I
Our last lecture started with the proposition that the dominant
influence in the intellectual and practical activity of the modern age
is man's scientific mastery over life. This present lecture considers
one of the consequences of this primary fact: namely, the humanitarian
desire to take advantage of this scientific control of life so to
change social conditions that mankind may be relieved from crushing
handicaps which now oppress it. For the growth of scientific knowledge
and control has been coincident with a growth of humanitarian
sentiment. This movement for human relief and social reform, in the
midst of which we live, is one of the chief influences of our time. It
has claimed the allegiance of many of the noblest folk among us. Its
idealism, its call to sacrifice, the concreteness of the tasks which it
undertakes and of the gains which it achieves, have attracted alike the
fine spirits and the practical abilities of our generation. What
attitude shall the Christian Church take toward this challenging
endeavour to save society? How shall she regard this passionate belief
in the possibility of social betterment and this enthusiastic
determination to achieve it? The question is one of crucial importance
and the Church is far from united on its answer. Some Christians claim
the whole movement as the child of the Church, born of her spirit and
expressing her central purpose; others disclaim the whole movement as
evil and teach that the world must grow increasingly worse until some
divine cataclysm shall bring its hopeless corruption to an end; others
treat the movement as useful but of minor import, while they try to
save men by belief in dogmatic creeds or by carefully engineered
emotional experiences. Meanwhile, no words can exaggerate the
fidelity, the vigour, the hopefulness, and the elevated spirit with
which many of our best young men and women throw themselves into this
campaign for better conditions of living. Surely, the intelligent
portion of the Church would better think as clearly as possible about a
matter of such crucial import.
At first sight, the devotee of social Christianity is inclined
impatiently to brush aside as mere ignorant bigotry on the Church's
part all cautious suspicion of the social movement. But there is one
real difficulty which the thoughtful Christian must perceive when he
compares the characteristic approach to the human problem made by the
social campaign, on the one side, and by religion, on the other. Much
of the modern social movement seems to proceed upon the supposition
that we can save mankind by the manipulation of outward circumstance.
There are societies to change everything that can be changed and,
because the most obvious and easy subjects of transformation are the
external arrangements of human life, men set themselves first and
chiefly to change those. We are always trying to improve the play by
shifting the scenery. But no person of insight ever believed that the
manipulation of circumstance alone can solve man's problems. Said
Emerson, "No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character."
Said Herbert Spencer, "No philosopher's stone of a constitution can
produce golden conduct from leaden instincts." Said James Anthony
Froude, "Human improvement is from within outwards." Said Carlyle,
"Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy
Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of."
Said Mrs. Browning:
"It takes a soul,
To move a body: it takes a high-souled man
To move the masses even to a cleaner stye:
..... Ah, your Fouriers failed,
Because not poets enough to understand
That life develops from within."
Now, religion's characteristic approach to the human problem is
represented by this conviction that "life develops from within." So
far from expecting to save mankind by the manipulation of outward
circumstance, it habitually has treated outward circumstance as of
inferior moment in comparison with the inner attitudes and resources of
the spirit. Economic affluence, for example, has not seemed to
Christianity in any of its historic forms indispensable to man's
well-being; rather, economic affluence has been regarded as a danger to
be escaped or else to be resolutely handled as one would handle
fire--useful if well managed but desperately perilous if uncontrolled.
Nor can it be said that Christianity has consistently maintained this
attitude without having in actual experience much ground for holding
it. The possession of economic comfort has never yet guaranteed a
decent life, much less a spiritually satisfactory one. The morals of
Fifth Avenue are not such that it can look down on Third Avenue, nor is
it possible anywhere to discern gradation of character on the basis of
relative economic standing. It is undoubtedly true that folks and
families often have their moral stamina weakened and their
personalities debauched by sinking into discouraging poverty, but it is
an open question whether more folks and families have not lost their
souls by rising into wealth. Still, after all these centuries, the
"rich fool," with his overflowing barns and his soul that sought to
feed itself on corn, is a familiar figure; still it is as easy for a
camel to go through a needle's eye as for a rich man to enter the
Kingdom of Heaven. When, therefore, the Christian, approaching the
human problem, not from without in, but from within out, runs upon this
modern social movement endeavouring to save mankind by the manipulation
of outward circumstance, his cautious and qualified consent may be
neither so ignorant nor so unreasonable as it at first appears.
As an example of manipulated circumstance in which we are asked to
trust, consider the new international arrangements upon which the world
leans so heavily for its hopes of peace. Surely, he would be a poor
Christian who did not rejoice in every reasonable expectation which new
forms of co-operative organization can fulfil. But he would be a
thoughtless Christian, too, if he did not see that all good forms of
international organization are trellises to give the vines of human
relationship a fairer chance to grow; but if the vines themselves
maintain their old acid quality, bringing out of their own inward
nature from roots of bitterness grapes that set the people's teeth on
edge, then no external trellises will solve the problem. It is this
Christian approach to life, from within out, which causes the common
misunderstanding between the social movement and the Church. The first
thinks mainly of the importance of the trellis; the second thinks
chiefly about the quality of the vine.
The more deep and transforming a man's own religious experience has
been, the more he will insist upon the importance of this inward
approach. Here is a man who has had a profound evangelical experience.
He has gone down into the valley of the shadow with a deep sense of
spiritual need; he has found in Christ a Saviour who has lifted him up
into spiritual freedom and victory; he has gone out to live with a
sense of unpayable indebtedness to him. He has had, in a word, a
typical religious experience at its best with three elements at the
heart of it: a great need, a great salvation, a great gratitude. When
such a man considers the modern social movement, however beautiful its
spirit or admirable its concrete gains, it seems to him superficial if
it presents itself as a panacea. It does not go deep enough to reach
the soul's real problems. The continual misunderstanding between the
Church and the social movement has, then, this explanation: the
characteristic approach of the Christian Gospel to the human problem is
from within out; the characteristic approach of much of the modern
social movement is from without in.