An Essay on the Theory and Practice of the Christian Religion

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Part I.— The Theory

Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter

Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chaptrb

I. The Sensible Service of Christianity 9

II. The Church Diverting 12

III. The Social Rendezvous 19

IV. The Ancient Church 25

V. The Decay of Faith 35

VI. Pagan Piety 49

VII. Semper Idem 57

VIII. The Secondary Religious Appetence 60

IX. "Follow Me" 70

X. The Word of God 86

XI. St Paul 94

XIL Some Modern Testimony 113

XIII. The Obdurate Self 120

XIV. De Via 126

XV. The Dark Ages 132

XVI. The Reformation 138

XVII. The Corporate Church 146

XVm. The Established Church 153

XIX. The Ethical Impulse 158

Part Ii.~the Application

I. Vengeance Without the Law 167

II. The Making of a Right 170

III. Right and Might 183

IV. The Resort to Violence 187

V. The Law ." 194

VI. The Will of the Individual 204

VII. Wants 214

Vm. The Poor 221

IX. How the Law Fails 231

X. Legislation by the Mob 236

XI. The Prince of Peace 244

*^ow difficult and discouraging soever this attempt may seem, when I consider how many great and extraordinary men have gone before me in the like design, yet I am not without some hopes — upon the consideration that the largest views are not always the clearest, and that he who is short-sighted will be obliged to draw the object nearer, and may, perhaps, by a close and narrow survey, discern that which had escaped far better eyes."

— Bishop Berkeley.

PART I.

The Theory^

CHAPTER I. The Sensible Service of Christianity*

Every Sunday the highways and byways of Christendom are thronged with people going to church. About everybody goes to church more or less often. The man or woman who never goes to church is rare. Few, perhaps, go every Sunday, but almost any Sunday finds a large part of the people going.

Why do people go to church?

Because they find some profit in going, of course, lu providing the church to go to, Christianity renders people a sensible service, by which I mean a service appreciated by the people themselves as such. The church to go to is plainly the eflScient implement, so to speak, to a valued purpose, else the people would not make the use of it we find them making.

On the first face of it, going to church is a religious proceeding.

Religion, in the general and objective sense, holds always, I suppose, the purpose to effect a harmony of will between God and man; to make God's will to be man's will. In a word, atonement, that is, at-onement, is the purpose common to all religions. It is in their several methods of bringing about the atonement that religions differ. Each religion has its own peculiar method of making man to be at one with God, and back of the method its peculiar theory of the relation of man to God.

The theory back of the Christian method, if I understand it, embraces these three fundamental doctrines, namely: The doctrine of man's inevitable depravity, holding that we fall into sin, that is, into God's disfavor, in spite of all we may do, and that such sin, prior to the coming of Jesus Christ, was inexpiable, to the end that we could not possibly be at one with God; the doctrine of vicarious expiation, holding that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, while rendering us none the less inevitably sinful, expiated our sin in general, in such measure as to leave the completion of our atonement within the compass of our own power; and, finally, the doctrine of completed satisfaction in virtue of expiatory activities by ourselves in our own behalf.

I use the term activities in a large sense. For instance, I would call believing an activity, and the faith whereby man is justified according to some, an expiatory activity. For this faith is an act of the mind in some degree voluntary, as every exhortation to faith implies.

There is no uniformity of practice among Christians to determine what these expiatory activities are; in answer to the question, What must a man do, precisely, in consummation of his atonement made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ? various answers are heard; it is in answering this question that Christianity breaks up into sects. But it is enough for our present purpose to observe that going to church is one of these activities. It is, prima facie, as we were just now saying, a religious and a Christian proceeding.

Are we, then, permitted to say at once that the sensible service which Christianity plainly renders

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. H

the people in providing them a church to go to is a religious service?

Obviously, we have yet to look at this proceeding of going to church in another aspect. We need to know something of the intent with which people go to church, before we decide what is the sensible service rendered by Christianity in providing the church to go to. Before we may say that the sensible service, the service which the people themselves appreciate as such, is a religious service, we need be assured that the proceeding of going to church is actuated by a religious purpose; specifically, the purpose to expiate sin, as our brief view of the Christian theory will perhaps serve to make clear.

What is it that the people have come out for to see, or hear, or feel?

