_A New Force_.
The new Century will demand great moral forces as well as high ideals.
Nothing is more evident than that the forms and ceremonies of religion are
rapidly losing--even in nominally Christian countries--all real influence
over the lives of men. The form of godliness without the power is not only
the greatest of all shams, but it is the most easily detected. Hence it is
that a large part of mankind is either disgusted to hostility or utterly
estranged from real religion by theories and ceremonials which, though
they may continue to exist in shadow, have lost their life and soul.
For example, the old lie, that money paid to a Church can buy
"indulgences" which will release men in the next world from the penalty of
sin committed in this, and the miserable theory which made God the direct
author of eternal damnation to those who are lost, are among the theories
which, though they are still taught and professed here and there, have
long ago ceased to have real influence over men's hearts or actions. In
the same way, there are multitudes who still conform to the outward
ceremony of Confirmation, upon whose salvation from sin or separation from
the world that ceremony has absolutely no influence whatever, although,
for custom's sake, they submit to it.
But a greater danger than this lies in the fact that _it is possible to
hold and believe the truth, and yet to be totally ignorant of its
power_. Sound doctrine will of itself never save a soul. A man may
believe every word of the faith of a Churchman or a Salvationist, and yet
be as ignorant of any real experience of religion as an infidel or an
idolater. And it is this merely intellectual or sentimental holding of the
truth about God and Christ, about Holiness and Heaven, which makes the
ungodly mass look upon Christianity as nothing more than an opinion or a
trade; a something with which they have no concern.
The new Century will demand something more than this. Men will require
something beyond creeds, be they ever so correct; and traditions, be they
ever so venerable; and sacraments, be they ever so sacred. They will ask
for an endowment of power to grapple with what they feel to be base in
human nature, and to master what they know is selfish and sinful in their
own hearts.
And right here _The Man for the Century_ comes forward. The doctrine
of Jesus is the spirit of a new life. It is a transforming power. A man
may believe that the American Republic is the purest and noblest form of
government on the earth, and may give himself up to live, and fight, and
die for it, and yet be the same man in every respect as he was before; but
if he believes with his heart that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and gives himself up to live, and fight, and die for Him, he will become a
new man, he will be a new creature. The acceptance of the truth, and
acting upon it, in the one case, will make a great change in his manner of
life--his conduct; the acceptance of the truth, and acting upon it, in the
other, will make a great change in the man _himself_--in his tastes
and motives, in his very nature.
Again, I say, this is what we shall need for the new Century. Not good
laws only, but the power to observe them. Not beautiful and lofty ideals
only, but the power to translate them into the daily practice of common
lives. Not merely the glorious examples of a pure faith, but the actual
force which enables men to live by that faith amid the littleness, the
depression, the contamination, and the conflict of an evil world.