A working faith, by Harris Franklin Rall

Preface

]y yTAN can have no greater treasure than a vital -*--■■ faith. Such a faith means courage and confidence for our tasks, purpose and unity for our Kfe, moral strength and inward peace, and that fellowship with the Highest which enriches life here and assures the life that is beyond.

Such a faith is not a creed handed down from age to age, nor a system of theology worked out once for all. Every age brings new problems threatening its security. Every age brings also its advance of knowledge and its larger experience. That is why such a faith needs to be constantly restated. That is especially true of our age. History and natural science have given us a new world. Can we hold the old faith in the new world? Every generation of thoughtful men, especially college men, has to face that question anew. That question these pages seek to answer.

But that is not all. Our faith should be richer with every generation. We see that in the field

8 PREFACE

of conduct to-day, in personal ethics, and in social

morality.

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth." i

That is just as true of religious thought. We are in the midst of a revival of faith. It is a deep conviction that nature is more than a machine, that life is more than material goods, that God is, and that the heart of life is the personal and spiritual. And what is more, men are seeing God and life through the eyes of Jesus Christ. But all this is no mere return to tradition. We must do our religious thinking in the new world, with all of science and all the better knowledge of history that we have gained. The new faith should be richer, more vital, than any statement of the past.

Four words suggest this change and enrichment : natural science, for God to-day is more wonderful and nearer because of the world that science has revealed; historical science, for it has made us know how rich Christianity is in its long history, and how wonderful has been the whole story of God's training of our race; the ethical emphasis, for it has been driving out the institutional and

» Lowell: The Present Crisis.

PREFACE 9

ceremonial and making religion vital and appealing; the social emphasis, for it has taken religion from the clouds and made it live among men.

These pages seek to give such a restatement of faith. They seek to meet the difficulties which assail a thoughtful man to-day ; to show that modern thought has brought not simply question, but enrichment; to set forth that faith in the speech of to-day; and to set it forth as a working faith, that will meet the needs of real life and grow stronger through its experiences.

There are four classes of readers to whom these words are directed. There are the students of our colleges, who need such a faith not only for their own life, but that they may render the full service for which society looks to them, the leadership which men of faith can give. There are the leaders of the young and of thoughtful folks that are older, pastors and teachers who must meet questions and doubts, and who want to bring to their students or hearers not only safe guidance, but a rich and appeahng faith as a summons to life. There are the folks outside the Church, or apart from the stream of religious progress, who think lightly of religion and the Church because they

10 PREFACE

do not know these as they are to-day. Finally, there is the growing number of men and women who want such a vital faith for themselves, a faith that shall interpret the changes that they see, that shall speak their convictions, and that shall meet the needs of the individual life and the demands of the larger social life as it exists to-day.

The substance of these pages has been given in the form of addresses to college students at summer conferences and at various institutions of learning. The style of direct address has been only partly modified. The argument has been put in simple and non-technical form. Readers to whom any of these problems are new, might find it easier and more interesting to begin with chapter three and leave the first two chapters to the end. HARRIS FRANKLIN RALL

The Iliff School of Theology, Denver, Colorado,

CONTENTS I

God In His Wobld 17

A "working faith," one that can face the facts and meet the needs of life.

The age just passed one of science, criticism, and increased material power; these have not met spiritual needs or moral weakness. The return to faith.

The Objections.

From Evolution: No need of God to explain the world. Evolution as science to be distinguished from evolution as philosophy. Can not explain source or end of the world.

From Naturalism: No place for God in the world. The wrong conception of the supernatural with both theologians and scientists; the result. Naturalism leaves out life's biggest facts: the personal and ideal. If the personal be real, then it is first and key to all the rest.

From Agnosticism: We can not know God. What is knowing? The venture of faith; the justification through life; the application to religion. The right to believe.

God as Presence. The meaning of law. The Presence in the life of man, in nature.

God as Purpose. The bearing upon our social faith.

God as Person. The failure in some modern cults. Religion a personal relation.

II

The great objection to faith: the world of evil. Four facts: nature as cruel, as unmoral, as immoral, and fact of sin.

Our fault, the failure to see life whole and at its highest. Three principles to be used.

The Ethical Principle: the test of the good is not material ease but moral life.

The world as a place for righteousness, not righteousness as finished external order but as moral achievement.

