due to the failure of the church to enforce the Christian morality. The
price that she must pay for the redemption of society is heavy because
of her own neglect. But it must be paid. There is no other way of
salvation.
Thus it appears that the church which bears the name of Jesus Christ has
come to its testing time. It finds itself in the midst of a society
whose tendencies are downward. Mammon is on the throne; the greed of
gain is eating the heart out of commercial honor; reputations are
crumbling; confidence is rudely shaken; the most cynical schemes for
plundering the multitudes are daily brought to light; social classes
stand over against each other distrustful and defiant; the house of
mirth resounds with the mad revelry of the wasters, while the purlieus
are noisome with poverty and vice.
Can this society be redeemed? Can this all-ruling commercialism be held
in check, and this reign of plunder be overthrown, and all this seething
selfishness and heartlessness and suspicion be made to give place to
good-will and kindness, to trust and truth, to faith and honor? It will
never be done without a vast expenditure of sacrificial love. "This kind
goeth not forth but by prayer and fasting." Is the church ready for
this struggle? Is she willing to put forth the effort and pay the cost
which is required for the redemption of society?
VIII
The New Evangelism
Those who have followed these discussions from the beginning will not be
inclined to hesitate in answering the question with which the last
chapter closed. That society can be redeemed, and that the church can
and will purge herself from the things that defile her beauty and
corrupt her powers, and gird herself for the redemptive work assigned
her, is the faith of every loyal Christian. The grievous failures of the
church we cannot deny and must not palliate; it is of the utmost
importance that she be brought face to face with them, and be made to
see how far short she has come of her high calling. Such criticism she
has received from the beginning. The seven churches of Asia were sharply
called to account by the beloved disciple; their faithlessness and
neglect were unflinchingly brought home to them. The churches at Ephesus
and Sardis and Laodicea had as hard things said about them as have been
said in these chapters of the churches of this generation, and probably
deserved them no less. We cannot doubt that that clear-eyed witness, if
he were confronting the church of the twentieth century, would be
constrained to say: "I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou
livest, and art dead.... Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased in
goods and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the
wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel
thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich;
and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame
of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eye-salve to anoint thine
eyes, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I reprove and chasten; be
zealous therefore, and repent." In every generation such chastisement
has been needed; the need is no greater to-day than in past generations,
and the chastening love no less. What Lowell says of this country, many
a Christian believer has been constrained to say of the church:--
"I loved her old renown, her stainless fame;
What better proof than that I loathed her shame."
But this keen sense of her shortcomings is not inconsistent with an
unfaltering faith in the recovery of her integrity and in her final
triumph. And those who have read the history of the Christian church
with sympathetic vision can hardly doubt that her brightest days are
still before her.
For while it must be admitted that she has neglected, hitherto, her
great work of social redemption, it cannot be said that she is more
neglectful of it now than she has been in past years; the truth is that
she is nearer to the recognition of it to-day than she has ever been.
Derelict as she is to her primary obligation, it must yet be said that a
consciousness of that dereliction is beginning to make her uneasy, and
that has never before been true of any large portion of her membership.
Since the earliest centuries the possibility of transforming the social
order by purely spiritual influences has scarcely dawned upon her. So
long as society was feudalistic or aristocratic, the problem seemed to
be beyond her reach; she might hope to improve society, by inculcating
kindness and charity, but hardly to reconstruct it upon new foundations.
The advent of democracy has brought home to her her social
responsibilities. Here in America, more than anywhere else, the nature
of her social obligation has been revealed. Here the fact cannot be
disguised that the people are the sovereigns, and that social as well as
political relations are under their direct control. The sovereign people
have pledged themselves one to another, in their constitution, to
refrain from establishing, by law, any form of religion; but they have
also covenanted together to promote the common welfare. This puts the
responsibility for social conditions upon the whole people, and the
Christian people are among them. They cannot avoid the obligation to
apply Christian principles to social conditions. Power is theirs to be
used in Christ's name and for the promotion of his kingdom. To see that
society is furnished with right ruling ideas, and organized on Christian
principles, is their main business. And while there are many by whom
this obligation is still but feebly felt, yet there is a goodly number
of those in whose minds the leaven is working, and to whom the nature of
the kingdom that Jesus came to establish is being clearly revealed. That
this number is destined to grow very rapidly we may reasonably hope.
The present situation is so clearly outlined by a recent writer that we
may welcome a liberal quotation:--
"The first apostolate of Christianity was born from a deep
fellow-feeling for social misery, and from the consciousness of a great
historical opportunity. Jesus saw the peasantry of Galilee following him
about with their poverty and their diseases, like shepherdless sheep
that have been scattered and harried by beasts of prey, and his heart
had compassion on them. He felt that the harvest was ripe but there were
few to reap it. Past history had come to its culmination, but there were
few who understood the situation and were prepared to cope with it. He
bade his disciples to pray for laborers for the harvest, and then made
them answer their own prayers by sending them out two by two to proclaim
the kingdom of God. That was the beginning of the world-wide mission of
Christianity.
