There is, then, no standing-ground left for a narrowly individualistic
Christianity. To talk of redeeming personality while one is careless
of the social environments which ruin personality; to talk of building
Christlike character while one is complacent about an economic system
that is definitely organized about the idea of selfish profit; to
praise Christian ideals while one is blind to the inevitable urgency
with which they insist on getting themselves expressed in social
programs--all this is vanity. It is deplorable, therefore, that the
Christian forces are tempted to draw apart, some running up the banner
of personal regeneration and some rallying around the flag of social
reformation. The division is utterly needless. Doubtless our own
individual ways of coming into the Christian life influence us deeply
here. Some of us came into the Christian experience from a sense of
individual need alone. We needed for ourselves sins forgiven, peace
restored, hope bestowed. God meant to us first of all satisfaction for
our deepest personal wants.
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee"--
such was our cry and such was our salvation. If now we are socially
minded, if we are concerned for economic and international
righteousness, that is an enlargement of our Christian outlook which
has grown out of and still is rooted back in our individual need and
experience of God.
Some of us, however, did not come into fellowship with God by that
route at all. We came in from the opposite direction. The character
in the Old Testament who seems to me the worthiest exhibition of
personal religion before Jesus is the prophet Jeremiah, but Jeremiah
started his religious experience, not with a sense of individual need,
but with a burning, patriotic, social passion. He was concerned for
Judah. Her iniquities, long accumulating, were bringing upon her an
irretrievable disaster. He laid his soul upon her soul and sought to
breathe into her the breath of life. Then, when he saw the country he
adored, the civilization he cherished, crashing into ruin, he was
thrown back personally on God. He started with social passion; he
ended with social passion plus personal religion. Some of God's
greatest servants have come to know him so.
Henry Ward Beecher once said that a text is a small gate into a large
field where one can wander about as he pleases, and that the trouble
with most ministers is that they spend all their time swinging on the
gate. That same figure applies to the entrance which many of us made
into the Christian experience. Some of us came in by the gate of
personal religion, and we have been swinging on it ever since; and some
of us came in by the gate of social passion for the regeneration of the
world, and we have been swinging on that gate ever since. We both are
wrong. These are two gates into the same city, and it is the city of
our God. It would be one of the greatest blessings to the Christian
church both at home and on the foreign field if we could come together
on this question where separation is so needless and so foolish. If
some of us started with emphasis upon personal religion, we have no
business to stop until we understand the meaning of social
Christianity. If some of us started with emphasis upon the social
campaign, we have no business to rest until we learn the deep secrets
of personal religion. The redemption of personality is the great aim
of the Christian Gospel, and, therefore, to inspire the inner lives of
men and to lift outward burdens which impede their spiritual growth are
both alike Christian service to bring in the Kingdom.
[1] Leo M. Tolstoi: My Religion, Introduction, p. ix.
[2] D. Crawford: Thinking Black, pp. 444-445.
[3] L. C. F. Lactantius: The Divine Institutes, Book V, Chap. xv, xvi.
[4] Gregory the Great: Moralium Libri, Pars quarta, Lib. XXI, Caput
XV--"Omnes namque homines natura aequales sumus."