. The business man who is primarily 
 concerned, not with serving but with saving, not 
 with creation but with corruption, is but a mod- 
 ern instance of "that servant who knew his
 
 92 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 Lord's will and prepared not himself." He says 
 in his heart: "My Lord delay eth His coming," 
 . . . but "The Lord of that servant will come in a day 
 when he looketh not for him . . . and will appoint 
 him his portion with the unbelievers." The man 
 of business who, as Edmund Burke said of "all 
 persons possessing any portion of power," is 
 "awfully impressed with an idea that he acts in 
 trust and that he is to account for his conduct in 
 that trust to the one great master, author, and 
 founder of society," 1 is what Jesus called "the 
 faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord hath 
 made ruler over his household." . . . "Blessed is 
 that servant whom his Lord when He cometh, 
 shall find so doing." 
 
 Such is the searching test which the teaching of 
 Jesus applies to the business world; and it is a 
 test which the present generation is in an extraor- 
 dinary degree inclined to accept. Many aspects 
 of the Gospels have for the great majority of modern 
 minds nothing more than a meagre and declining 
 interest. The mysteries of Christology, the prob- 
 lems of eschatology, the evidence of miracles, even 
 the assurances of immortality, which have seemed 
 in other periods the critical questions of New Testa- 
 ment interpretation, have surrendered their place 
 in the foreground of thought to the more pressing 
 and appealing problems of obligation and oppor- 
 
 1 " Reflections on the Revolution in France," etc., ed. 1790, 
 p. 138-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 93 
 
 tunity created by the unprecedented conditions of 
 the modern industrial world. The life that now is, 
 with its conflicts and confusions, its pathos and trag- 
 edy, has crowded out from many minds all thought 
 of the life which is to come, and the desire to ful- 
 fil one's part "in this present world," to sanctify 
 oneself for others' sakes or, as the philosophers 
 say, to realize oneself in the world of the common 
 good has become the working creed of many a 
 modern man. One word sums up this practical 
 confession. It is the word Service. No Christian 
 hymn is sung by modern congregations with more 
 complete acceptance of its teaching than that of 
 Wesley : 
 
 "To serve the present age, 
 
 My calling to fulfil, 
 O may it all my powers engage 
 To do my Master's will." 
 
 No period in history has been able to appreciate 
 so fully the meaning of the Gospel paradox, 
 "Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be 
 your servant." 
 
 The teaching of Jesus is, in fact, the uni- 
 versalizing of a principle which already con- 
 trols great numbers of modern lives. "Social ser- 
 vice" has become a technical or professional 
 vocation, in which certain trained specialists en- 
 gage ; but in the language of the Gospels the ordi- 
 nary work of the world and its prosaic cares are 
 types of social service. In them, as truly as in
 
 94 THE CHRISTIAN LITE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 almsgiving, one is called not to be ministered unto, 
 1 but to minister. In his office or factory the disciple of 
 Jesus Christ is called to repeat his Master's precept, 
 " If any man desire to be first, the same shall be ... 
 servant of all." Not the philanthropist alone, or 
 even chiefly, as he sacrifices a fragment of his time and 
 life for social service, but the man of business doing 
 his work amid the competition and confusion of 
 the commercial world, may receive the Master's 
 commendation, "Well done, good and faithful 
 servant . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 
 " When we try to serve the world," a distinguished 
 physician has lately said in his admirable book, 
 " we touch what is Divine. Service is one of the 
 ways by which a tiny insect like one of us gets a 
 purchase on the whole universe." * The law 
 of service is, in short, among the problems of 
 conduct what the law of attraction is in the 
 physical world. It gives to the individual life its 
 orbit round a larger centre, and sets it in a uni- 
 verse of order instead of in a fortuitous concourse 
 of atoms drifting in a meaningless world. 
 
 If, then, these are the terms on which a Chris- 
 tian life is practicable in a modern business world, 
 if business methods must be justified by the prin- 
 ciple of service or be condemned and overthrown, 
 it becomes of critical interest to inquire whether 
 the existing industrial order is in any degree capable 
 of meeting this test. Have prevailing business 
 
 i R. C. Cabot, "What Men Live By," 1914, p. 85.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 95 
 
 customs sunk irretrievably into a sordid and vulgar 
 commercialism, or do their ways of operation and 
 tendencies of reform point to a possible revival of 
 industrial idealism ? No one can recall to himself 
 the many and flagrant instances of cynical self- 
 interest and unscrupulous scheming which have of 
 late been brought to light, without being tempted 
 by the creed of social pessimism. No indictment 
 of the existing industrial world, and no provocation 
 of revolution, is so serious as the suicidal attempts 
 still recklessly made to maintain the present condi- 
 tions of industry by brutality, bribery, or fraud. 
 Yet if one can detach his attention from these 
 shocking evidences of business sins, and consider 
 the nature of business as a whole, in its normal 
 processes of buying and selling, producing and dis- 
 tributing, nothing is clearer than the fact that this 
 organization of industry is essentially and on a 
 vast scale an enterprise of social service. The 
 process may be often interrupted and at times 
 diverted from its natural course, but in its total effect 
 and general intention business life exists and 
 flourishes only as it serves social need. There are, 
 an English economist has said, "risks and uncer- 
 tainties in business . . . but to the men of business 
 who are trying to do business the gambling ele- 
 ment is a difficulty and a nuisance. Business of 
 every kind is organized to cater for the wants of 
 the public." : Capital, in other words, is valueless 
 
 1 Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," 1910, p. 195.
 
 g6 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 unless it is set to earn, and the best way for it to 
 earn is to serve. The most obvious source of 
 personal profit is to discover what other people 
 want and to make it for them or bring it to them. 
 A brilliant young Englishman has lately remarked 
 that "the horror of our present European civiliza- 
 tion" is in its being "predominantly selfish." 1 
 That is as if one should say that the trade of the 
 sea, because it is predominated by the desire for 
 gain, is a horrid scene of piracy. Selfishness is 
 indeed conspicuous enough in business, and pirates 
 and buccaneers still roam the seas of modern trade. 
 But the vast majority of business men, like the 
 vast majority of mariners, apply their self-interest, 
 not to scuttling rivals, but to supplying the markets 
 of the world, and get profits in their business, not 
 by robbing other people, but by serving them. 
 The practical condition of the business world, in 
 short, is like that already considered in the institu- 
 tion of the family. Abuses are so conspicuous and 
 sensational publicity is so exaggerated, that the pro- 
 portions of truth may be quite obscured and the 
 foundations of integrity seem to totter. The fact 
 is, however, that just as the normal modern family 
 is quite unscathed by temptations to wandering 
 desire, so the normal business man buys and sells, 
 employs and invests, without a taint of the treachery 
 or knavery which occasionally infect business life. 
 Instead of being involved in a system of lucrative 
 
 1 W. Temple, "The Kingdom of God," 1912, p. 75.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 97 
 
 looting, he is engaged in one of the most creditable 
 of human occupations, making or exchanging what 
 people need, and receiving from them what he 
 needs himself. Normal business is of advantage 
 to buyer and seller alike. "The honorable pur- 
 chaser and the honorable seller," Bishop Westcott 
 once said, "meet in business for the work of citizens. 
 Their interest is the same the right support of 
 life." 1 Instead of being pirates, they are pro- 
 ducers and providers. Instead of robbing people 
 of what they have, they are giving them what they 
 want. 
 
 Indeed, as one thus reconsiders the nature of 
 business, he observes that its permanent stability 
 and efficiency depend, not on the evils which 
 disfigure it, but on the virtues which it pro- 
 motes; not on its yielding to corruption, but 
 on its preservation of incorruptibility. The vast 
 majority of transactions hi modern business are 
 made on credit, and a system of credit is 
 essentially a system of trust, involving a general 
 condition of trustworthiness. If it were not the 
 general practice of business men to tell the 
 truth and keep their contracts the entire fabric 
 of modern trade would crumble in a night. 
 Even in that centre of popular reproach, the 
 stock market, negotiations involving great sums of 
 money are ratified by a word or a sign. In short, 
 the foundation of modern business is business honor. 
 
 1 "Christian Social Union Addresses," 1903, p. 63. 
 
 a
 
 98 THE CHRISTIAN LITE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 This truth is not merely of general, but 
 quite as legitimately of personal, significance. If 
 business were essentially a form of gambling or 
 robbery, it would be reasonable to believe, as is 
 now often assumed, that the most lucrative en- 
 dowments of a business man are audacity, un- 
 scrupulousness, and cunning. The fact is, however, 
 that for one man who succeeds in business by luck 
 or by fraud, a thousand owe their standing in the 
 business world to integrity and incorruptibility. 
 When an employer is filling a position or proposing 
 an advancement, he looks, it is true, for the quali- 
 ties of sagacity and alertness, but with much more 
 seriousness he looks for the underlying qualities of 
 loyalty, insight, and trustworthiness. Character 
 is, on the whole, the best foundation for a com- 
 petency. The profits of honorable and persistent 
 energy are in the long run vastly greater than the 
 profits of commercial piracy or speculative reck- 
 lessness. The stream of business may be tem- 
 porarily blocked, and applied to desolation rather 
 than to irrigation, but in the normal course of 
 trade the stream of supply waters the fields of 
 demand, and the products of those fields in their 
 turn feed the engineers who direct the fertilizing 
 stream. 
 
 Here, also, it may be added, is a test which 
 can be applied to various forms of business, and 
 may, in some degree, be made a basis for 
 judgment of the relative standing of various call-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 99 
 
 ings. How directly does any form of business con- 
 tribute to social service ; or in what degree does it 
 obstruct or oppose the general good ? Some forms 
 of business, like farming, manufacturing, the de- 
 velopment of new regions, new power, or new 
 discoveries, may be at the same time lucrative to 
 the individual and enriching to the community. 
 Unless perverted in method, they naturally bless 
 both those who give and those who take. Other 
 forms of business, like the speculating in futures 
 and shuffling of securities which make up much of 
 what is known as finance, while they may not 
 be discreditable in method, and may even con- 
 tribute to a system of exchange, do not so 
 directly add to the volume of social service, and 
 instead of being regarded as is now generally 
 the case as the aristocracy of business, may be 
 ranked among the less honorable, even though 
 necessary callings. 
 
 In the feudal system of ancient Japan 
 the plain people, below the noble and the 
 military class, were classified in three groups, 
 farmers, artisans, and merchants. But of these 
 the farmers held the highest rank ; next below were 
 the craftsmen ; and at the bottom of the social 
 scale stood the commercial population from 
 bankers to shopkeepers. Trading with money was 
 less creditable than agriculture or skilled labor. 
 The land and the forge soiled the hands less than 
 the counting-house and the shop. The condi-
 
 IOO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 tions of modern life may modify this classification, 
 as indeed has happened in Japan, yet it 
 remains true that a good test which a young 
 man may apply to the choice of a business career 
 is this test of serviceableness. Let him associate 
 himself as closely as is practicable with creative, 
 productive, or inventive affairs. Let him make 
 two blades of grass grow where one grew before. 
 Let him make grain grow where there was a desert 
 before. Let him be ambitious to make things, 
 rather than to make money ; to prosper by service 
 rather than by loot; to bear another's burdens 
 rather than to "bear" another's stocks. Business 
 thus conducted is not only consistent with the 
 Christian life, but has its natural issue, not probably 
 in a vast fortune with its equally vast temptations, 
 but under the fortunate conditions of American 
 civilization, in an honorable and sufficient liveli- 
 hood, and may permit one to write above the 
 hearth of a self-respecting home the great words 
 of his Master: "I am among you as one that 
 serveth." 
 
 These indications of the essential character of 
 business life are, at least in some degree, reassuring. 
 Difficult as it may be to adjust commercialism to 
 idealism and to achieve success through service, it 
 does not appear to be an undertaking which is directly 
 contrary to nature, or a hopeless struggle against a 
 resistless current. There are, it seems, elements and 
 aspects of business, even as it now is, which are not
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD IOI 
 
 inconsistent with the Law of Service, and which 
 should suggest some hesitation before committing 
 oneself to a creed of social destruction, or repeating 
 with the Persian poet : 
 
 " Could you and I conspire 
 To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, 
 Would we not dash it into bits, and then 
 Remould it nearer to the heart's desire?" 
 
 Yet this story of incomplete adjustment and misused 
 opportunity should also teach to every thoughtful 
 man of business grave lessons concerning his imme- 
 diate duty. If business is not reformed, it is likely to 
 be transformed. The alternative to a violent eco- 
 nomic revolution is an accelerated economic evolu- 
 tion. If capital is to escape confiscation, it must 
 accept consecration. Nothing is more obvious than 
 the fact that the present industrial order is now on 
 probation, and that its justification must be found 
 in its contributing both to utility and to justice. 
 If it does not serve, it must surrender. 
 
 At this point, then, one is forced to realize that a 
 large proportion of business men are promoting a 
 serious crisis, not so much by their wickedness as 
 by their stupidity. Administration has suppressed 
 imagination. They are so preoccupied by the 
 day's work and the year's profit as to be unaware that 
 a new world is knocking at their door. While the 
 disastrous strike at Lawrence in 1913 was in prog- 
 ress, the treasurer of a mill testified that until the
 
 102 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 storm of unrest broke over his head, he had never 
 heard of syndicalism or seen its cloud approaching. 
 Thought, reading, and discussion concerning eco- 
 nomic questions, not to speak of the imaginings of 
 a better future, are more habitual among wage- 
 earners than among employers. Custom, tradi- 
 tion, routine, and short-sightedness still dominate 
 many forms of business and make them the fruitful 
 soil of disorder and revolt. Of a considerable section 
 of the most privileged class it might be prophesied, 
 in the words of Jesus, " They were eating and 
 drinking, marrying and giving in marriage . . and 
 knew not until the flood came and took them 
 all away." 
 
 Here, then, the way of business wisdom 
 not to say of business sanity becomes clear. 
 The many and varied schemes, now so vigor- 
 ously undertaken by intelligent employers, 
 of conciliation, arbitration, cooperation, profit- 
 sharing, and industrial partnership, are not to 
 be regarded as forms of beneficence or magna- 
 nimity. To initiate them in the spirit of pater- 
 nalism or patronage or charity is, in the present 
 temper of the working-classes, to foredoom them 
 to failure. They represent a candid recognition 
 of the fact that the wage-system in its bare economic 
 form must be supplemented, if it is not to be sup- 
 planted ; that the line of division between employer 
 and employed must be effaced by fraternalism, if it 
 is not to be obliterated by socialism. Schemes of
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD IO$ 
 
 industrial reform must be incorporated with the 
 business, adapted to the type of industry con- 
 cerned, and charged to production. The proper 
 payment for them is not gratitude, but loyalty. 
 They are one form of evidence that the industrial 
 order, imperfect as it is, may be developed by intelli- 
 gence and ingenuity into a system of mutual ad- 
 vantage, which is certainly more accessible, and may 
 perhaps be more durable, than the vague ventures 
 which social revolution now so lightly proposes to 
 make. 
 
 Thus by an unexpected and tortuous road the 
 last developments of business life have brought the 
 modern world round to new applications of Christian 
 idealism. The teaching of Jesus, which announces/ 
 that social stability is dependent on social service,/ 
 is verified by the industrial schemes which the mosti 
 discerning of employers are utilizing to-day. The\ 
 conditions of the modern business world, with all 
 their shocking evidences of iniquity and greed, do not 
 completely preclude a practicable Christianity. 
 Marcus Aurelius said of the luxuries of Rome, "It 
 is possible for a man to live in a palace without want- 
 ing . . . such-like show." 1 With the same recog- 
 nition of grave, yet not unsurmountable, difficulties 
 one may now say, It is possible for a man to live 
 in the world of business, with all its sins of gam- 
 bling and speculation, without wanting such-like 
 show. Commercial opportunity is like the exceeding 
 1 "Meditations," I, 17; tr. Long, 1864.
 
 104 TH E CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 high mountain where the devil showed to Jesus the 
 kingdoms of this world and said, "All these things 
 will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship 
 me " ; and the business man of to-day is a simpleton 
 if he does not recognize that at any moment he 
 may be tempted of the devil. Yet, it is precisely 
 this victory of the Christian life over the solicita- 
 tions of commercialism which creates leadership 
 in the modern world as it did in Galilee. The man 
 of business is called to wrestle against the rulers of 
 the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
 ness hi high places, but it is not impossible for him 
 to withstand in the evil day, and what is even 
 harder having done all, and attained the possi- 
 bility of luxury and ostentation, still to stand. 
 
 The conflicting currents of modern business life 
 meet, as two rivers, the Arve and the Rhone, meet 
 near Geneva. One is a glacial torrent, swift and tur- 
 bid with the melting of the snows ; the other a broad 
 stream, flowing down through pasture banks in an 
 untroubled current. For a time the muddy torrent 
 seems in complete control, and the transparent Rhone 
 is submerged and denied ; but by degrees the glacial 
 impurities sink beneath the larger stream, and the 
 Rhone sweeps unpolluted to the sea. So meet the 
 forces of commercialism and idealism in modern 
 trade, and to many a looker-on it seems as if the result- 
 ing river must be a turbulent and destructive stream. 
 Steadily, however, let the springs of idealism, which 
 lie far back in the high places of Christian faith,
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE BUSINESS WORLD 105 
 
 send down their full supply, and by degrees the 
 angry rush of reckless self-interest may be sub- 
 merged in a clearer stream, and the Rhone of a 
 purified industrialism may flow to the ocean of 
 human service, unvexed and free.
 
 IV 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 
 
 THE indications of the nature of modern business 
 which have been observed, though they may appear 
 to make the Christian life not wholly impracticable, 
 are of too general a character to give definite 
 direction among the immediate problems of one's 
 own affairs. Behind these large aspects of the 
 industrial world lie more intimate questions of the 
 use and abuse of money which meet one hi the daily 
 conduct of a modern life. One may dream of a 
 time when private ownership shall be looked back 
 on as a nightmare and money shall have become a 
 discarded symbol ; but, for the moment, here is a 
 world in which one must in some way earn his 
 living, invest and spend his money, and make such 
 adjustment as is practicable between his conscience 
 and the existing order of industry. Is, then, the 
 Christian life practicable here? Can one get any 
 guidance from the teaching of Jesus Christ among 
 the perplexing problems of his own business affairs ? 
 What shall he do to be saved, not merely in his 
 Church, but in his office, or his counting-room, or 
 on his farm ? 
 
 These questions of the use of money can have, it 
 is true, but meagre interest for that great number of 
 
 1 06
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 107 
 
 people who have no money to use, and who live in 
 daily apprehension lest even their daily wage may 
 fail. To consider the ethics of property may seem 
 like cruel irony while the antecedent problem of the 
 distribution of property is still unsolved. Yet, 
 even though the uses of money are unimportant to 
 those who have no money, there remain a great 
 many people to whom money, whether they have 
 much or little of it, presents a daily problem and 
 care, and the case of these people has had compar- 
 atively little consideration. Reformers and phi- 
 lanthropists have applied themselves either to the 
 case of the very poor, or to the not less pathetic case 
 of the very rich. How to relieve tragic destitution, 
 and how to restrict vast accumulation, have been 
 questions with which social legislation and agitation 
 have been almost exclusively concerned. It was, 
 indeed, confidently taught by Marx a generation 
 ago that modern society would soon and inevitably 
 be divided into these two groups, the few that have 
 and the many that have not, the Bourgeoisie and 
 the Proletariat, each with its own aims and its own 
 class-consciousness; and that the irrepressible 
 conflict between these two classes could have no 
 other issue than the victory of the many and the 
 restoration of wealth to those who had created it. 
 " Centralization of the means of production and 
 socialization of labor at last reach a point where 
 they become incompatible with the capitalistic 
 integument. The integument is burst asunder.
 
 I08 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 The knell of capitalist private property sounds. 
 . . . We have the expropriation of a few usurpers 
 by the mass of the people." 1 
 
 The course of economic history since the day of 
 Marx has, however, not only failed to verify this 
 confident prophecy, but has taken a direction alto- 
 gether unforeseen by him. Great accumulations of 
 capital have, it is true, fallen into a few hands, and 
 great numbers of wage-earners still find themselves 
 without a margin of income, but a much more 
 remarkable characteristic of the present time is the 
 unprecedented increase of the middle class, above 
 poverty and below wealth, and quite unaware of 
 that chasm which, according to Marx, is ever 
 widening between them and a stable competency. 
 This middle group is indeed not so much a class as a 
 movement; not a fixed, but a fluid mass. As a 
 whole it is on the way up rather than on the way 
 down, a rising rather than an ebbing tide. It is 
 this middle-class multitude which gives to modern 
 society its vigor and hope, and has, on the whole, 
 the best chance of personal and domestic happiness. 
 The statistics of savings banks and of life-insurance 
 companies, the enormous multiplication of modest 
 homes, and the growth of stock corporations with 
 their thousands of small holdings are conclusive 
 witnesses of this new factor in the social problem. 
 "Wherever we look we find a steady increase of 
 the middle class. . . . Economic development has 
 
 1 " Capital," tr. Aveling, 1889, I, p. 789.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 109 
 
 taken a turn which Marx did not foresee." 1 In 
 fact, there is a touch of irony in the war-cry of a 
 "class-conscious conflict," when so many who 
 repeat the Marxian formula are not themselves of 
 the class which, according to that formula, is alone 
 to survive. 
 
 The normal condition of American life is, 
 in short, neither one of vast wealth, nor one 
 of hopeless destitution, but one which begins with 
 modest self-support and ends with a substantial 
 competency. To this central body of American 
 citizenship the farmers, the small investors, the 
 professions, and the great majority of persons 
 employed in business the Marxian theory of 
 ' ' increasing misery ' ' is almost unintelligible. They 
 acknowledge no irremediable fixity of condition. 
 They are not listening for a the knell of private 
 property." They find themselves living in a 
 mobile, hopeful, expanding world. They expect 
 much for themselves, and still more for their 
 children. They educate their children for a higher 
 social standing than their own. They observe not 
 only that many of the very rich began life without 
 money, but that many of the most distinguished of 
 inventors, administrators, and politicians began 
 life without exceptional opportunity. They are, 
 therefore, with good reason, sanguine and ambitious. 
 
 1 Simkhovitch, "Marxism versus Socialism," 1913, pp. 94, 97. 
 The entire chapter on "The Disappearance of the Middle Class" 
 is conclusive.
 
 110 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 The appeal to class-consciousness fails to touch 
 them because they have not resigned themselves 
 to the consciousness of belonging to a class. The 
 way up is open to the humblest of them, if he be 
 sober, frugal, honest, and sound in health. 
 
 This vast and rapidly increasing majority the 
 forgotten millions of inconspicuous and industrious 
 lives are not commonly regarded, and do not re- 
 gard themselves, as a social problem. They are 
 simply minding their own business, reasonably secure 
 from the risks of extreme poverty and comparatively 
 untempted by the risks of excessive wealth. Their 
 case is too prosaic and undramatic to attract 
 attention; yet in the conduct of their business 
 affairs they are confronted by problems of the use 
 of money which are hardly less perplexing than 
 those which meet the very rich or the very poor. 
 Can one, they ask, expect to make a living without 
 running the risk of losing a life ? Can he use his 
 money without abusing his neighbor? Is the 
 Christian life consistent with the prudent manage- 
 ment of one's own affairs? Dismissing from 
 consideration for a moment the marginal problems 
 of excessive wealth and hopeless poverty, how 
 shall that central group of the population who have 
 some money to use, so use it as to meet the test of 
 Jesus Christ? "Ye cannot serve God and Mam- 
 mon," he said in one of his most unqualified utter- 
 ances ; but then again he said, " Make to yourselves 
 friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness." Is it
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY III 
 
 possible to be a friend of Mammon without being \ 
 a servant of Mammon? May one in the use of / 
 his money be a servant, not of Mammon, but of I 
 God, and through friendly use of the Mammon of / 
 unrighteousness be received into the everlasting 1 
 habitations ? 
 
