IT is partly because of the largeness of its scope for activity of the
entire man, the fullness of its appeal to the whole human being, that
Christianity surpasses other idealisms as a working basis of life,
proves itself the flower of them all. Sharing with others a purely
idealistic theory, faith in the spiritual nature of the universe, it
brings home that faith in ways unknown to other systems, makes it
human, a matter of the hearth, of daily life. It is an idealism which
is within the reach of the humblest intelligence; in its humanness,
its simplicity, its nearness to the least, it may almost be said to be
the only working idealism of all time. The vision of the Perfect Man
appeals to the larger self; feeling is stirred by it, passion touched,
and imagination, that power through which alone creative work is done,
forever shapes fairer and fairer conceptions. No other idealism has
the compelling power which brings the whole nature into play; so many
elements to quicken the will and release hidden stores of energy. In
all creative work, mere reasoning process lags behind; life, with its
high spiritual possibilities, is creative work. It is for us to fashion
it in accordance with our clearest vision of perfection; we have need
of the largest hope that we can muster, the loftiest aim. For shaping
life to great ends, for employment of all the faculties in the service
of a great idealism, impulse, intuition, will, there is nothing that
can match the Christian faith in the greatness of its simplicity.
The old, old needs of life are always with us, the necessity of
consolation in grief and loss, of hope enough to keep us trudging along
our path. Perhaps not even in its swift response to these great needs
of the human being comes the profoundest proof of its supremacy. From
the point of view of potential evolution, from the greatness and depth
of its challenge, we know its greatness. Christianity, with the sting
of its challenge for eternity, suggests enough of progress to satisfy
the human soul once started on its way. What deeper appeal has ever
come than the thought of endless destiny, bringing the awful necessity
of living in the light of it?
Not long since, I read in some journal an article in which a writer
speaks wistfully of our lost hope in immortality, but adds that we do
not so greatly mind, and that our children will mind still less. If
this faith is indeed gone, what has happened to rob us of so great a
hope, once entertained? How the demonstration of organic processes in
the physical world, which has been the great achievement of our time,
can be assumed to reach to that which is beyond sense is hard to say;
it would need eternity to disprove the belief, as it needs eternity
to prove it. When you try with finite means to define the infinite
you make trouble for yourself, and perhaps rob the young of inherited
hopes. If our children do not mind, it will show a phase of degeneracy
in them, of willful shutting off of light and life already attained. We
shall count them craven if they let go any high ideal once conceived,
for that means inevitable retrogression; this should be held as the
unforgotten and unforgettable hope of the race. What mortal, when the
splendor of such a thought had dawned on him, could let it go? The
endless possibility, the infinite opportunity for growth, the challenge
for eternity,--who dare take it, and order his life in accordance with
it?
Again, this is the greatest of all idealisms in that it sets for
the human being the hardest and the highest of all human tasks,
self-sacrifice. The wonder of it, that across the old physical law of
survival of the fittest by brute means, supreme, unchecked, unhindered
two thousand years ago, could have crept the gleam of a higher law,
strangely contradicting it,--the survival of that which is fittest in
the individual, perhaps at the expense of the body. The greatest marvel
in all the world’s history is that Christ could have been; that the
very idea of soul, of human development transcending the physical in
utter self-sacrifice, could have come into existence is proof enough of
the divine. That teaching, so clear, so unmistakable, has been blurred
and forgotten, as nation and individual have succumbed to the lesser
law, but it still is there. Christianity left behind? It is millions of
years ahead, so far ahead that it is still dim before our vision.
Must æons pass before the human race will begin to realize how great
was that message, how divine, how far it reached into depths which
nothing else had touched, how high, how all but unattainable its
service? Is there no chance for this Christianity, with its stern
teaching of sacrifice, of eternal endeavor, for this faith, never tried
with sufficient freedom from the trammels of dogma, with the deepest
challenge, the highest possibility that has come before the race?
Since no life can be worth living without faith in power transcending
nature’s manifestations of physical force; without some ideal of human
conduct, of right and wrong, rising above the needs of “biological
man”; without a sense of further scope, of wider opportunity than the
mere span of human existence allows; since our forefathers held these
high beliefs and lived more greatly than we; since no man has disproved
them; since the very effort to disprove is a contradiction of the laws
of thought, carrying processes of reason into depths of life profounder
than reason; since we have powers, capabilities of emotion, divination
of higher meanings; since we know aspiration, hope, love, let us use
these greater powers and let them build our greater world. The choice
is ours; why choose the less, and fling away the greater?
The only genuine progress for us is progress in the inner life. We
know the greater meaning, the higher significance, not in the mere way
in which the facts of the physical world are known, but in a far higher
way. By that uncertainty, full of challenge, which is the condition of
real growth, rousing the creative will, it is ours to make great our
lives in accordance with the loftiest hope the race has known.