"The situation is repeated on a vaster scale to-day. If Jesus stood
to-day amid our modern life, with that outlook on the condition of all
humanity which observation and travel and the press would spread before
him, and with the same heart of humanity beating in him, he would
create a new apostolate to meet the new needs in a new harvest time of
history.
"To any one who knows the sluggishness of humanity to good, the
impregnable intrenchments of vested wrongs, and the long reaches of time
needed from one milestone of progress to the next, the task of setting
up a Christian social order in this modern world of ours seems like a
fair and futile dream. Yet, in fact, it is not one tithe as hopeless as
when Jesus set out to do it. When he told his disciples, 'Ye are the
salt of the earth; ye are the light of the world,' he expressed the
consciousness of a great historic mission to the whole of humanity. Yet
it was a Nazarene carpenter speaking to a group of Nazarene peasants and
fishermen. Under the circumstances at that time it was an utterance of
the most daring faith,--faith in himself, faith in them, faith in what
he was putting into them, faith in faith. Jesus failed and was
crucified, first his body by his enemies and then his spirit by his
friends; but that failure was such an amazing success that to-day it
takes an effort on our part to realize that it required any faith on his
part to inaugurate the kingdom of God and to send out his apostolate.
"To-day, as Jesus looks out upon humanity, his spirit must leap to see
the souls responsive to his call. They are sown broadcast through
humanity, legions of them. The harvest field is no longer deserted. All
about us we hear the clang of the whetstone and the rush of the blades
through the grain and the shout of the reapers. With all our faults and
our slothfulness, we modern men in many ways are more on a level with
the mind of Jesus than any generation that has gone before. If that
first apostolate was able to remove mountains by faith, such an
apostolate as Christ could now summon might change the face of the
earth."[28]
The time is ripe for such an apostolate. The old type of evangelism has
plainly had its day. Strenuous efforts are put forth to revive it, but
their success is meagre. It is easy by expending much money in
advertising, by organizing a great choir, and employing the services of
gifted and earnest men, to draw large congregations; but the great mass
of those who attend these services are church members,--the outside
multitude is scarcely, touched by them. Those who are gathered into the
church in these meetings are mainly children from the Sunday schools.
There may be evangelists who, by an extravagant and grotesque
sensationalism, contrive to get the attention of the non-churchgoers,
and who are able to report considerable additions to the churches; but
the permanence of these gains is not yet shown, and we have no means of
enumerating the thousands who, by such clownish exhibitions, are driven
in disgust from the churches.
The failure of the modern evangelism is not conjectural: the year-books
show it. The growth of membership in several of our leading
denominations has either ceased or is greatly retarded; the Sunday
schools and the young people's societies report decreasing numbers; the
benevolent contributions are either waning, or increasing at a rate far
less than that of the growth of wealth in the membership. It is idle to
blink these conditions; we must face them and find out what they mean.
This slackening and shrinkage is not a fact of long standing; it
represents only the tendencies of the past twenty years.
We hear rather frantic demands for a return to the old methods of
evangelism, but that is a foolish cry:--
"The mill will never grind
With the water that is past."
The old appeal, which fixed attention upon the interest of the
individual, has lost its power. It is not possible to stir the average
human being of this generation, as the average human being of fifty
years ago was stirred, by pictures of the terrors of hell and the
felicities of heaven. These conceptions have far less influence over
human lives than once they had,--less, doubtless, than they ought to
have; for there are realities under these symbols which we cannot afford
to ignore. But the fundamental defect of that old appeal was the
emphasis which it placed upon self-interest. "Look out for yourself!"
was its constant admonition. "Think of the perils that threaten, of the
blisses that invite! Do not risk the pain; do not miss the blessedness!"
To-day this does not seem a wholly worthy motive. At any rate, it is
below the highest. Men feel that the religion of Christ has a larger
meaning than this. A presentation of the gospel which makes the welfare
of the individual central does not grip the conscience and arouse the
emotions as once it did. For the conception of human welfare as social
rather than individual has become common; that "great fund of altruistic
feeling," which, as Mr. Benjamin Kidd tells us, is the motive power of
all our social reforms, is constantly stirring in human hearts; and
although there are few whose lives are wholly ruled by this motive,
there are fewer still who do not recognize it as the commanding motive;
and a religious appeal which is based upon considerations essentially
egoistic does not, therefore, awaken any large response in human hearts.