 These questions may be restated in a somewhat 
 more systematic form. If one discriminates among 
 the uses of money, he comes upon three different 
 ways hi which money may be employed, and each 
 way has its accompanying moral problems and 
 risks. There is, first, the use of money in the 
 making of more money, or the ethical problem of 
 property ; there is, secondly, the use of money in 
 spending, or the ethical problem of luxury; there 
 is, thirdly, the use of money in giving, or the ethical 
 problem of benevolence. Each of these personal 
 problems meets hi varying degree that great num- 
 ber of citizens whose level of income is above that 
 of mere subsistence ; and each reopens the question 
 of the practicability of the Christian life. Can one 
 administer his property, regulate his expenditure, 
 and direct his philanthropy, in ways which are con- 
 sistent with Christian discipleship ? What are 
 the principles of ownership, the limits of extrava- 
 gance, and the scope of responsibility, which must 
 be accepted by a Christian life in a modern world ? 
 
 As to the general question, now hotly debated, 
 whether the institution of private ownership itself 
 is consistent with social justice, whether, in the
 
 112 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 phrase of Proudhon, "Property is robbery," 
 whether "It is right to rob the robbers," no specific 
 answer can be derived from the teaching of Jesus. 
 He lived in a world where such a revolution could 
 not have been proposed by any sane teacher, and if 
 it were, would not have been intelligible to those who 
 heard. The existing fabric of social and political 
 life was accepted by Jesus as the material out of 
 which the Kingdom of God was to be made. 
 Primitive Christianity developed, it is true, a 
 temporary communism, in which the confident 
 expectation of a Messianic reign led the first dis- 
 ciples to have "all things common"; but that 
 Pentecostal communism was both a transient and 
 a voluntary arrangement. It was the common 
 ownership of a loving family rather than the legal 
 abolition of the institution of property. Each 
 disciple might keep his own possessions, but "not 
 one of them said that aught of the things which he 
 possessed was his own." 
 
 Modern agitators, therefore, miss the note of the 
 Gospels when they describe the teaching of Jesus as 
 a message of social revolution, and limit the range 
 of his sympathy to a single group. "Whether he 
 was a metaphysical personage," it is said, "or, like 
 us, one of the sons of time and the children of men, 
 the fact is indisputable : Jesus lived, moved, and 
 had his being among working-folk. As a day- 
 laborer, and later as a leader of day-laborers, 
 there is recorded not one friendship of his with
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 
 
 people who were not in the worker-crowd, or else 
 members of the privileged class who showed 
 temperamentally a leaning toward the worker- 
 crowd. . . . From the cradle to crucifixion, he 
 was proletarily environed. . . . He was utterly 
 of the disinherited class." * Fortunately, however, 
 for the influence of Jesus on the history of the 
 world, the record of his life reports no such 
 restricted definition of his purpose. Many an 
 outcast and beggar, it is true, found himself re- 
 stored to courage and self-respect by the 
 sympathy of the wise teacher, but the circle of his 
 intimacy held many who were by no means 
 of the disinherited class. The fishermen who 
 were the first to become disciples were em- 
 ployers rather than employed; they "left their 
 father with the hired servants and went after him." 
 "We have forsaken all," said Peter, "and followed 
 thee." At the home of Matthew Jesus sat "with 
 many tax-gatherers and sinners. " "I must abide at 
 thy house," said Jesus to the rich Zacchaeus. 
 "And certain women, . . . Mary, called Magdalene, 
 . . . and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward, and 
 Susanna, and many others, . . . ministered to him of 
 their substance." However compassionately, then, 
 the heart of Jesus turned to the poor and the toiler, 
 it is manifestly inaccurate to affirm that "there is 
 recorded not one friendship of his with people who 
 
 White, "The Carpenter and the Rich Man," 1914,
 
 114 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 were not in the worker-crowd" ; or that his thought 
 was "fundamentally concerned with the lot of the 
 lower-most men in the social mass." The fact is 
 that the passion for social revolution which encour- 
 ages such an inference was not the passion closest 
 to his heart. He was seeking recruits for the King- 
 dom of God, and whenever he found a response to 
 his ideal of a world dedicated to God, whether it was 
 in blind Bartimeus by the roadside, or rich Zac- 
 chaeus in his home at Jericho, he said with equal 
 appreciation: "Thy faith hath made thee 
 whole"; "This day is salvation come to thishouse." 
 "In short, his categories of social judgment were 
 not those of wealth and poverty." J Whatever 
 social revolution may be the logical consequence of 
 his teaching, he was not a social revolutionist. 
 It is impossible to convert the teaching of Jesus 
 into that of an industrial agitator. His purpose 
 was not revolution, but revelation. He was 
 primarily concerned, not with the distribution of 
 goods, but with the inspiration of goodness. He 
 cared less for social classification than for social 
 sanctification. He was not a socialist, but a 
 saviour. 
 
 Yet it does not follow from this apparent limita- 
 tion that the teaching of Jesus is either silent, or 
 indulgent concerning the ethics of property. On the 
 contrary, and in words whose severity and irony 
 
 l d. F. G. Peabody, "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," 
 1900, p. 205.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 
 
 no commentary can obscure, Jesus recognizes the 
 tremendous risks which the possession, or even the 
 pursuit, of money involves. "How hardly," he 
 says, "shall they that have riches enter into the 
 Kingdom of God." "It is easier for a camel to go 
 through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter 
 into the Kingdom of God." "Lay not up for 
 yourselves treasures upon earth." "A man's life 
 consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 which he possesseth." The modern world ap- 
 preciates, as perhaps no generation since the 
 time of Jesus Christ has done, the insight and 
 precision of these solemn declarations. It is still 
 very hard for those who have riches, and often 
 harder still for their children, to enter into the 
 Kingdom. The abundance of the things which 
 one possesses may easily crowd out the ideals in 
 which his life consists. The gaining of the world 
 may be the losing of one's soul. When Jesus de- 
 manded of the rich young ruler that he sell 
 whatever he had and give it to the poor, it may 
 have been as Tolstoi, in his own case, found it 
 to be not the harder, but the easier way of re- 
 nunciation which was proposed. It may be more 
 difficult for one to use money than to abandon it. 
 Many a pious soul in the days of the monastic 
 system took the vow of poverty, not because it was 
 harder to live in a monastery than in the world, 
 but because it was the easiest way of refuge from 
 the bewildering problems which one who remained
 
 Il6 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 in the world had to meet. What was occasionally 
 true in the Middle Ages is universally true to-day. 
 The moral problems which the uses of money in- 
 volve present the severest test now offered to the 
 Christian life in the modern world. "I cannot call 
 riches," said Bacon, "but other than the baggage 
 of virtue ; the Roman word is better, ' impedimenta,' 
 for as the baggage is to an army so is riches to 
 virtue ; it cannot be spared or left behind, but it 
 hindereth the march." 1 
 
 What is it, then, which according to the teaching 
 of Jesus may justify the ownership of money? 
 On what terms may one profess discipleship to 
 Jesus Christ and yet concern one's self with the 
 accumulation and holding of property? It has 
 already been pointed out that the social teaching 
 of Jesus lays its central emphasis on the Law of 
 Service, and that this test may be directly applied 
 to the general conditions of business life. When, 
 however, one turns to the immediate problems of 
 his own property-holding, he is met by another 
 word of the gospels which strikes a more personal 
 note. It is the word Stewardship. "Give an 
 account of thy stewardship." "Who then is that 
 faithful and wise steward? ... Of a truth his 
 Lord will make him ruler over all that he hath." 
 According to this teaching, one is not an owner, 
 but an agent. The Master of the House will come 
 at an hour when his servant "looketh not for him," 
 
 i Essays, XXXIV, " Of Riches."
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 117 
 
 and will either make the steward "ruler over his 
 household," or will " appoint him his portion with the 
 unbelievers." The steward, therefore, is a trustee of 
 the estate of God, a laborer together with God for 
 the accomplishing of God's ends. The steward 
 does not "make" money; he directs the forces 
 of God in their productive work. He does not, 
 in the language of modern slang, "make good," 
 unless he makes goodness. His property is not 
 subtracted from the common welfare, but added to 
 it. What is wealth to him is not, in Ruskin's 
 phrase, "ill-th" to others. His fidelity is that "of 
 a steward of the mysteries of God" ; of whom "it 
 is required that a man be found faithful." His 
 career is successful if, as Milton said, 
 
 "I have grace to use it so, 
 As ever in my great taskmaster's eye." 1 
 
 No principle in the teaching of Jesus is more 
 conspicuous than this, yet none is more difficult to 
 obey. Nothing seems more obviously one's own 
 than one's money. One can hide it, save it, spend 
 it, or invest it in his own name and for his own 
 profit. This, however, is precisely what Jesus so 
 suggestively described as "the deceitfulness of 
 riches" 2 the illusion of wealth. It deceives one 
 with the notion that he is its possessor, when he 
 is, in fact, only its steward. This, Jesus says, is he 
 
 1 "Sonnet on Being Arrived at the Age of Twenty-one Years." 
 2 Matt. XIII, 22 (aTrdrr) = trickery, fraud). "The delusions 
 of riches quite stifle the Message." (Weymouth.)
 
 Il8 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 that received the seed among thorns. The word 
 grows, but is choked. The man finds himself 
 tricked. He thought his money was a seed from 
 which good grain would spring, and he discovers 
 some day that it bears a crop of thorns. He 
 thought it would feed him, and he finds that it 
 chokes him. A still more tragic irony of fate may 
 meet the inheritor of wealth, when the thrift and 
 self-denial of the father which have promoted 
 acquisition are succeeded by the slackening fibre 
 and increasing self-indulgence of the son. Then, 
 as Jesus said, there are added to "the deceitfulness 
 of riches" the further and choking thorns of "the 
 cares of this world and the lusts of other things" ; 
 or, in the solemn words of Paul to young Timothy, 
 the "many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown 
 men in destruction and perdition." This is the 
 paradox of property. To own is to owe. Possession 
 means obligation. The more one has acquired, the 
 more is required of him. " To whom menjhave com- 
 mitted much, of him they will ask the more." 
 Ownership is stewardship. "Watch, therefore, for 
 ye know neither the day nor the hour" ; "Give an 
 account of thy stewardship. ' ' Such are the stringent 
 terms on which the business of money-making is 
 consistent with the Christian life. 
 
 If one proceeds to inquire how this Law 
 of Stewardship may be practically tested in his own 
 experience, he is met by two ways of its operation, 
 which are the evidences of its vitality and force.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 
 
 The first of these is the way of utilization; the 
 second is the way of humanization. The first is 
 but a special form of that principle which the author 
 of " Ecce Homo," in one of his noblest chapters, 
 called Positive Morality. The Christian, Professor 
 Seeley said, has passed from passive to active human- 
 ity ; from "a feeble restraining power to an inspir- 
 ing passion"; from "prohibitions to commands." 
 "The old legal formula began, 'thou shall not,' 
 the new begins with 'thou shalt.'" "The sinner 
 whom Christ habitually denounces is he who has 
 done nothing; the Priest and Levite who passed 
 by ; the rich man at whose gate Lazarus lay while 
 'no man did aught for him' ; the servant who hid 
 his talent in a napkin." Efficiency, productive- 
 ness, activity, social obligation, are essential ele- 
 ments in Christian ethics. Passivity, complacency, 
 an introspective and ineffective virtue, are signs 
 that one has not passed from the Law to the 
 Gospel. "Condemnation passed under the Mosaic 
 law upon him who had sinned; . . . Christ's 
 condemnation is pronounced upon those who had 
 not done good." 
 
 This general law of Positive Morality is re- 
 peatedly applied by Jesus to the commercial life. 
 Money is made to be utilized. Its deceitfulness con- 
 sists, not only in its tricking one into regarding 
 it as one's own, but in the further illusion that 
 one may keep it his own. To remain one's own, 
 it must be utilized for the common good. That
 
 120 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 only which one makes serviceable he keeps. 
 The servant who digs in the earth and hides his 
 Lord's money is cast into the outer darkness. 
 The conventionally good are confronted by the 
 rebuke: "When ye shall have done all those 
 things which are commanded you, say, We are 
 unprofitable servants : we have done that which 
 was our duty to do." In either case the unprofit- 
 ableness is not in doing wrong, but in doing nothing, 
 and the tragic penalty to which the man with one 
 talent is condemned is not because he has misused 
 his trust, but because he has not used it at all. 
 
 The utilization of stewardship thus prescribed 
 begins, however, much earlier than is often sup- 
 posed. It does not merely dictate the generous 
 or beneficent use of money when made. The 
 justification of property is not determined by its 
 distribution. Stewardship is primarily a matter of 
 business itself. It utilizes the forms of trade as 
 forms of trust. The unjust steward was not con- 
 demned because he had been uncharitable or un- 
 sympathetic; on the contrary, his generosity was 
 one evidence of his guilt. He "called his 
 Lord's debtors" and accepted from each a fraction 
 of his indebtedness as discharging his obligation, 
 and for this the Lord "commended the unjust 
 steward." The culpability lay further back, in the 
 relation of the steward to the employer. He "was 
 accused unto him that he had wasted his goods." 
 No prodigality in distributing his Lord's money
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 121 
 
 could atone for criminality in making it. The 
 ethics of stewardship, in other words, begins not 
 in one's giving, but in one's getting. Business life 
 is itself a moral opportunity. Ideals not utilized 
 in business are neutralized in charity. The evi- 
 dence of a Christian life in the modern world is 
 collected, like the income tax, "at the source." 
 
 It is, of course, true that this utilization of prop- 
 erty is in one aspect almost forced upon one by the 
 conditions of modern life. One no longer hides his 
 money in the grounder wraps it in a napkin. Invest- 
 ment in any form applies money to service. Even 
 the miser does not bury his money, but sets it to 
 earn more money, and in so far may contribute, 
 even unconsciously, to the general good. A com- 
 mercial enterprise undertaken for nothing else than 
 personal gain may be swept into the larger current 
 of common service and fulfil a vastly more benefi- 
 cent end than was designed. The purposes of 
 God may make even the wrath of man to praise 
 Him. 
 
 The Christian teaching, however, goes behind 
 the fact of utilization and considers the motives 
 and consequences of evading or ignoring the 
 principle of stewardship. A life, for example, 
 surrenders itself to the habits of irresponsible 
 and self-indulgent wealth. The instincts of re- 
 sponsibility are atrophied through disuse. "Is it 
 not lawful for me," one says, "to do what I will 
 with mine own?" May I not "fare sumptuously
 
 122 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 every day?" What is the effect of this unutilized 
 stewardship, not only on others, but still more on 
 him who has thus wasted his Lord's goods? 
 By one of the most curious and tragic operations of 
 the principle of utilization, those who refuse to 
 conform to it may become the most impressive 
 witnesses of its force. These very persons who 
 may fancy themselves most free from the burdens 
 of life, and who propose to be immune from social 
 obligations, not infrequently become the most 
 pitiful victims of shattered nerves, spiritual depres- 
 sion, and the philosophy of despair. Refusing to 
 utilize life for others, they may lose the capacity to 
 utilize life for themselves. Abandoning the prin- 
 ciple of stewardship, they may forfeit the right to 
 ownership, until at last their enervated sensibilities 
 and slackened vitality may be the evidence, not 
 only that the mastery of their possessions, but that 
 self-mastery itself, is lost. 
 
 There is a phrase, appended by Jesus to his 
 parable of stewardship, the significance of which is 
 at this point disclosed. "If ye have not been 
 faithful in the unrighteous Mammon," he says, " who 
 will commit to your trust the true riches ? " So far 
 the lesson is obvious. If one has been unfaithful 
 in that which is least, he cannot expect to be 
 trusted with that which is much. The riches of the 
 Kingdom are to be reserved for those who have done 
 their duty "in this present world." There follows, 
 however, a more subtle teaching. "If," Jesus
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 123 
 
 goes on to say, "ye have not been faithful in that 
 which is another man's, who shall give you that 
 which is your own?" How can that be given to 
 me which is already my own ? Is it not my own to 
 give rather than to receive ? May one's own pos- 
 sessions be given to him as a reward? Must he 
 be faithful to that which is another's before he 
 can be said to own what is his own? Precisely 
 this is the searching doctrine of Christian ownership. 
 To set apart what is one's own from that which is 
 another man's, to fancy the two interests essen- 
 tially hostile and the gain of the one to be in the 
 same degree the loss of the other, is not only to live 
 in a world of robbers and wolves instead of a world 
 of brotherhood and love, but it is, still further, to 
 fail of real possession, even of the spoils which one 
 may secure. What one securely owns is not that 
 which is appropriated by him from the common life, 
 but that which is utilized by him for the common life. 
 His serviceableness is the proof of his ownership. 
 He has been faithful to that which is another's, and 
 so there is given to him that which is his own. He 
 has verified the truth of Dante's teaching con- 
 cerning " the higher sphere " : 
 
 "For there, by how much more they call it ours, 
 So much propriety of each in good 
 Increases more." 
 
 Seneca, in a striking "Dialogue," defends the 
 possession of wealth in terms which are as Christian 
 as they are Stoic. "The philosopher," he says to
 
 124 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 Gallic, "will have abundant wealth, but wealth 
 acquired without injustice to any, and without 
 sordid traffic ; the outflow of which is as honorable 
 as the income. . . . He will even have that of 
 which he may boast, if throwing open his house and 
 admitting people to his property, he can say, 'Let 
 every man take whatever he recognizes as his.' 
 O, great man, most honorably rich, if, after these 
 words, he shall have as much as before !" 1 
 
 The case of the irresponsible rich illustrates in an 
 extreme form the operation of the principle of 
 Utilization, but the same principle, though less 
 conspicuous in its action, governs those more 
 fortunate lives whose possessions are moderate and 
 shifting. Here also ownership, to be secure, in- 
 volves utilization. The investor, the employer, 
 the man of business, is either a conscious participant 
 and willing partner in the world's work, or in de- 
 taching himself from the common good he is in 
 grave peril of becoming ensnared by the "deceitful- 
 ness of riches" and, in the end, being owned by that 
 of which he thinks himself the owner. There is no 
 moral neutrality in the making of money. There 
 are, as has been finely said, only two social classes, 
 benefactors and malefactors. 2 The man that is 
 not doing good is doing harm ; and the harm he 
 may do to others is not more permanent and dis- 
 astrous than the trick he has played on himself. 
 
 1 "De Vita Beata," Ch. XXIII. 
 
 1 M. Stryker, "Addresses," 1896, p. 96.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 125 
 
 These considerations may guide one to some ex- 
 tent in many difficult decisions of business life. What 
 is my money doing, and what am I doing with it, 
 in the daily conduct of my affairs, to satisfy the 
 test of stewardship? Am I concerned with any 
 creative enterprise, either of hand or of mind ? Is 
 there any gam in methods of trade, in standard of 
 profession, in efficiency of teaching, in legal pro- 
 cedure, in domestic happiness, in neighborly service, 
 in civic security, in religious fellowship, through the 
 uses to which I put the money which I make? 
 Then I have at least escaped from the great illusion 
 of the modern world, the "trickery of riches." 
 The utilization of my money becomes its justifica- 
 tion. The most searching test of the Christian life 
 is met as I thus consider, not the uses of my money 
 after it is made, but the uses which it serves while 
 it is making. However slight may be my part in 
 the stewardship of the purposes of God, I may at 
 least so conduct my affairs that it shall not be on 
 me that the Teacher's eye will fall as he says : 
 "If ye have not been faithful in that which is an- 
 other man's, who shall give you that which is your 
 own?" 
 
 The second test which may be applied to the 
 principle of stewardship is that of humanization. 
 Economists have, as a rule, studied the processes of 
 industry as problems in mechanics. They describe 
 the balance of trade, the flow of gold, the rise and 
 fall of values, the free competition of equal indus-
 
 126 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 trial units, and one might easily infer that economic 
 science was a form of physical science, dealing with 
 tides, or streams, or the balanced equilibrium of 
 weights and forces. Such, in fact, was the con- 
 clusion of the earlier English economists. The 
 laws of social action appeared to them like the laws 
 of nature, and the less obstructed these laws were 
 by human intervention or modification, the more 
 stable and productive industry would be. De 
 Quincey said that Ricardo "had deduced a priori 
 from the understanding itself laws which first shot 
 arrowy light into the dark chaos of materials." 1 
 The circumstances of the modern world have, how- 
 ever, undermined this system of industrial physics. 
 Instead of free and equal units jostling each other 
 like atoms in the physical world, we have vast 
 aggregations both of capital and labor, in which 
 these atoms are merged as in a planetary system ; 
 and instead of free competition we have the enor- 
 mous development of combination, restricting com- 
 petition or excluding it altogether. Yet the effect 
 of the earlier economic science still survives in a 
 habit of mind which controls many business men. 
 They fancy that industry has been proved to be 
 automatic in its action, that it is completely inter- 
 preted by the laws of supply and demand, and the 
 fact that these laws of economic life usually work to 
 the advantage of the capitalist does not diminish 
 
 1 "Confessions of an English Opium-eater," Works, 4th ed. 
 1878, 1, p. 255.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 127 
 
 his faith in them. "Laissez faire," "Mind your 
 own business," "Accept the current standards of 
 trade," these familiar maxims have been not 
 only easy to obey, but have seemed to possess the 
 further merit of conforming to natural law and of 
 illustrating the mechanism of industry. 
 
 Nothing, however, is more obvious in the 
 practical conduct of modern business than its trans- 
 formation from a mechanical to a human science. 
 The wage-earner who was once treated as a part 
 of a machine has emerged into self-consciousness 
 and demands consideration as a human being. 
 Education has made him observant ; organization 
 has made him formidable; and legislation has 
 applied itself to his protection and welfare. Fifty 
 years ago Ruskin said that economic science in its 
 study of the engine of industry had neglected the 
 study of the steam which propelled that engine. 
 "The largest quantity of work will not be done by 
 this curious engine for pay; ... it will be done 
 only when the motive-force, that is to say the will 
 or spirit of the creature, is brought to its greatest 
 strength by its own proper fuel." * That is pre- 
 cisely what all intelligent employers have come, 
 however hesitatingly or reluctantly, to recognize. 
 The secret of business stability, they have dis- 
 covered, is not so much mechanical as ethical. 
 Economic laws have their fundamental importance, 
 as laws of heat and motion control the construction 
 1 "Unto this Last," 1862, p. 23.
 
 128 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 and management of an engine; but through the 
 mechanism, shattering it if not utilized by it, works 
 the steam of human passions, desires, and needs. 
 To ignore that human factor is to court disaster, to 
 direct its expansion and its propelling energy is the 
 chief task of the man of business to-day. In New 
 England at least it will not soon be forgotten that 
 the most disastrous strike of this generation oc- 
 curred, not because a new law compelled a reduc- 
 tion in hours, or even because reduced pay followed 
 from this reduction, but because it had not occurred 
 to the employing corporations to humanize their 
 business, and to give due notice and explanation to 
 their employed. The shock of surprise with which 
 the pay-envelopes were received ran through the 
 inflammable mass of operatives like an electric 
 spark and set the town on fire. 
 
 At precisely this point, where expediency and 
 justice unite in advising the humanization of indus- 
 try, we are met once more by the teaching of 
 Jesus Christ. His entire view of conduct was 
 based on the conception of a fraternal world. The 
 brotherhood of man was his corollary from the 
 Fatherhood of God. If the order of the world is 
 that of a Father's love, then the order of society 
 must be that of a human family. "One is your 
 Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." 
 "Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is 
 my brother." "My brethren are these which hear 
 the word of God and do it." "Inasmuch as ye
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 129 
 
 have done it unto one of the least of these my 
 brethren, ye have done it unto me." It is the 
 same teaching which is summarized in the glowing 
 and reiterated maxims of the Epistle of John: 
 "He that loveth his brother abideth hi the light." 
 "He that hateth his brother is in darkness." 
 "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, 
 he is a liar." "This commandment have we from 
 Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also." 
 Industrialism, then, if it is to conform to the teach- 
 ing of Jesus, must become fraternalism. The busi- 
 ness world, as the apostle Paul said of the Christian 
 Church, is a body with many members, and "all 
 the members of one body being many are one body." 
 "The eye cannot say unto the hand, nor again the 
 head to the feet," nor still again he who calls himself 
 the head of an industry to those whom he calls his 
 hands, "I have no need of you." "And whether 
 one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, 
 or one member be honored all the members rejoice 
 with it, that there shall be no schism in the body, 
 but that the members should have the same care 
 one for another." Here is a conception of business 
 as an organism of mutually dependent parts, 
 which, it must be admitted, the modern world is 
 but slowly approaching. Yet no one can observe 
 the signs of the present time without recognizing 
 that this conception of a humanized and frater- 
 nalized industrialism is now distinctly within the 
 horizon of practical experiment. This is the ideal
 
 130 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 which, however dimly perceived or crudely de- 
 scribed, gives momentum and vitality to many a 
 scheme of industrial revolution whose economic 
 programme may be proved impracticable, but 
 whose human appeal remains unanswerable. The 
 humanization of industry is the only alternative to 
 industrial war. 
 
