The outside of the cup; a response to Winston Churchill's "The inside of the cup,"

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. John Hodder. The Minister Who Woke Up 9-20

II. E1.DON Parr. Mammon Running the

Preface

ESUS meant by "The Outside of the Cup" the world outside of the church. Mr. Winston Churchill in his epochmaking book "The Inside of the Cup" endeavors to show that the world outside of the church will never be what it ought to be until the Christian Church changes its theology and makes it rational, and until it can get its members to put Christianity into practise as Jesus practised it. Mr. Churchill, unlike most critics of the Church, does not try to destroy the Church but to save it. And yet there has been a terrific storm of criticism rained down upon his head by those who should have risen up and thanked him for opening their eyes and showing them their duty.

This volume is from a minister who feels that Mr. Churchill is right and would have his congregation and other congregations see how thoroughly right he is. It takes up some of the biggest questions discussed in "The Inside of the Cup" and treats them more extensively in chapters by themselves, so that the earnest reader may consider one subject at a time, in all of its modern bearings.

The writer does not agree with Mr. Churchill in everything; but there is so much in this great novel with which he does agree and with which every Twentieth Century preacher should agree, that he rejoices it has been given to the world ; and he believes before its influence is spent, "The Inside of the Cup" — the Church — will be radically altered for the better, and, as a result, "The Outside of the Cup"— the Worldwill be vastly and beautifully improved.

VII

CHAPTER I. JOHN HODDER The Minister Who Woke Up*

The hero of the story is John Hodder, an unmarried Episcopal rector, who is called from a delightful suburban church to a rich and fashionable parish in a large city. Its vestrymen want a rector who will preach the good old orthodoxy and attend to the altar in the most conservative fashion. They want to keep St. John's what it has always been, — eminently respectable and thoroughly conventional: a kind of Sunday Club for the well-to-do and the socially prominent people of the diocese. But the new rector proves to be a young man with red blood in his veins and a growing mind, and he does not stay put. Some of his most valued parishioners tell him frankly that they do not believe his conservative doctrines and cannot understand how he continues to believe them. This sets him to thinking. Then he discovers that certain of his members, even men on his vestry, are doing things in the world of business and in other relations that are utterly dishonest and heartless. This makes him think all the harder. Finally he wakes up, and says to himself: ''This church of mine is going to the dogs, and so are other churches. Something must be done and that right early or there will not be any church." The book is the story of his awakening and of what happens as he wakes and after he wakes.

John Hodder wakes up to the two vital problems now confronting the church. First, how it is to continue to exist. Second, how it is to become a real and mighty force in this conscientious, exacting and unfoolable Twentieth Century.

^Matt. 23, 25. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter that the outside thereof may be clean also.

He sees the pews emptying. What is the reason? What will stop the exodus and start the tide back into the church again?

He finds a cause that astonishes him. Some of his people do not want the pews filled! St. John's rich and fashionable constituency does not care to have anybody and everybody attend its services. H he begins to bring in the middle class or the poor, these people will leave.

He also discovers another explanation in the people who will not go to his church or any church. Their number is appalling, probably fifty million in our population of one hundred million. One-half the citizens of the United States outside of all churches. And yet the church is the greatest prop and hope of Democracy I

What is the trouble?

Not poor preaching entirely. At any rate, not in his case, as he is a fine speaker.

Not because the good old-fashioned gospel is not preached. He preaches nothing but the most rigid orthodoxy. And yet his pews are not filled, nor does he succeed in interesting the people in his parish he most longs to reach: the most thoughtful and most conscientious members of his congregation.

It dawns upon him that two things are standing in the way of the true prosperity and influence of his church and of every church.

First, its theology is out of date. The views he cherishes most and preaches with agony and eloquence are as dead and foreign to the average man and woman of to-day as if he were using a dead language. He is visiting the Fergusons when a young man, who used to attend his church, tells him frankly that he has quit because he no longer believes in hell-fire and such doctrines. At another time one of his most intelligent women quite as frankly informs him that she can take no stock in the old theology and wonders why he keeps on preaching it. Thus it grows upon him that a part of the explanation of empty pews is an outgrown theology. The pulpit has no creed acceptable to the

THE MINISTER WHO WOKE UP 11

present century.

