_THE INFLUENCE OF THE DEEPENING SENSE OF THE LIKE-MINDEDNESS OF MEN
UPON THEOLOGY_
In definitely considering the influence of the social consciousness
upon theological doctrines, our first question becomes: How does the
deepening sense of the like-mindedness of men affect theology?
Obviously, here, the change will be largely one of mood. We shall look
at our themes with a different feeling, and so speak differently,
modifying our methods of putting things in those slight ways that do
not seem specially significant to one who judges in the mass, but mean
very much to one who feels the finer implications of personal life.
These finer changes no one can hope to follow out in detail. Certain
of these finer changes will naturally find incidental expression in
the course of the more formal treatment.
But our attention must be mainly given to the statement of some of the
most important of the plainer results of the principle in theology.
I. NO PRIME FAVORITES WITH GOD
In the first place, this conviction of the like-mindedness of men
means that there can be no prime favorites with God.
It can hardly help affecting the thought of election. Election will,
indeed, be thought of as qualified by the character of the chosen; for
even Paul's argument in Romans clearly recognizes this, and is, in
fact, itself a distinct argument against a narrow doctrine of
election, as others have recognized.[57] But, beyond this, the
conviction of the like-mindedness of men will especially view election
as a choice for service. The divine method of election must be in
harmony with Christ's fundamental principle of his kingdom, and with
the developing social consciousness: "Whosoever shall be first among
you, shall be servant of all."[58] It is no accident that this thought
of election as choice for preëminent service, which is indeed soundly
biblical, has come into special prominence in these days of the social
consciousness. The same change is passing over our view of the
"elect," as of the "privileged" and "governing" classes. We shall not
return to the older feeling of prime favorites of God, and the problem
of evil will find herein a certain alleviation. We shall feel
increasingly that each race and each individual have their calling and
have their compensating advantages; and that, when it comes down to
the final test of opportunity, the differences in opportunity between
individuals are far less than they seem; for to each one is given the
possibility of the largest service any man can render--the possibility
of touching closely with the very spirit of his life a few other
lives. "There are compensations," as James says, "and no outward
changes of condition in life can keep the nightingale of its eternal
meaning from singing in all sorts of different men's hearts."[59]
II. THE GREAT UNIVERSAL QUALITIES AND INTERESTS, THE MOST VALUABLE
Moreover, since equality of need among men,[60] implies, as we have
seen, a common capacity--even if in varying degrees--of entering into
the most fundamental interests of life, this belief in the essential
likeness of men is likely to carry with it that most wholesome
conviction for theology, that the great universal qualities and
interests are the most valuable. Not that which distinguishes us from
one another, but that which we have in common is most valuable. As
Howells tells the boys in his _A Boy's Town_, "the first thing you
have to learn here below, is that in essentials you are just like
every one else, and that you are different from others only in what is
not so much worth while."[61] This consideration is no small help in
facing that most difficult problem for any ideal view of the
world--the problem of evil.
In God's world, we feel that the most common things ought to be the
best. And this growing conviction of the social consciousness comes in
to confirm our faith. The constant and simple insistence of Christ on
receptivity as a fundamental quality in his kingdom is built, in fact,
on an optimistic faith in the value of the common things.
It is interesting to notice the varied confirmations of the value of
the common. How often we have to feel that the deepest discussions
come out with only deeper insight into the great common truths; and,
on the other hand, that in stilted philosophizing, what seems at first
sight a great discovery, proves only a perversely obscure way of
putting a common truth.
It is the very mission of genius--of the poet in the larger sense, we
are coming to feel, to bring out the value of the common. His
distinctive mark is that he has kept a fresh sense for the great
common experiences of life. So Kipling prays:
"It is enough that through Thy grace
I saw naught common on Thy earth.
Take not that vision from my ken."
So, the greatest in art, Hegel contends, has a universal appeal.
It is a wholesome and heartening conviction, I say, to bring into
theology, that the really best things are common, accessible to all,
actually shared in, to an extent beyond that which our superficial
vision seems to show. For, after all, this conviction of the social
consciousness is only bringing home to us, in a new and appreciable
way, Christ's own optimism and his own faith in the love of the
Father. It is only another illustration of Fairbairn's principle of
the Christian consciousness becoming more Christian, and so better
able to understand and interpret Christ.