 A way thus opens, not indeed unobstructed, yet 
 not impassable, for a Christian man in the modern 
 business world. Let him humanize his business. 
 Let him dismiss from his mind the complacency of 
 possession which a large proportion of business men 
 still cherish, and face the obvious fact that the 
 industrial world is in process of transformation. 
 What was once a mechanical process, where not 
 only looms and furnaces but working-men and work- 
 ing-women were parts of a great machine, has 
 become an association of human beings, with con- 
 flicting desires, with irrepressible passions, with 
 unrealized hopes. Such a transformation neces- 
 sarily involves maladjustment and disorder, and may 
 easily be utilized to promote a programme of class- 
 conscious hate and internecine war. The Chris- 
 tian idealist, however, cannot regard this insurgence 
 of humanity as intrinsically destructive or even 
 perilous. The humanization of business must, 
 on the contrary, in its final result be a happy 
 redemption from the domination of the machine. 
 Business not less than character must finally pros- 
 per in a world whose motive-power is not steam,
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 131 
 
 but life. The first onrush of the new consciousness 
 may be fitful and passionate, like the first angry 
 gusts which precede a cleansing breeze. The new 
 force is full of possibilities of disaster, as the force 
 of electricity may be a weapon of flame against 
 which an earlier generation built its lightning rods 
 of defence. The far-sighted and right-minded 
 employer, however, applies himself to the inevitable 
 and the intensely interesting problem of convert- 
 ing a threatening gale into a propelling power, and 
 of transforming a dangerous force into an agent 
 of service. Formulas of ownership which were 
 appropriate to a feudal age of industry are recog- 
 nized by him as like the machinery of the last 
 century, to be scrap-heaped as antiquated and 
 unprofitable. By ingenious application of human- 
 ization to his special industry he selects that type 
 of cooperation which is congenial and appropriate. 
 Without qualification or reluctance he welcomes the 
 principle of partnership in production, which assures 
 to the wage-earners the right to a share of profits, 
 the information which a stockholder may demand, 
 and the conditions of industry which are fit for 
 human lives. He believes in the capacity of wage- 
 earners to understand the nature and limits of his 
 business when candidly explained, and to contribute 
 to it loyalty instead of capital. By every available 
 method he promotes continuity of service and 
 diminishes the grave evil of intermittency. He 
 describes the business, not as his, but as "ours."
 
 132 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 Among its assets are to be reckoned sanitation, 
 health, education, and self-respect. In the present, 
 and not wholly unjustified, temper of the wage- 
 earners this humanization of business must expect 
 to be met by much hostility, suspicion, and even 
 bitter attack ; but it has the positive and inalien- 
 able satisfaction of being a direct application of the 
 teaching of Jesus Christ to the modern world. Its 
 failures are, for the most part, not because it is an 
 impracticable or untimely venture, but because it 
 is undertaken without sufficient knowledge, study, 
 or patience. It is not enough for the sense of 
 humanization to-day to be generous, self-sacrificing, 
 or even prodigal; it must be what the apostle 
 Paul described as a "reasonable service." 
 
 These indications of the tendencies and opportu- 
 nities of modern business make it not impossible to 
 regard the world of money-making, even as it now 
 is, with a restrained and rational hope. It is a 
 troubled scene of mingled motives, where great 
 numbers of men are what Hobbes called wolves to 
 their neighbors; where the greed of gain makes 
 treachery a permissible custom and duplicity a 
 studied science ; where the ignorant and defenceless 
 often find themselves wrestling against the rulers 
 of the darkness of this world in high places. The 
 very audacity and arrogance of this financial piracy 
 has, however, brought about a dramatic and un- 
 precedented reaction. When a community has 
 once discovered that Directors are misdirecting,
 
 CHRISTIAN LITE AND THE MAKING OF MONEY 133 
 
 that Trustees are untrustworthy, and that the 
 very name of Trust is applied to an illegal combina- 
 tion, it is likely to be not only morally shocked, but 
 stirred to a new demand for reform. Outraged 
 sentiment in the United States has, therefore, not 
 only uttered itself in stringent legislation, but has 
 led to indictments, confessions, judicial sentences, 
 and even suicides, which mark the stormy begin- 
 nings of a new age. Never before in financial history 
 was there such a searching of hearts and scrutiny of 
 methods as have been of late going on in the busi- 
 ness world. Habits of trade which a generation 
 ago were not only entrenched as customs, but 
 defended as creditable, have become either frankly 
 discarded or guiltily concealed. Not great cor- 
 porations alone, but men of every degree who are 
 concerned with the making of money, are consulting 
 their consciences as much as their ledgers, and ad- 
 justing their affairs to meet the new tests of public 
 opinion and the new interpretation of law. 
 
 At such a time one quality in human life attains 
 new impor tance and gives to its possessors distinction 
 and leadership. It is what a journal little given to 
 sentiment, the New York Nation, has lately de- 
 scribed as the "antique virtue of simple honesty." 1 
 The age of Napoleons of finance, of wreckers of 
 corporations, of dummy directors and reckless 
 plunderers, is closing as the prison doors have closed 
 on some illustrious representatives of that era; 
 1 The Nation, Jan. i, 1914.
 
 134 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 and the best foundations of business success in the 
 new time are integrity, incorruptibility, the spirit 
 of stewardship, and the humanization of industry. 
 Difficult, then, as it still must be to keep business 
 clean, hard as it still is for a rich man to enter 
 the Kingdom of God, it is evident that the modern 
 world has discovered, through many severe and 
 even tragic experiences, the practicability not 
 to say the desirability of the Christianization 
 of business. Honesty has become not only the 
 best policy, but the surest foundation of a stable 
 competency. The best advice which can now be 
 offered to a young man who wants a good income is 
 to get and keep a good name. Even though the 
 business world is far from Christianized, it at least 
 faces toward the light. It is a period, not of fulfil- 
 ment, but of anticipation ; a prophetic rather than 
 a Messianic era. A man of the modern business 
 world may not be ready to repeat the great words of 
 perfect consecration, "My meat is to do the 
 will of Him that sent me and to finish his work" ; 
 but he may be ready to obey the call of the prophet : 
 "Prepare the way ! Take up the stumbling block 
 out of the way of my people ! Cast up the high- 
 way ! Gather out the stones !"
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 
 
 THE considerations which have thus far been sug- 
 gested for the direction or control of money-making, 
 however important they may be for men involved in 
 business affairs, may well seem to others of little 
 personal concern. Great numbers of persons, 
 though necessarily using money, are not primarily 
 devoted to making it, and the call to utilize it 
 or humanize it may make but slight appeal to 
 their own lives. There are, however, two uses of 
 money which are not reserved for financiers or 
 capitalists, but are available for all except those 
 who have no money to use, and which are quite as 
 perplexing in the problems and demands they in- 
 volve as is the conduct of business itself. The first 
 of these uses is in the spending of money, and 
 the second is in the giving it away. Not the 
 rich only, but the far more numerous and far 
 more important body of less conspicuous people 
 who are neither rich nor poor, feels itself con- 
 fronted by questions of expenditure and of benev- 
 olence, of thrift and charity, of extravagance and 
 generosity. How to spend without waste, and 
 how to give without harm, are matters of daily 
 135
 
 136 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 self-inquiry and hesitancy for great numbers of 
 conscientious lives. What indication, then, of 
 guidance among such problems may be derived 
 from the teaching of Jesus Christ? What are 
 the rules of spending and the principles of giving 
 which the Christian life may apply, under the 
 circumstances of the modern world? 
 
 The first of these questions is of special concern in 
 the United States because its people, whether pros- 
 perous or poor, are the most thriftless and extrava- 
 gant in the world. The extraordinary bounty of 
 nature, the discovery of new resources, the migra- 
 tory habit of life, and the universality of popular 
 education have combined to make desires outrun 
 possessions and luck more tempting than thrift. 
 The typical American is expectant, sanguine, and 
 venturesome. Though he may fail at one point, he 
 anticipates success at another. As one need is 
 satisfied it creates more. The romantic story of 
 great fortunes attained from small beginnings 
 excites the imaginations of plain people as Cooper's 
 Indians used to excite American boys to take the 
 warpath ; and the magic of speculation seems more 
 likely than the slow processes of saving to convert 
 earnings into gold. 
 
 The national extravagance induced by this 
 habit of mind is most conspicuous among the 
 foolish rich, whose ostentatious prodigality makes 
 welcome material for the daily press and incites 
 the less fortunate either to vulgar imitation or
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 137 
 
 to bitter protest. Hardly less misdirected and 
 wasteful, however, though less conspicuous, is the 
 extravagance of wage-earners and their families. 
 Ill-chosen and expensive food, hand-to-mouth 
 buying, migratory living, the passion for finery, 
 and the still more imperative craving for alcoholic 
 drink, not only dissipate earnings, but reduce the 
 capacity to earn. "Give me the luxuries of life," 
 a distinguished American once playfully said, "and 
 I can dispense with the necessities." This is pre- 
 cisely the principle which prevails in many an 
 humble home. Imitation of the more fortunate, 
 the contagion of fashion, and ignorance of the first 
 principles of sanitation and nutrition increase the 
 budget of superfluities and rob both bodies and 
 minds of necessities, until the will to save and the 
 ability to save perish together. The situation is 
 aggravated by the counsel of many revolutionists 
 who systematically condemn the habit of thrift. 
 He who saves, they argue, is likely to be on the 
 side of the present industrial order. His balance 
 in the savings-bank commits him to capitalism. 
 To spend all one gets and to demand more is, it is 
 often taught, the first duty of a consistent revolu- 
 tionist. "We teach our people," an English labor 
 leader once said, "that thrift is no virtue." 
 
 In this condition of national improvidence two 
 general truths become of preliminary importance. 
 In the first place it should be remembered that thrift 
 is not only an economic advantage, but a way of
 
 138 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 moral education. The saving of money is, in most 
 instances, to be encouraged, not merely for the mak- 
 ing of money, but quite as much for the making of 
 character. Prosperous children not less than poor 
 children may be taught, through the practice of 
 thrift, not only frugality and prudence, but self- 
 restraint, foresight, and consideration for others. 
 The reckless spender loses not only money, but self- 
 control. However threatening to economic welfare 
 the prevalence of thriftlessness may be, the risk to 
 self-mastery and efficiency, which inevitably ac- 
 companies thriftlessness, is still more disastrous to 
 national morality. The spendthrift tendencies 
 of the poor may be in some degree defended as 
 signs of aspiration and hope ; but the irresponsible 
 ostentation of the rich is an unmistakable sign of 
 decadence. The one may meet a civilization on its 
 way up ; the other attacks it on its way down. 
 
 The second principle which should be remem- 
 bered at this point is what the economists call the 
 fallacy of extravagance. It is sometimes argued 
 that the spending on superfluities promotes labor 
 and trade. A sumptuous ball, for example, in- 
 volves and remunerates many kinds of labor. The 
 cost of champagne supports the grower in France 
 and the distributor in America; the prodigal dis- 
 play of flowers maintains florists and decorators. 
 What seems a waste is thus, it is urged, a blessing. 
 The spendthrift is a disguised philanthropist. 
 The argument, however, as has been often pointed
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 139 
 
 out, is fallacious. It assumes that the money 
 thus spent would otherwise remain idle and unpro- 
 ductive, while, in fact, money, even though left by a 
 depositor in a bank, is set by the bank in circulation 
 and applied to the making of more money. The 
 depositor may be idle, but the money is at work. 
 Investment uses money as definitely as does spend- 
 ing. The only economic alternatives possible, 
 unless money be kept in a miser's stocking, are 
 those of a profitable and an unprofitable expendi- 
 ture. "It is," as Mr. Mill said, "a truism, though 
 a paradox, that a person does good to laborers, not 
 by what he consumes on himself, but by what he 
 does not consume." 1 Thus it is the direction in 
 which labor is to be employed which is the only 
 practical issue involved. What makes expenditure 
 on champagne less well directed than investment in 
 houses or railroads is not that labor is not in both 
 cases promoted, but that the labor hi the one case 
 creates a perishable product and in the other case 
 reproduces further labor. The champagne is 
 drunk and the bottles are thrown away ; while the 
 houses are occupied and the railroads continue to 
 employ labor and to promote convenience and 
 trade. In the one case value ceases ; in the other 
 case it is perpetuated or increased. The eco- 
 nomic fallacy of extravagance consists in direct- 
 ing expenditure to that which is short-lived, perish- 
 
 1 "Principles of Political Economy," 1868, 1, p. 120; cf. F. W. 
 Taussig, "Principles of Economics," 1911, II, p. 192.
 
 140 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 ing, and pernicious, instead of to that which is 
 reproductive, permanent, or serviceable. Waste- 
 fulness, ostentation, and self-indulgence not only 
 diminish economic productiveness in the spender, 
 but obstruct the flow of productive labor to other 
 lives. 
 
 These general considerations bring one to the 
 personal problems of his own expenditure, or to 
 what an American economist has called "the 
 backward art of spending money." 1 What princi- 
 ple may direct one in his spending ? What stand- 
 ard of living is justified and appropriate? What 
 are the limits of luxury ? Is it possible to adminis- 
 ter expenditure without penuriousness on the one 
 hand or extravagance on the other, so that the 
 Christian life may be consistent with the conditions 
 of the modern world? The answers to these 
 questions must, of course, vary in many details 
 with varying circumstances of inheritance, occupa- 
 tion, or place. Fixed regulations cannot be appli- 
 cable to different incomes or special emergencies. 
 The Christian Gospel is not a Talmudic system of 
 minute rules concerning each detail of conduct, but 
 a communication of Power and Life, with the 
 elasticity and variability of this dynamic and 
 vital operation. And yet the general principle of 
 stewardship which governs the making of money 
 may direct not less definitely the spending of it. 
 If what one owns is owed, if possessions are 
 
 1 W. C. Mitchell, American Economic Review, June, 1912.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 141 
 
 illusory until they are socially serviceable, if 
 riches have in them the quality of " deceitfulness " 
 against which one must be on his guard, then 
 some indication is given to any thoughtful mind 
 concerning the backward art of spending money. 
 
 In the first place the principle of stewardship 
 indicates scrutiny. Expenditure must be intelli- 
 gent and rational instead of thoughtless and stupid. 
 "The Lord of those servants cometh and maketh a 
 reckoning with them." To be ready for that 
 accounting, to accept the limitations and obliga- 
 tions of a trustee, to fix a standard of living which is 
 appropriate and legitimate for one who is respon- 
 sible to Him who owns, and to recognize as 
 fraudulent either the practice or the pretence of 
 prodigality, that is the beginning of Christian 
 spending. The loose expenditure which is often 
 fancied to be a sign of social superiority or superb 
 indifference is, in fact, not only a form of vulgarity, 
 but a form of self-deception. It hopes to buy 
 recognition, distinction, or gratitude; but it be- 
 comes, in reality, notorious, ridiculed, or plundered. 
 
 Here is an ethical situation which is often quite 
 overlooked. Many a man who closely scrutinizes 
 his money-making feels no obligation to scrutinize 
 his spending. May I not, he says, do as I will with 
 mine own ? The science of business is so absorbing 
 that he has no time for the science of expenditure. 
 Many a woman has no idea what, or on what, she 
 spends, and swings in her moods from extravagance
 
 142 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 to penuriousness, injuring other lives, first by her 
 recklessness and then by her injustice. The 
 scrutiny of spending is as much a duty of women 
 as of men, of employers as of employees, of house- 
 keepers as of house-servants, of the prosperous as 
 of the poor. "They that trust in their wealth 
 and boast themselves in the multitude of their 
 riches," says the Psalmist, "none of them can by 
 any means redeem his brother nor give to God a 
 ransom for him." Ostentatious and reckless spend- 
 ing, that is to say, is not only culpable in itself, but 
 may even leave one incapable of helping others. 
 One cannot redeem his brother by purchase, or 
 buy a ransom for him. The only way to redeem 
 another life is through one's own life. The Son of 
 Man came to give his life a ransom for many. 
 
 To the obligation of scrutiny is, however, to be 
 immediately added what may be called the privilege 
 of detachment. The scrutiny of spending, though 
 a duty to be intelligently performed, is a subordi- 
 nate duty. If it become primary and engrossing, it 
 grows anxious and penurious. The Christian life 
 is faithful in that which is least, not because the 
 least is much, but because the least may, if over- 
 looked, be obstructive of that which is much. 
 It makes a friend of Mammon, not because Mam- 
 mon offers a permanent habitation, but because 
 Mammon may obstruct the way toward "ever- 
 lasting habitations." In short, the problem of 
 spending, while it may be carelessly ignored, may
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 143 
 
 on the other hand be taken too seriously. The 
 Christian life views it with a certain detachment of 
 mind. Precisely as the economists, in dealing with 
 the fallacy of extravagance, advise the direction of 
 expenditure to permanent rather than to perish- 
 able ends, so with reiterated emphasis Jesus calls 
 his disciples to give their loyalty, not to that which 
 is to perish, but to that which is to remain. " Seek 
 first," he says, "the Kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness"; "Provide for yourselves treasures 
 that fade not" ; "Where your treasure is there will 
 your heart be also"; "Thou fool . . . that layeth 
 up treasure for himself and is not rich toward 
 God." 
 
 The emancipation of the will from slavery to 
 riches and its dedication to treasures which money 
 cannot buy is, therefore, the first condition of spir- 
 itual security. The spirit of detachment supple- 
 ments the scrutiny of spending. It is important 
 to save, but there are other things which are more 
 important. The real wealth is that which fades 
 not ; the real poverty is that which is not rich tow- 
 ard God. Expenditure, therefore, for friendship, 
 for hospitality, for the expression of beauty, for 
 the dissemination of happiness, for the utterance of 
 affection, may often be justified, even when lav- 
 ish or imprudent instead of cautious and cal- 
 culating. "Piety," said William Law in his 
 " Serious Call," " requires to renounce no way of life 
 where we can act reasonably. Whatever you can
 
 144 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 do or enjoy in the presence of God, as his rational 
 creature ... is allowed by the laws of piety." 1 
 
 This is what the Apostle, in a phrase often robbed 
 of its force, called the "Simplicity that is toward 
 Christ." 2 Simplicity is not meagreness or empti- 
 ness, the stripping from life of its richness and 
 resources ; it is, as the Greek signifi.es, singleness, 
 the undeviating direction of the will as of a piece 
 of wood which is straight-grained. The simple 
 life is one that has fixed direction, straightforward- 
 ness, single-mindedness, the ability to keep a 
 straight path among the solicitations either of 
 selfishness or of success. There is a simplicity 
 which abandons and rejects ; and there is a better 
 simplicity which discriminates and selects; and 
 this capacity to keep the narrow path which divides 
 niggardliness from extravagance and ostentation 
 from liberality, is one evidence of the simplicity 
 that is toward Christ. 
 
 No glimpse of the heart of Jesus is more illu- 
 minating than that which is here revealed. The 
 same Teacher who so repeatedly condemns fool- 
 ish expenditure, and bids his disciples provide 
 for themselves treasures that fade not, does not 
 hesitate to commend an offering which symbol- 
 izes single-minded consecration. A woman brings 
 her box of precious ointment, and pours it out 
 in prodigal expenditure ; and the disciples " have 
 
 1 "Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life," ed. 1821, p. 108. 
 1 2 Cor. XI, 3. " Single-heartedness." (Weymouth, op. cit.)
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 145 
 
 indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste ; 
 for this ointment might have been sold for much 
 and given to the poor ? " But Jesus welcomes the 
 spontaneous spending, the symbolism of sacrifice, 
 the subordination of the commercial to the ideal, 
 and says, in words which indorse many an extrava- 
 gance of love, "Wheresoever this Gospel shall be 
 preached in the whole world, there shall also this 
 that this woman hath done be told for a memorial 
 of her." The Christian life, in other words, though 
 it scrutinizes its spending, is not ascetic, but appre- 
 ciative. It says, indeed, with the Prophet, 
 "Wherefore do ye spend money for that which 
 is not bread?" but it also says with the Apostle, 
 "I will very gladly spend and be spent for you." 
 John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, 
 but the Son of Man was called the friend of wine- 
 bibbers and publicans. The first incident reported 
 in the Fourth Gospel of the public life of Jesus was 
 at a wedding. Jesus, in fact, was as little afraid 
 of luxury as he was ashamed of poverty. He 
 was equally at home among the prosperous and the 
 poor. His teaching was not, "Beware of capital," 
 but, "Beware of covetousness." His scrutiny was 
 not of money, but of motives. His detachment 
 from money was not from the institution of prop- 
 erty, but from the deceitfulness of riches. 
 
 What, then, is the test which may with varying 
 results under varying circumstances be applied 
 to the personal problem of expenditure ? It is the
 
 146 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 test of service. Am I spending for self-display, for 
 notoriety, for sensual satisfaction, ignorantly, 
 stupidly, with varying whims of extravagance and 
 niggardliness alternating like fever and chills? 
 Then, even while I ignore the social obligations of 
 my spending, the satisfactions of that spending 
 tend to shrink into discontent, restlessness, and 
 burdensome care; and even as I say to myself, 
 " Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years ; 
 take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry," I hear the 
 stinging satire of God, "Thou fool, this night thy 
 soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall 
 those things be which thou hast provided ?" Or am 
 I, on the other hand, accepting the privilege of 
 spending as I do the other endowments of my life, as 
 talents committed to my care, for which a reckoning 
 is to follow, so that money, like health, like learning, 
 like skill, is a trust rather than a possession ? Then 
 the details of my expenditure fall into their places 
 with the duties of the body or the mind or the hand. 
 My responsibility is proportionate to my capacity. 
 "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall 
 be much required, and to whom men have com- 
 mitted much, of him they will ask the more." 
 Such is the teaching of Jesus for those to whom 
 much has been committed, whether of strength, 
 or learning, or money. "The limit of luxury," 
 Canon Barnett once finely said, "is the limit of 
 sharing." To dispossess one's self of the fallacy of 
 possession, to associate one's expenditure of money
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 147 
 
 with the general problem of the consecration of 
 life, that is no easy task among the multitudi- 
 nous demands of ambition, taste, pride, or affec- 
 tion; but on no easier terms is the existing 
 diversity of social conditions, or even the institu- 
 tion of private property itself, likely to endure. If 
 wealth means vulgar ostentation and demoralizing 
 expenditure, if luxury is license and money a 
 menace, then a social structure which has become 
 so top-heavy may without much harm to the future 
 of the human race topple into ruins. If, on the 
 other hand, ownership is stewardship, and spending 
 is serving, and luxury is sharing, then social revolu- 
 tion may be supplanted by the evolution of a stable 
 society. Either self-justification through service, 
 or defeat and surrender, are the alternatives 
 offered to the spenders of money. The Christian 
 life, in a word, holds in its hands the destinies of 
 the economic world. 
 
 When one turns from these problems of expendi- 
 ture to the second use of money, through personal 
 benevolence or through organizations for social 
 service, he is met by difficulties which are familiar 
 to great numbers of thoughtful lives. What are 
 the laws and limits of judicious charity? What 
 proportion of one's earnings or savings should be 
 distributed to those who earn little and save noth- 
 ing ? How may one be sure that in trying to do 
 good he is not doing harm ? If he subsidize, will he 
 not pauperize? Is not "the one big duty," as an
 
 148 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 American economist has affirmed, to mind one's 
 own business and take care of one's self ? In the 
 " Dialogue" of Seneca, already cited, the Stoic 
 philosopher anticipates in a most surprising degree 
 the modern attitude of caution in approaching the 
 duty of charity. "If any one thinks that giving," 
 he says, "is an easy matter, he is mistaken. It 
 presents the greatest difficulty, provided one gives 
 deliberately and does not scatter casually and on 
 impulse. ... He will have an easy purse but not 
 one with holes ; one from which much may go out, 
 but nothing fall out. ... To some I will not 
 give, although they lack, for even if I were to give 
 they would still lack. ... I cannot be careless in 
 this matter. Never do I keep my accounts more 
 carefully than when I give." What light may be 
 thrown by the teaching of Jesus on this duty of 
 intelligent and discriminating benevolence? If 
 some guidance has been found among the problems 
 of making money and spending it, can it also be 
 trusted to direct one among the not less difficult 
 problems of giving money away? 
 