If the church wishes to regain her hold upon the people, she must learn
to speak to the highest that is in them. A man's religion must
consecrate his ideals. A religion which invites him to live on a lower
plane than the highest on which his thought travels cannot win his
respect. And therefore the new evangelism must learn to find its motive
not in self-love, no matter how refined, but in the love that identifies
the self with the neighbor. It must bring home to the individual the
truth which he already dimly knows, that his personal redemption is
bound up with the redemption of the society to which he belongs; that he
cannot be saved except as he becomes a savior of others; nay, that the
one central sin from which he needs to be saved is indifference to the
welfare of others, and a willingness to prosper at their expense.
The time has come for the church to take an entirely new attitude in
offering men the gospel. It has been too well content with pressing the
personal advantages of religion, with trying to lure them into
discipleship with baits addressed to their selfishness. It has been
inventing attractions of all sorts,--fine buildings, sumptuous
upholstery and decorations, artistic music, brilliant oratory; it has
thought it possible to enlist men by pleasing their tastes and
gratifying their sensibilities. So far has this gone that the average
churchgoer consciously justifies his presence in church or his absence
from it on the ground of pleasure. If it pleases him enough, he goes; if
not, he reads the Sunday paper or goes out with his automobile. It is a
simple question of enjoyment.
The response of those invited shows the nature of the invitation. It
indicates that the church has been putting a great deal of emphasis on
the attractions which it has to offer. We can hardly imagine such
replies to be made by those who were invited to listen to the preaching
of Jesus or his apostles. They did not suppose that it was a question of
entertainment that they were considering. They knew that it was a
summons to service and sacrifice. That, beyond all doubt, was the nature
of the appeal of the church in those earliest centuries, when it was
marching over Asia and Europe, conquering and to conquer. It was not
baiting men with soft cushions and pictured windows, with coddlings and
comfits; it was calling them to hardship and warfare, to ignominy and
ostracism; the words of the Master to which it gave emphasis were not
mere metaphors: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me."
The call of the cross has never failed. The power of God and the wisdom
of God are in it. And it is time for the church to take up this heroic
note and sound it forth with new power. This is the new evangelism for
which the world is waiting. It is not a call to be "carried to the skies
on flowery beds of ease;" it is not an invitation to the sentimental
soul to "sit and sing herself away to everlasting bliss;" it is the
clarion of battle; it is the challenge to an enterprise which means
struggle and suffering and self-denial.
The redemption of society is the objective of the new evangelism. How
vast an undertaking this is was indicated in the last chapter. Let us
look at it a little more in detail. How much does it signify, here and
now, in the United States of America?
It means, first, the reconciliation of races. One thing that must be
done is to take this chaotic mass of dissimilar, discordant, suspicious,
antipathetic racial elements and blend them into unity and brotherhood.
The first Christians had a task of this nature on their hands; they had
to bring together in one fellowship Jews and Gentiles. But that was a
pastime compared with the herculean labor intrusted to us,--the bringing
together of whites and blacks, of Caucasians and Mongolians, of scores
of groups divided by the barriers of language, of religion, of custom,
and fusing them into one nationality. No task of the same dimensions was
ever undertaken by any people; but this is ours, and we must perform it.
It is the task of the nation; but the church of Jesus Christ is charged
with the business of furnishing the sentiments and ideas by which alone
it may be accomplished.
It means, secondly, the pacification of industry. The contending hosts
of capital and labor must be brought together, and constrained to cease
from their warfare and become friends and coöperators. It is absurd to
suppose that the war of the industrial classes can continue to be waged,
as at present, each seeking to overpower the other. Such a condition of
things is simply irrational. All warfare is illogical and unnatural.
Human beings are not made to live together on any such terms. They are
made to be friends and helpers of one another. The elimination of war is
the next step in industrial evolution. And it is the business of the
church of Jesus Christ to speak the reconciling word. She has the word
to speak, and when she utters it with authority it will be heard.
It means, thirdly, the moralization of business. The trouble with
business is simply covetousness. The insatiable greed of gain is the
source of all the dishonesties, the oppressions, the spoliations, the
trickeries, the frauds, the adulterations, the cutthroat competitions,
the financial piracies, the swindling schemes,--all the abuses and
mischiefs which infest the world of commerce and finance. Against all
these forms of evil the church must bear her testimony; but the root
from which they all grow is the love of money, and it is this central
and seminal sin of modern civilization that the church must assail with
all the weapons of the spiritual warfare. "Covetousness is idolatry"--so
St. Paul testifies; and a grosser or more debasing idolatry has never
appeared on earth than the worship of material gain. Unless the bonds of
that superstition can be broken, the race must sink into degradation. It
is the one deadly enemy of mankind. And the church of Jesus Christ is
called to lead in the battle with this foe. Against no other social evil
was the testimony of Jesus so trenchant and uncompromising. Nothing more
clearly evinces his unerring vision of moral realities than his judgment
upon this encroaching passion. In his day it was an evil almost
negligible compared with what it is to-day. It was because he foresaw
the conditions which prevail to-day that his words were so hot against
the rule of Mammon. The church is face to face with the danger which he
discerned, and she must meet it in his spirit and with the energy of
his passion. To make men see the hatefulness and loathsomeness of this
greed of gain is the first duty of the church. When that is accomplished
the worst evils of the business realm will disappear.