Is their purpose, which the church to go to is being made to serve, a religious purpose?

We need attempt no fine analysis. The motives of the multitude we find going to church concern us only in their general character. It is not what they are, particularly, but whether or not they are derived from the desire to be at one with God, that has to do with our present inquiry.

CHAPTER II. The Chtffch Diverting*

In a house of Christian worship where there were sittings for 1,500, fewer than fifty souls met, on a certain Sabbath evening, to hear the sermon of instruction and the anthems of praise.

The pastor and the trustees agreed that something had to be done, at once; it did not pay to hold services of that sort for the benefit of such a small congregation. The pastor proposed, since the people would not come to the church, that the church go to the people. Specifically, he was for having the Sunday evening services in the chief theater of the town; he would make them as informal as possible, with bright orchestral music, a broad sermon, but short, and touching everyday affairs, and no collection. He felt assured that people would attend such services.

Some of the trustees had their doubts. They thought it would be better to discontinue evening services. But they did not insist. They were willing that the pastor have his own way.

The trial seemed amply to vindicate the pastor's wisdom. The first time services were held in the theater, 2,000 souls attended.

People found a use in going to church in the theater which they did not find in going to church in the temple. Going to church in the theater yielded them a sensible profit which going to church in the temple did not yield. Christianity, providing in both cases the church to go to, rendered a sensible service in the one case which it did not render in the other. Otherwise, there would be no such disparity in the numbers of the two congregations.

What was this sensible service? Particularly, was it a religious service?

What was done before the congregation in the theater would seem at first glance to be about what would have been done before a congregation in the temple. There was music, some prayers and a sermon. The prayers and the sermon were precisely what they would have been in the temple. The music was furnished in patt by the regular choir, and in part by the orchestra of the theater.

The surroundings were not very different. There were frescoed ceilings, carved wainscotings, hammered brass chandeliers, a flood of soft light over all here in the theater, just as there in the temple. Things are a bit tawdrier, here, it may be; doubtless they cost less money. But, after all, they are not very different.

Yet there is certainly enough difference, by reason of one thing and another, to provide the element of novelty. Nobody may doubt that there is novelty here; and novelty is diverting. Shifting the services of worship from the accustomed temple to the unaccustomed theater, and providing a new feature or two, like the orchestral music, the pastor causes these services of worship to become a means of diversion.

And does not this tell the whole story?

It happens that a lesser offering of diversion suffices to attract people of a Sunday. Diversions which they might quite neglect any other day, people embrace eagerly on Sunday.

Sunday is likely to be a dull day for those ordin<iiily busy; it is a day of rest and rest soon gets to be burdensome. A man sleeps as late as he can Sunday morning. He succeeds in spending half his forenoon in bed, perhaps. When he can sleep no more, he gets him a Sunday newspaper, and with it manages to fill his time until dinner, whic*h he does not eat very early, naturally enough. The Sunday dinner is probably the heaviest meal of the week, and the most elaborate. The man dispatches it in a leisurely way, and by the time he has finished, the afternoon is well along. Now the torpor of digestion, or indigestion, overtakes him, and he is enabled to doze away some hours. Or, if the weather is fine, he may walk out.

But evening is likely to find him quite at the end of his resourc^es. He has still several long hours of idleness before him. He is in the thoroughly rested condition that makes further rest intolerable. In thiiS extremity he has recourse to the churches.

The man looks up the church announcements in his newspaper. He finds that several of the churches promise unusual features.

He reads that a certain pastor will tell what he thinks of the municipal government, sparing nobody. Another pastor will preach about dancing, as high society dances. Another will discuss the story of Jonah and the whale, giving his reasons for not believing it.

In one church the experiment of employing pretty young women as ushers will be tried for the first time. In another, communion will be with individual cups, a new thing; the people there are afraid of swallowing microbes from the common cup. One choir is to be augmented by the voice of a famous opera singer. Another choir has been enlarged into a chorus, and will offer a service of song, the sermon being altogether dispensed with.

Finally, the man discovers, services of worship are going to be held in the chief theater of the town. The seats will be free; there will be no collection; the orchestra of the house will assist with the music.

He goes to church in the theater. His ennui drives him to go to church somewhere. The theater services seem to him to offer the best refuge from his ennui. They promise the best means of whiling away the hours of the evening.