And it leads us back by this route of the social consciousness, to
emphasize in life, and in our theological thinking upon the conditions
of entering the kingdom of God, Christ's own insistence upon the two
universally human characteristics found in every child--susceptibility
and trust, which, voluntarily cherished, become teachableness and
belief in love. If God is Father indeed, and we are intended to come
to our best in association with him, these qualities must be the most
fundamental ones. And they imply no lack of virility, either, for the
highest self-assertion, as Professor Everett pointed out in his
criticism of Nietzsche, is in complete self-surrender to such a will
as God's. "When Jesus said, 'He that loseth his life shall save it,'
he said in effect--The self-surrender to which I call you is the
truest self-assertion. We find thus in the teachings of Christianity a
summons to strength far greater than that implied by the
self-assertion which is most characteristic of the teachings of
Nietzsche, because it is the assertion of a larger self."[62]
Our outlook becomes well-nigh hopeless, when we make our tests of
admission to the kingdom so much more exclusive than Christ himself
made them.
III. ESSENTIAL LIKENESS UNDER VERY DIVERSE FORMS
It is particularly important for theology that this conviction of the
like-mindedness of men has come from a growing power to discern
essential likeness under very diverse forms; for this consideration
bears not only on the problem of natural evil, but also on the problem
of sin and of the progress of Christianity.
We have taken some curiously diverse paths to this understanding of
diverse lives. Travels, history, biography, autobiographical
fragments, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and--to no small
degree--fiction, with its stories of out-of-the-way places and
out-of-the-way peoples and of unfamiliar classes,--all have been
thoroughfares for the social consciousness here.
We are slowly learning to see the likeness under the differences, and
so to transcend the differences even between occidental and oriental.
All this means much, not only for our practical missionary putting of
the truth, but also for our final theological statements. They will
inevitably grow simpler, larger, more universally human, and at the
same time more deep and solid.
We are slowly learning, too, to discern a deep inner content of life
under conditions that have no appeal for us, and to see like ideals
and aspirations under very diverse forms of expression. Take, for
example, these three or four sentences--a small part of that quoted by
Professor James in his essay, _On a Certain Blindness in Human
Beings_,--from Stevenson's _Lantern-Bearers_: "It is said that a poet
has died young in the breast of the most stolid. It may be contended
rather that a (somewhat minor) bard in almost every case survives, and
is the spice of life to his possessor. Justice is not done to the
versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man's imagination. His
life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud; there will be some
golden chamber at the heart of it in which he dwells delighted."[63]
And, later, on the side of ideals, Stevenson is quoted once again: "If
I could show you these men and women all the world over, in every
stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance
of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still
obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging to some
rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls!"[64] And now, having
quoted Howells and Stevenson as theological authorities, I shall be
pardoned if, for a moment, I erect Kenneth Grahame's _Golden Age_ into
a "theological institute": "See," said my friend, bearing somewhat on
my shoulder, "how this strange thing, this love of ours, lives and
shines out in the unlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields
in early morning? Barren acres, all! But only stoop--catch the light
thwartwise--and all is a silver network of gossamer! So the fairy
filaments of this strange thing underrun and link together the whole
world. Yet it is not the old imperious god of the fatal bow--+herôs
hanikate machan+--not that--nor even the placid respectable
+storgê+--but something still unnamed, perhaps more mysterious, more
divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one must
stoop!"[65]
It means very much for the sanity of our outlook on life, and for any
possible theodicy, that we can believe the heart of such a view as
this for which Stevenson and Grahame are here contending. And what is
all this attempt to get away from this "certain blindness in human
beings," of which Professor James speaks, but a growing into one of
the fixed habits of Jesus, what Phillips Brooks calls "his discovery
of interest in people whom the world generally would have found most
uninteresting?" "And this same habit," he adds, "passing over into his
disciples, made the wide and democratic character of the new
faith."[66]
IV. AS APPLIED TO THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY
It may probably be safely said that this steadily growing conviction
of the social consciousness, of the essential likeness of all men,
which is daily confirmed afresh, and the more confirmed the more
careful the study, is not likely to take kindly to the idea--which
comes into a part of Dr. McConnell's argument concerning immortality,
in his interesting book, _The Evolution of Immortality_--that living
creatures classed as men on physical grounds are not, therefore, to be
so classed on psychical grounds.[67] The considerations and
illustrations brought forward by Dr. McConnell, in connection with
this proposition, I cannot think would seem at all conclusive to
either the trained psychologist or sociologist. It is exactly the
like-mindedness of men which the social consciousness affirms, and it
has not come hastily to its conclusion. It will not quickly surrender
that conclusion. There _is_ an "evolution of immortality," and it has
been age-long, but it is pre-human. The belief in immortality so far
as it does not rest purely on the question of the moral quality of a
given human life (where the hypothesis of "immortability" may properly
enough come in) is grounded upon characteristics--like that of the
possibility of absolutely indefinite progress[68]--which in sober
scientific inquiry cannot safely be denied to any man, and must be
denied to all creatures below man. In any case, the new theory of
"immortability," so far as it is based upon the proposition here
considered, has its battle to fight out with this established
conviction of the social consciousness of the essential
like-mindedness of all men.