The other explanation is that the church is not touching humanity. It is not doing the work for the people that they have a right to expect it to do and, therefore, they have no use for it. They feel no warm and vital connection between it and themselves. His acquaintance with Alison Parr, Kate Marcy, the Garvins and Horace Bentley drives this truth home. These people and thousands like them are entirely outside the church. Yet they need the church and the church needs them.

John Hodder sees that these two things must be remedied before the church can right itself and not be shipwrecked.

On the one hand, it must yield to the theological demands of the age. Church leaders do not determine the theology the world needs. It is determined by the independents inside and outside the pulpits and pews v/ho keep in touch with the age, just as political bosses do not determine the political platforms of their parties any longer, but must accept the platforms prepared for them by the progressive members of their parties. Forward-looking thinkers, writers and preachers within and without the church have been undermining its doctrines for years because they were capable of being undermined, and now that they are about to fall, the church must stand from under or go down with the crash! For instance, the three writers who have had the most subtle and powerful influence upon the thinking of this age are Emerson, Tennyson and Browning. Not one of them teaches the old orthodoxy. The millions who have absorbed and are absorbing these thinkers can no longer entertain the doctrines their fathers did in the days gone by. Something must be done.

John Hodder says : "One thing I perceive. The age calls for new contents to some of the doctrines. This will I give it." It is not easy to give the familiar phrases of religion a different meaning, but it is a good thing to attempt, as most of the old theological terms stand for something really vital when taken spiritually and not traditionally. It will do the reader good to read from page 284 to 290 of **The Inside of the Cup/'*

Here are some of the new definitions he gives. I do not state them in his own words, but give his thought.

"The Inspiration of the Bible." Not a book dictated, word for word, from on High; but the product of personal inspiration, — men and women listening to the inner voice of God and recording what they heard. Some parts more beautiful and more trustworthy than others because the persons were more spiritual and could hear divine things better than others. Inspiration did not stop with the Apostles. It still goes on in men and women of sincere spirituality.

"The Unpardonable Sin.'' Not some specific sin which no man has ever been able to discover ; but that attitude which denies that the spirit of God is just as truly at work in this age as in Christ's time, and that wilfulness which resists the appeal of God's spirit to one's own spirit and conscience.

"The New Birth." Not that we are depraved at birth and the children of the devil in need of being reborn the children of God ; but that we are more or less spiritually blind, spiritually ignorant, spiritually unsensitive, and need to have our spiritual eyes opened, our spiritual sensitiveness quickened, and our divine powers developed. That is a new birth indeed !

"Baptism." Not a sacrament that makes a man a Christian, as if any external rite could change us internally; but an outward expression of what should be an inward consecration and aspiration, — the dedication of a man to Christ's way of living. Baptism with water, he says, is not enough. It must be of the Spirit, too, and more Spirit than water.

What is "Heaven"? Not a place hereafter, but a state of soul which may begin on earth and continue

* The figures throughout this book refer to pages in "The Inside of the Cup."

THE MINISTER WHO WOKE UP 13

hereafter. He should have known this all his ministry, for Jesus distinctly said: "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you."

''Hell?" Not a place hereafter, but a state of soul here and hereafter, of disharmony with God ; a condition that will last until man makes up his mind to get out of it. Such a decision will always be possible, in the next world as it is in this.

What is "Salvation?" Not rescue from a devil, but deliverance from disharmony with God or good, and devotion to the service of humanity and the joy and development that comes from such service.

How explain the "Trinity?" He doesn't believe those who say "The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God." He departs from this form of tritheism entirely and stands for a new definition of the Trinity, one that will make it acceptable to the Unitarian as well as the Trinitarian, and thus pave the way for a reunited Christendom. His Trinity is this : "God the Father is God manifested as the universe. God the Son is God manifesting himself as Personality in Man. God the Holy Spirit is God ever working upon the souls of men to transform, inspire and drive them spiritually." Jesus was not God; but was filled completely with the spirit of God and was a perfect exemplification of the Personal qualities of God. We know that Jesus was closer to the Father than any Son who has ever appeared on the earth, because he alone, of all men, was able to fathom God's purpose to bless humanity to the uttermost, and able to grasp clearly the truth that the supreme duty of man is the service of mankind. The parables reveal this deep insight of Jesus, especially those of the talents and the prodigal son. (284) (364) This is about the only way to define this fundamental doctrine of Christianity if the age is to keep the name Trinity and have it mean something vital and useful in its thought and life.