 The answer to these questions may be ap- 
 proached by recalling one characteristic of the Gos- 
 pels which is often overlooked. Jesus accepts in 
 his teaching, it is true, the noble tradition of his 
 nation that charity is the logical sequence of reli- 
 gion. "I was a father to the poor," said Job in his 
 parable. "He hath given to the poor," says the 
 Psalmist. "He that giveth unto the poor shall not
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 149 
 
 lack," says the Book of Proverbs. In the same 
 spirit of merciful responsibility the Gospels teach : 
 "Distribute to the poor; Sell that ye have and 
 give to the poor"; and Paul writes to Timothy, 
 "Be ready to distribute." It soon appears, how- 
 ever, that the teaching of Jesus modifies profoundly 
 this tradition of benevolence. Almsgiving, though 
 it be an essential part of the Christian life, is to him 
 not its complete, or even its highest, expression. 
 On the contrary, it is an undertaking beset by 
 many risks and easily blighted by ostentation, 
 self-interest, and hypocrisy. The new Teacher is, 
 therefore, more concerned with the mistakes of 
 charity than with its merits. "Take heed," he 
 says, "that ye do not your alms before men." 
 "When thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand 
 know what thy right hand doeth." "Many that 
 were rich cast in much, and there came a certain 
 widow and she threw in two mites, which make a 
 farthing. And he called unto him his disciples and 
 saith unto them ; Verily, I say unto you that this 
 poor widow has cast more in than all they which 
 have cast into the treasury." Self-display and 
 self-satisfaction rob giving of its worth ; self-efface- 
 ment and sacrifice are the marks of Christian 
 charity. "He that giveth," writes Paul to the same 
 effect, "let him do it with simplicity;" "Not 
 grudgingly or of necessity : for God loveth a cheer- 
 ful giver." 
 This attitude of caution and reserve is in curious
 
 150 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 contrast with the prevailing practice of the Chris- 
 tian Church. Almsgiving in the name of Christ 
 has been not only vast in its dimensions, but, as a 
 rule, indiscriminate in its methods. The command, 
 "Give to him that asketh thee," has often seemed 
 to justify recklessness in the giver and mendicancy 
 in the receiver. Many a man who is hard in business 
 but soft in sentiment has defended his double stand- 
 ard of ethics by citing the Apostolic precept: 
 "Charity shall cover the multitude of sins." The 
 relief of the poor has even been commended, not 
 so much for its effect on the receiver's welfare as 
 for its effect on the giver's peace of mind. "I give 
 alms," said Sir Thomas Browne, "not to satisfy the 
 hunger of my brother, but to fulfil the will and 
 commandment of my God." 1 
 
 This perversion of charity into a form of self- 
 justification or self-esteem finds no support hi the 
 teaching of Jesus Christ. On the contrary, he de- 
 mands a rigid self-inquiry into the motives of giv- 
 ing. Am I charitable because I am too busy or 
 too indolent to refuse ? Is it with me as with the 
 giver whom Jesus with such irony condemned, who 
 would not give because he was a friend, but be- 
 cause of his friend's importunity would rise and 
 give him ? Am I tarnished with what Mr. Spencer 
 called the flunkeyism of benevolence, 2 which is glad 
 
 1 "Religio Medici," II, 2; cited by Lecky, "History of Euro- 
 pean Morals," 1869, p. 299. 
 
 * "Principles of Ethics," 1893, II, p. 284.
 
 to pay for social prominence and for a high place 
 in the lists of givers ? Then I may sit in the chief 
 seats of the philanthropists and receive their greet- 
 ings in the market-place, but I do not escape the 
 burning judgment of Jesus Christ, "Woe unto you 
 hypocrites, for all your works ye do for to be seen 
 of men ; . . . therefore ye shall receive the greater 
 damnation." 
 
 Thus, the problem of distributing money cannot 
 be separated from the antecedent problem of ad- 
 ministering money. The steward in the teaching of 
 Jesus does not justify himself by giving away his 
 Master's money lavishly, but by administering it 
 wisely. The most charitable man of business is 
 the man who conducts his business humanely. 
 The stream of wealth is purified, not by filtering it 
 at its outlet, but by cleansing it at its source. The 
 faithful steward, the diligent servant, the watchful 
 porter, are givers not less than those "who dis- 
 tribute unto the poor." The first bring gifts of 
 fidelity, diligence, and loyalty; while the second 
 may offer unto the Lord that which has cost them 
 nothing. The same qualification must be made 
 concerning benevolence by bequest. It may be an 
 honorable duty to insure the continuance of one's 
 benefactions after death; but such distributions, 
 though they may be serviceable to charity, cannot 
 be regarded as adequate substitutes for generosity 
 and self-sacrifice while one is alive. There may be 
 but little virtue in giving away what one cannot
 
 152 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 keep. Indeed, it may be, in effect, a giving by one's 
 heirs rather than by one's self. "Defer not charities 
 till death," said Bacon, "for certainly, if a man 
 weigh it rightly, he that hath done so is rather 
 liberal of another man's than of his own." 1 
 
 Approaching, then, the problem of giving with 
 this appreciation of its subordinate place and 
 peculiar difficulty, one is soon met by further and 
 more positive directions. In the first place, the 
 teaching of Jesus prescribes that giving should be, 
 so far as practicable, individualized and personal 
 rather than mechanical and institutional. His 
 way of helping was, as the author of "Ecce Homo" 
 said, "by contagion from another living soul." 
 The one lost sheep, the one lost coin, the one lost 
 son, was his search. His sympathy was "a love 
 for the race, or for the ideal of man, in each individ- 
 ual." 2 "That unit of value," Phillips Brooks 
 said in one of his noblest paragraphs, "was never 
 out of the soul of Jesus. After the day when he 
 told them the story which they could never forget, 
 of how there was a man with a hundred sheep . . . 
 and of how the shepherd left all the rest and found 
 the one that was lost, and came singing down the 
 hill with the rescued sheep upon his shoulder, 
 after that keynote of the individual had been struck, 
 it never ceased to be heard through everything 
 
 1 Essays, XXXIV. 
 
 2 "Ecce Homo," Ch. XIV, "The Enthusiasm of Humanity;" 
 Ch. XVIII, "The Law of Edification."
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 153 
 
 that Jesus said and did." l Giving, therefore, is a 
 meagre substitute for Christian charity if it be not 
 the giving of one's self, one's time, thought, and com- 
 passion, as person to person, as life to life. The 
 master-words of the Gospels thus become the key 
 of effective philanthropy. It is the transmission of 
 Power ; it is the contagion of Life. 
 
 Here is a guide-post set where many roads of giv- 
 ing divide. That way of giving is best to follow 
 which is most personal or educative, and least offi- 
 cial or external. Most imperative and most re- 
 warding are the immediate ministries of neighborly 
 responsibility, the friendly hand and the reenforcing 
 will, where the transmission of power and life is least 
 obstructed. The lame man lay at the gate of the 
 Temple "to ask alms of them that entered," but 
 Peter said to him : "Silver and gold have I none, 
 but such as I have give I thee. In the name of 
 Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk." That 
 is a perfect expression of Christian charity. To 
 contribute power is better than to contribute alms. 
 To give life is better than to give subscriptions. 
 To give one's life as a ransom is more costly than 
 to give a ransom for being left alone. The gifts of 
 Life and Power are equally blessed to give and to 
 receive. 
 
 This principle is less easily applied in cases of 
 institutional or organized relief, where giving must 
 be in some degree delegated, and money becomes a 
 1 "The Influence of Jesus," 1879, P- II2 -
 
 154 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 substitute for personal service. Yet here also the 
 test is conclusive. That organization or method is 
 best which is most humanized. The placing-out 
 system, for example, for children, for the insane, 
 for the feeble-minded, is a scientific recognition of 
 the Christian ideal. It displaces institutionalism 
 by humanity ; it offers not asylums, but homes ; 
 it provides not keepers, but parents. It is the same 
 with the most unimpeachable forms of charity. 
 To communicate courage, to fortify character, to 
 revive hope, to bring a person to a person, the 
 friendly visitor to the poor, the nurse to the sick, 
 the teacher to the ignorant, the strong to the weak, 
 is the investment in giving which the disciple of 
 Jesus Christ should seek. Jesus did not, so far as 
 the record reports, give alms; he gave himself. 
 The call of God was to give Power and Life. " He 
 hath anointed me ... to heal the broken-hearted, 
 to preach deliverance to the captives, and, recovering 
 of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
 bruised." The Samaritan gave little money, but 
 much time and care ; and it was his intelligent and 
 continuous compassion more than his pence which 
 made him a neighbor. 
 
 "Who giveth himself with his gift feeds three, 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me." 
 
 From the principle of individualization in giving 
 there follows the principle of education for the giver. 
 If a person is to serve a person, if a life is to com-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 155 
 
 municate power, then it must be educated to under- 
 stand and fulfil this difficult task. The science 
 of relief must guide the sentiment of compassion. 
 Education in giving is essential for the prevention 
 both of economic and of moral waste. An English 
 writer has lately said that economic progress may 
 be measured by the application of mind to industry. 
 It is not less true that philanthropic progress is to 
 be measured by the application of mind to giving. 
 To this point, however, Christian sentiment has 
 come with great reluctance. Intelligence and dis- 
 cretion applied to giving have often seemed to rob 
 it of spontaneity and grace. How can one, it is 
 asked, obey the command, "Give to him that 
 asketh thee," and at the same time restrain him- 
 self from indiscriminate and emotional benevo- 
 lence ? Nowhere, therefore, has it been harder for 
 the science of charity to take root than in the soil 
 of the Christian Church. The instincts of piety 
 have, as a rule, seemed more trustworthy guides 
 than : 
 
 "Organized charity, scrimped and iced, 
 In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ." 
 
 Uneducated giving, however, when more closely 
 scrutinized, turns out as a rule to be little more than 
 disguised selfishness. The sight of suffering pains ; 
 the story of want distresses; the contrast of cir- 
 cumstances shocks; and one cannot rest until he 
 gives. Very different from this intermittent dis-
 
 156 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 composure is the " Caritas " of Christianity. Being 
 concerned with personality quite as much as with 
 poverty, its giving must be intelligent and educa- 
 tive. Charity, the Apostle says, "buildeth up." 
 It may give to every one that asketh, but it gives, 
 not the help which may pauperize, but the help 
 which may "edify." "Though I bestow all my 
 goods to feed the poor, and have not charity, it 
 profiteth menothing." Charity is but another name 
 for rational, effective, and enduring love. In this 
 education of the giver there is, therefore, no conflict 
 of science with sentiment. On the contrary, as 
 the aim of machinery is to transmit power, so the 
 science of philanthropy is designed to transmit 
 sentiment. Science which is mere officialism is as 
 ineffective as sentiment which is mere emotional- 
 ism. It is easy to be recklessly kind ; it is equally 
 easy to be timidly wise; but to be scientifically 
 sympathetic and intelligently humane, that is 
 the difficult task of Christian giving. 
 
 It may be urged that rational giving is likely to 
 be less generous than emotional giving ; that to sit 
 down with one's conscience at the beginning of 
 the year and apportion one's giving according to 
 one's means, is to repress the bounty of the heart. 
 This conclusion, however, is contradicted by the 
 experience of those communities where this ap- 
 plication of science to giving has been made. 
 Emotional giving is, as a rule, highly deceptive. 
 One thinks he has given much and excuses
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 157 
 
 himself for giving more, when, in fact, he has 
 made the same excuse already. He obeys the 
 injunction that his left hand shall not know 
 what his right hand has done; but he forgets 
 that his right hand has remained in his pocket. 
 A home where children are educated to give as 
 well as to receive, and where parents approach the 
 problem of giving money with the same conscien- 
 tious scrutiny which they apply to investing money, 
 does not find its instincts of compassion drying up, 
 but on the contrary is deepening the channel for their 
 fertilizing flow. There is no more risk to giving 
 from' science than from sentimentalism, from hard- 
 heartedness than from soft-headedness. As has 
 been seen in the case of the family, one should love 
 not only with the heart and soul but with the mind. 
 To apply the mind to love, to rationalize sym- 
 pathy and make compassion wise, is to accept the 
 education which the teaching of Jesus requires. 
 
 These principles of individualization in giving 
 and of education to give are finally summed up in 
 what may be called the spiritualization of giving. 
 What often blights the giving of money, like the 
 making and spending of it, is the practical mate- 
 rialism which dominates so much of modern life. 
 If one only has enough money, and does not spend 
 too much, and gives away a little, he may easily 
 seem to himself to have fulfilled the whole duty of 
 man and to be ready for the judgment of God. 
 Much good may, unquestionably, be done with
 
 158 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 money, and it is better to do good with money 
 than not to do good at all. The giving of money 
 may even be, in certain instances, the best avail- 
 able symbol of self-denial and love. What seems 
 to be less obvious, however, is the fact that there 
 is much which money cannot do, either for the rich 
 or the poor; that there are desires and demands 
 which cannot be bought or sold ; that behind the 
 external and material experiences of life there are 
 profounder needs which can be satisfied only by 
 the spiritualization of giving. 
 
 One of the most surprising experiences which 
 meets many well-intentioned givers is the sense of 
 their insufficiency and helplessness. Their alms 
 seem wasted ; their advice is repelled ; they cannot 
 bridge the chasm which lies between their kindly 
 giving and its unresponsive recipients. What is the 
 meaning of this curious impotency ? It means that 
 a spiritual relation has been mistaken for a ma- 
 terial relation, that the needs to be supplied have 
 seemed to be money, food, and clothing, when they 
 were, even more primarily, courage, self-control, 
 and hope. Material needs may be easy to supply, 
 but spiritual giving is possible for those only who 
 have these blessings themselves. Charity, that is 
 to say, is inseparable from character. To give, one 
 must have. There is much good which one can- 
 not do without being good himself. "Bear ye one 
 another's burdens," wrote the apostle Paul, but 
 almost in the same sentence he added, "For
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE USES OF MONEY 159 
 
 every man shall bear his own burden." To help 
 another in the deeper experiences of his life, one 
 must have been helped himself. Inexperience of 
 hardness leaves the kindest philanthropist impotent 
 before the mystery of lives that are hard. Only 
 the bearer of his own burdens is strong enough to 
 lay on his shoulder the added burden of other lives. 
 Among the deep sayings of Jesus Christ none is 
 more searching than that which defines the nature 
 of his own consecration. "For their sakes," he 
 says, "I sanctify myself." "For their sakes," 
 that was the end of his mission, the giving of 
 life a ransom for many ; but the beginning of that 
 service of others was in the sanctifying of himself. 
 Having found the strength of communion with 
 God, he could apply that strength to the helping 
 of man. That is his gospel of giving. "If any 
 man will come after me," he says, "let him deny 
 himself and take up his cross and follow me." Effi- 
 ciency comes of experience. Self-denial equips for 
 service. It is only the bearers of their own crosses 
 who can be the saviours of other souls. 
 
 How far-reaching, then, become these principles 
 of the uses of money ! Whether one make it, or 
 spend it, or give it away, he is, in fact, dealing with 
 a material symbol of the spiritual life. His scrutiny 
 and his detachment in spending, the individualiza- 
 tion and education of his giving, are tests of his 
 own character. The problems of expenditure 
 and of philanthropy are not separable from the
 
 l6o THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 problems of bearing one's own burdens and car- 
 rying one's own cross. Are such uses of money 
 inconsistent with the conditions of the modern 
 world? On the contrary, the more closely they 
 are examined, the more obvious it becomes that 
 they are principles which stand like supporting 
 arches under the whole structure of modern 
 life. The humanization of industry is the last 
 word of financial sagacity and economic fore- 
 sight; the scrutinizing of spending is the only 
 barrier which stands between Western civilization 
 and the flood of gross materialism which swept 
 away the splendor of ancient Rome ; and the in- 
 dividualizing and spiritualizing of giving are the 
 only terms on which charity may cease to be an 
 offence and insult, and remain consistent with fra- 
 ternalism and self-respect. It is no easy task in 
 days like these to use money well. It is hard for 
 a rich man, either as spender or as giver, to enter 
 the Kingdom of God. Yet social evolution has, 
 at least, reached that dramatic point where the 
 mechanism of modern life is waiting for the influx 
 of Christian power, and where the hope of social 
 stability and peace depends on the practicability 
 of the Christian life in the modern world.
 
 VI 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 
 
 ONE of the most curious characteristics of the 
 modern world is the limited range in which the 
 social conscience appears to operate. If, as has 
 been suggested, the area of social relationships is 
 pictured as a series of concentric circles surrounding 
 the individual life, then it becomes evident that 
 the sense of duty slackens as the radius of respon- 
 sibility is prolonged. Within the interior circle 
 of the Family, for example, in spite of many trage- 
 dies of instability and disruption, there remains 
 a prevailing tradition of self-forgetfulness and 
 sacrifice which keeps the normal home uninfected 
 by the poison of inconstant love. As one enters 
 the larger area of the industrial world, he is met by 
 many signs of the times which encourage the belief 
 that, in spite of the strategies and brutalities of 
 trade, the moralization of business is not impossible. 
 When, however, he passes to the more comprehen- 
 sive circle of social relations, where both families 
 and industries are associated in a political Com- 
 monwealth, and considers the motives which control 
 either local or national politics, he may easily be 
 
 M 161
 
 162 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 led to conclude that moral idealism has spent its 
 force before radiating so far, and that political life 
 is little else than a scene of intrigue, plundering, 
 and treachery. 
 
 What, for example, could be more disheart- 
 ening to one who looks for the purification of 
 politics than the prevailing condition of city-gov- 
 ernment in the United States, with its scramble 
 of party politicians for the spoils of office, and 
 its cynical contempt for both economy and effi- 
 ciency, a situation which has provoked one of 
 the most distinguished of Americans to remark : 
 "I would desire for my country three things above 
 all others to supplement our existing American 
 civilization : from Great Britain her administration 
 of criminal justice, from Germany her theatre, and 
 from any European country, save Russia, Spain 
 and Turkey, its government of cities." x Or what, 
 again, can be said of the principles and practices 
 of national politics which appear to be approved 
 by the most favored countries of the modern 
 world ? Is legislation habitually guided by a com- 
 prehensive and far-sighted idealism, or is it, in 
 the main, a balancing of temporary expediencies, 
 a promotion of party interests, not to speak of its 
 baser uses to promote personal ambition or gain ? 
 Is not an English observer justified in remarking 
 that while patriotic sentiment is conspicuous in 
 the United States, the "sense of public spirit . . . 
 1 Andrew D. White, " Autobiography," 1905, II, p. 226.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 163 
 
 seems to be little developed," 1 or, in other words, 
 that Americans are more inclined to boast of their 
 country than to make sacrifices for her? "Politi- 
 cal life," Professor Cunningham concludes, "ap- 
 pears to be regarded in America as the mere weigh- 
 ing of larger and smaller interests against each 
 other. . . . The conception of government as 
 trusteeship for the community ... is curiously 
 lacking." 
 
 If one goes still further and considers the pre- 
 vailing characteristics of international diplomacy, 
 must not the indictment be even more severe? 
 What could be more brutally cynical than the 
 plots of statesmen to occupy a territory or to ruin 
 an ally, as though the world were a chess-board 
 and the nations pawns in a great game? What 
 essential difference is there between the negotia- 
 tions of diplomatists to despoil a neighboring king- 
 dom and the plans of burglars to rob a bank? 
 When Crispi protested to Bismarck that in the 
 taking over by Austria of Bosnia and Herzegovina 
 Italy "would find herself clasped as in a vice," 
 the master of statecraft calmly replied, as though 
 the Balkan States were a subject for scientific 
 vivisection: "If Austria takes Bosnia, Italy can 
 take Albania, or some other Turkish province on 
 the Adriatic." 2 Or when, again, Italy found the 
 
 1 W. Cunningham, " Christianity and Social Questions," 1910, 
 
 P- 54- 
 
 * "Memoirs of Francesco Crispi," 1912, II, p. 33.
 
 1 64 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 north of Africa becoming French, no further prov- 
 ocation seemed necessary to justify an outrageous 
 raid on Tripoli. Or when, again, a Christian re- 
 volt against Turkish oppression united the Balkan 
 Peninsula in a holy war, the cynical neutrality of 
 the Great Powers combined with the forces of 
 national jealousy and greed to convert that cru- 
 sade into a colossal tragedy. And what shall be 
 said of the Christian nations of Northern Europe, 
 as they multiply their armaments in the name of 
 peace, or watch the regeneration of China like dis- 
 appointed heirs who have prematurely divided the 
 sick man's estate? "Without justice," said St. 
 Augustine, as if contemplating these modern inci- 
 dents, "what are kingdoms but high-way robberies 
 on a grand scale ? . . . Indeed, that was an apt and 
 true reply which was given to Alexander the Great 
 by a pirate whom he had seized. For when that 
 king had asked the man how he durst so molest 
 the sea, he answered with bold pride : ' How 
 darest thou molest the whole world ? But because 
 I do it with a little ship I am called a robber, whilst 
 thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled Em- 
 peror.' " * Is not Milton's description of politics 
 in the Seventeenth Century applicable to a later 
 age, "How to keep the floating carcass of a crazy 
 or diseased monarchy or State betwixt wind and 
 water, swimming still upon her own dead lees, 
 
 1 "City of God," Bk. IV, Ch. 4. (Quid sunt regna, nisi magna 
 latrocinia?) _,
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 165 
 
 that now is the deep design of a politician." * 
 Is not statecraft so cunning an art that, as Lord 
 Beaconsfield once satirically said, "It is doubtful 
 whether good men should be intrusted with the con- 
 duct of public affairs. " 2 Was not Lord John Russell 
 justified in writing to Lord Cowley, in 1859, con- 
 cerning the annexation of the Duchies to Piedmont : 
 "I could not answer ... in a despatch, for I 
 should use terms of abhorrence and indignation 
 too strong for eyes and ears diplomatic. The 
 disposal of Tuscany and Modena as if they were 
 so many firkins of butter is somewhat too prof- 
 ligate." 3 "I hate a lie," said Bismarck to Crispi, 
 with perhaps not absolute accuracy, "but I confess 
 that in certain rare instances in my political life 
 I have had to resort to it" ; 4 and with a finer dip- 
 lomatic instinct Cavour remarked : "I understand 
 the art of misleading diplomats. I tell them the 
 truth, and am certain that they will not believe 
 me." "As to the title of statesman," said John 
 Bright in i868, 5 "I have seen so much intrigue 
 and ambition, so much selfishness and inconsistency 
 hi the character of so-called statesmen, that I have 
 always been anxious to disclaim the title. I have 
 been content to describe myself as a simple citizen." 
 
 1 "Of Reformation touching Church Discipline," etc.; 
 "Works" (Pickering), 1851, III, p. 34. 
 z Spectator, Nov. 8, 1913. 
 
 * Thayer, "Life and Times of Cavour," 1911, II, p. 129. 
 4 "Crispi bei Bismarck," 1894, s. 133. 
 
 G. M. Trevelyan, "Life of John Bright," 1913, p. 386.
 
 l66 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 Must one, then, confess that these testimonies 
 completely represent the political life of the modern 
 world? Must the moral ideals which Christian 
 faith has nurtured be regarded as wholly inappli- 
 cable to statesmanship or legislation? Has the 
 circle of political action so extended a radius that 
 the sense of responsibility fails to reach its circum- 
 ference? If this conclusion were inevitable, it 
 would involve the further confession that modern 
 civilization itself is a scene of moral decline, where 
 each extension of national and international re- 
 lations carries the world farther from moral sanc- 
 tions and laws. Spiritual security, under such 
 conditions, must be sought, not by political read- 
 justments, but as Tolstoi taught by retreat 
 from all forms of governmental restraint. Diplo- 
 macy would be a name for determination backed 
 by force, as in the famous saying of a distinguished 
 American concerning the Panama Canal, "As 
 nobody else was able to deal with the matter, 
 I dealt with it myself, " a way of procedure 
 concerning which a competent critic remarks: 
 "No British sovereign, or French President, or 
 Turkish Sultan, hardly any Russian Tsar, could 
 act in a manner so arbitrary. . . . The scope 
 of the powers of the Head of the United States 
 is ... positively Montenegrin." 1 
 
 When, however, one reconsiders the history of 
 political philosophy, he is led to recall a long series of 
 1 W. M. Fullerton, "Problems of Power," 1913, p. 35.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 167 
 
 teachers who have seen in forms of government some- 
 thing very different from an opportunity for aggran- 
 dizement or aggression. The State, to their imagi- 
 nations, has appeared to be, not a compact of con- 
 venience, maintained by the ambition of rulers or 
 the interests of trade, but a spiritual creation, an 
 incarnation of social morality, an instrument of 
 ethical idealism. Unrealizable and Utopian such 
 teachings in many details may have been, but 
 succeeding generations have inherited from them 
 an indestructible faith in the possible moralization 
 of politics. 
 