There are various considerations, not all of them wholly creditable,
which will lead many to turn a willing ear to this new prophesying;
but, though it makes much of evolution, it seems to me to have the
whole trend of the social evolution against it, and to give the lie to
that patient sympathetic insight into the lives of other classes and
peoples, which is one of the finest products of the ethical evolution
of the race. If one is tempted to believe that a good large share of
the human race are really brutes in human semblance,--and our
selfishness and pride and impatience and unloving lack of insight and
desire to dominate may naturally tempt in this direction,--let him
read that chapter of Professor James to which reference has already
been made, _On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings_, and its pendant,
_What Makes a Life Significant_. It may help his theology. Let him
recall the words of Phillips Brooks concerning this "strange
hopelessness about the world, joined to a strong hope for themselves,
which we see in many good religious people." "In their hearts they
recognize indubitably that God is saving them, while the aspect of the
world around them seems to show them that the world is going to
perdition. This is a common enough condition of mind; but I think it
may be surely said that it is not a good, nor can it be a permanent,
condition. God has mercifully made us so that no man can constantly
and purely believe in any great privilege for himself unless he
believes in at least the possibility of the same privilege for other
men."[69]
V. CONSEQUENT LARGER SYMPATHY WITH MEN, FAITH IN MEN, AND HOPE FOR MEN
This whole conviction of the social consciousness, of the
like-mindedness of men, leads naturally to increased _sympathy with
men_, and this in turn to still better discernment of moral and
spiritual realities. And this is of prime importance for the
theologian; for sympathetic insight, it must never be forgotten, is
the true route to spiritual verities. So far as our insight into
actual human life becomes truer, so far our theology becomes clearer
and more reasonable.
This conviction leads also to increased _belief in men_, and
consequently to increased belief in the effectiveness of the higher
appeals. The temptation to disbelief in man was one of the underlying
temptations of Christ as he looked forward to his work; but he turned
resolutely from it, and refused to build his kingdom on any lower
appeal that implied a lack of faith in men. Nothing seems to me more
wonderful in Christ than his marvelous faith in man; for, though he
has the deepest sense of the sin of men, there is not the slightest
trace of cynicism in his thought or life.
This recognition of likeness under diversity, too, leads to increased
_hope for men_, here and hereafter. In James' words: "It absolutely
forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of
forms of existence other than our own.... Neither the whole of truth
nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer.... No one
has insight into all the ideals. No one should presume to judge them
off-hand."[70]
This thought helps us to greater hope for men, because, indeed, it
helps us to the discernment of genuine ideals under very different
forms of life, of the universal sense of duty and some loyalty to it,
though there is great diversity of judgment as to what is duty.[71]
But, it is here to be noted, also, that the thought of the
like-mindedness of men brings greater hope, because it helps to the
discernment of likeness, even under difference in important terms
used. We are coming to see that there is sometimes, at least, a really
strong religious faith where men do not acknowledge the term. Thus,
Bradley says: "All of us, I presume, more or less, are led beyond the
region of ordinary facts. Some in one way, and some in others, we seem
to touch and have communion with what is beyond the visible world. In
various manners we find something higher, which supports and humbles,
both chastens and transports us. And," as a philosopher he adds, "with
certain persons, the intellectual effort to understand the universe is
a principal way of thus experiencing the Deity."[72]
Even where the term Deity would be entirely abjured, we have seen with
Paulsen,[73] that a real faith essentially religious in character may
be clearly manifest. We are even coming to see that men may seem to
themselves to be contending upon opposite sides of so fundamental a
question as that of the personality of God, and yet be near together
as to their own ultimate faith and attitude, and possibly even as to
their real philosophical views of God; but the same term has come to
have such different connotations for the men, from their different
education and experience, that they simply cannot use it with the same
meaning.
I have not the slightest desire to reduce the concrete, ethical,
definitely personal religion of Jesus to the ambiguities of
philosophical dreamers; the world is going to become more and more
consciously and avowedly Christian. But I do not, on the other hand,
as a Christian theologian, wish to shut my eyes to great essential
likenesses in fundamental faiths and ideals and aspirations, because
they are clothed in different garb. The life and teaching of Jesus
have worked and are working in the consciousness of men far beyond the
limits our feeble faith is inclined to prescribe. There is doubtless
much "unconscious Christianity," much "unconscious following of
Christ."[74] And we are only following Christ's own counsel, when we
refuse to forbid the man who is working a good work in his name,
though he follows not with us.[75] Certainly, if we accept the witness
of a man's life against the witness of his lips when the witness of
his lips is right, we ought to accept the witness of his life against
the witness of his lips when the witness of his lips is wrong.