Nothing could be farther from this man's mind, probably, than the conscious thought of God. It is with no purpose of taking advantage of the religious offices of Christianity that he goos to church. He goes to church in the theater when he would not think of going to church in the temple; yet did he go in order to expiate his sin, and with that end in view, he would make no such distinction between going here and going there. It cannot be in the possession of a religious purpose, of the purpose to please God, that the man neglected the church last Sunday, when it was the temple, while he uses it today, when it is the theater. It is no religious use that he makes of Christianity's implements. These implements serve him sensibly, but with a worldly service.

There are a good many of the character of this man in the congregation of 2,000. Exclude all of his character, and you have but few, perhaps, beyond the congregation of fifty.

We hear it complained that the secularization of the Sabbath keeps people away from church. Once Sunday was a perfectly empty day, except for religious activities. There were no implements provided to any save a religious purpose, except as they might serve another purpose incidentally. But now it has come to pass that implements are provided on Sunday about as they are provided any other day,

m

that is, to almost any purpose men may have. Once people might go to church or do nothing. Now they have a wider choice. They may golf or play tennis or go to the play, or they may go to church. At once the temples are deserted.

The secularization of the Sabbath would seem to be the occasion rather than the cause of the people staying away from church. Were the implements to ostensibly worldly purposes to be withheld from the people, it is not unlikely that they would go to church; but simply to deprive them of the alternative of doing that which is more diverting than going to church would not be to make them have a use for the religious oflSces of Christianity. If the secularization of the Sabbath keeps people away from church; if the people are kept away from church by being permitted to do those things which in comparison with going to church are simi)ly more diverting, and not in the remotest way comparable as religious activities, it goes to show that the sensible service of Christianity, in any case, and no matter how great it may be, is not a religious service. If it were a religious service, people would not neglect the church to golf or play tennis. The opportunity to do a more diverting thing would not keep away from church the man bent on doing an expiatory thing, a thing pleasing in the sight of God. The religious purpose is lacking; the sensible service cannot be a religious service.

Compare the sumptuous temple yonder with the old meeting-houses of New England, which you have heard your fathers and mothers tell about. Why the change? You answer when you ask yourself how many people would go to church if the only church to go to were the old-fashioned meeting-house, with its torturesome seats and its long services. The church has become luxurious for the same reason that the pastor holds his services of worship in the theater; that is, in order to get people to come to church. Innovation has little by little put the modern temple in the place of the old-fashioned temple; and the thought behind the innovation (an unconscious thought, I suppose) has been the thought to make the church an implement to a purely worldly purpose, a means of diversion. The thought stands confessed in that the moment an innovation has lost its novelty, and thus its power to divert, still further innovation has been devised, and put in practice, until we have worship of such forms and appurtenances that our grandfathers would hardly recognize it for worship at all.

The religious purpose is lacking; the old meeting-house was as effective an implement to a religious purpose as the most gorgeous temple is; there was no call for innovation except as the people lost the religious purpose.

But in offering the means of diversion the church has done nothing in itself unworthy; the diversion is always wholesome. And by these means it has brought a great many people within its precincts, its sphere of irfluence, who would otherwise stand aloof, and never come in contact with the church at all. 2

Here, for example, is a young man who came to church the first time simply in order to listen to the singing of a certain prima donna. The next Sunday the prima donna did not sing, but the young man was there. In fact, he has ever since been going to church regularly; and not only that, he now engagos in other activities which Christianity proposes for expiation; he joins in prayer; he participates in the communion ; he is become what is called a member of the church. These other activities in which he now engages are not to be reckoned diverting, yet he engages in them of his own motion; to engage in them serves some valued purpose of his; the implement to some valued purpose of his the church supplies in providing the place and the occasion for prayer and communion; and it cannot be the purpose of diversion.

It is possible that he who came to hear the prima donna sing encountered, by the way, something which startled him into a consciousness of his relation to God; something which set him to thinking of God, to the end that he came back the next Sunday with a view to pleasing God, and to the profit of his soul. That is to say, it is possible that the church, by means of the innocent devices it uses to bring people to it, is enabled to touch these people, or some of them at least, with a religious purpose, and to make them have a religious use for the implements it offers.

CHAPTER in.