 The Republic of Plato, for example, in which 
 philosophers were to be kings, and kings "to 
 have the spirit and power of philosophy," was, 
 in one aspect, what Jowett called "a vacant form 
 of light on which Plato is seeking to fix the eye of 
 mankind " ; l yet the teacher was evidently serious 
 in maintaining that "until political greatness and 
 wisdom meet in one, . . . cities will never cease 
 from ill." "The legislator," he later prescribed, 
 "did not aim at making any one class in the State 
 happy above the rest ; the happiness was to be in 
 the whole State, and he held the citizens together 
 by persuasion and necessity, making them bene- 
 factors of the State and therefore benefactors of 
 each other. . . . They were to be his instruments 
 in binding up the State." 2 In other words, the 
 
 1 "Dialogues of Plato," 1871, II, p. 163. 
 '"Republic," 473; 519-520.
 
 1 68 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 Republic was both a visionary ideal, and a practi- 
 cable type of political stability and peace. "Most 
 men," Plato's editor concludes, "live in a corner 
 and see but a little way beyond their own 
 home. . . . But in Plato, as from some 'tower of 
 speculation,' we look into the distance and behold 
 the future of the world." 
 
 When one turns from Plato to Aristotle, he meets 
 a conception of the State which is less visionary, but 
 not less exalted. "Man is a political animal." 
 "In the order of nature the State is prior to the 
 family or the individual, for the whole must neces- 
 sarily be prior to the parts. Hence it is evident 
 that a State is one of the works of nature . . . 
 and that whoever is naturally, and not accidentally, 
 unfit for Society is either inferior or superior to 
 man." The State "contains in itself, if I may so 
 speak, the perfection of independence." 1 
 
 These lofty sayings of the Greeks are repeated in 
 various keys by a succession of prophets and seers 
 through later political history, and have revived in 
 many a discouraged observer of contemporary 
 events his faith in political idealism. "That 
 man," taught Dante, "who is imbued with public 
 teachings, but cares not to contribute something 
 to the public good, is far in arrears of his duty, let 
 him be assured; he is, indeed, not 'a tree planted 
 
 '"Politics," tr. Walford, 1853, Bk. I, Ch. II. (atrdpKcia = 
 Self-sufficiency; cf. B arbour, "A Philosophic Study of Christian 
 Ethics," 1911, p. 118.)
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 169 
 
 by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit 
 in his season,' but rather a destructive whirlpool, 
 always engulfing and never giving back what it has 
 devoured." 1 "A Commonwealth," continued Mil- 
 ton hi the treatise just cited, "ought to be but as 
 one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth 
 and stature of an honest man, as big and compact 
 in virtue as in body." "If there be any one that 
 makes many poor to make a few rich," said Crom- 
 well, "that suits not a Commonwealth." 2 
 
 Behind all these later teachings, and in large 
 part their inspiration, lie the social prophecies of 
 the Old Testament and its prevailing note of polit- 
 ical idealism. Social stability, it was there almost 
 with monotony reiterated, rests on national right- 
 eousness. A small nation might be strong if it were 
 holy. " What great nation is there that hath a god 
 so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is, whenso- 
 ever we call upon him ? " " Woe to the oppressing 
 city ! Her princes within her are roaring lions ; 
 her prophets are light and treacherous persons ! " 
 " They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount 
 Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth 
 forever." These confident proclamations of polit- 
 ical ethics have sustained the hope of many a 
 defence of honest government and many a revolt 
 against oppression. 
 
 None of these doctrines or precepts, however, 
 
 1 "De Monarchia," tr. Henry, 1904, Ch. I. 
 
 2 Motley, "Oliver Cromwell," 1900, p. 339.
 
 1 70 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 approaches in sweep of idealism or in imperative- 
 ness of command the social prophecy which meets 
 one in the teaching of Jesus Christ. His attitude 
 toward existing politics was, it is true, determined 
 by his citizenship in a conquered province and a 
 despised community. His patriotism was Pales- 
 tinian. The disasters which threatened his Holy 
 City drew from him both warnings and tears. "O 
 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often would I 
 have gathered thy children together, even as a 
 hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and 
 ye would not." "And when he was come near, he 
 beheld the city, and wept over it." With the 
 finest dialectical skill, he refused to be entangled 
 in the political seditions of his time. When cer- 
 tain of the Pharisees and the Herodians would 
 "catch him in his words," he met their demand 
 for loyalty to the throne with a counter-demand 
 for loyalty to God. You bring to me, he said, this 
 penny with Caesar's image as the symbol of im- 
 perial authority; but I bring to you the message 
 of my Father and demand of you the obedience of 
 faith. As you are pledged to render to Caesar the 
 things which are Caesar's, so pledge yourselves also 
 to offer to God the things which are God's. "And 
 they could not take hold of his words." 
 
 The teaching of Jesus was, then, not a Gospel 
 of political revolt. "It must have struck every 
 attentive reader of the New Testament," Lord 
 Hugh Cecil has lately pointed out, "that its direct
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 171 
 
 teaching in respect to matters of State is slight 
 and even meagre." l When, however, this pro- 
 vincial teacher, whose primary concern is not for 
 legislation but for regeneration, and who refuses 
 to be involved in a fruitless conflict with Imperial 
 Rome, sets forth his own conception of a Christian 
 Commonwealth, he pictures a spiritual Kingdom 
 of whose extent even Caesar had never dreamed, 
 and before whose power Rome was soon to fall. 
 Whether the Kingdom of God, which became the 
 burden of his preaching, was to be ethical or 
 eschatological in form, to come through some 
 catastrophic change or to begin within, or both, 
 may remain a debated problem of Biblical inter- 
 pretation; but of the general character and sig- 
 nificance of his ideal there can be no doubt. It 
 was to be a social regeneration. A new world 
 was to issue from the new message. To herald 
 its coming was the mission of Jesus. The first 
 announcement of his purpose records that he "came 
 into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the king- 
 dom of God." "To organize a society," said the 
 author of " Ecce Homo," "and to bind the members 
 of it together by the closest ties, was the business 
 of his life." 2 This Christian society, however, was 
 to be much more comprehensive than imperial 
 Rome. A universal Republic, a commonwealth 
 of humanity, a spiritualized world, was to grow 
 
 *" Conservatism," 1912, p. 75. 
 1 "Ecce Homo," 1867, p. 103.
 
 172 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 like a great tree from the seed sown by Jesus 
 Christ. The Kingdom of God was not only a 
 gift to be received, but a task to be performed. To 
 the realization of this mighty enterprise the dis- 
 ciples of Jesus daily pledge themselves as they 
 join in their Lord's Prayer. To convert this 
 ideal into reality is their supreme desire. The 
 Christian religion is either the vainest of mockeries, 
 or else it is an inconquerable faith that the King- 
 dom of God is more than a dream, and that His will 
 may some day be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
 The teaching of Jesus has often been compared 
 at this point with the political Utopia proposed by 
 Plato; and there are many striking analogies 
 between the Greek and the Christian ideals. Both 
 contemplated a world where the Idea of the Good 
 might perfectly prevail. That which to Plato 
 was the "Ideal of a perfect State," * was to Jesus 
 the Kingdom "prepared from the foundation of 
 the world"; and to the writer of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, "the pattern shewed in the mount." 
 Plato's teaching of the "nature of justice and the 
 perfectly just man," to which we look "in order 
 that we might judge of our own happiness and un- 
 happiness," is lifted in the Gospels into the great 
 sayings : "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness" ; "Be ye therefore perfect, even as 
 your Father which is in heaven is perfect." One 
 fundamental difference, however, has made the 
 1 " Republic," tr. Jowett, 472.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 173 
 
 Republic a visionary dream and the Gospel a prac- 
 ticable hope. To Plato the moralization of politics 
 was to be the task of those elect natures in whom 
 "political greatness and wisdom meet in one." 
 A spiritual aristocracy was to be the hope of the 
 world, while commoner natures were to "stand 
 aside." So long as this rule of the best was 
 lacking, the part of a wise citizen was to retreat 
 from the disorders of his own age, "like one who 
 retreats under the shelter of a wall in the storm 
 of dust and sleet . . . and is content if only he 
 can live his own life and be pure from evil and un- 
 righteousness." * No such self-considering flight 
 from an unredeemed world is permissible to the 
 disciple of Jesus Christ. He is bidden, not to hide 
 from the storm, but to face it; not to shelter his 
 own life, but to seek and save the lives that are 
 lost. In short, he is called to a work of social 
 redemption. He comes not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister; to give, not a doctrine for the 
 satisfaction of the few, but a life for the ransom 
 of many. "Evils, Theodorus," said Plato, "can 
 never perish. . . . Wherefore we ought to fly 
 away thither, and to fly thither is to become like 
 God, so far as this is possible." 2 "Blessed are 
 ye," said Jesus, in quite another spirit, "when 
 men . . . shall say all manner of evil against you." 
 
 1 " Republic," 496. The contrast is convincingly described 
 in Barbour, op. cit., p. 204 ff. 
 
 1 "Theaetetus," 176, tr. Jowett, III, p. 400.
 
 174 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 "I pray, not that Thou shouldest take them out 
 of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them 
 from the evil." "Thy will be done, on earth as 
 it is in heaven." The teaching of Plato remains 
 an intellectual solace for those to whom the ten- 
 dency to social equality seems a menace and of- 
 fence ; the Gospel of Christ is the charter of a spirit- 
 ual democracy which, in spite of the hypocrisy 
 and unscrupulousness that have stained the history 
 of Christian nations, still remains the political ideal 
 which commands the imagination of the world. 
 
 Here, then, are two types of political ethics 
 which seem- in absolute conflict with each other, 
 the conception of the State as an instrument of 
 gain or conquest, and the conception of the State 
 as a moral organism, an agent of idealism, a pre- 
 liminary stage in the evolution of the Kingdom of 
 God. At this point, however, where it would 
 seem that a choice must be made, there is disclosed 
 the perennial paradox of politics, which no serious- 
 minded statesman or citizen can safely ignore or 
 deny. On the surface of events the schemes of the 
 "practical politician" may be, and often are, tem- 
 porarily dominant and profitable. He may be 
 unscrupulous in strategy and skilled in evasion, 
 justifying the means by the end, convinced that, 
 as an American politician is reported to have said, 
 "the Golden Rule has no part in politics." His 
 success may infect many minds with the poisonous 
 impression that politics is nothing else than the
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 175 
 
 manipulation of a machine, the dividing of spoils, 
 or the playing of a game with the State as the 
 board and the people as pawns. 
 
 Yet, when the deeper currents of national feel- 
 ing and permanent loyalty are traced, they dis- 
 close below these turbulent eddies of political 
 intrigue a less conspicuous and often unobserved 
 movement of national feeling or conviction or honor 
 or duty, which gives direction and momentum to 
 the stream of events, and which has its source in the 
 hidden springs of political idealism. The politician 
 who fancies his profession to be fundamentally one 
 of trades or bribes or profit or partisanship may 
 have his day and cease to be ; but the statesman who 
 identifies himself with a cause, an ideal, an even 
 remotely possible reform, may be swept with its 
 advance into permanent affection and honor. The 
 epochs which have determined the destiny of 
 nations have not been, as a rule, periods of com- 
 mercial expansion or military success, but those 
 dramatic moments when some compelling ideal of 
 nationality, liberty, democracy, justice, compas- 
 sion, or religion has flashed before the conscience of 
 the people, as the Cross appeared in the heavens 
 to Constantine with its summons: "In this sign, 
 conquer." Behind the political achievement of 
 Cavour, an event described by Lord Morley as 
 "the most important fact in European history for 
 two centuries," * was the ideal of a united Italy, 
 1 "Notes on Politics and History," 1914, p. 30.
 
 176 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 seen from afar by Mazzini, and inspiring the 
 volunteers of Garibaldi. It was the resistless 
 appeal to patriotism of Fichte's "Addresses to 
 the German Nation," which fired the heart of 
 Prussia to repel Napoleon. The brutalities of 
 commercialism in England were chastened by the 
 whip of Carlyle's irony. The rights of the plain 
 people to free bread and free franchise were secured 
 in Great Britain by a Quaker, of whom his biog- 
 rapher said, "religious feeling was the very basis 
 of his life ; he practised the silence of his sect and 
 drew thence the strength of his soul, the purity 
 of his heart, and the quality of his speech." 1 The 
 Civil War of the United States in 1861 was, as 
 Wendell Phillips said, "a conflict of ideas. . . . 
 Every soldier in each camp is certain that he is 
 fighting for an idea which holds the salvation of 
 the world." 2 Even the ambition of Napoleon 
 had to disguise itself in the garb of the glories of 
 France; and the cruelties of Alva to be justified 
 as marks of devotion to the Catholic faith. 
 
 Such is the paradox of politics. What at first 
 appears to be a record of self-seeking conspiracies 
 and merciless intrigues has been, in fact, at its most 
 critical points determined by some fresh accession 
 of feeling, sentiment, passion, hope, or faith. The 
 politicians play the game, but a veiled figure be- 
 
 1 G. M. Trevelyan, " Life of John Bright," 1913, p. 3. 
 1 Cited in the convincing Lectures of E. D. Adams, "The 
 Power of Ideals in American History," 1913, p. 59.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 177 
 
 hind their backs prompts the decisive moves and 
 determines the final issue. The things that are 
 seen are temporal, and the things that are not 
 seen are eternal. Political schemes may accom- 
 plish their immediate ends, and "ideas," in 
 Eucken's phrase, "may be overgrown by in- 
 terests" ; 1 but as one surveys the total move- 
 ment of national and international affairs, in its 
 slow yet resistless sweep, it is obvious that the 
 far-sighted statesman has been he who, as Cavour 
 said of himself, has had "more faith in ideas than 
 in cannon for mending the lot of humanity," 2 
 and has launched his cause on the stream of na- 
 tional idealism with the assurance that it is the 
 river of destiny. 
 
 A well-informed observer of international affairs, 
 whose views of diplomacy are far from those of a 
 sentimentalist, has stated this paradox in his con- 
 clusion that modern politics is dominated by 
 two forces, neither of which is itself political. 
 "Behind the facade of Government," Mr. Fuller- 
 ton says, "two occult powers . . . are now de- 
 termining the destinies of the world. One of 
 them is the disseminated wealth of the democracy 
 . . . the other is the mysterious, pervasive force 
 known as public opinion." The first of these 
 powers is conspicuous enough. National security, 
 the capacity either for self-defence or for aggression, 
 
 1 "Life's Basis and Life's Ideal," tr. 1911, p. 363. 
 
 2 Morley, op. tit., p. 172. 
 
 N
 
 178 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 has become largely a question of money. Bankers 
 may determine whether war or peace shall prevail. 
 The conflicts of nations are more frequently in- 
 cited by commercial than by political motives. 
 The second power, however, that of public 
 opinion, is more subtle but not less effective. 
 It is, in fact, another name for the unprecedented 
 part now played by the social conscience of a 
 nation, compelling politicians to represent, or at 
 least to pretend to represent, the ideals of the 
 people. " Idealism," this author concludes, "seems 
 to hold its own in spite of the corrupting power of 
 wealth." 1 The two forces may indeed operate 
 not in opposition, but in cooperation. Wealth 
 may be an instrument of idealism. "The general 
 desire for reform, and the fact that money is to-day 
 the chief method of rapid and successful action, are 
 merely different aspects of the same habit of mind." 
 In other words, though modern politics may 
 utilize commercial advantage, and may accept 
 as its agents the forces of money, navies, tariffs, 
 and loans, it will proceed with hesitancy and ap- 
 prehension unless it be reenforced by the popular 
 will, the national conscience, the force of public 
 opinion, the dynamic of political idealism. What 
 the philosophers of government, from Plato to 
 Burke, have seen as a vision, thus turns out to be 
 the only substantial foundation of a stable State. 
 The Kingdom of God, of which Jesus dreamed, 
 1 W. M. Fullerton, op. cit., p. 196.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 179 
 
 may be far from realization ; but to believe in it 
 and to convert the prayer for its coming into consist- 
 ent and patient service, is not only Christian 
 idealism, but political wisdom. Politics, in short, 
 has its external machinery and its interior 
 dynamic, and each factor has its place. Engineers 
 are necessary, but so also are seers. Precisely 
 as a system of telegraphy is externally a network 
 of wires and posts and clicking instruments, through 
 which pass the unseen messages of minds and 
 hearts, so in a system of politics, legislation and 
 administration are the intricate and ingenious 
 links of communication through which the will of 
 people is transmitted and expressed. 
 
 The paradox of politics thus disclosed, its 
 superficial materialism disguising its underlying 
 idealism, its intended schemes overruled by its 
 unforeseen emotions, finds a most striking illus- 
 tration in the experience of the United States. 
 That "melting-pot" of the nations, though it may 
 some day fail in its vast problem of assimilation, 
 has thus far succeeded in producing from its in- 
 finitely varied materials a civilization which is rec- 
 ognizable as the American type. This type, how- 
 ever, is not so simple as its observers often suppose. 
 It has its obvious and its more fundamental traits, 
 and it is not until its paradoxical character is 
 appreciated that the apparently illogical and often 
 surprising incidents of American politics are ex- 
 plained.
 
 l8o THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 The obvious fact in the United States is the 
 growth, on a tremendous scale, of a commercial 
 democracy. Vast natural resources and a remark- 
 able ingenuity in utilizing them, energy joined with 
 opportunity, have created a people much devoted 
 to money-making and amazingly successful in that 
 pursuit. Foreign students of the United States 
 are so impressed by this aspect of the national 
 character that they are easily led to believe it the 
 dominating force of American life. The country, 
 they report, is hopelessly materialized and com- 
 mercialized, and its people so unscrupulous and 
 mercenary as to be described in the markets of 
 Europe as the American peril. The most distin- 
 guished economist of Germany, for example, has 
 thus expressed himself: "The youthful civiliza- 
 tion, the incompleteness of conditions, the extraor- 
 dinary chance of gain in a land which thus far 
 seems inexhaustible, place in the foreground the 
 'self-made man/ completely devoted to the mak- 
 ing of money. Precocious children and immature 
 youths throw themselves into the chase of the dol- 
 lar. . . . The people have energy, but no deep cul- 
 ture, no richness of disposition, no amiability .... 
 Life is all work, speculation, hustle, gain or loss. 
 . . . Enthusiasm is rare, self-restraint is essential 
 for the money-maker. The sight of Niagara Falls 
 excites in the American only a regret that so much 
 water-power is running to waste. . . . The life 
 of the American has been compared with a rushing
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE l8l 
 
 locomotive ; the European trudges by its side as a 
 quiet pedestrian." * To the same effect are the 
 conclusions of an English observer : " Business is 
 king. . . . The human soul can strike no roots in 
 the America of today." 2 It is the same indict- 
 ment which Ruskin made a generation ago, "The 
 Americans are, as a nation, undesirous of rest and 
 incapable of it, irreverent of themselves both in 
 the present and the future, discontented with what 
 they are and having no ideal of anything which 
 they desire to become, as the tide of a troubled 
 sea that cannot rest." 
 
 No candid critic can deny that these statements 
 are justified by many incidents of American life. 
 The unscrupulous making of money and the reck- 
 less spending of it are both familiar facts in the 
 United States, and bring with them the inevitable 
 consequences of speculation, vulgarity, physical 
 degeneracy, and moral decay. Yet the American 
 character is but half-explained if it seems of an 
 uncomplicated and coarsely commercial type. 
 Further acquaintance with national history, or 
 closer observation of the deeper movements of 
 national life, discloses another trait which may 
 seem quite inconsistent with this commercial 
 acquisitiveness, but which is, in fact, not less 
 typical or persistent. It is a hereditary suscep- 
 
 1 Schmoller, "Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschafts- 
 lehre," 1900, 1, s. 157. 
 
 * A. E. Zimmern, Sociological Review, July, 1912, p. 212.
 
 l82 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 tibility to idealism. By one of the most curious 
 coincidences in human history, a people which 
 was to become so conspicuously devoted to com- 
 mercialism had, from the beginning, in their blood 
 a distinct strain of moral seriousness. Of the early 
 migrations which stamped their mark on national 
 character some, it is true, were promoted by the 
 lust for gold ; but by far the greater number were 
 adventures of moral protest or of religious zeal. 
 Across the Northern wastes marched the bearers 
 of the Cross, conquering the wilderness for Christ. 
 Pilgrims and Puritans abandoned for conscience' 
 sake the smiling villages of England and settled on 
 the stern coast of an unknown continent, between 
 the savages and the sea. The sombre valleys of 
 the Alleghenies rang with the hymns of German 
 Pietists; the Moravians penetrated the untrav- 
 elled waste which is now Ohio. Inheritances 
 like these are not easily obliterated. Even the 
 marvellous expansion of commercialism has not 
 altogether suppressed the American tendency to 
 convert each incident of political experience into 
 a moral problem. Liberty, justice, compassion, 
 magnanimity, service, these words unlock the 
 meaning of many events and touch with nobility 
 and romance many of the most significant incidents 
 of American history. "It is fundamentally false," 
 a discerning critic has said, "to stigmatize the 
 American as a materialist and to deny his idealism. 
 The cardinal point of his whole activity is not
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 183 
 
 greed, or the thought of money, but the spirit of 
 self -initiative." * 
 
 Here is the paradox of American politics. Ac- 
 quisitiveness and generosity, hardness and softness, 
 the spirit of commercialism and the faith of 
 idealism, contend for mastery. The same people 
 who have impressed observers as sharp traders 
 and keen politicians have surprised the world 
 by acts of unprecedented magnanimity and ro- 
 mantic self-denial. What other nation, while re- 
 jecting the principle of a State Church, maintains 
 through the voluntary gifts of its population vast 
 organizations for worship, as if to testify that it 
 has, not only territory to develop and products 
 to sell, but a soul to save ? What other country 
 ever received an indemnity from a foreign Govern- 
 ment and returned it, only to receive it once 
 more in the form of stipends for the education 
 of youths sent to the United States by the 
 grateful land? When did another nation win 
 territory and return it to its occupants, as in 
 Cuba, or hold it in trust, as in the Philippines? 
 When did ever another nation at the end of a war 
 like that with Spain transport the defeated army to 
 their homes across the sea ? When did ever a great 
 Power pause with such scrupulousness before pun- 
 ishing a weaker neighbor, like Mexico, and mean- 
 time provide for her refugees friendly shelter and 
 support? Or when did any other nation, having 
 
 1 Hugo Munsterberg, " The Americans," 1904, pp. 236, 239.
 
 1 84 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 taken possession of a strip of land and at enormous 
 cost built a Canal, even propose to satisfy its 
 conscience by a voluntary payment to the former 
 owners, or to open the Canal on equal terms to the 
 fleets of the world ? Works of supererogation like 
 these indicate a more complex type of character 
 than a nation of shopkeepers could produce. Un- 
 der the hardness of American commercialism lies 
 a richer soil, from which there has grown in 
 American politics and diplomacy many an unex- 
 pected and even Utopian scheme. The United 
 States, a discerning Englishman has said, is "a land 
 of, contrasts." l There is a great deal of every- 
 thing, prairie and mountain, fertility and desert, 
 irreverence and piety, piracy and patriotism. 
 Most fundamental of all is the contrast of com- 
 mercialism with idealism. The crux of American 
 politics is here. Can a nation which has made 
 such conquests of nature learn to conquer itself? 
 Gaining the world, will it lose its own soul ? Is the 
 inherited idealism which still runs in the blood to 
 be checked by the lethargy of national prosperity 
 and a hardening of the national arteries to ensue ; 
 or is it possible that the very dimensions and 
 responsibilities of modern commercialism may 
 quicken a new idealism and prolong the national 
 vitality and health ? 
 