The world as place for faith. Its contradictions challenge faith, call it forth, give faith its insight.

The world as a place for love. Love as the final good. Its relation to suffering and sorrow.

The Social Principle: to understand the world we must look at the social whole, not merely the individual.

The social fact and its problem. Social suffering incident to social good, the source of social passion and power.

The Principle of Development: we must judge life by its issue, not by the moment. A world in the making.

As to the individual, apparent failure.

As to the race. The tuition of law. Life in a world that is being made.

The bearing on moral evil. Character only through development, with imperfection and failure as inevitable. God's interest is not simply suppression of sin, but achievement of righteousness.

The final solution is by faith. Faith makes us sure of God, shows us evil overcome in our own life and in the world.

III The old conception and the new

The Traditional View: a real experience, hut a faulty theory; the faulty elements: the Bible as text-book, inspiration as mechanical, human and divine considered as excluding each other, no room for real growth.

The Modern View: a human book, but one in which we meet God; a great history in which God is moving; a nation through which God wrought; first the redemptive movement and the life, then the writings.

The Historical Revelation in its character: it will be gradual, personal, redemptive; the Bible as its product and monument; the result, a Bible that is vital, that shows variety and difference and progress.

The Meaning of the Book: the book of God, God as its ruling passion and its moving spirit; the book of man, revealing man, meeting the needs of all men.

The Authority of the Bible.

IV

The theme: not what doctrine of Christ must we hold, but what help to faith does He give.

Christ and the Question of God. Jesus brings us God as Father. Jesus reveals the Father by His spirit and life. The idea of God thus given has determined our ideal of religion. The religion of Jesus universal, spiritual, ethical, redemptive.

Christ and the Ideal of Life. Jesus gives not laws, but an ideal; the ideal set forth in His life.

His life: its purity, yet not negative; its universality and completeness; its supremacy.

Jesus changes morality from mere duty to passion. He shows it as the conquering power.

Christ and the Question of Hope. The problem of power as man's great question. Jesus' spiritual mastery as a fact. He kindles the sense of need and of desire. He shows men God and gives them courage to trust.

Jesus as Master of men and of nations, of the social life and conscience. "To whom shall we go?"

The miracles of Jesus. The doctrine of His person.

Our age as the social age; the social passion, the social insight, the social hope. The social movement in the Church, its place in religion.

The Social Ideas of Christianity.

The Kingdom of God a social hope.

The idea of God: His presence in the world; the holiness which saves instead of separating; the meaning of His righteousness.

The idea of man: the sacredness of humanity; the radicalism of Jesus; the human test of state, of industry.

The idea of righteousness: its meaning with the prophets; its social meaning; as a present-day issue; righteousness and the new democracy.

The Social Spirit of Christianity.

The spirit of purity: its war against immorality.

The spirit of love: the new fellowship; socializing the man.

The spirit of service.

The Social Power of Christianity: the social spirit as creative force.

A Social Creed.

VI

Modern indifference to the Church and its ground. False conceptions of the Church, and true. The Church a vital part of Christianity.

The Church and Its Message.

Ideas are the forces of history. The need of the message for society, for the individual. The message found in the Church. The Church and the Bible.

The Church as Fellowship.

Fellowship and the highest life; the need of the individual; the meaning for democracy; for the perpetuation of faith. The comprehensive fellowship.

The Church and Worship.

The permanence of worship and its need; its spiritual power.

The Church at Work.

The relation to the Kingdom; the Church as instrument; the spirit of service to-day; social service of the Church, direct and indirect.

The Coming Church. Authority and unity: in the past institutional and external, in the future moral and spiritual.

VII The Life with God — Fellowship

As seen in the Old Testament, with Jesus.

The problem: how can sinful man have fellowship with the righteous God? God receives us as sons, that He may make us such. The life of sonship: humility, trust, fear, obedience, prayer. The right to pray; the nature of prayer.

Saintship — the Making of a Man.

Saintship as consecration and character. Fellowship as a transforming power, God's gift; as a task, the moral demand.

Society — the Life with Men.

The social nature of man's life, its social training, its social task, and end.

Stewardship — Life as Trust and Task.

Life as co-operation with God.

The attitude toward the world. Jesus on the fear of the world and the love of the world. The world as means: the school of play, of work.

