The world is being torn down like an outworn and antiquated structure.
When the work of wrecking it is completed, it will be built over. The
result will be a world the builders of which will have tried to profit
by the mistakes and experiences of the ages. A Bible prophecy heralds
a new heaven and a new earth. The postbellum reconstruction period will
help to realize at least the latter part of that hope.
It is already apparent that religion will share in the general
readjustment. The war has stimulated the world’s thinking. It has seen,
as it did not take time to see in the old days, the needs in the religious
field. Any reform is rapid when men once get to thinking. The case is
hopeless so long as apathy and lethargy prevail.
We probably need not look for any revolutionary change in the fundamentals
of religion. These do not change. Being rooted and grounded in the truth,
they are fixed and permanent. It is not with either the substance or the
mission of religion that the difficulty lies.
The difficulty lies at the points of interpretation and application. It is
possible for these to advance with growing knowledge, and the new world
will unquestionably see to it that they do so. The earth has always been
round, and it will remain round as long as it exists. Men have not,
however, always understood the fact of its roundness. There was a time
when geographical authority insisted that it was flat. Then there came a
time when better knowledge existed. The fact had not changed in the least.
Only human interpretation had undergone progress. The facts of religion
can not change, but humanity can achieve progress in rightly interpreting
them and in rightly adapting itself to them.
It need not be supposed, either, that the religion of the new age will be
a denatured one. It bids fair, on the contrary, to be a positive and vital
one. It will probably be less and less the fashion to parade moral laxity
under the false banners of liberal thinking. The coming period will not be
superficial. It will need a religion of power and significance. It will
try religious principles to the limit, and if such a religion can not be
had, it will have none at all. Fortunately, a definite and positive faith
can be had. The people who are really living want a religion which is more
than a fashion or a convenience. It must include a working program which
means something and is not too easy.
The new religion will be composite, because it will be unified. Only in
the reactionary centers is any real difference now apparent between
Protestant Christian bodies. Now, under the unifying influence of a great
common cause, Protestant, Catholic, and Jew are combining forces for the
religious good of the soldier. That unity will probably increase
and continue.
Most carefully thinking people stand together on the things which are
really vital. All understand that no ecclesiastical body can possess a
monopoly of the truth. We go on and work faithfully, each for his own
church household, but we all understand that both good and bad and both
truth and error dwell in each of our many camps.
All the world has been searching for the same God. Different peoples have
called the Deity by different names and sought him in different ways. It
is not the name or the method, but the spirit and motive that count most.
Various peoples have reached various stages in their search. Probably all
will, sooner or later, find the world’s one perfect image of the divine
Father in Jesus. We must be patient, however, with those who are only on
the way. In the finished faith, the chaff of all the world’s beliefs will
have been cast away, and the abiding in them all will remain. There is
nothing in the spirit of the cross to violate that which is good in any
of them.
The new religion will be a religion of practical standards. It will find
its expression in terms that men know about, and its form will be one
which can really be adapted to the needs of everyday living. The tendency
in this day of human problems is to bring each line of human thought and
investigation down to earth. It is with religion just as with science or
philosophy. The demand is that it shall be practical in all its standards
and methods.
The world has not found the theology born upon a study table sufficient.
The cry is for a theology based wholly upon the facts of life. Truth does
not always follow the processes of formal logic. The tests of faith are
not to be found in the syllogism but in life’s great laboratory. The
authority of the great Teacher came largely from his fixed habit of
talking about real things in practical terms. His only theology was life.
In conforming our religion more and more to this principle, we shall not
be getting away from Jesus. We shall rather be getting back to him.
The new religion will be a socialized religion. In this, it will but bear
the fruit of agitation which has already been going on for years. Religion
can not be worth while without a definite object. Its object is not the
appeasing of an arbitrary Deity. It is rather to bring the touch of a
tender Father’s grace into the lives of his children. In other words, the
object of religion is humanity. For the good of men are all laws
established, all warnings issued, and all promises given.
The achieving of the present and future salvation of people demands not
the successful performance of some mystical process of indoctrination.
It calls for the actual application of religious principles in everyday
thinking and action. It has not achieved its end until testimony to its
power and blessing is borne by all social life and by every social
institution. It is nothing until it has come to be expressed in terms of
life. Without surrendering any of its hope in the promise of a world to
come, the religion of the future will lay a larger emphasis upon the life
of the world in which we dwell. More and more men are realizing that the
only hope we can have of gaining any other world depends upon our
treatment of this one. The path to heaven lies directly through the earth.
Two attitudes toward this world can never fit in with a thoughtful and
reasonable faith. One is the attitude that this is a world of selfish
opportunity and sensuous pleasure, and that the highest object of life is
the satisfaction of the flesh. The other is the attitude that this is only
a vale of tears to be endured, despised, and neglected until such time as
we can get out of it into a happier realm. This is a life of opportunity,
to be lived out with full appreciation and emphasis upon the sweetness and
the worth-whileness of each day and hour. Real religion will strive to
make it more and not less beautiful.
The new religion will be one of optimism. It will understand that nothing
is so easy as cynicism and nothing so cheap as the continual discounting
of other people. It will find its strength not in emphasizing the badness
of people, but in believing in them. After all these years, it will come
to realize that Jesus saved by believing in sinners. Whoever follows in
his footsteps will certainly have to learn to do the same. The human heart
shrivels under accusation. It blossoms under the radiant influence of
someone’s confidence. The new religion—an evolved form of the old—will
count the roses and forget the thorns, and it will strive to emphasize
the divinity in every man.
The new religion will be the old reduced to its simplest and most workable
terms. God will be upon its throne. Jesus will stand as his perfect
expression in the flesh. The cross will overshadow all. It will be a
religion of service, for there is much to do. It will be a religion of
sacrifice, for this is a needy world. Reasonably interpreted, the Bible
will be its message. Its aim will be to bring out the divinity implanted
in all things, and its test will be its product.