The gospel in the light of the great war

Preface

This book is not a treatise on formal homiletics. It is designed as a workable manual for the preacher who is facing the opportunities of the pulpit in an age which the writer believes is the most challenging and fascinating in the history of the Christian church. The Great War not only raised tremendous questions with which the preacher must deal, but it called a literature into being which is throbbing with life and power. The letters and meditations of the soldiers are priceless, and many of them will become permanent possessions of a new world which will discover that these young writers have spoken in free and varied forms the deepest message of this urgent generation.

The great experience through which we have passed has also added a new sense of reaHty and worth to our appreciation of the Bible. It, too, was born from fierce and long struggle; it is amazing how much of the temper of the war and of the constructive purpose following it is reflected in the Scriptures.

To define the great subjects that have been thrust forward during the last five years, to show how the vital documents of the new literature bear upon them, and chiefly to bring the Bible into use as a source of text and subject and illustration is the purpose of this volume.

The writer has ventured to offer practical suggestions concerning the use of texts and illustrative material. This is designed to be only in the way of suggestion.

vi Preface

The horror of "canned outlines" of sermons or garlands of poetic gems for illustration is unspeakable. The suggestions offered are simply examples of a profitable way to work the rich mine of biblical and recent literature. No plagiarism would be involved in using them; but they are presented to stimulate study rather than to stifle it.

The writer is a preacher. He knows the hardship and the splendor of the task. These pages have been written in a temper of grateful regard for the high quality of the American ministry and a resolute devotion to the work of preaching. He now sends the book forth to his comrades with the earnest hope that it may help somewhat in making the old message of the gospel vibrant with new meaning and power to a confused and yearning age.

Chicago Theological Seminary January i, 1919

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. New Conditions Defining the Preacher's Task i

II. The Influence of the Modern Pulpit .... 17

Chapter I New Conditions Defining The Preacher's Task

Every Christian preacher is facing the most exigent and commanding situation of human history in these days when the world is simply being re-made through the results of the Great War. Never was there such need of the clear mind and the flaming soul in the pulpits of America. Today the preacher may come to his throne, but he never will arrive there by accident or without preparation adequate to the service that he must render.

But in what spirit is he to preach? What is his distinctive message? How is he to prepare for and discharge his task ? These questions surge to the center of our thought. New problems, vaster in their range and deeper in their drive than have ever before demanded solution, are upon us. The minister must be prepared to create and guide pubHc opinion. How profound these changes are is indicated by the following observation from a man who has traveled widely and observed carefully:

Is a new theology, determined by democracy, to emerge from this war? May we look to the consensus of popular opinion, instead of to the theologians, for our great ideas about God and the soxil and the future life ?

There are clear signs pointiag that way. For .... a really startling radicalism pervades the thinking of the armies, and of the chaplains and of Young Men's Christian Association workers who have been long with the troops. Conventions have lost their grip. Nobody cares a cootie for "orthodoxy," as such. Old usages and old creeds seem to have succumbed to the U-boats, or some other force, on the way over. All things, from the very existence of a Supreme Being to the right of a church to exist, have had to face the challenge of this new, emancipated, freethinking, audacious war mind. Whether this is as it should be or not, I am not here discussing: this article is not a statement of the writer's opinions, but of clearly revealed conditions. Churches and seminaries and religious institutions at home do not realize it, but they, too, are in the melting pot that is bubbling in France.^

Another statement of the changing present and the future task of humanity in building a new world comes from one of the most valuable books produced by the war, whose author says:

With brains and hearts clean now of all terror, grief-purged men and women everyis^'here are rising from this devastation with a wondering respect for the resilience of the hiunan soul, and with a great instinct toward rebuilding driving them on into the new future. Evolution teaches that survival depends on the power of adaptation to environment; is not the effort of each nation to reconstruct this destruction constant evidence of the vast impulse of the human race to discover an adjustment of life to death that shaU make for endurance rather than decay ?^

Still a third statement deserves consideration here. Speaking at the centennial of Auburn Theological Seminary, October lo, 1918, Secretary of State Robert Lansing said:

The principles upon which a general peace will be made between the warring nations have been clearly stated by President Wilson. These principles of justice must guide those charged with the negotiation of the great treaty of peace, and must find

^William T. Ellis, The New Theology of the Trenches. 2 Winifred Kirkland, The New Death (1918), p. 53. Copyright by Houghton Mifflin Co., publishers.

expression in that momentous document which will lay the foundation for a world transformed.