The social meaning of stewardship: the stewardship of business; the spending of income; the business of giving; the stewardship of life. Choosing a life-work: What and where.

Chapter I God In His World

««nnHIS is a healthy, a practical, a working faith. A First, that a man's business is to do the will of God. Second, that God takes upon Himself the care of that man. Third, and therefore, that a man ought never to be afraid of anything."

George MacDonald in Robert Falconer.

"There has never been a day when so many men were seeking for firm convictions of their own. For a conviction that is really conviction, for a faith that can really be believed, our age is still ready to hazard life itself. Human nature is not so low that it can rest in pleasure and the service of self. Men are seeking some conviction as to the meaning of life. Only, it must be a real faith. And here lies the task of the Church, its old task and its new, to bring to the men of to-day a living God and eternal life."

Chapter I GOD IN HIS WORLD

WE are to consider in these pages "A Working Faith." A faith does not mean a system of doctrine or a philosophy. It is something vital and practical. We may define it as a conviction concerning a higher Power who can give meaning to our life, to whom we look for help and whom we obey. The faith which we shall consider here is a Christian faith, because its inspiration, its ideal, and its certainty come through Jesus Christ. We shall not go back, however, to ask what all the doctrines are that have been held by the Church or that are contained in the Bible. Our aim is rather personal and practical. We are looking for something upon which to build our life. We call it a working faith for this reason: it must meet the needs of our life and stand the test of living itself. And it must meet a second test, not only that of the world of action, but of the world of truth. We want no faith that must be walled off from the rest of our thinking. We believe with Emerson: "The Religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empire, but is not the immutable, universal law."^

Such a faith is not a task, but a gift. It is not a burden that weighs men down, but joy and peace and strength that girds for the task. It does not come to men and say, This is the minimum that you must believe ; rather it says, This is a life that you may have. Jesus did not go about talking of the "essentials," the doctrines which a man must hold to be a Christian; He proclaimed the good news, the God in whom men might trust and from whom they might have life.

It is no wonder, then, that men are turning again to faith. Such a revival is with us now. It is true that men are not simply going back to the traditions of their fathers. That would bode ill for religion, for that which lives never simply moves backward. But the temper of men has changed. Henry Van Dyke wrote fifteen years

ago his "Gospel for an Age of Doubt." To-day we need "The Gospel for an Age of Desire." The spirit of desire is present where once there was at least a touch of self-sufficiency and scorn. Science is more modest to-day. She knows her limits, alike of knowledge and of power, better than two generations ago. What our present condition is will become more clear if we turn for awhile to the age from which we are emerging.

The Passing Age

The past age has been one of science. Never have the boundaries of knowledge been so rapidly extended. Molecule and atom and electron, we have probed for the last element of matter. We have searched the heavens and found infinite worlds beyond the worlds that we have seen, and we have weighed them in our balances and determined their composition. We have searched the past and compelled it to give up its secrets. No problem has been considered insoluble. Men stopped before the last and hardest, and simply said. To-morrow. That overconfidence is gone. We know to-day that the tools of science have brought us no nearer the answer to the final questions of life than we stood a hundred years ago. All our wide knowledge can give no answer to Job's ancient cry, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him!"

It has been an age of criticism. Men were in earnest. They wanted what was real. No tradition was so hoary, no dogma so long established, as to escape the test. Men wanted all the facts, and they wanted nothing else. But the age which insisted upon the real left the most real to one side. They would deal only with what they could measure and weigh. They knew the dust on their balances, but they knew not what was in man. They asked for facts, and then shut their eyes to the great facts which make for all men, even scientists, the meaning and power of life. Love and truth, right and wrong, man and God, these were outside their ken. It was science grown unscientific. To-day we are making room for the great facts of our moral and religious nature, for the whole realm of the ideal.