With reference to all the preceding inferences from the deepening
sense of the like-mindedness of men, it is particularly worthy of
note, that this conviction of the essential likeness of men has come
into existence side by side with the growing conviction of the moral
unripeness of many men, and in spite of that conviction. The careful
study of different social classes is forcing upon both the scientific
sociologist and the practical social worker, the sense of the ethical
immaturity of men. But deeper than this recognition of moral
unripeness, deeper than the vision of the sad defectiveness of moral
and spiritual ideals and standards, deeper than the clear sense of the
immense differences among men as to _what_ is duty, deeper than the
differences in even the most important terms used, lies this great
conviction of likeness--that all men are moral and spiritual beings,
made for relation to one another and to God; that they have ideals
that have a wide outlook implicit in them, and have some loyalty to
these ideals; that they do have a sense of obligation; that the moral
and spiritual life is a reality, a great universal human fact.
VI. JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO LIGHT, AND THE MORAL REALITY OF THE FUTURE
LIFE
It is no accident, now, that accompanying this double social
conviction, there has come into theology a new insistence upon the
principle of judgment of a man according to his light, and
consequently also, what Professor Clarke calls "a tendency toward the
recognition of greater reality and freedom in the other life, and thus
toward the possibility of moral change."[76] Our conception of the
future life was certain to be modified by the social consciousness;
and it may be doubted if any influence of the social consciousness
upon theology can be more clearly traced historically than this. The
motives that have been working in our minds here include, on the one
hand, a wholesome sense of the imperfection of even the best human
lives; a glad discernment, on the other hand, of the presence of
genuine ideals in lives where we had thought there were none; the
certainty that, as Dr. Clarke says, "for at least one-third of mankind
the entire life of conscious and developed personality is lived in the
other world;"[77] an experienced unwillingness to say, where we cannot
see, the precise point at which the very diverse lives of men under
very diverse conditions come to full moral maturity; and the
conviction that a life that is to be moral at all must be moral
everywhere and through all time, and that where even we can see a
little, God can see much more. All these motives, now, make us refuse,
with Christ, to answer the question, "Are there few that be saved?"
And both with increasing hope, and with that increasing sense of the
seriousness and significance of life which so characterizes the social
consciousness, to urge: "Strive to enter in." The growing sense of the
likeness of men does affect our thought of the future life. The best
men, under the clearest light, have only begun; for the best, there is
still much need of growth. Who has not begun at all? For whom is there
no growth?
Let us make no mistake here. It is no light-hearted indifference to
character, to which the genuine social consciousness leads. No age,
indeed, ever saw so clearly as ours that the most essential conditions
of happiness are in character, or was more certain that sin carries
with it its own inevitable consequences. It is not a less, but a more,
profound sense of the seriousness of the problem of moral character,
that makes us hesitate to dogmatize concerning the future life.
To bring together, now, the conclusions of the chapter: The first
element in the social consciousness--the deepening sense of the
likeness of men--seems likely to affect theology, especially by
modifying the thought of election through emphasis upon choice for
service, and through the clear recognition that there are no prime
favorites with God; by strengthening the conviction that the great
common qualities and interests are the most valuable, and that genuine
and largely common ideals may be found under very diverse forms and
conditions; and thus, on the one hand, by opposing the denial of the
psychical likeness of men, as applied to the problem of immortality,
and, on the other hand, by bringing us to larger sympathy with men, to
larger faith in men, and to larger hope for men; and, finally, by
laying new emphasis upon judgment according to light, and upon the
moral reality and freedom of the future life.
[57] Cf. e. g., Clarke, _Outline of Christian Theology_, p. 145.
[58] Mark 10:44.
[59] James, _Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals_, p. 301.
[60] Cf. Giddings, _Elements of Sociology_, p. 324.
[61] Howells, _A Boy's Town_, p. 205.
[62] _The New World_, Dec., 1898, pp. 702, 703.
[63] James, _Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals_, p. 237.
[64] _Op. cit._, p. 282.
[65] P. 112.
[66] Brooks, _The Influence of Jesus_, p. 253.
[67] McConnell, _The Evolution of Immortality_, pp. 75 ff.
[68] Cf. James, _Psychology_, Vol. II, pp. 348 ff., p. 367; Lotze, _The
Microcosmus_, Book V, especially Vol. I, pp. 713, 714.
[69] _The Candle of the Lord, and Other Sermons_, p. 154.
[70] _Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals_, pp. 263, 265.
[71] Cf. above, p. 121 ff.
[72] Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, pp. 5, 6.
[73] Cf. above, pp. 46, 47.
[74] Cf. Fremantle, _The World as the Subject of Redemption_, pp.
250 ff, 320 ff; Lyman Abbott, _The Outlook_, Dec. 24, 1898.
[75] Mark 9:38, 39; Cf. Matt. 10:40-42.
[76] _An Outline of Christian Theology_, p. 475.
[77] _Op. cit._, p. 469.