But John Hodder finds it necessary to go further than change the meaning of these statements of faith.

He must reject some doctrines entirely, even though time-honored and very precious to many souls.

One is that of "Apostolic Succession." It is very sacred and central to the Greek Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church and one party in the Protestant Episcopal Church. But he abandons it altogether. By the way, this doctrine makes these churches call each other and all the denominations interlopers and heterodox. They regard the Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Congregationalist, Reformed and Lutheran churches just as truly heterodox in this respect as the Unitarians, Universalists and Christian Scientists. But the rector shows that when Simon of Samaria wanted Simon Peter to confer upon him mechanical apostolic power which he could transmit to a succession of followers and to them alone, Peter rebuked him, saying it was not his to give. (Acts viii, 19.) "The true successors to the Apostles," as the book says, "must be Apostles themselves, must have the spirit of an Apostle, and live the life of an Apostle."

The "Virgin Birth" is another dogma he rejects. He calls it a myth (287) and explains how it came to be believed by Christian people. When Christianity was first carried to the ignorant masses of the Roman Empire they were believers in nature miracles, and it was easier for them to believe that Christ's unique divinity was due to actual, physical generation of the Spirit than to get them to understand the theory of the incarnation as put forth in the terms of Greek philosophy. (286) So they were taught that Jesus was miraculously born of a virgin. Later on, however, there grew up a cult that held that he was not born at all, but came straight down from heaven, supernatural in every respect. The church had to stamp out this error and make sure that its communicants would ever afterwards believe that he was actually born of woman and was human, as well as divine, so it wrote in the Nicene Creed: "Incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary." (286) But reasoning people of to-day can only believe tha,t Jesus was born

THE MINISTER WHO WOKE UP IS

like all children. Indeed, his mother implied as much when she said to her boy on the day he got separated from them in the Temple: "Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." Would she have spoken thus if she knew that Joseph was not his father? Paul wrote to the Romans: "Concerning his son Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh. And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness." John Hodder holds that it is necessary to get rid of the doctrine of the virgin birth before the orthodox church to which he belongs can or will come on to the new doctrinal basis demanded by the Twentieth Century, for around this dogma revolves the whole system of supernatural theology called evangelical orthodoxy.

In fact, our preacher reaches the conclusion that he must give the church a new theology from the ground up, based upon modern science, modern philosophy and a modern interpretation of the Bible and reli.s^ion. He says to his assistant, McCrae : "I no longer believe in the external and imposed authority of the Church — nor in the virgin birth, nor in certain other dogmas in which I once acquiesced. I am convinced that not one man or woman in ten thousand who has rejected Christianity ever knew what Christianity is. The science and archaic philosophy in which Christianity has been swaddled and hampered is discredited, and the conclusion is drawn that Christianity itself must be discredited." (324) It is his duty to preach liberal orthodoxy, as there is no other way to get the educated and thoughtful classes back to church and no other viewpoint that will wake the church and make it tackle the social problems of the age.

So long as religion is regarded as a form of life insurance for one's self, and the church is looked upon as a kind of shelf on which the redeemed are placed, awaiting their turn to enter paradise, how can it ever be brought to take a living hand in making this world a livable world for the millions who are not on the same delectable shelf or in possession of the same insurance policy?

This line of thinking brings him face to face with the sociological conditions of the time and the duty of the church toward them. When you get a livable theology it commands you to practise it or quit and acknowledge yourself a coward. Hence the book also takes up and discusses the church's duty toward the awful and complicated problems of our civilization ; a discussion to be opened up fully and freely in the chapters that follow. John Hodder struggles to get at the root causes and root cures of the ills that afHict us and the evils that appall us, as we ought to do.

Here is the White Slave problem. Not what is the city going to do about it or the social workers, but what is the church going to do about it? It must understand that church members are sometimes responsible for the traffic, before it can successfully undertake its destruction.

Here is Divorce. Why is there such a thing in our Christian civiHzation? Is the church just and wise in refusing to allow it under any circumstances ?