It has been an age of power, of material expansion and conquests. The day of iron and steam has made a new industrial world. We have enslaved the forces of earth and sea and sky, and harnessed them to our machines. The single man at the machine can do the work of a hundred men of three generations since. And so there has been a material development for which there is no parallel in history. The world's wealth to-day is incomparably greater than in any previous age. A generation ago nations gloried in that power and boasted of their advance. We are far from confident to-day. The material development has multiplied problems for us instead of solving them. Our increased material power seems only to have made our moral weakness the more plain. With all our wealth, there was never more bitter or widespread social discontent. We have wealth that is selfish and insolent, and poverty that is the more bitter because it is needless. And disease and vice and political corruption are still with us. The age of boastful power has not had power enough to solve these questions. Nor has it served our need to add science to our wealth. Only moral and religious forces may meet these needs, and only a new age of faith can supply these forces. The experience of the past age has not been without its fruitage, even for faith. We shall not go back to the beliefs of an earlier age. We must move on to something higher and richer, and the age of science and criticism and material development will help us. The science and criticism, as we shall see, have helped to purge out old errors and narrow views. They have driven us to a larger conception of religion. And even our material progress and social problems have helped to force religion down from the clouds of theory and sentiment and back from the dreams of another world, to face her real task of establishing a kingdom of righteousness upon earth.

Can I Believe in God

The first article of any faith is God. Because ours is a working faith, we shall not talk of the being of God in itself, but shall ask rather whether we can believe in such a God, and what He means for our life and for this world. But some one may interpose right here: "What we want is something practical, and you are falling back already into dogma. It is not a theory that this world needs, but a life."

Do we need a God for our working faith? Is it not enough to say, I believe in the good will and the kind heart? A little girl was wont to play church, and the play went something like this: "Peoples, stand up. Peoples, sing. Peoples, sit down." And the sermon that followed was always the same, "Peoples, be good." There are many sermons that are summed up in that word, but this life of ours needs far more than that. It is not enough to say, "Peoples, be good." It is not enough that we shall try to be good ourselves. Is there no power to give us victory in our own lives.'* And what of the world fight against the forces of evil, does the issue hang upon your little effort and mine.'* What is on the throne of this universe.'* Are the stars fighting in their courses against Sisera? Is our little kindness just a helpless eddy in a great world current that, cruel and resistless, sweeps us all on at last to the same oblivion.? Or is our kindness begotten of some great heart of kindness that rules this world.'*

But here is another objection that is raised. Though the self-confident unbelief of an earlier day is largely gone, the voice of doubt is not yet stilled, and it tells us that we can not believe in a God in this world. In a popular way these objections may be put in fourfold form: (1) There is no need of God for this world. The world is simply a gradual evolution to be explained by the forces that are resident in it. (2) There is no room for God in the world. The world is simply a great mechanical order, where everything happens according to law. (3) We can not know God if there be one. (4) The world is full of evil; we can not believe that a good God rules it.

There are two reasons why we may well take up these questions with care. We have already agreed that our working faith is not to be shut up in a separate compartment and kept from all disturbing facts. It must live in the whole world of our thought, and it must be strong enough to bear the burden of life's chief interest which we are placing upon it. Further, we shall find that these great questions, and the theories of science which lie back of some of them, so far from shutting us off from faith, may help to free us from casual error and drive us to deeper and larger truth. It need not be added that these great questions can not be taken up in detail. We want to face the issue fairly, but consider it only so far as it bears upon our question. The last of the problems will be considered in the next chapter. The first three, which we may call the objections of evolutionism, naturalism, and agnosticism, we will consider now.

The Objection prom Evolution

We turn, then, to the objection made in the name of evolution. The position taken is somewhat like this: "The old explanation of the world was that of creation. Now, however, we know that the world came to be gradually, by the forces of nature herself working from within, and not by a creative power from without. These inner forces and these laws explain all things. There is no need whatever to go outside and suppose a creating God."

The one point that must be made absolutely clear here is the distinction between evolution as a working theory of science and evolution as a philosophy. The task of science is simply to explain the order and nature of happenings in the world. It tells how things behave. It is not the task of science to tell what is the ultimate nature of things or their final meaning. That belongs to philosophy. Scientific evolution is the attempt to explain how the world of nature as we know it came to be. It lays down two main principles : first, the world of to-day came to be gradually instead of by great leaps or at some single moment; second, it came in some way by forces working within, not imposed from without.

In this broad sense we are all evolutionists to-day. We are all trying to understand things as they are by studying the history of how they became. We apply this to society and religion just as we do to geology and biology. Of course, even in science evolution is not a solution, but a working tool. Darwin's case affords a good illustration of the distinction. He showed men that evolution was the principle to be used for studying the development of organic forms. Scientists all use this tool which he put into their hands. But his solution of the problem, his particular theory of evolution, is still subject for difference of opinion.