 If political history teaches through this illus- 
 tration the general lesson that beneath the opera- 
 
 1 J. F. Muirhead, "The Land of Contrasts," 1898.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 185 
 
 tions of self-interest and intrigue a moral purpose ,/ 
 may be, with many retardations, fulfilled; if 
 political action is fickle, tentative, and self-deceiv- 
 ing unless it be the agent of the conscience and I] 
 heart of a people, then the fundamental duty of / 
 citizenship is plain. It is the education of political H 
 idealism. These accessions of emotion, or inherit- 
 
 1" 
 
 ances of conviction, may be foolishly or thought- 
 lessly applied. The voice of the people may be ^ 
 far from an echo of the voice of God. A good 
 conscience may not save one from a foolish vote. 
 Designing politicians may even convert into moral 
 issues what are, in fact, administrative problems, 
 and may disguise their own designs in phrases of 
 idealism. No words have been more misused or 
 perverted than justice, equality, and liberty. " The 
 dying words of Madame Roland," said Macaulay, 
 "*O Liberty, how many crimes are committed, 
 in thy name ! ' were at that time echoed by many 
 of the most upright and benevolent of mankind." 1 
 The same words are not unreasonably on many 
 lips to-day. Liberty may commit crimes as easily 
 as it may create character. Idealism, to be justi- 
 fied, must be disciplined. The education of a 
 country for self-government should include, not 
 only a training in letters or trades, but the direction 
 of its moral impulses to rational ends. Each public 
 question discloses the paradox which has been 
 described ; the superficial selfishness and the un- 
 
 1 Macauky, Essay on "Mirabeau," " Works," 1875, V, p. 616.
 
 1 86 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 derlying ideals ; and in each a wise result can be 
 attained by nothing less than the sane and dis- 
 criminating education of national idealism. 
 
 The most impressive instance of this demand 
 for the education of idealism is provided by the 
 awful problem, now confronting every nation, of 
 substituting reason for war in the settlement of 
 international disputes. In spite of Hague Tri- 
 bunals, Peace Endowments, International Bureaus, 
 and the sympathetic interest of the vast majority 
 of citizens in all countries, expenditure on prepara- 
 tions for war has mounted without check, until in 
 1913 the six great powers of Europe were, it is 
 said, taxing themselves for this purpose the in- 
 credible sum of more than one and a half thousand 
 millions of dollars. This colossal and constantly 
 increasing charge, which takes no account of the 
 productive labor lost by more than five million 
 men serving with the colors, must, it would seem, 
 be tolerated for some profounder reason than a 
 mere obsession of alarm, or a conspiracy of ship- 
 builders, or a craze of militarism. Statesmen are 
 not likely to risk national bankruptcy in order to 
 quiet national hysteria. The great illusion that 
 war is commercially profitable has been supplanted 
 in most minds by the confession that war is hell. 
 Why is it, then, that the nations, in spite of many 
 protesting voices, still tacitly consent to these vast 
 sacrifices of money and life ? It is because, in spite 
 of its terrors, if not because of them, war has
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 187 
 
 seemed through all human history the most ade- 
 quate and available expression of political idealism. 
 Honor, patriotism, sacrifice, nationality, unity, 
 religious conviction, all these high ideals have 
 found their channel of utterance in the willingness 
 to fight and die. A soldier's courage, fortitude, 
 and daring have seemed to offer to character its 
 crown. No better title could be found for a loyal 
 disciple of him who said: "Blessed are the 
 peace-makers," than "A good soldier of Jesus 
 Christ." This tradition of idealism has made 
 peace appear unheroic, and war the proper sphere 
 for gallant men. Rulers and nations have chafed 
 when this opportunity for exhibiting manhood was 
 denied. They have felt what Shakespeare's 
 Falstaff called, "The cankers of a calm world 
 and a long peace"; 1 or have lamented with his 
 Gloster, "This weak, piping time of peace." 2 
 The supreme test of courage, self -discipline, and 
 loyalty has been found by men, as by other animals, 
 in war. 
 
 Such a tradition, then, reenforced by the ex- 
 perience of all the centuries since man emerged 
 from caves and fought with stones, is not to be 
 overcome by declamations or convocations in the 
 name of peace, or even by computations of the 
 extravagance of war. "War," said Channing, in 
 one of those many utterances in which his courage 
 
 1 "Henry IV," Part I, IV, 2. 
 
 2 "Richard III," I, i.
 
 1 88 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 and his sanity met, "is not absolutely or in all 
 possible cases a crime. ... I do not believe in 
 escaping the responsibility of moral discrimina- 
 tion by flying to an extreme principle." l Wars of 
 aggression, jealousy, or revenge, that is to say, 
 are crimes, not merely because people are killed, 
 but because motives are vicious. Wars for self- 
 defence, national integrity, or popular liberty may 
 be, as Channing adds, "not inconsistent with the 
 spirit of Christian love." The blessing of Jesus 
 was not for those who merely praise peace or even 
 pray for it, but for those who, by laying the founda- 
 tions of international justice, equity, and honor, are 
 worthy of the name of peace-makers. 
 
 How, then, is it possible to perpetuate the 
 ideals of courage and loyalty without the taint of 
 brutality and blood ? They must be expressed in 
 new forms of heroism, and applied to ventures of 
 life and death not less splendid, and more honorable. 
 "Much remains," wrote Milton to Cromwell, 
 
 "To conquer still ; peace hath her victories 
 No less renown'd than war ; new foes arise 
 Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. 
 Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
 Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw." 2 
 
 No characteristic of the modern world is more 
 significant than its increasing recognition of these 
 types of heroism which may supplant or satisfy 
 
 1 W. E. Channing, "Memoirs," 1851, III, p. 20. 
 * Sonnet XVI, "To the Lord General Cromwell."
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 189 
 
 the martial instinct. In a brilliant "essay by Will- 
 iam James 1 on "Moral Equivalents for War," he 
 urges an organized movement to direct militarism 
 to worthier ends. War, he says, has always 
 represented the "strong life." "Militarism is 
 the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood." 
 "The horror makes the thrill." He proposes, 
 therefore, a Utopian equivalent, " the conscrip- 
 tion of the whole youthful population" in an army 
 of social service where "intrepidity, contempt of 
 softness, and obedience to command" may "re- 
 main the rock on which States are built." 
 
 But is it, one may ask, necessary to wait for this 
 universal and impracticable conscription to enforce 
 new types of heroism ? Do they not, in fact, already 
 exist and offer their summons to gallant youth? 
 Is not " civic passion " even now urging many young 
 men and women into the ranks of social service, 
 and "contempt of softness" creating a new knight- 
 hood of industry? A soldier runs occasional risk 
 at an outpost, but for most of his days he is drilling, 
 waiting, and polishing his arms, while many a 
 wage-earner risks his life any hour on the end of a 
 cantilever, or the top of a skyscraper, or at the 
 throttle of an engine, or in the depths of a mine. 
 It is exciting to destroy life at the risk of one's 
 own ; but it is not less exhilarating, and may in- 
 volve much greater danger, to rescue life at the 
 risk of one's own. It is brave to be a soldier ; but 
 
 1 "Memoirs and Studies," 1911, p. 267 ff.
 
 190 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 it may be much braver to be a saviour. It takes 
 courage to conquer savages with guns; but it 
 takes much more courage to conquer savages 
 with the sword of the spirit. It is heroic to lead 
 a charge in battle ; but it is much more heroic to 
 let a mosquito settle on one's hand and to die of 
 yellow fever, that a world may be delivered from 
 a scourge more terrible than war. No soldierly 
 daring was ever greater than many a modern ex- 
 ploit of medical research or missionary zeal. " To 
 kill one's fellow-creatures," wrote Erasmus to the 
 Bishop of Trent hi 1530, "needs no great genius, 
 but to calm a tempest by prudence and judgment 
 is a worthy achievement." " Away then," said 
 Channing, after rejecting the principle of peace at 
 any price, " with the argument that war is needed 
 as a nursery of patriotism! The school of the 
 peaceful Redeemer is infinitely more adapted to 
 teach the nobler as well as the milder virtues 
 which adorn humanity." 
 
 When Samuel Gridley Howe, the principal figure 
 in American philanthropy, a man who, as his 
 biographer said, "combined the qualities of Sir 
 Galahad and the Good Samaritan," turned from 
 fighting for Greek independence to his crusade hi 
 defence of the blind and the feeble-minded, it was 
 not a suppression of his martial instincts, but a 
 conversion of them. He was equally a soldier 
 when he fought against Turks and when he fought 
 against Legislatures, or released from its fleshly
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 1 91 
 
 prison the soul of Laura Bridgman. He had 
 found, not a substitute for war, but a new way of 
 warfare, not less romantic or heroic than at Misso- 
 longhi or Athens. The titles given him by con- 
 temporary observers were military titles, "The 
 Happy Warrior"; "The Chevalier"; "The Good 
 Knight"; and when Whittier wrote of him it 
 was as " The Hero":- 
 
 "Knight of a better era 
 Without reproach or fear ! 
 Said I not well that Bayards 
 And Sidneys still are here?" 
 
 Here, then, and in many other critical problems 
 of political action, is indicated the place of the 
 Christian life in the modern State. It is not a 
 political agent or a legislative machine. An 
 affiliation of Church with State is more likely to 
 materialize the Church than to spiritualize the 
 State. A State Church is more inclined to be a 
 bulwark of conservatism than a quickener of the 
 nation's conscience or a guardian of spiritual 
 liberty. A governmental agency is more disposed 
 to conform than to reform. The disciple of Jesus 
 Christ may still wisely leave to the Caesars of the 
 modern world the things which are theirs, and 
 claim for the things of God the rights of a free 
 Church in a free State. The Christian Church, 
 however, has a much more fundamental part in 
 political action. It is, for the Western world at 
 least, the most effective agent in the education
 
 192 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 of idealism. Its business is to detect in each public 
 issue, beneath the angry voices of partisanship, the 
 still small voice of the national conscience, and to 
 lift that subconscious and undefined emotion into 
 rational and articulate expression, in short, to 
 apply to politics the Law of Love, and to diplomacy 
 the Golden Rule. This is not, as many politicians 
 imagine, mere sentimentalism ; it is, on the contrary, 
 political wisdom. To hold before a community 
 or a nation the ancient standards, "Better is a 
 little with righteousness than great revenues with- 
 out right," "Where there is no vision the people 
 perish," is in Emerson's phrase to deal, not 
 with glittering generalities, but with blazing ubiq- 
 uities. These are the decisions which determine 
 the destinies of nations. Precisely as a railway 
 corporation posts on every wall the regulation, 
 "Safety first!" so the Christian Church is called 
 to preach, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness." 
 
 It is not enough, then, to say that the Chris- 
 tian life may be practicable in a modern State, 
 for the ideals which it cherishes are, in fact, the 
 foundations of political stability. Without the 
 vision of an ideal State, which Christians call 
 the Kingdom of God, no modern State, and 
 least of all a commercial democracy, can survive. 
 "Democracy is possible," Woodrow Wilson, as 
 Professor of Government, has said, 1 "only among 
 
 1 "An Old Master and Other Essays," p. 117; cited by W. W. 
 Willoughby, "The Nature of the State," 1907, p. 424.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE MODERN STATE 193 
 
 peoples of the highest and steadiest political habit. 
 It is the heritage of races purged alike of hasty 
 barbaric passion and of patient servility to rulers, 
 and schooled in temperate common counsel. It 
 is an institution of political noonday, not of the 
 half-light of political dawn." On no other terms 
 can a country like the United States hope to be 
 saved from a progressive paralysis of its vitality 
 and efficiency. A renaissance of national idealism 
 alone can solve the paradox of politics. The 
 whole creation of Government travaileth in pain 
 until now, waiting for the manifestation of the 
 Christian life in the modern State. 1 
 
 1 These pages were already in print when there descended upon 
 an astonished world the terrific storm of European war, which 
 seems to lay in ruins the faith of the idealist and to leave the 
 principles of Christian Ethics like a devastated city in an army's 
 track. Yet, as the causes of this carnage are more clearly dis- 
 cerned it becomes obvious that instead of refuting these princi- 
 ples they testify on the most tremendous scale to their validity 
 and permanence. This chaos of the nations, it already appears, 
 is not a consequence of rational decisions or immediate contro- 
 versies, but the awful Nemesis which follows a long series of moral 
 wrongs ; the tragic corollary of captured provinces, broken trea- 
 ties, territorial aggrandizement, and the duplicity of secret 
 diplomacy. Never in human history was there such a fulfilment 
 of the warning of Moses to the people of Israel : " Behold, you 
 have sinned against the Lord ; and be sure your sin will find you 
 out." Each act of arrogance or oppression committed by any 
 nation, and which of them is guiltless ? each tortuous negotia- 
 tion and evaded obligation, now meets its delayed retribution. 
 The cynical divorce of politics from morality and of statesman- 
 ship from idealism which the history of Europe records could 
 have no other consequence than this apparently unprovoked and 
 o
 
 IQ4 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 uninterpretable war. And, on the other hand, if the United 
 States is to have any share in the final restoration of peace, it 
 will be because no question can be raised of its absolute good 
 faith, its abnegation so lately and impressively proved of all 
 desire for further territory, its abandonment of all diplomatic 
 strategy, and the confidence of the world in its fundamental 
 idealism. The issue of this apparent reversion to barbarism can 
 be nothing less than the restriction of militarism, the substitution 
 of reason for force in international disputes, and the application 
 of the fighting instinct to constructive ends. 
 September i, 1914.
 
 VII 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 
 
 THERE remains for consideration one further 
 question which in its first statement may seem 
 superfluous, if not ironical. Is the Christian life 
 practicable in the Christian Church? Are the 
 conditions of organized Christianity, its standards 
 of fellowship and its effect on character, such as 
 to give to the Christian life reenforcement and 
 momentum ; or are the forces of commercialism, 
 sectarianism, bigotry, and insincerity so formidable 
 in the Christian Church as to block the free course 
 of the Christian life and turn its flow toward other 
 channels ? The Church exists, it may be assumed, v 
 to perpetuate and transmit the Power and Life.]..| 
 derived from Jesus Christ. Has it fulfilled this 
 sacred task? Has it subordinated all other am- 
 bitions and desires? Does it now offer an unob- 
 structed course for the water of Life? Is it a 
 Power-house of effective service ? 
 
 These questions may appear to some minds al- 
 most insolent in their implications. Has not the 
 Christian Church, it may be answered, throughout 
 all its history, comforted the weak, consoled the 
 
 195
 
 196 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 sad, preached the forgiveness of sins, and main- 
 tained unprecedented agencies of benevolence and 
 compassion ? Is not the Christian life, with its 
 self-denial, its sacrifices, and its tranquillity, the 
 product of this association and inheritance ? Shall 
 not the tree be known by its fruits, the nature of 
 the Christian Church by the beauty of the Christian 
 character ? All this, and much more, may be justly 
 affirmed. Yet it is not less obvious that it has 
 often been hard for the Christian life to flourish in 
 this soil. What incredible persecutions, what 
 mistaken asceticism, what dehumanized saintship, 
 what demoralizing charity the history of the 
 Church records, and what lingering superstitions, 
 arrogant assumptions, and mercenary aims still 
 vitiate or neutralize its purpose ! The presumptu- 
 ousness of the ecclesiastic, the competitive zeal 
 of the sectarian, and more than all the sup- 
 pression of a spiritual democracy by the domina- 
 tion of wealth, all these familiar characteristics 
 of modern Christianity have made many a 
 thoughtful observer turn away in despair or dis- 
 gust, and conclude that the Christian life is im- 
 practicable in the Christian Church. No attack 
 on the Christian religion from without can 
 compare in destructive effect with this betrayal 
 of it from within. Intolerance and spiritual 
 pride are more threatening than agnosticism and 
 materialism. Nothing hinders the expansion of 
 the Church among non-Christian nations so
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IQ7 
 
 seriously as the un-Christian conduct of Chris- 
 tians. The work of foreign missions is blocked by 
 denominational rivalries and provincial bigotry 
 more than by superstitions and barbarism. No 
 allies of scepticism or atheism are so effective as 
 the commercialized Christian and the church-going 
 scamp. "Woe unto you," said Jesus, to the 
 Churchmen of his day, "Scribes and Pharisees, 
 hypocrites, for ye devour widows' houses and for 
 a pretence make long prayers. . . . Woe unto you, 
 whited sepulchres . . . which outwardly appear 
 righteous unto men but within are full of hypocrisy 
 and iniquity." Many a critic of Christianity re- 
 peats the same indictment to-day. The hypocrisy 
 which permits in the same person prayer and 
 plunder, the external decorum which tolerates ex- 
 tortion within, the blind guides who strain out the 
 gnat of heresy and swallow the camel of world- 
 liness, still drive from the doors of the Christian 
 Church many a seeker for consistency of character. 
 The Christian life, even if it be practicable in the 
 Christian Church, is not an inevitable or an un- 
 obstructed growth. 
 
 There are many reasons for this incomplete ful- 
 filment of the mission of the Church. Undis- 
 ciplined zeal may generate persecution, ignorant 
 piety may promote animosity ; a great institution 
 is always likely to become an inorganic form 
 rather than a quickening soul, a historical monu- 
 ment rather than a propelling force. All this
 
 198 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 may happen because the Church has to take human 
 nature as it is. Much may be pardoned to small 
 minds using as their instrument a great ideal. 
 There is, however, one general tendency which 
 the history of the Christian Church illustrates, 
 and which has enormously increased this malad- 
 justment with the Christian life. It is what may 
 be called the intellectualizing of discipleship, the 
 defining of fellowship in terms of intellectual con- 
 sent rather than in terms of a moral pledge. 
 
 When one recalls the symbols and confessions of 
 the Church he is struck by a curious paradox. The 
 general, even if tacit, agreement of unsophisticated 
 people has always accepted the Christian life as 
 the test of the Christian religion. However divided 
 in opinion Christians may have been, however 
 ruthlessly their creeds have excluded the uncon- 
 verted from fellowship or condemned the un- 
 baptized to perdition, whenever and wherever the 
 Christian life, with its characteristic marks of 
 sacrifice, service, and serenity, has been manifest, 
 controversy has been silenced, divisive doctrines 
 have been forgotten, and the Master's words 
 remembered: "Not every one that saith unto 
 me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven ; but he that doeth the will of my Father 
 which is in heaven." In the presence of such 
 souls the Church repeats the Pauline teaching: 
 "As many as are led by the spirit of God, they 
 are the sons of God," and joins in the confession
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 199 
 
 of Ignatius: "Where Jesus may be, there is the f 
 universal Church." 1 
 
 "From scheme and creed the light goes out, 
 The saintly fact survives ; 
 The blessed Master none can doubt, 
 Revealed in holy lives." 
 
 This desire for fellowship in the spirit is, however, 
 at once confronted by the fact that in the formal 
 creeds and confessions of the Christian Church no 
 such primacy has been unqualifiedly given to the 
 Christian life. On the contrary, the terms of 
 discipleship have been frankly intellectualized, so 
 that consent to dogma rather than consecration 
 of character has been the test of fellowship. To 
 say this is neither to deny nor to depreciate the 
 creeds of the Church. Every thoughtful man has 
 a creed, and to denounce the creeds is simply to 
 announce one's own creed. The creeds of Christian 
 communions, however, divergent and conflicting 
 as they may be in their propositions or articles, 
 are in one respect singularly uniform in type. 
 With scarcely an exception they intellectualize 
 discipleship, assume the primary obligation of 
 doctrinal agreement, and imply that the Christian 
 religion is a dogma rather than a life. 
 
 The Apostles' Creed, for example, of which most 
 later Confessions are elaborations, while it dwells 
 with solemn affirmation on the miraculous aspects of 
 
 1 "Epistle to the Smyrnaeans," tr. Lightfoot, 8 ; cf. Lightfoot's 
 note on the word "Catholic," " Apost. Fathers," II, p. 320.
 
 200 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 the birth and death of Jesus Christ, makes no allu- 
 sion whatever to the life and teaching which lie 
 between. He was "born of the Virgin Mary . . . 
 suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, 
 and buried." " It leaps," a sympathetic expositor 
 of this creed has lately said, '" from the thought 
 of his birth as a helpless infant to the thought of 
 his suffering as a helpless victim. . . Nothing is 
 said of the kingdom of God, or of our social ob- 
 ligations and responsibilities; not a word of our 
 duty to our equals or to those beneath us in privi- 
 lege and opportunity ; not a word of the brother- 
 hood of man, except what seems the pallid and 
 narrow substitute of the communion of saints." 1 
 As a consequence of these omissions, therefore, 
 one might repeat with entire conviction all its 
 Christological articles without pledging himself 
 at all to a consistently Christian life. Consent to 
 these majestic propositions would not commit one 
 even to honesty, chastity, or self-sacrifice, or make 
 one ready for the Master's welcome: "Well done, 
 good and faithful servant. Inasmuch as ye have 
 done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, 
 ye have done it unto me." 
 
 The Nicene Creed expands the same series of 
 articles, with a more explicit definition of the 
 Deity of Christ. The Athanasian Creed prefaces 
 its declarations with the solemn warning, "Who- 
 
 1 G. A. J. Ross, " The God We Trust. Studies in the Devo- 
 tional Use of the Apostles' Creed," 1913, p. 201.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 2OI 
 
 soever will be saved, before all things it is necessary 
 that he hold the Catholic Faith, which Faith ex- 
 cept every one do keep whole and undefiled, without 
 doubt he shall perish everlastingly." The Council 
 of Trent confirms the Nicene Creed as " that prin- 
 ciple wherein all who profess the faith of Christ 
 necessarily agree." The Augsburg Confession, 
 after defining the nature of God, the Son of God, 
 the Church and the Sacraments, affirms "that 
 those things only have been enumerated which it 
 seemed necessary to say." The Thirty-nine Ar- 
 ticles of the Church of England restate the creeds, 
 enumerate the canonical Scriptures, describe the 
 nature of sin, predestination, and salvation ; and 
 conclude that "Holy Scripture doth set out unto 
 us only the name of Jesus Christ whereby men must 
 be saved." The Westminster Confession an- 
 nounces "that it pleased the Lord at sundry times 
 ... to reveal himself . . . and afterwards . . . 
 to commit the same wholly unto writing, . . . those 
 former ways of God's revealing his will unto his 
 people being now ceased." 
 
 It is not necessary for the present purpose to 
 enter into any discussion or express any doubt con- 
 cerning the validity or authority of these venerable 
 symbols. They have been wrought into the wor- 
 ship of the Church, steadying its orthodoxy, en- 
 riching its ritual, and lifting the minds of worship- 
 pers to great conceptions of the ways of God with 
 man. They should be approached with reverence
 
 2O2 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 as great monuments of ancient thought. What is 
 immediately obvious in them all, however, is their 
 common emphasis. They are declarations of 
 dogma, not directions for life. They codify Chris- 
 tian opinion rather than modify Christian char- 
 acter. They invite an intellectual confession rather 
 than a moral pledge. They make affirmations 
 concerning which "all who profess the name of 
 Christ necessarily agree," or which contain "those 
 things which are necessary to say." Yet, all the 
 while, the real tests of Christian discipleship are of 
 quite another character, and are daily met by 
 many lives to whom the affirmations of the creeds 
 may be either a riddle or a stumbling-block. 
 One might concur in the entire Nicene theology, 
 accept the authority of Scripture, and maintain 
 the efficacy of the sacraments, and yet be far from 
 a follower of Jesus Christ ; and, on the other hand, 
 one might be indifferent to all formal creeds, wel- 
 come the higher criticism of Scripture, and deny 
 the importance of sacraments, and yet so com- 
 pletely yield himself to the spirit of Christ as to 
 say with Paul, "I live, yet not I, but Christ 
 liveth in me," or with George Fox, "These 
 things I did not see by the help of man . . . 
 but I saw them by the light of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ." 1 
 
 Here is the inevitable paradox of an intellectu- 
 alized discipleship. When a distinguished prelate 
 
 1 Journal, I, p. 101.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 203 
 
 defines the Church as "The great company of the 
 baptized," he is confronted by the obvious fact that 
 there are many baptized sinners and many unbap- 
 tized saints. In short, these confessions, which ac- 
 cording to the Athanasian Creed sum up the Catholic \ 
 faith, are not confessions of faith, but deposits of I 
 opinion. Each is a record of ancient controversies 
 with Gnosticism, it may be, or Sabellianism, or 
 Arianism which once burned with volcanic fury, 
 but are now little more than extinct craters. Chris- 
 tian faith is, on the other hand, a spiritual condition 
 of loyalty and trust, of Power and Life, which a creed 
 may confirm, but which a creed cannot create. One 
 may believe in the forgiveness of sins as a theological 
 proposition without being thereby constrained to 
 penitence for his own sins. One may believe in 
 the resurrection of the body as a miracle without 
 presenting his own body as a living sacrifice. The 
 virgin-birth of Christ, as the greatest of modern 
 theologians said a century ago, is in itself no ab- 
 solute warrant of the Divine life of Christ. The 
 work of Christ was not perfected in his suffering, 
 but in his resignation to that suffering. * The in- 
 carnation of God in Christ is a historical proposi- 
 tion; the incarnation of Christ in the life of a 
 Christian is a spiritual experience. The prayer of 
 the Apostle is not that Christ may be defined in 
 our minds, but that Christ "may dwell in your 
 
 1 Schleiermacher, "Christliche Glaube," ed. 1861, II, ss. 67, 
 101.
 
 204 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 hearts by faith" ; not that Christ may be confessed 
 in a creed, but that Christ may be "in you, the hope 
 of glory." 
 