Thoughtful men must know that the peace which is to come will not be a lasting peace if its terms are written in anger or if revenge rather than the desire for strict justice and the common good is the underlying motive of those who are charged with the grave responsibility of drafting the greatest treaty which this world has ever known.

The new era born in blood and fire on the battlefields of Europe must be a Christian era in reality and not alone in name. The years to come must be years of fraternity and common purpose. International injustice must cease. All men must be free from the oppression of arbitrary power. Unreasoning class hatreds and class tyrannies must come to an end. Society must be organized on principles of justice and liberty. The world must be ruled by the dominant will to do what is right.

No preacher can read this noble statement of the American Secretary of State without a kindling heart. Here is the ringing voice of the old prophets; here is the doctrine of the Kingdom of God as Jesus taught it; here is subject-matter for preaching that ought to thrill every Christian congregation through the length of the land.

The whole order of human life has been shaken to its foundations and, after peace is established, there will remain a problem and duty greater than humanity ever has faced before even in its most critical and difl&cult periods of history. The world must be re-made in order that the issues of the war may be turned into beneficent forms.

Our present uncertainty is not concerning the fact of this task, but rather as to what the particular problems will be and how they are to be attacked and solved. No one is able to forecast the hnes along which the world is to be "remolded nearer to the heart's desire." As a recent writer says:

Conjectures multiply as to the character of the new era, but that there wiU be a new era is beyond conjecture — a new set of living conditions, a new scale of values, a new alignment of social elements, a new arrangement of human relationships, a new basis of international life/

Dr. Fosdick states the same conviction as follows: We are challenged by this war to a renovation of our popular Christianity, to a deep and unrelenting detestation of the little bigotries, the needless divisions, the petty obscurantisms that so deeply curse our churches, to a new experience and more intelligent expression of vital fellowship with God. Unless we can answer that challenge, there is small use in our trying to answer any other. We must have a great religion to meet a great need.^

Scarcely had the tumult and the shouting that followed the signing of the armistice died away before many voices were heard, not only defining the new tasks before the world, but warning the American people against remitting their devoted championship of the ideals of democracy. Among these the following editorial from the Chicago Evening Post of November 13, 1918, is an example:

Building a New World

For four years our minds have been fiUed with tales of suffering and destruction. In imagination, gazing at Europe, we have seen a picture of violence, flame, blood, and ruin. The world has been distraught, agonized, and superheated in emotion.

And now we must try to look at the world from a new standpoint. We must try to think of it in other terms.

^Murray, The Call of a World Task, p. i.

= Fosdick, The Challenge of the Present Crisis, p. 82. Copyright by the Association Press, publishers.

If the victory we have won means anything, it means that the world has been cleansed and cleared of much that poisoned and encumbered in order that it may be built anew after a better fashion.

Imagination is wearied with trying to grasp the horror of the conflict through which we have passed and from which we are emerging. Thus tired, it may be slow to grasp the possibilities of the new era that dawns. And yet the great need is for constructive imagination now.

Everywhere it is important that men and women turn their thoughts to the work of rebuilding and bring to the tasks that await them the lessons that have been learned in bitterness of soul.

War has brought us together. It brought all classes together in the lands that fought for freedom. It broke down barriers of caste and economic difference. It gave us a common experience in suffering and a common impulse for service.

War taught us to give and to submit to taxation cheerfully for the common cause. It bred in us a spirit of sacrifice, a willingness to subordinate the individual right to the general good.

War made us generous spenders on public enterprise — for the defense of the nation and the achievement of its ideals were a pubUc enterprise. We did not stint. Whatever was needed that was done, without considering cost.

War promoted co-operation among nations that had been keen rivals and distrustful rivals. It taught us the worth and the fineness of people who spoke other tongues than ours and lived in other climes. We realized that brotherhood was more than a word on the lips of the orator — it was a practical, a very practical, possibility.

We made of war a great emergency that discounted everything else, and because of that we gained the victory.

Are the problems that victory and peace will bring us any less emergent and less vital to the freedom and happiness of mankind than those that our armies solved on the fields of battle and our civilians solved in the trenches of commerce, industry, and public effort ?

Surely they are not.