It was not unnatural that men felt at first that the idea of evolution was an answer to all questions of life. Its good standing in science was used as a cloak to cover all sorts of philosophical shabbiness and emptiness. Two simple questions will show the failure of evolutionism as a philosophy. First, what is the ultimate origin of this world of life that we see.*^ Second, what is its meaning and goal? Science does not need to answer these questions, philosophy must.

Take the question of origin. Darwin closes his "Origin of Species" with these words: "There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, while this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved." Tyndall declares that he must "cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in matter . . . the promise and potency of all terrestrial life."^ But these first forms of life of Darwin, or this primitive fire mist of Tyndall which has the "promise and potency" of all life, are not all that is necessary for the evolutionist. You can not have evolution without variation. Where does it come from? To call it fortuitous is to beg the question. That would be a denial of the reign of law at the beginning by those who insist upon it so strenuously later on. Here is the fact of heredity that is just as necessary to start up evolu-

*Fragments of Science, II, 191.

tionary housekeeping. And with these granted we might as well concede the rest. That is nothing less than this marvelous world-all itself, not as an inert and undifferentiated mass, but charged with power and informed by a marvelous complex of law and order. All this we grant freely to scientists like Darwin and Tyndall, but not to the philosopher who calls himself evolutionist. The philosopher must explain. Where does he get fire mist and forces and laws, heredity and variation and all the rest.'* Until then we can not agree that he has a sufficient explanation of the world. Until that time we will simply say that modern science with its evolution has not ruled out God, but has given us a more wonderful conception of His working.

In the same way we must say that we can not accept evolutionism as a theory of the world until it can also explain the meaning and the goal of the world. Here are questions that men asked when the world was young. They will ponder them when Laplace and Darwin shall lie as far back for human thought as Saracen science or Babylonian astronomy to-day. For the end of things claims not only our deepest interest as men.

but alone reveals the true nature of being. It is not enough to study the history of the man. It is not enough to discourse about phylogenetic and ontogenetic series. We must study the man, the man at his highest, the end of the series. The real explanation of things lies at the end, not at the beginning. The key to the meaning of the world is not in nature, but in the Kingdom of God ; not in fire-mist and cell, but in that

"far-off, divine event.

Toward which the whole creation moves." *

It is this last step that gives us the key by which we unlock the meaning of the first cause.

The Objection from Naturalism

The second objection is that of naturalism, of which, indeed, evolutionism is but a phase. The modern idea of nature is that of a constant development through inherent forces according to natural laws. What we have is just a great machine moving according to inexorable law. The form is ever changing, but every change is absolutely explained by what has gone before. The wheels move round. We have motion and change of position;

* Tennyson, In Memoriam, conclusion.

that is all. Nothing old is lost, nothing new comes in.

Before we question this new naturalism we must understand the old supernaturalism which was the popular orthodox theory of yesterday. The old theory was dualistic. It drew a line through the world. On the one side was the natural, on the other the supernatural; on the one the sacred, on the other the profane. The supernatural was the direct action of God. The natural was the ordinary course of the world. In the beginning God made the world; that was supernatural. Then He left it to go on its regular course; that was natural. Now and then, at special times and for special purposes. He reached down into the course of events to work a miracle, to inspire a prophecy, to dictate a sacred writing, to shape the history of Israel or the founding of Christianity. Other events were natural, other history was profane. The supernatural was used where the natural explanation gave out. It was this supernatural that was used to show the being of God. The supernatural became, in a sense, the unnatural, and God was shut up to one part of His world.

We can see what happened. The growth of science extended the "natural" explanation, and every such extension seemed to cut away just so much more of the foundation of faith. Astronomy showed a universe in the making — under natural law. The new geology showed us an earth that had come to be in similar manner. Darwin was only the last in this series. The forms of organic life were the last stronghold of the old static view. Were not the various species fixed and immutable.^ To cross them meant sterility. They could not have come out of anything else. They must, therefore, have been due to an original act of creation. When Darwin and organic evolution came, and showed how these, too, were under the reign of law and had been brought forth by gradual evolution, it seemed as though God had been driven out from His last place in nature.