 A conspicuous instance of this intellectualiz- 
 ing of Christianity is provided by the proposal 
 of one American Communion for a "World Con- 
 ference on Faith and Order," to promote the move- 
 ment to Christian Unity. Comprehensive plans are 
 made for this great consummation and to each pre- 
 liminary document is prefixed the sublime prayer 
 of Jesus Christ, "That they may all be one; 
 as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they 
 also may be one in us." When, however, one turns 
 to the conditions of unity proposed, it appears 
 that they are to be neither ethical nor religious, 
 neither of obedience to Christ's commands nor of 
 communion with his spirit, but dogmatic, confes- 
 sional, intellectualized. To this enterprise for 
 "the fulfilment of our Lord's prayer that all his 
 disciples may be one" are invited "all Christian 
 communions throughout the world which confess 
 our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour." It is 
 not necessary to dwell on the fact that a unity 
 based on this bald assertion of the identity of 
 Jesus with the Eternal God, and omitting all allu- 
 sion to his human life, would be a curious reproduc- 
 tion of the ancient Monophysite heresy, which the 
 early Church was prompt to deny, and would 
 at once be confronted by the teaching of Paul: 
 "There is one God, and one mediator between God
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 205 
 
 and men, the man Christ Jesus," and by the warning 
 of St. Augustine : "If he were not man, man would 
 not be redeemed." l A more elementary considera- 
 tion is to be drawn from the obvious fact that such 
 a programme of unity would fail to cover, either 
 by inclusion or by exclusion, those whom Jesus 
 Christ welcomed as his disciples. The confession 
 that Christ was God is no conclusive evidence 
 that he who makes it will follow Christ. "The 
 devils also believe and tremble." "Not every one 
 that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
 the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will 
 of my Father which is hi heaven." The exclusions 
 of the Apostolic Church were ethical : "If any man 
 have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his"; 
 its inclusions were spiritual : "As many as are led 
 by the spirit of God they are the sons of God." 
 This generous and fraternal effort to gain an 
 end for which all Christians pray is, therefore, 
 blocked at its very outset by its preliminary in- 
 tellectualism. It must exclude many who are 
 undeniably Christians and include some who are 
 practically heathen. The difficulty is not in the 
 Christology but in the substitution of Christology 
 for life. It is a curious fact that if the only basis 
 of Christian unity were the confession that Christ 
 is God, then the prayer which makes the text of 
 this whole enterprise, that all his disciples might be 
 
 1 " Sed si ille non esset homo non liberaretur homo." Super 
 psalmos. Ps. 63.
 
 206 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 one, as he and the Father are one, could never 
 be fulfilled. 
 
 These reflections, it must be repeated, do not 
 raise the question of the veracity or authority of 
 the Christian creeds. What is immediately evi- 
 dent, however, is that they speak another language, 
 strike another note, are pitched in another key, 
 from those of obedience, loyalty, and discipleship. 
 They may be demonstrably true and yet ethically 
 subordinate. They may establish institutional 
 Christianity without appreciably fortifying personal 
 religion. "The weakness of our position," an An- 
 glican lecturer has frankly said, "does not lie in the 
 inadequacy of our definitions, but in the deadly fal- 
 lacy of putting definition first and character sec- 
 ond." * Jesus says, "If any man will do His will, 
 he shall know of the doctrine" ; 2 the creeds reverse 
 this chronology of Christian experience and make 
 the knowledge of doctrine antecedent to the doing 
 of the will. Jesus says, "Whosoever shall do the 
 will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is 
 my brother and sister and mother"; but many 
 sectarian or ecclesiastical controversies erect bar- 
 riers between those who are doing the will of the 
 Father, as though they were neither brothers 
 nor sisters, but enemies of the faith. A represen- 
 
 1 Peile, "The Reproach of the Gospels," Bampton Lectures, 
 1907, p. 21. 
 
 *" If any one is willing to do His will, he shall know about the 
 teaching." (Weymouth.)
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 207 
 
 tative of one important Communion has lately 
 declined the suggestion of ecclesiastical fraternalism 
 with the words: "Our system is nothing if not 
 dogmatic. . . . Ours is a system based on the 
 sacramental basis." 1 
 
 To explore the causes of this paradox would lead 
 one far into Christian and even into pre-Christian 
 history, but its consequences may be easily ob- 
 served. To some minds it is sufficient that the 
 mysterious and remote events described in the 
 creeds are ratified by the testimony of a Divinely 
 directed and infallible Church, which assures the 
 permanence of dogma and within a prescribed area 
 of truth fosters the practice of the Christian life. 
 Other minds have undertaken to translate these 
 archaic phrases into what seem their modern equiv- 
 alents. "Begotten of the Father before all 
 worlds" means that "the purposes Christ revealed 
 always existed." "Incarnate by the Holy Ghost 
 of the Virgin Mary" means that "man born of 
 woman may be Divine." "Descended into hell" 
 is merely "a matter of controverting those who 
 declared Christ was taken from the cross before 
 he died." 2 Or again, as proposed by another apolo- 
 gist, " Conceived by the Holy Ghost "means "Con- 
 ceived in the mind of God " ; "Born of the Virgin 
 Mary," "confirms the fact that Jesus came forth 
 not by chance or unaccountably" ; "The Resurrec- 
 
 1 Constructive Review, October, 1913, p. 780. 
 
 8 Churchill, "The Inside of the Cup," 1913, p. 288 ff.
 
 208 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 tion of the body" (resurrectio carnis) means that 
 "to every soul set free by death God gives a body 
 as it hath pleased Him." l 
 
 Neither of these ways of justification, however, is 
 likely to commend the Christian Church to un- 
 sophisticated modern minds. Esoteric ecclesiasti- 
 cism lies altogether outside the horizon of free in- 
 quiry ; and the accommodation of ancient symbols 
 to modern thought seems more ingenious than 
 convincing. It is equally hopeless to propose that 
 theological research shall be delegated to a priestly 
 caste, and to anticipate that articles of faith will 
 long be solemnly repeated after their obvious 
 meaning has been rejected. Among the first 
 principles of the scientific habit of mind are the 
 scrupulous use of words and rigid accuracy in 
 definition. When, therefore, this habit of mind is 
 met by such a controversy as is now agitating the 
 Church of England, and which the letters of the 
 Bishop of Oxford and the Lady Margaret Professor 
 illustrate, 2 a perplexing division of sympathy 
 is likely to ensue. On the one hand the modern 
 mind regrets with Professor Sanday that the con- 
 troversy "may make the ministry of the Church of 
 England impossible for many thinking and in- 
 structed men" ; but on the other hand it feels the 
 force of Bishop Gore's contention that when "one 
 
 1 Ross, op. cit. pp. 67, 73, 193. 
 
 1 C. Gore, "The Basis of Anglican Fellowship," etc., 1914; 
 W. Sanday, " Bishop Gore's Challenge to Criticism," etc., 1914.
 
 CHRISTIAN LITE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 2OQ 
 
 does not believe that we have adequate grounds 
 for asserting that our Lord was in very fact born 
 of a Virgin, and rose again the third day from the 
 dead, he cannot legitimately, or with due regard 
 to public sincerity, retain his position as an officer 
 in a Church which requires of its officers the 
 constant reiteration of the creeds." The dilemma 
 thus created is inevitable. It is the corollary of 
 the assumption that consent to these propositions 
 is the basis of Christian discipleship. No Church 
 can hope to possess at the same time flexibility 
 and fixity, free inquiry and unchanging standards, 
 the moral right to criticism and the moral obligation 
 of conformity. The difficulty in an intellectualized 
 Christianity is inherent and insurmountable, and 
 it inevitably repels from interest in its discussions 
 many modern minds. With grave reluctance and 
 often with agony of spirit, they surrender their he- 
 reditary claim to discipleship as inconsistent with 
 the habit of mind in which they are irretrievably 
 trained, and conclude that Christian loyalty is 
 not practicable for them. The Christian life is 
 not, after all, they infer, the supreme aim of the 
 Christian Church. What they had sought in 
 the Christian religion was not so much a cosmic 
 drama as a way of life. What led them to Jesus 
 Christ was not so much the mystery of his origin 
 and destiny as his words, "Come unto me all ye 
 that labor and are heavy laden, and ye shall find 
 rest unto your souls." What they wanted was
 
 210 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 Power and Life; and no doctrinal system, they 
 conclude, can communicate this dynamic morality. 
 For such minds Christian teaching must either 
 change its emphasis, or forfeit its supremacy. 
 They have no quarrel with the creeds; their 
 minds are simply turned another way. First 
 a Christian experience and then a Christian the- 
 ology to explain it ; first a doing of the will and 
 then a knowledge of the doctrine, that is the 
 only chronology of discipleship which is likely to 
 be verified by the spiritual history of a modern life. 
 The paradox of creed and character, of conformity 
 and consecration, of an external system and a 
 spiritual message, which makes the Christian teach- 
 ing so hard for many modern minds to receive, can 
 be solved by nothing less than the frank recognition 
 that religion is life, and discipleship obedience, and 
 the creeds an effort of the reason to trudge with 
 weary steps of demonstration along the way which 
 the wings of the will have traversed in their un- 
 hindered flight. "Thy faith hath saved thee," 
 said Jesus to many a penitent and responsive dis- 
 ciple who, as an American preacher has lately re- 
 marked, "could not have repeated a single article 
 of the Apostles' Creed." 1 
 
 What, then, must happen to the Christian Church 
 if it is to provide an unobstructed channel for the 
 Christian life ? In the first place, its demands must 
 be simplified. When one compares the teaching of 
 
 1 George Hodges, in Harvard College Chapel, May i, 1914.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 211 
 
 Jesus with the practices and principles of organized 
 Christianity, the contrast is not only striking, but 
 humiliating. Few Christian communions welcome 
 discipleship on terms which Jesus himself found 
 sufficient, and into many, if he added nothing to the 
 Gospel record, he would find entrance difficult for 
 himself. It was once said by an American theolo- 
 gian that no two forms of religious symbolism could 
 be more remote from each other in spirit and inten- 
 tion than the Lord's Supper and the Celebration 
 of the Mass. A similar comment might be made 
 on many definitions of faith and conditions of 
 fellowship. Jesus, in the most definite announce- 
 ment of his mission, said, "Not every one that 
 saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the King- 
 dom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my 
 Father which is in heaven" ; and, again, "Why call 
 ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I 
 say"; and still again, "Seek first the Kingdom of 
 God and His righteousness." It was a moral 
 obedience which he sought, a dedication of desire, a 
 loyalty to the ideal of the Kingdom of God. What 
 kinship with this simplicity is to be found in the 
 thirty-three chapters of the Westminster Confes- 
 sion, or the thirty-nine Articles of Anglicanism, or 
 the sixty-seven Conclusions of Zwingli, or the 
 fifty and more pages of the Lutheran Formula of 
 Concord, with its concluding words, "This is 
 the faith, doctrine, and confession of us all, con- 
 cerning which we are prepared to render account at 
 the Last Day."
 
 212 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 Here is not a question of truth, or authority, 
 or scriptural indorsement; it is a question of 
 emphasis, of dominant note, of central inten- 
 tion. However profoundly these historic con- 
 fessions may express the nature of God and man, 
 it is evident that they are set in a different key from 
 the teaching of Jesus. To affirm that it is concern- 
 ing these matters of faith and confession that one 
 must be prepared to give an account at the Last 
 Day is to forget that in the teaching of Jesus con- 
 cerning that Last Day when "the Son of man shall 
 come in his glory," it was not because of any 
 conformity to faith, doctrine, or confession, but be- 
 cause one had given meat to the hungry, clothed 
 the naked, and visited the prisoner, that the wel- 
 come was given, "Inasmuch as ye have done it 
 unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye 
 have done it unto me." Here is a change of 
 spiritual climate, a simplification of discipleship. 
 The Christian life becomes the test of orthodoxy, 
 and the Christian Church the instrument and wit- 
 ness of the Christian life. To set a declaration of 
 dogma in the place of a pledge of loyalty is to hear 
 once more the poignant protest of Jesus himself, 
 "They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be 
 borne, and lay them on men's shoulders" ; and the 
 still severer irony of Peter, "Why tempt ye God, 
 to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which 
 neither our fathers nor we were able to bear ? " It 
 was a wise saying of Bishop Hall in the Seventeenth
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 21$ 
 
 Century which Lord Morley has preserved, that 
 "the most useful of all books on theology would 
 be one with the title * De paucitate credendorum ' 
 of the fewness of the things which a man must 
 believe." 1 
 
 The transition thus indicated may perhaps be 
 more accurately described in the language, not of 
 theology, but of psychology. Throughout the 
 history of the Christian Church the prevailing 
 emphasis has been laid either on the reason or on 
 the emotions as the organ of a religious life. Either 
 the reason must be convinced, or the emotions must 
 be stirred, if Christian discipleship is to be attained. 
 The creeds of the Church have addressed the reason 
 and invited an intellectual approval ; the practice 
 of the Church has appealed to the feelings and 
 quickened the emotional life with high affections 
 and desires. Each of these paths to communion 
 with God has its place in the teaching of Jesus. 
 His thought uttered itself in great generalizations 
 which might have given him a name among the 
 world's philosophers if he had not been assigned a 
 more exalted place. His feelings rose into spiritual 
 insight which has fortified, through all the Christian 
 centuries, the mystic's vision and faith. When, 
 however, Jesus makes his first appeal to those who 
 would be his disciples, it is neither to their reason 
 nor their emotions that he primarily turns, but to 
 their wills. "Follow me," he says, "Take up your 
 1 "Oliver Cromwell," 1900, p. 150.
 
 214 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 cross and follow." "He that willeth to do the will 
 shall know of the doctrine." The specific petitions 
 of the Lord's Prayer, for bread, forgiveness, and 
 deliverance from evil, are postponed until the 
 fundamental desire, to do God's will and to serve 
 His Kingdom, is expressed. Not theological accu- 
 racy nor mystic illumination, but moral decision, is 
 his first demand. "I am the way, the truth, and 
 the life" first the way, and along the way a 
 better knowledge of the truth, and at the end of the 
 way, what the Book of Revelation calls the Crown 
 of Life. Here is no conflict between creed and 
 character, or between feeling and will. A mind that 
 thinks must have a theology, even though its 
 theology be destructive ; a heart that beats must 
 love and adore, whether the object of its affection 
 be human or Divine. Neither of these expressions 
 of religion, however, nor both of them, disclose the 
 original source of loyalty, decision, and obedience. 
 The preliminary and direct approach to Christian 
 discipleship is neither through theological accuracy 
 nor mystical communion, but through the dedica- 
 tion of the will; and whatever obscures or com- 
 plicates that elementary decision deters from dis- 
 cipleship many who would welcome "the simplicity 
 that is toward Christ." 
 
 To the simplification of the Christian teaching 
 must be added, secondly, its socialization. No 
 sign of the present time is so conspicuous as its 
 summons to social responsibility and social action.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 215 
 
 It is the age of the Social Question. Never in 
 human history were so many people, learned and 
 ignorant, employers and employed, wise and other- 
 wise, concerned with problems of social adjustment 
 and with tasks of social service. The most charac- 
 teristic discovery of the present generation is not 
 the telephone, or the automobile, or the aeroplane, 
 but the social conscience; the new acceptance of 
 duty as beginning in social obligation and ending 
 in social redemption. It is by no means deter- 
 mined, however, what part hi this vast and varied 
 enterprise the Christian Church is to play. That it 
 has waked to the consciousness of a new world is 
 evident. Schemes of social service, committees, 
 charities, and conferences are to be found in the 
 programme of each communion and congregation ; 
 but this extension of responsibility is still frequently 
 regarded as extraneous to the proper work of the 
 Christian Church, a Department of Foreign Affairs 
 to be distinguished from the interior tasks of ad- 
 ministration or inspiration. "The real business of 
 the Church," a synod cited by Professor Rauschen- 
 busch has affirmed, "is to preach the Gospel. 
 It is not the mission of the Church to abolish physi- 
 cal misery or to help men to earthly happiness." 1 
 This uncertainty as to the province of the Church 
 and hesitancy to annex further territory as its own, 
 have had their inevitable effect. The social move- 
 ment of the present time has in large part proceeded 
 1 "Christianizing the Social Order," 1912, p. 24.
 
 2l6 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 as though the Christian Church did not exist, or 
 were either a neutral or a hostile power. " Society," 
 an English scholar has said, "has absorbed into its 
 tissue a large measure of that moral idealism of 
 which the Church once seemed the solitary repre- 
 sentative. The Church has stood aloof from the 
 world, and now the world takes revenge by main- 
 taining the position assigned to her and stand- 
 ing aloof from the Church." l The more pro- 
 foundly one is moved by the iniquities of industry 
 and the sins of civilization, the more bitterly he 
 is likely to protest against this wavering attitude 
 of the Church, until at last he may regard it as 
 either an obstruction or an enemy. "My asso- 
 ciates," the President of the American Federation 
 of Labor has stated, "have come to look upon the 
 Church and the ministry as the apologists and 
 defenders of the wrong committed against the 
 interests of the people." 
 
 Here, then, is a curious situation. The motives 
 and ideals which have been most characteristic of 
 the Christian life are appropriated by many who 
 refuse to accept the Christian name. Fraternity, 
 social justice, cooperation, sacrifice, the bearing of 
 others' burdens, the very words which are 
 expressive of Christian discipleship, are inscribed on 
 banners of new schemes and dreams ; and organiza- 
 tions of philanthropy, cooperative industry, trades- 
 unionism, and socialism go sailing buoyantly down 
 1 L. P. Jacks, Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1906, p. 17.
 
 CHRISTIAN LITE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 217 
 
 the river of the age, while the Christian Church 
 looks on from the bank and sees its own insignia 
 on these alien flags. In such a situation what is 
 meant by the socialization of the Christian Church ? 
 The new expansion of meaning now given to the 
 word itself is instructive here. When social science 
 speaks of a "socialized" charity-worker, or a 
 "socialized" judge, or a "socialized" scheme of 
 reform, it does not merely mean that these are 
 agents of social service. It means that their hori- 
 zon is broader than their immediate tasks, that they 
 look before and after, to causes and consequences, 
 to the community as well as to the case, to the 
 concomitant circumstances and the general good. 
 They are not technical and specialized in their pur- 
 pose, but comprehensive and "socialized." They 
 deal, so far as they may, with the whole of life, not 
 with a fragment ; with the organism of society rather 
 than with the isolated atom. 
 
 It must be the same with a socialized Church. \ 
 It is a Church which comprehends within its 
 proper sphere, not worship, clergy, doctrine, 
 and charity alone, but the whole troubled world 
 of modern life, its conflicts of classes, its dis- 
 sensions of industry, its problems of politics, its 
 sins of property. It accepts the Pauline teach- 
 ing, "All things are yours"; not the sectarian 
 interests of Paul and Apollos and Cephas alone, 
 but the larger problems of the world and life and 
 death and things present and things to come. It
 
 2 1 8 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 remembers the great word of Wesley: "There 
 is no such thing as a solitary Christian" ; and sets 
 itself, not to save the individual out of a perishing 
 world, like a passenger rescued from a sinking 
 ship, but to the more heroic task of rallying both 
 passengers and crew to bring the world itself, like a 
 battered but still seaworthy vessel, safe to port. 
 "The Church," Phillips Brooks has finely said, "is 
 but the type of the complete humanity, elect, 
 not that it may be saved out of the world, but that 
 the world may be saved by its witness and specimen 
 of what the whole world is in its idea." 1 
 
 Anything less than this is not only an unsocial- 
 ized, but an ineffective Church. Its power is ex- 
 hausted in turning its own wheels. Its life is 
 atrophied because it is not communicated. When 
 the apostle Paul declares himself a "minister and 
 witness," he uses a "socialized" word. What the 
 translation calls a "minister" is, in the Greek, a 
 rower in a galley, one of the crew, who puts his back 
 into his work and keeps stroke with the rest. 2 The 
 Church, if one may render the Pauline figure into 
 a modern equivalent, is not a harbor where its 
 "ministers and witnesses" comfort shipwrecked 
 souls, but a life-saving station, where a crew is 
 trained to save those who cannot find a harbor, 
 and to take the risks of brave men who launch out 
 
 1 "The Influence of Jesus," 1879, p. 129. 
 8 Acts XXVI, 16; forTjp^rijs, = " an under-rower, under-sea- 
 man ; distinguished from vavrai and tptrai." (Liddell and Scott.)
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 2 19 
 
 into the deep. That is the task of the Christian 
 minister to-day. He is not an official giving orders 
 from the shore, or a compassionate landsman 
 surveying the scene. "He forgets," as a great 
 English teacher has said, "the outworn petition of 
 the Collect, 'that we being freed from the fear of 
 our enemies may pass our tune in rest and quiet- 
 ness.' " 1 He does not ask for rest and quietness, but 
 for a chance to save. He has no time for the fear 
 of his enemies because he is busy at his oar. He is 
 one of a crew, trained to pull against wind and tide ; 
 enlisted not to be ministered unto, but to minister 
 and to give his life a ransom for many. When 
 Jesus in his own town wished to announce his 
 message, he opened the ancient Scriptures and 
 applied the words of Isaiah to himself. The Spirit 
 of the Lord was on him, he said, anointing him to 
 heal, to deliver, to give sight, to set at liberty, as 
 well as to preach. It was a socialized faith. His 
 field, he said, was the world. The world, as the sig- 
 nificant title of a notable English book announced, 
 is the subject of redemption. 2 The socialization of 
 the Church is not alone its adaptation to the present 
 age; it is its restoration to the purpose of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 At this point, also, it must be added, is the open 
 
 1 J."R. Seeley, "The Church as a Teacher of Morality," in 
 "Roman Imperialism and Other Essays," 1871, p. 269. 
 
 2 W. H. Fremantle, "The World as the Subject of Redemp- 
 tion," 1885.
 
 220 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 door to that great consummation of Christian unity, 
 which is now as never before in history inviting the 
 imagination and desire of the Christian world. 
 How eagerly and prayerfully the various commu- 
 nions are considering what each may surrender, and 
 what each must maintain as essential to a Chris- 
 tian Church; and how impenetrable seems the 
 wall of division which confronts each approach 
 as it reaches the opposing claim of Immersion or 
 Sacraments or Orders ! Intelligent heathen listen 
 with amusement or contempt while devoted mis- 
 sionaries preach a sectarian Gospel or commend 
 a divided Church. Intellectual agreement grows 
 less probable as intellectual honesty increases and 
 critical learning dissects; until at last the pre- 
 posterous position is reached where fellow-mission- 
 aries may not, without serious protest, take together 
 that bread and wine of which their common Master 
 said, "This do in remembrance of me." Yet 
 all the while the real unity of the Christian Church 
 is not only accessible, but at many points attained. 
 It is one of the most curious aspects of the tune 
 that Christians who cannot worship together are 
 glad to work together, and though, as has been 
 finely said, they "refuse to partake under the same 
 roof of the bread and wine, do not hesitate to unite 
 in taking the basin and towel and in imitating the 
 Saviour in his acts of lowly service." 1 What 
 is the meaning of this happy association in work 
 1 C. E. Jefferson, Constructive Review, Apr. 1914, p. 65 ff.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 221 
 
 of minds dissociated in thought? It means that, 
 while the Church is almost unaware of the fact, 
 the only practicable unity, a unity of Life and 
 Power, has at such points actually arrived. It 
 comes not through discussion but through de- 
 votion ; not by the agreement of Councils but 
 "without observation"; not by a concurrent 
 consent to doctrine, but by a cooperative conse- 
 cration to do the will; not by the segregation of 
 the sects but by the socialization of the Church. 
 Wherever Christians have great things to do 
 together there the problem of unity has been, not 
 so much solved, as left behind. That is the lesson 
 which stay-at-home Christians are learning from 
 the new spirit in Foreign Missions. If the mighty 
 task of Christianizing the Orient is to be fulfilled 
 many differences of form and method which may 
 seem vital to the Churches at home must be, not 
 denied, but forgotten, in the supreme desire to 
 carry the Master's message, "I am come that 
 these may have my life and may have it abun- 
 dantly." Christian unity, in fact, seems more 
 likely to be imported from Foreign Missions to 
 the home-Churches than to be discovered in the 
 leisure of ecclesiastical debates; unless indeed 
 the home-Churches wake to the momentous dis- 
 covery that a similar missionary opportunity is 
 knocking at their own doors. 
 