Here is Marriage. It is so often an unholy contract, because entered into for other reasons than love, when it ought to be the divinest union on earth and would be if the church exerted the influence it might.

Here, too, is Poverty. Much of it flows directly from the unchristian treatment of help by employers, some of whom are the very pillars of the church.

And Ruthless Business. Its maxim is "every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost" ; and yet it is championed and defended even by those who arc members of a vestry and for a pretense make long prayers.

He comes in closest possible contact with the whole Woman Movement of our time through his relations with Alison Parr, the rich young woman who renounces her father's wealth and home that she may work out her life as an independent woman.

And he comes face to face with Socialism, discovering for the first time why such a revolt is natural^

THE MINISTER WHO WOKE UP 17

and also seeing that it would never have come about if Christianity had been put into practise as Christ preached it.

And so this aroused and enfranchised preacher wakes up to the fact that he is living in a real world, with real problems, and that there are real men and women who are determined to settle those problems with the aid of the church, if they can get that aid, or without the aid, if God himself cannot wake the church out of its criminal sleep.

The final thing that John Hodder sees clearly is his personal duty as a minister. He knows that one man cannot do everything, but he arrives at certain decisions worthy of him and of every minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was fearless enough to denounce the religious leaders of his own day by saying: '*Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites: for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within you are full of extortion and excess; cleanse first the inside of the cup that the outside thereof may be clean." And who could express his yearning love for the people, by crying: *'0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not. Behold your house is left desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."

He resolves to be honest with himself and his people. He will tell them exactly what he believes and intends to do; tell it from the pulpit and also in their homes and to their very face. How easy that sounds. But it will require the struggle of his life, as the same kind of a decision cost Christ the struggle of his life. It is no easy thing to change one's whole religious faith; fling one's cherished beliefs into the crucible and see them melt into thin air. John Hodder almost goes to pieces in doing it, like many another preacher. He nearly loses his faith in God, humanity and himself.

Everything for a time seems slipping from under him, even conscience and all moral scruples. That is why we find him in his most desperate hour in the saloon where he meets Kate Marcy and acts for a time as if he were going to hell.

Then he resolves, and this is the grandest thing about John Hodder, that he will be a stayer and not a quitter ; that he will not desert the church but change the church. Robert Elsmere went through a similar experience, and quit the church. John Hodder refuses to quit. And therein lies his infinite superiority to Robert Elsmere and every other minister who runs away. Hodder started to run, I admit.

He goes into his church to take a last farewell, but there before him hangs a painting of Christ on Calvary. As he sits staring at the face of the Man on the cross, it seems to move and live ; it seems to come across the centuries and to show that in the hardest and darkest hour of Christ's Hfe there was no weakness in his face (144) no suggestion of quitting his task or abandoning his hope. John Hodder staggers to his feet and goes back to his job !

But it entails opposition, as we shall see, and desertion, and malevolence and martyrdom. Vested interests and religious bigots join hands to squelch him; many who have walked with him walk with him no more ; some call him Unitarian and others call him SociaHst, laboring to prejudice him in the eyes of the bigoted or of those who have vested privileges at stake. When the vestry cannot overcome him in any other way, it seeks to drive him away by cutting off his salary, and starving him out. But he stands his ground and wins !

To his surprise and joy, now that he has come out boldly, unequivocally and completely for the new theology and the new duty of the church to society, he finds that the Bishop of his diocese is cheeringly on his side, saying that if he were a younger man he would be doing the same thing and fighting the same fight. He finds that some of the very finest people he

THK MINISTER WHO WOKE UP 19

ever met are coming into his church to hold up his hands. And, joy of joys, he discovers that the plain people are filling his pews as if they had been waiting for years for a minister and a congregation really, truly and sweetly on fire with the passion of Christ. He preaches a wonderful sermon, and Alison tells him he begins to look young again, as if the eternal youthfulness of Christianity had possessed his soul.