The Social Rendezvous*

I quote the Rev. Dr. John Watson, a Christian clergyman who has become widely celebrated under the pen name of Ian Maclaren.

"As I write," says Dr. Watson, "the appeal of a Young Men's Christian Association to its members lies on the table before me. I copy it verbatim :

" ^Do Not Forget

The next social, The next candy-pull, The next entertainment, ^The next song service.

The next gospel meeting.

The next meeting of the debating club, The next chicken-pie dinner.

The next date when you ought to make the secretary happy with your cash.'

*This remarkable list of operations, combining evangelistic zeal, creature comforts and business shrewdness, requires no commentary; the items give as a convincing illustration of an up-to-date religious institution — a veritable hustler of a Y. M. C. A.

"Perhaps one department of the work requires a word of explanation ; there may be some persons who have given considerable attention to Christian agencies, and yet whose researches may not have come across a candy-pull. This agency, if that be the correct word, is a party of young men and women who meet for the purpose of pulling candy, and, in the case of the co-operation of the sexes, is said to be a very engaging employment. It may be that candypulling on the part of the Y. M. C. A. is confined to one sex, and is therefore shorn of half its attractions, but one clings to the idea that in these days of *pleasant' religious evenings the young men would not be left to their own company.

"The Christian church and the Y. M. C. A. are of course veiT different institutions, and the latter is free from any traditions of austere dignity, but one is not surprised to find that the church has also been touched with the social spirit, and is also doing her best to make religion entertaining. One enters what is called a place of worship and imagines that he is in a drawing-room. The floor has a thick carpet, there are rows of theater chairs, a huge organ fill» the eye, a large bouquet of flowers marks the minister's place; people come in with a jaunty air and salute one another cheerily; hardly one bends his head in prayer; there is a hum of gossip through the building.

*A man disentangles himself from a conversatioD and bustles up to the platform, without clerical garb of any kind, as likely as not in layman's dress. A quartette advance, and, facing the audience, sing an anthem to the congregation, which does not rise, and later they sing another anthem, also to the congregSr tion. There is a prayer, and a reading from Holj Scripture, and a sermon which is brief and bright

THE QHRISTIAN RELIGION. 21

Among other intimations the minister urges attendance at the Easter supper, when, as mentioned in a paper in the pews, there will be oysters and meatturkey, I think — and ice cream. This meal is to be served in the ^church parlor.'

"No sooner has the benediction been pronounced, which has some original feature introduced, than the congregation hurries to the door, but, although no one can explain how it is managed, the minister is already there shaldng hands, introducing people, ^getting off good things,' and generally making things ^hum.' One person congratulates him on his talk — new name for sermon — and another says it was fine.''

Were you to look in on the candy-pull of which Dr. Watson speaks, you would doubtless find a lot of young people having what they term a rattling good time. Here the strong social instinct is being highly gratified, and always in an innocent, proper way, of course.

The young man who goes to the candy-pull and has a good time there, discovers in the Y. M. C. A. a thing of sensible use to him. It proves itself to be worth something to him from the worldly (I do not mean pecuniary) point of view; it helps him to be happy, and thereby it renders him a great and sensible worldly service. The young man who goes to the candy-pull and enjoys himself is bound by a consideration of his own worldly interest to this Y. M. C. A,

If he goes to the social, the entertainment, the chicken-pie dinner, at each of these he probably has a good time, too, and in an entirely wholesome way that leaves no memory to reproach his manhood. All these are purely social affairs; they do not profess to be anything else. Nothing is attempted to \i^ ^wi^

I I

at any of them except to provide proper means to the gratification of the social instinct.

If he goes to the song service and the gospel meeting and the debating club, he does not have such a good time, perhaps, in a social way; these affairs are ostensibly religious or intellectual, and not intended primarily to gratify the social instinct. But they are not unenjoyable even to a young man without religious purpose. They are bright and breezy and brief; they are never permitted to become tedious. And, moreover, there is always the plentiful admixture of the social element; even here the young men and their company meet and mingle about as they might at an evening party.

In all these operations, then, the young man finds more or less to answer to appetences not religious; particularly the social appetence.