 There remains one further question. How is this 
 socialization of the Christian Church to be at-
 
 222 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 tained ? Does socialization involve secularization ? 
 Is worship to be supplanted by work, theology by 
 sociology, communion with God by the service of 
 man? On the contrary, it is precisely at this 
 point that the highest function of the Christian 
 Church is disclosed. Its mission is not that of 
 secularization, but that of spiritualization. It 
 looks on all this perplexing and tragic scene of the 
 modern world, not as from afar, with a sense of 
 detachment and immunity, not as from without, as 
 one who watches a great machine in its resistless 
 revolutions, but as from within, as one who stands 
 at the centre of a living organism and sees the un- 
 folding of its vital growth. What is the most 
 immediate and insidious peril which threatens the 
 social movement of the present age? It is the 
 peril of a practical materialism, the interpretation 
 of this vast and varied enterprise of responsibility, 
 fraternity, and hope, as an external, economic, or 
 )litical transition, instead of a human, ethical, and 
 spiritual adventure. The philosophy of revolution 
 'is in part to blame for this misinterpretation. In 
 its desire to picture social change as inevitable it 
 has described that change as automatic and 
 mechanical. Revolutionize the methods of pro- 
 duction and exchange, it has taught, and the ideals 
 of the human heart will be transformed. The law 
 of economic determinism governs not only the 
 industrial, but also the spiritual life. We are what 
 our conditions of labor compel us to be. "The
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 223 
 
 mode of production in material life," said Marx in 
 one of his most famous aphorisms, "determines 
 the general character of the social, political, and 
 spiritual processes of life." 1 
 
 The same materialism in a less reasoned form 
 degrades and dehumanizes great areas of the 
 modern world. Prosperous people, reckoning their 
 happiness in terms of income and expenditure; 
 employers, regarding their employees as cogs in 
 a great machine ; wage-earners, subdued to that 
 they work in like the dyer's hand, with no 
 horizon beyond the closing hour and the pay- 
 envelope; poor people with no ideal but the 
 rent and no solace but the saloon, what a mock- 
 ery is here of a world of souls, a spiritual brother- 
 hood, an answer to the prayer, "Thy Kingdom 
 come ... in earth as it is in heaven" ! Into this 
 world of materialized aims enters the Christian life, 
 utilizing as its agent a socialized Church to carry 
 the Gospel of spiritualization. It looks within the 
 facts of social disorder for their spiritual causes. 
 It converts the relief of the poor into a spiritual 
 transaction, conveying not only food and lodging, 
 but courage, self-control, and hope. It lifts the 
 relations of industry from the level of a wage-system 
 to the higher plane of a cooperative system. It res- 
 cues the social world from its slough of fleshly and 
 commercial aims and sets it on the rock of moral 
 idealism. 
 
 1 "Critique of Political Economy," tr. Stone, 1894, p. n.
 
 224 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 A great teacher of the modern world has lately 
 said: "The corner-stone of all philosophical 
 thought, and the axiom of axioms, is the fact of 
 a world-embracing spiritual life." "With the 
 attainment of independence by the spiritual life 
 there emerges a distinctive kind of being." l This 
 distinctive kind of being, this independence of the 
 spiritual life, is the corner-stone which supports a 
 spiritualized faith. Religion is not one more ma- 
 chine like the mechanism of business or politics, 
 but a power which may work through all the 
 varied forms of social machinery for spiritual ends. 
 To a generation hungry for more money, more 
 luxury, more possessions, it says, "Man shall 
 not live by bread alone, but by every word that 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God." To a com- 
 mercialized generation, balancing its profit and loss, 
 it says, "What is a man profited if he shall gam 
 the whole world and lose his own soul ? " To those 
 who have confused religion with politics, and fancy 
 that the Church of Christ is one more external 
 Empire with its titles and laws, its says: "The 
 Kingdom of God cometh not with observation. . . . 
 The Kingdom of God is within you." To set life 
 in true perspective, to make the great things great 
 and the small things small, to change a world of 
 contending animals into a world of cooperating 
 souls, that is the mission of a spiritualized 
 Church, of which all other tasks of the Church are 
 imperfect and preparatory symbols. 
 
 1 Eucken, "Life's Basis and Ideal," tr. 1911, p. 160.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 225 
 
 Is the Christian life, then, practicable in the 
 Christian Church? That must depend in large 
 degree on the Church itself. It can never be an 
 easy thing to live a simplified, a socialized, and a 
 spiritualized life ; but it is made much more diffi- 
 cult in the atmosphere of an intellectualized, an 
 individualized or an externalized Church. The 
 dogmatic, provincial, or arrogant Church may gain 
 the whole world, but may forfeit its own soul. The 
 Church Militant may be so concerned with fighting 
 other churches, or with fighting for its own existence, 
 that those who want to fight the real sins of modern 
 life may enlist under other banners. The hymnody 
 of the Church is more apt to call worshippers to 
 arms than to tell them what to do. The Christian 
 life has a right to ask of the Christian Church 
 specific marching orders. 
 
 Nor is this all. As one looks back over the series 
 of problems which have been briefly considered, 
 the life of the family, the work of the industrial 
 world, the making and spending of money, and the 
 perplexities of politics, what is the redemptive 
 force which each in turn has seemed to need ? It is 
 a revival of idealism, a Life and Power of the spirit, 
 an association with souls who have found their 
 lives in God. To be surrounded by this cloud of 
 witnesses is to run with a better patience one's own 
 race. The affairs of home, and business, and poli- 
 tics need the reenforcement of this collective 
 righteousness. Precisely this organization of the 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE MODERN WORLD 
 
 spiritual life is what the Christian Church may offer. 
 It is a creation, not of dogmas or clergy or Councils, 
 but of the personality of Jesus Christ wrought into 
 the spiritual experience of the world. Men may 
 build on this foundation, gold or silver, hay or 
 stubble, but other foundation can no man lay than 
 that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. The Christian 
 Church is a community of souls touched by the 
 contagion of the Christian ideal, a "spiritual house" 
 built up of "lively stones." "The Church," a 
 German scholar has lately said, " is essentially a 
 school for sinners who would become saints. . . . 
 Even if, as there seems little reason to believe, 
 Jesus did in any way determine the organization 
 and ceremonial of a Church, to take such 
 external forms as anything more than means to 
 the attainment of his spiritual aims is in contra- 
 diction to the impression given by his whole life 
 and teaching." x 
 
 What might not happen, then, in this troubled 
 world of social problems and personal decisions, 
 if there could be applied to it the Life and 
 Power of this association of the spirit ; a Church 
 which is not an end in itself, but the agent of a 
 larger redemption; not sacred for its own sake, 
 but sanctifying itself for others' sakes ! The 
 province of the Christian Church, thus defined, 
 becomes larger than many of its most zealous 
 defenders have conceived. To it is given the 
 
 1 Weinel and Widgery, op. cit, p. 440.
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 227 
 
 supreme privilege of interpreting to the world its 
 own meaning, and of saving the soul of the world. 
 To accept this high privilege, and to subordinate 
 to it all other ends, is the preliminary task of modern 
 Christianity. "Cleanse first," said Jesus, "that 
 which is within the cup and platter, that the out- 
 side of them may be clean also." It is a stern 
 summons to the Christian Church. A cleaner life 
 in the family, a more fraternal world of business, 
 the purifying of money-making, and the moralizing 
 of politics, all these are waiting for that antece- 
 dent cleansing of the Church, which may make it 
 an effective instrument of the great salvation. 
 A simplified, socialized, and spiritualized Church 
 is but another name for the Christian life, or- 
 ganized to serve the modern world. The majestic 
 promise of Jesus to his disciples is not that of an 
 institutional maintenance, but of a spiritual con- 
 tinuity, not that of a scheme, but that of a 
 Saviour: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
 the end of the world."
 
 INDEX 
 
 Adams, E. D., 176 
 Alexander the Great, 164 
 Alva, Duke of, 176 
 America. See under State 
 American social life, 50 
 Apostles' Creed, 199 
 Aristocracy, spiritual, 173 
 Aristotle's State, 168 
 Arnold, Matthew, 25 
 Asceticism. See Quietism 
 Athanasian Creed, 200 
 Augsburg Confession, 201 
 Augustine, St., 164, 205 
 
 B 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 116, 152 
 
 Balkan States, 163 
 
 Barbour, 168, 173 
 
 Barnett, Canon, 146 
 
 Beaconsfield, Lord, 165 
 
 Bebel, A., 8, 42, 80 
 
 Benevolence. See Giving 
 
 Bernard, St., 2 note 
 
 Bismarck, Otto von, 163, 165 
 
 Bosnia and Herzegovina, 163 
 
 Bourgeoisie, 107 
 
 Bradley, F. H., 6 
 
 Bridgman, Laura, IQI 
 
 Bright, John, 15, 165 
 
 Brooks, Phillips, 152, 218 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 150 
 
 Browning, Robert, 91 
 
 Burdens, 158 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 92 
 
 Business: Christian life and, 76; 
 encouraging aspect, 90 ; essential 
 character, 100; fraternalism in, 
 
 102 ; honor and credit, 97 ; Jesus' 
 teaching, 81, 87; modern, criti- 
 cisms on, 77 ; need of reform, 
 101 ; real evil in, 81 ; selfishness 
 of, 96 ; service to the world, 91 ; 
 true estimate, 89 
 
 Cabot, R. C., 94 
 
 Caird, Edward, 30 
 
 Cairns, D. C., 22 
 
 Capital and labor, 79 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 176 
 
 Cavour, Count, 165, 175, 177 
 
 Cecil, Hugh, 170 
 
 Chamberlain, Houston, 44 
 
 Channing, W. E., 187, 190 
 
 Character and environment, 83 
 
 Charity, 154. See also Giving 
 
 Chesterton, G. K., 58 
 
 Children, 52 ; care and training 
 of, 6 1 ; individuality, 71 ; in- 
 stitutions for, 69; Jesus and, 
 46 ; problem of having, 60 
 
 China, 164 
 
 Christ, eternal, 13; imitation of, 
 14. See also Jesus 
 
 Christianity : as interim gospel, 
 n, 24; Epistles as contain- 
 ing, 13; fallacy in present-day 
 criticisms, 23; modern conduct 
 and, 15 ; present-day criticisms, 
 2 ; reaction from, 19 ; senti- 
 mental approval of, 18; true 
 nature, 30, 35 
 
 Christian life. See Family, Busi- 
 ness, State, Church 
 
 Christians, inconsistent conduct, 15 
 
 Christology, 205 
 
 229
 
 230 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Church: ancient symbols and 
 modern thought, 208 ; Christian 
 life in the, 195 ; creed and 
 dogma as tests of discipleship, 
 199 ; creeds and life, 209 ; 
 hypocrisies, 197, 198 ; intel- 
 lectualization of its discipleship, 
 199 ; motives and ideals ap- 
 propriated by other bodies, 
 216; paradox of intellectual 
 discipleship, 202 ; practicability 
 of Christian life in, 225; real 
 mission, 215 ; revived idealism, 
 225; secularization and spirit- 
 ualization, 222; simple teaching 
 needed, 210; socialization of 
 teaching, 214; state and, 191; 
 unity, 204, 220; weakness 
 within, 196; world and, 216 
 
 Church of England, controversy 
 in, 208 
 
 Civil War in the United States, 176 
 
 Commercialism, 178, 181, 182, 184 
 
 Commonwealth: Christian, 171; 
 Milton's and Cromwell's, 169. 
 See also State 
 
 Communion, 220 
 
 Communism, 112 
 
 Competition, 82 
 
 Conduct. See Christianity 
 
 Constantine, 175 
 
 Constructive Review, 207 
 
 Creeds, 199; explanations of 
 phrases in, 207 
 
 Cretans, i 
 
 Crispi, Francesco, 163, 165 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 169 
 
 Cuba, 183 
 
 Cunningham, Wm., 95, 163 
 
 Dante, 123, 168 
 
 Democracy, 177, 192; commer- 
 cial, 1 80; spiritual, 174 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas, 126 
 
 Dickinson, Lowes, 7 
 
 Diplomacy, international, 163, 193 
 note 
 
 Discipleship, intellectualization of, 
 199; Jesus' simple require- 
 ment, 211 ; paradox of intellect- 
 ual, 202 
 
 Divorce, 40, 50, 55, 61 
 Dogma, 199. See also Creeds 
 
 "Ecce Homo." See Seeley, Sir 
 
 J.R. 
 
 Economics, Christian, 86 
 Education. See Schools, Children 
 Elective system, 72 
 Emerson, R. W., 192 
 England, 176 
 English public school, 67 
 Environment and character, 83 
 Erasmus, 100 
 Eschatology, n, 23 
 Eucken, R. C., 7, 31, 177, 224 
 Eugenics, 53 
 
 Europe, peace of, 186, 193 
 European war, 193 note 
 
 Falstaff, 187 
 
 Family : as a school of character, 
 57; Church teaching, 47; con- 
 tinuity and perpetuity, 54; 
 instability, 40; Jesus' philos- 
 ophy of, 70; Jesus' teaching, 
 44, 54; normal American, 73; 
 physical conditions, 54; prac- 
 ticability, 42 ; Roman unity, 43 
 
 Fichte, J. G., 176 
 
 Figgis, J. N., 9 
 
 Formula of Concord, 211 
 
 Forsyth, D. T., 12 
 
 Fox, George, 202 
 
 Fremantle, W. H., 219 
 
 Fullerton, W. M., 166, 177 
 
 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 176 
 Garrod, H. W., 6, 12, 14 
 Giving: education of the giver, 
 154; emotional and rational,
 
 INDEX 
 
 231 
 
 156; individual and personal, 
 
 152; Jesus' teaching, 149; 
 
 laws and limits, 147; spiritual- 
 
 ization, 157 
 Gloster, 187 
 Golden Rule, 192 
 Gore, C., 208 
 Gospels: epistles and, 13. See 
 
 also Christianity 
 Greek State, basis of, 43 
 
 H 
 
 Hall, Bishop, 212 
 
 Harnack, Adolf, 17, 24, 28 
 
 Heroism, fields for, 189 
 
 Herron, G. D., 27, 38, 77, 78 
 
 Herter, C. S., 66 
 
 Hodges, George, 210 
 
 Holland, H. S., 33 
 
 Home, 45; religious influence, 
 
 62. See also Family 
 Honesty, 133 
 Hort, F. J. A., 33 
 Howe, S. G., 190 
 Humanization of business, 125 
 Huxley, T. H., 21 
 
 Idealism : American beginnings, 
 182 ; education of, 185 ; need of 
 a revival of, 225 ; political, 169 
 
 Ignatius, St., 199 
 
 Immaculate conception, 48 
 
 Individuality, 71 
 
 Industry. See Business 
 
 Inge, W. R., 14 
 
 Initiative, 183 
 
 Institutions for children, 69, 154 
 
 Intellectualization of Christian dis- 
 cipleship, 199 
 
 Investments, 121 
 
 Italy, 175 
 
 Jacks, L. P., 216 
 James, Wm., 189 
 
 Japan, classes in, 99 
 
 Jefferson, C. E., 220 
 
 Jesus: homelessness of, 45; in- 
 consistencies, 29; nature of, 
 204; not a reformer, 27; per- 
 sonal relation, 35; purpose, 
 31; social message, 86; Virgin 
 birth, 48 
 
 Jesus and Christ, 13 
 
 Joseph and Mary, 48 
 
 Jowett, Benj., 167, 168 
 
 Kingdom of God, 171, 224 
 
 Labor: Leo XIII on, 85. See also 
 Business 
 
 Last Day, 212 
 
 Law, Wm., 143 
 
 Lawrence (Mass.) strike, 101 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., 150 
 
 Leo XHI, 85 
 
 Lessing, G. E., 21 
 
 Liberty, 185 
 
 Life, 32 
 
 Lightfoot, J. B., 199 
 
 Literalism, 23, 27 
 
 Literature, religious use for chil- 
 dren, 63 
 
 Lloyd, 13 
 
 Love, 50, 60, 156, 192 
 
 Lowell, J. R., 21 
 
 Luxury. See Spending 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., 185 
 Marcus Aurelius, 103 
 Marriage, 49, 51 ; incompatibility, 
 58; unity, 58. See also Family 
 Martineau, James, 31 
 Marx, Karl, 7, 107, 223 
 Matthieu, J., 8 
 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 176 
 Mexico, 183 
 Middle class, 108
 
 232 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Militarism, 186, 189, 194 
 
 Mill, J. S., 35, 139 
 
 Milton, John, 34, 117, 164, 169, 
 188 
 
 Minister, the Christian, 218 
 
 Missions, foreign, 221 
 
 Mitchell, W. C., 140 
 
 Modena, 165 
 
 Money and money-making, 106; 
 American conditions, 109 ; 
 American success, 180; autom- 
 atism in industry, 126; Chris- 
 tian life and, no; deceitfulness 
 of riches, 117; hopeful indica- 
 tions, 132 ; humanization of 
 business, 125; Jesus' teaching, 
 112; Jesus' teaching of fra- 
 ternity, 128; justification of 
 owning, 116; middle class, 
 108; risks of possession, 115; 
 stewardship, 116; utilization, 
 119. See also Giving, Spending 
 
 Moravians, 182 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, 19 
 
 Morley, John, 169, 175, 177, 213 
 
 Muirhead, J. F., 184 
 
 Municipal government, 162 
 
 Miinsterberg, Hugo, 183 
 
 N 
 
 Napoleon, 176 
 Nation, The (N. Y.), 133 
 Nicene Creed, 201 
 Nietzsche, F. W., 7 
 Nitti, F. S., 27 
 
 O 
 
 Oliphant, Lawrence, 19 
 Ownership. See Stewardship 
 
 Paganism, modern, 20 
 Panama Canal, 166, 184 
 Parenthood, delegated, 66 
 Paul: as founder of Christianity, 
 13; character of his letters, 33 
 
 Peabody, F. G., 86, 114 
 
 Peace. See War and Peace 
 
 Pearson, Karl, 42 
 
 Peile, J. H. F., 206 
 
 Personality, 35, 71 
 
 Philippines, 183 
 
 Phillips, Wendell, 176 
 
 Pietists, 182 
 
 Placing-out system, 68, 15 
 
 Plato, 173 
 
 Plato's Republic, 167, 171, 173 
 
 Politics: American, 162; Euro- 
 pean, 193 ; forces that domi- 
 nate, 177; Golden Rule in, 174; 
 machinery and dynamic, 179; 
 paradox of, 179; paradox of 
 American, 183. See also State 
 
 Poverty. See Rich and Poor, 
 Money and Money-making, 
 Wealth 
 
 Power, 32 
 
 President of the United States, 
 powers, 1 66 
 
 Proletariat, 107 
 
 Property. See Money and Money- 
 making, Wealth 
 
 Proudhon, P. J., 112 
 
 Prussia, 176 
 
 Public opinion, 177 
 
 Public spirit, 162 
 
 Puritans, 182 
 
 Quietism, 16, 25 
 
 Race-suicide, 52 
 Rauschenbusch, W., 2, 78, 215 
 Reforms, place of, 84 
 Republic, Plato's, 167, 171, 173 
 Retreat, 17, 25 
 Ricardo, David, 126 
 Rich and Poor, 107 
 Riis, Jacob, 69 
 Roland, Madame, 185 
 Roman State, basis of, 43 
 Ross, G. A. J., 200
 
 INDEX 
 
 233 
 
 Royce, Josiah, 10 
 
 Ruskin, John, 117, 127, 181 
 
 Russell, Lord John, 165 
 
 Sanday, W., 208 
 
 Sceva, 14 
 
 Schleiermacher, F. E. D., 21, 203 
 
 Schmoller, 181 
 
 Schools for children, 65 
 
 Schweitzer, 25 
 
 Seeley, Sir J. R., 68, 119, 171, 219 
 
 Seneca, 123, 148 
 
 Service, law of, 90 
 
 Simkhovitch, V. G., 109 
 
 Simplicity, 144, 214 
 
 Simplicity of Jesus' requirement 
 for discipleship, 211 
 
 Social conscience, limited range, 161 
 
 "Social ethos," 16 
 
 Socialism: fallacy in its pro- 
 gramme, 82; family and, 41; 
 Jesus and, 28, 114 
 
 Social questions, 215 
 
 Social service, 93, 215. See also 
 Service 
 
 "Socialization," 217 
 
 Spain, 183 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 150 
 
 Spending, 135; American ex- 
 travagance, 136; fallacy of 
 argument in defence of luxuries, 
 138; Jesus' teaching, 142; 
 regulation and system, 141 ; 
 the test of service, 145 
 
 State: American conditions, 179; 
 American restlessness, 1 80; Aris- 
 totle's conception, 168; Chris- 
 tian life and, 161 ; Church and, 
 191 ; duty of educating ideal- 
 ism, 185; foundation, 178; 
 Jesus' Gospel of the Kingdom, 
 171; Jesus' teaching, 170; Mil- 
 ton's, 169; moral seriousness 
 of America, 182; Plato's Re- 
 public, 167, 173; Plato's Re- 
 public and the Gospel, 172; 
 political idealism, 169, 175, 193 
 
 Stewardship, 116, 140 
 Stryker, M., 124 
 Sumner, W. G., 16 
 Survey, The, 79 
 Syndicalism, 79 
 
 Taussig, F. W., 139 
 
 Temple, W., 96 
 
 Thayer, W. R., 165 
 
 Thirty-nine Articles of the Church 
 
 of England, 201 
 Thrift, 137 
 
 Titus, Epistle to, i, 2 note 
 Tolstoi, Leo, 4, 16, 25, 115, 166 
 Trade. See Business 
 Trent, Council of, 34, 201 
 Trevelyan, G. M., 15, 165, 176 
 Tripoli, 164 
 Troeltsch, E., 87 
 Turkey, 163 
 Tuscany, 165 
 
 U 
 
 Underbill, E., 33 
 
 United States: idealism, 183, 
 
 194. See also Politics, State 
 Unity. See Church Unity 
 Utilization. See Stewardship 
 
 Venereal diseases, 30 
 Virgin birth, 48 
 
 W 
 
 Wage system, 102 
 
 War and peace, 186, 193 
 
 Wealth: an instrument of ideal- 
 ism, 178. See also Giving, 
 Money and Money-making, Rich 
 and Poor, Spending 
 
 Weinel, Heinrich, 25, 226 
 
 Wells, H. G., 41 
 
 Wesley, Charles, 93 
 
 Wesley, John, 218
 
 234 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Westcott, B. F., 97 
 Westminster Confession, 201 
 White, A. D., 162 
 White, Bouck, 77, 113 
 Whittier, J. G., 191 
 Widgery, A. G., 25, 226 
 Willoughby, W. W., 192 
 Wilson, Woodrow, 192 
 Woman, 42. See also Family 
 
 Working classes, defection from 
 
 Christianity, 20 
 World Conference on Faith and 
 
 Order, 204 
 
 Zimmem, A. E., 181
 
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