The story is meant of course to be a prophecy of what will happen, not when one church and one minister does what St. John's and John Hodder did^ — for no such prosperity will come to one church doing this thing alone ; it is not big enough and strong enough to overcome the growing public prejudice and hostility to churches in general — it is a prophecy of what will take place w^hen all the churches and all the ministers come round to the theology and to the humanity that St. John's and John Hodder did. When that time comes, and thank God it is surely approaching, we are going to have very different churches from what we have to-day and they are going to occupy a very different position in the world, which is now sneering at them and passing them by. We are going to have a pulpit whose utterances will have at least as much room in the daily press one day of the week as sporting news and political news get every day. We are going to have preaching so full of human interest and uplift that to come to church will be the heavenliest experience on earth. And we are going to have men and women going from church into business, politics, pastimes, their homes and every affair of life with none other than the gentle, loving, helpful spirit of Jesus Christ, bearing and forbearing, each for the good of all and all for the blessing of each. Isn't it a wonderful, a glorious, a stimulating picture? and it is all in this splendid book and that still more remarkable book the Bible! whose spirit runs through it like pearls through golden sands and whose millenial dream has captivated the author as it ought to captivate you and me.

And so the author says, now that John Hodder and his church have awakened: "The church might be likened to a ship saiHng out of the snug harbor in which she has lain so long, to range herself gallantly beside those whom she has formerly beheld, with complacent cowardice, fighting her fight; young men and women enlisted under other banners than her own, doing their part in the battle of the Twentieth Century for humanity. Her rector is her captain. It is he who has cut her cables, quelled, for a time at least, her mutineers and seeks to hearten those of her crew who waver, who shrink back appalled as they realize something of the immensity of the conflict in which her destiny has to be wrought out." (428).

CHAPTER IL

ELDON PARR Mammon Rumiing the Church^

The two antagonistic characters in "The Inside of the Cup" arc John Hodder, the minister, and Eldon Parr, the vestryman. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that in dealing with Eldon Parr the author is dealing simply with an individual. He is presenting a representative of a class. In other words, he is personating Mammon, and also personifying the Pharisee. Notice the ingenious play on words in the name of Eldon Parr. Eld means old. Par is a word used in financial circles in connection with stocks and bonds. It suggests money. **Eldon Parr" then might well mean "Old Money" or "Old Mammon." Or, if we pronounced the last name a little differently, we have a play upon the word Pharisee. Phar, the first four letters of Pharisee, might easily be changed into Parr, and by calling him "Eldon Parr" we would have the idea of "Old Pharisee." So that he stands for a hypocritical type, as old as the foundation of society; as ancient as the beginning of religion.

John Hodder tells his assistant Mac Crae that it is his determination to do three things. First, preach liberal orthodoxy. (324) Second, discourage the charity that is a mockery of Christianity. (324) Third, free the church of its Pharisees. (324) We saw in the first chapter how magnificently he changed his faith and brought it into harmony with modern science and recent Biblical interpretation and then went into his pulpit and preached it. We shall see in the next chapter how he discouraged the charity that is a mockery of Christianity. Now, we go with him as he enters upon the struggle to free the church of its Pharisees.

*Matt. VI., 24. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.

22 EU)ON PARR

He undertakes the big job of the century. The author shows his grasp of the condition confronting the church in this new era when he practically says: **It must get rid of the Pharisee or die." John Hodder, as he looks about him, finds that civilization is at fault ; that it is conducted on the materialistic theory of the survival of the fittest rather than the brotherhood of man. (322) He also finds that those in the church are too full of the materialistic spirit of our civilization and too little of the spirit of Christ. Worse than that, some of them and even the most prominent and influential of them, are using the church to bulwark the privileges they have gained at the expense of their fellow men. (322) These are the modern Pharisees; the present day children of Mammon, who neither go into heaven themselves nor suffer others to go in. Indeed, it grows upon him, as it does upon every observing man, that while we have to a great extent Christianized the home, the school and the state, we have not Christianized industry and commerce. The business world is on a heathen and even savage basis, the strong battling with the weak and the shrewd and unscrupulous gathering in the spoils. If war is hell; business is war and hell combined, especially for the men who are being ground between the upper and nether millstones.

John Hodder resolves not to attempt to do what the average preacher has always tried to do: keep the individual a Christian within an unchristian industrial and commercial world only to miserably fail. It is impossible — utterly impossible — for a man to serve both God and Mammon. In business, most workers find it necessary, as business is now constituted, to serve Mammon much of the time and God very seldom.