It means, fourthly, the extirpation of social vice. When covetousness is
conquered, the procuring cause of much of this kind of evil will be cut
up by the roots. The greed of gain is the motive which breeds and
propagates social vice. But there are animal propensities to which these
incitements make their appeal; and some way must be found of quickening
the nobler affections, so that the spirit shall rule the flesh and not
be in bondage to it. To fill the thoughts and wishes of men with
something better worth while than the joys of animalism is the radical
remedy for these degradations. And the church ought to be able to supply
this remedy.
The redemption of society means, in the fifth place, the purification of
politics. The dethronement of Mammon will go a long way toward this
also; most of the corruptions of our political life spring from the love
of money. Graft is the first-born of covetousness. But the love of
power also plays a part in the debauchery of citizenship; and the
central sin of using men as means to our ends is exhibited here on a
stupendous scale. This is the vocation of the boss and the briber and
the political machinist; and a deadlier way of destroying manhood it
would be hard to find. It is not only the interest of other individuals,
but the interest of the whole community that the corrupt politician
sacrifices upon the altar of cupidity or ambition; and when a man has
learned to turn the one great privilege of service and sacrifice which
citizenship offers into an opportunity of private gain, he has sunk
about as low as man can go. What more urgent task has the church upon
her hands than that of making men see the treachery and infamy of this
kind of conduct? And unless men can be made to see it and feel it, what
hope is there for free government? Can anybody imagine that democracy
can long endure if the ruling motive of the citizen in his relation to
the commonwealth is a purpose to get as much out of it as he can and
give it as little as he can? All political reforms which leave the
citizen in this state of mind are futile. There is no salvation for a
democracy which does not change the direction of the motive in the
heart of the individual citizen. And this is the business of the church.
Without this, social redemption is impossible, and there is no other
agency which even proposes to accomplish this.
And, finally, the redemption of society means the simplification of
life. Here, perhaps, we strike more nearly than anywhere else at the
heart of the whole problem. The bottom trouble of the world in which we
live is the enormous over-multiplication of our wants. In the multitude
of ministrations to our senses, the life of the spirit is overlaid and
smothered. Jesus said that a man's life consists not in the abundance of
the things which he possesses; it is this elementary truth which the
world has ceased to believe. For the most part our life is in our
things; our happiness depends on them; our desires do not often rise
above them.
The complexity, the artificiality, the profusion of our belongings
absorbs the larger part of our interest. The energies of invention are
mainly directed to the creation of new wants. As the resources of the
earth are developed, life takes on an accumulating burden of cares and
conventions and superfluities. We read, with a wonder which is a thinly
disguised admiration, the stories of the extravagances of the people of
the whirlpool, but most of us are jogging along after them, wishing that
we could get into the swim ourselves. Our houses are cluttered with
adornments; our social functions are spending matches; our feasts invite
to satiation; our funerals are exhibitions of extravagance. This thing
has been growing by leaps and bounds, and the time has come when we are
fairly swamped by the abundance of the things which we possess. Nay, it
can hardly be said that we possess this abundance; it possesses us:--
"Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind."
In recent years the cry has been rising for a simpler life. It is a
voice in the wilderness; in the din and clatter of our complex
civilization it seems faint and far off, but it is making itself heard;
it begins to be evident to all thoughtful people that we must somehow
manage to get away from these entanglements of sense and live a freer
life. In these artificialities and extravagances the soul is enfeebled
and belittled, and the national vigor is lost. If we want to save our
nation from decay we must learn to live a simpler life. And this change
will not be wrought out by evolutionary processes; it means revolution
rather; not by violence, we may trust, but certainly by choice, by
effort, by struggle and resistance we shall turn back these tides of
materialism, and lead the current of our national life into safer
channels.
We are not going to strip our lives bare of beauty, or to consign
ourselves to the meagreness of the anchoretic regimen; we shall have
beautiful homes and abundant pleasures; but we must learn to make our
spiritual interests supreme, and not suffer our thought to be blurred
and our faith enfeebled and our love stifled in the atmosphere of modern
materialism.