The fact is that unless we meet these problems with the same spirit of serious determination that has marked democracy in its struggle with the enemy we cannot win from the war the full measure of what victory should mean. Unless we are prepared to carry into the days ahead the same consciousness of a common service that obHterates lines of class and creed and race; the same readiness to give and to sacrifice; the same willingness to spend largely and wisely for the general good, we are going to make the graves in France and Flanders unavailing, we are going to miss the goal of human betterment for which the paths have been opened at the cost of blood.

BuUding a new world must grip imagination and enUst effort as splendidly as did the pulling down of autocracy and the wiping out of oppression. The world wiU not build itself, nor will it be built well if we backsUde into the old selfishness, the old blind individualism, the old narrow nationaHsm that obtained in all countries to a largely controlling degree four years ago.

The man who breathes easily and says, "Now we can return to our former ways. Things can go on as before," is a traitor to his time and to the men who gave their lives in order that things might be changed. Things must not go on as before. Democracy has wrested the world from the clutches of the last of the autocrats, and democracy must now prove that it can make a better world than that of which "kultur" dreamed. That is our task. It is big enough and fine enough to inspire the best that is in America and in her great comrades of the allies overseas.

What is to furnish the energy for this constructive work ? What is the general Hne of development which it is to follow ? It has been said that we can no longer look confidently to Christianity for help because it did not prove itself strong enough to prevent the Great War, That, however, is not a fair verdict. The Great War came because there was not enough of the real reHgion of Jesus in the world; Christianity never had been tried. The Christian religion has not been discredited by the Great War; it has not collapsed. Christianity will be the primary source of creative energy in the new world. The ideal of the Kingdom of God is still the goal ahead of the race. There is power enough in the Christian ideal to make the world over.

It has been said that the ministers did not prove themselves able to be the moral and spiritual leaders of the community in the period of the Great War; when community action was demanded to safeguard the highest interests of the nation, the business men and the newspaper men were the leaders to whom the people turned. A study of the records will set this criticism at rest. Of course the ministers and churches were not the exclusive leaders of pubHc opinion or civic action in the time of the Great War. The share that they took in the final action of the nation was not so significant as it was, for example, in the early history of the New England colonies, when the principles taught by John Cotton and the measures advised in his pulpit on Sunday were said to have been promptly enacted into law by the General Court during the following week. On the other hand, no other institution and no other body of men has contributed a larger measure of influence to the inspiration and guidance of public opinion during the Great War than the ministers and the churches. The uses to which the churches have been put, the sermons preached which shaped public opinion concerning the moral and spiritual aims of the war, the services rendered to the nation by the ministers themselves — all these are the proof of the proposition that the Christian rehgion as represented in the churches of America has been the most powerful single factor in the guidance of the nation during its great struggle.

Now we may confidently look to the same sources for inspiration and guidance during the era of rebuilding that is upon us. Ministers and church leaders must see the duty before them and address themselves to the task of continuing to hold up the standards of truth and justice toward which the nation must work its way. Earnest thought must be given to this work. As Robert E. Speer has said:

What we are living through now is the fruitage of the long past and we are sowing today for our children's reaping tomorrow. In this view, if men do not prepare in advance for the solution of their problems it is too late to prepare when the time for the solution arrives. The forces of good which are to cope with the forces of evil must be developed contemporaneously with them. This is the comfort of our faith in God.^

The gospel has an essential function to perform in the making of the new world. The message and mission of Jesus are by no means exhausted in their reference to the inidividual. Christianity is meant for industry and society and poHtics. It will be impossible to apply it to these vast and bewildering problems unless we ourselves have the large and noble conception of it which is fundamentally necessary. The vision of a Christianity large enough to perform its function in the great world must be vivid in the preacher's mind; then he will begin to bring his message to an age re-made by war.

The definition of that greater religion which we must have in order to meet the greater needs of the world that is to emerge from the welter of war is found in Christ. The preacher must ask, What did the religion of Jesus mean to him personally? When we answer

' The Christian Man, the Church and the War, p. 66. Copyright by the Macmillan Co., publishers.

New Conditions of the Preacher's Task g

that question we discover what it may mean to us and to our generation. The point has been summed up well by Fosdick:

The Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the friendship of the Spirit, the inexorableness of the moral law, the supremacy of the Cross, the campaign for the Kingdom, the Ufa eternal — what weight and range must the words have that try to tell what his faith meant to him!^

We return therefore to the task of preaching as an essential and paramount factor in the work of re-making the world. Christianity has been extended and maintained in the past by preaching; it will continue to depend upon the same power. It is by the oral delivery of a message, day after day and year after year, in countless tongues and varied forms that the truths and the spirit of Christianity have been spread over the world. There are other ways, to be sure, in which the religion of Christ has been extended; but preaching is the chief, the enduring, method. And the changes wrought by the war are apparently not to make preaching less necessary and vital but rather more.