The Y. M. C. A. leaves us in no doubt at all as to its main purpose. Its main purpose is to get men to engage in the expiatory activities proposed by the Christian church; to get them to be faithful members of the church. So we find the young man who has enjoyed the candy-pull and all the other operations, strongly impelled, on considerations altogether apart from religion, and regardless of any religious purpose in himself, to become a member of the church. It is natural for him to identify himself with the Y. M. 0. A. and thus to share in its general purposes and aspirations. He is placed under an obligation to join the church. And if he joins the church, what does he encounter?

Dr. Watson gives us a pretty good idea.

He is treated as a guest, and made much of in a tfocial way by desirable people, people whom he might not hope to meet otherwise, as likely as not. The pastor is the urbane host, and he is assisted by leading members and their families. ' Of course the young man is gratified. It is a very pleasing experience, at a very small cost of inconvenience to himself.

The church, in itself and in its accredited agencies, is a social rendezvous. The Y. M. C. A. is but one of many church societies working to the same end in the same way, namely, to the end of inducing men and women to engage in Christian expiatory activities, by making these activities incidental to the gratification of the social instinct; or, as Dr. Watson pithily puts it, they are engaged in making the practice of religion pleasant. There are church societies for young and old, for men and women, for youths and maidens, for little boys and little girls; societies for this ostensible purpose and societies for that; their name is legion, for their number is great.

Perhaps I suggest too bluntly the worldly nature of the motive which prompts this young man we are considering to become a member of the church. He will tell you, with perfect honesty, that he has experienced a genuine access of religious feeling, and that he is a member of the church because of that feeling, and not in order to avail hinself of the social agencies. He is conscious of being drawn to the church, and he gees his motives as he says, but it will hardly do to take his word as final proof that he has indeed come into a religious purpose.

The fact appears only when we ask what would become of the church membership if these social agencies were to be entirely dispensed with. There is not a pastor, I suppose, who would undertake to hold his membership under such a condition. It \^\>^ Xi^m^ ^ social rendezvous that the church is in its body kept together and renewed. It is the societies that maintain the membership. By means of the societies old members are retained and new members are added. Were there no societies, the membership would at once fall off.

Whoever makes use of these social agencies of the church, and is sensibly served thereby, comes into a sentiment of friendliness for the church and all its purposes, which naturally wears the look, even to himself, of a genuine religious appetence. He is unconscious of any worldly motive. The worldliness of his motive is not disclosed unless he asks himself in all seriousness how long he would remain a member of the church were there no social agencies for him to use.

There are other valued purposes which Christianity is being made to serve, some of them, perhaps, less becoming in themselves than the two we have mentioned, which are doubtless the most important, as being the two which possess the great majority of those who find a use for the church. But of all the purposes which Christianity is being made to serve, I think we are justified in saying that the most of them are, equally with these two, worldly purposes. The sensible service of Christianity, the service by reason of which people have a use for it, is not, then, a religious service. If the church were capable of being used only in the pursuance of a religious purpose, it would not be much used, in our time.

I dare say this conclusion does no great violence to the common understanding of the case.

CHAPTER IV. The Ancient Church*

We are told that at the end of the first century following the birth of Christ there were some 300,000 Christians in the world. Of course this is mostly a guess. All that is certain is that there were a good many Christians after the lapse of a century from the foundation of the religion. To be sure, in comparison with the 600 millions who are called Christians now, 300,000 seems a small number, but the bare comparison is hardly fair. In the first place, the 300,000 were confined to a small part of the earth's surface, whereas the 600 millions are spread over the entire globe. Again, the 600 millions include many who are Christians only in the sense that they are not specifically anything else, while living in communities where Christianity is the religion most largely practiced; whereas, of the 300,000, since they lived in communities where Christianity was not yet the chief religion, all were of necessity professing Christians.

But the exact number of the early Christians does not matter. The fact remains, in any case, that Christianity, in the course of a century, had come to render a sensible service to men. Men had come to have a use for it.

What was the sensible service of Christianity in the first century? In particular, did the church serve men then as it serves them now, namely, with a worldly service, for the most part?

A worldly service waits on worldly circumstances, it is plain. Conditions might easily be such that there could not possibly be any worldly profit in making use of the implements of the church. As conditions are with us, to make use of these implements costs a man little or nothing in a worldly way, to be offset against the worldly profit derived. But the cost of making use of the implements of the church might become such, in virtue of other conditions, as to wipe out any possible worldly profit, thus to leave the church unable to render a sensible worldly service.