Criticism of preaching is nothing new. Preaching has been called foolishness; and sometimes it has been foolish. But in spite of this, it is through the power of this ancient business that the Christian gospel has been made known. And the task of preaching has outlived all the wise words of those who have disparaged it; indeed, it has often been called into action to preach the funeral sermon of the critic himself. Thus it seems even now to be entering into a new era of privilege and power instead of passing as a waning interest.

^ The Challenge of the Present Crisis, p. 84. Copyright by the Association Press, publishers.

The act of preaching is a complex and difficult matter under the easiest conditions. Many forces enter into it; the factors composing it are often difficult to untangle. There is the truth to be proclaimed. If this were simply to be elaborated out of a perfectly clear and infallible statement, preaching would not be a very perplexing task, as it surely would not be a rewarding or stimulating one. But the truth that the preacher is to proclaim, in all the depth and range of it, can be discovered only at the cost of intense search and patient thinking. Then there is the personality of the preacher, the medium through which the truth is transmitted in oral form. This is as varied, even under the most favorable circumstances, as personality itself is varied. Real preparation for preaching is nothing less than the preparation of the whole man. The final means by which the truth gets itself expressed is the refined and kindled soul of the man in the pulpit. Then there is the congregation, that limiting audience, whose every mood conditions the extent to which the truth, granted that it has been accurately transmitted through the personality of the preacher, influences the life of those who hear the message. Jesus expressed this principle in the famiHar parable of the Sower, or, as it would be better called, the parable of the Soils, to enforce the command, "Take heed how ye hear. " For the truth must do business with the persons who hear the sermon; but what it can do will be determined by the receptive audience.

Thus we must reckon with the real world in which the preacher and the congregation five. It is full of hard work and moral perplexity and spiritual struggle. The sermon is not meant for the ideal conditions of a

New Conditions of the Preacher's Task ii

dream-world, but for this earnest and terrible present year on our planet. It engages with the practical problems of living men, not with hypothetical angels in some glad somewhere. This conditions not only the method and message of the preacher but also the mood and response of the hearer. It is out of the practical surroundings of the listening congregation that the most forceful influences emerge to determine the issues of the sermon. That Sunday sermon, upon which the preacher may have toiled until he sweat blood, will miss its mark if it does not throb with the pulse of reaHty and appreciation of the actual world for which it is intended.

Therefore it is obvious that all effective preaching must reckon carefully with the age in which the preacher gives his message to his congregation. This is not the supreme item, but it is one of the most significant factors determining the power and permanence of the preacher's work. Spiritual discernment and deep conviction are more significant; but in order that preaching may be sure-footed it must rest on clear insight into the meaning of the age. Otherwise it will fumble at the moment when the world is expectant with interest and when the issues of the greatest experience of humanity since history began to be written depend upon the clear vision and the accurate word of the Christian preachers.

That the character of preaching must be changed in some way ought not to cause dismay to any thoughtful minister. Of course, if preaching is merely the exposition of a system of infalHble doctrine, it is less easy to accept the situation than it is if preaching is regarded as the setting forth of truth that is ever running over its old boundaries and bursting its ancient bottles.

That preaching would be changed as a result of the Great War the young French student, Alfred Eugene Casalis, affirmed in these passionate words:

First, there will be our preaching to change. All that consists in empty formulas, beautiful as they may be, powerfully as they may have contributed to nourish souls; aU the formulas which are today empty because our philosophic or religious thought, our experiences or our conception of life have outgrown them or caused them to burst their frames — all such formulas must disappear. And what we shall substitute for them as our statement of faith will not be less great, not less beautiful, not less true, if we search for it in the depths of souls in union with God. And it will not be less Christian, for the Spirit of Christ is a spirit which lives, which develops — never remaining for a moment in any fixed form.^

The significant words in this statement are "souls in union with God. " That, after all, was the purpose which called all the formulas into being; and we need have no fear of final loss if the creative energies behind the formulas are saved. The creeds have served their purpose well in the history of the spirit; they will always be needed. But it is the vital force that creates the creed; it is the experience that renews the formal expression of faith; and out of the Great War is surely coming the old experience of souls in union with God, which is the eternal fact in religion.

Therefore we need not fear changes either in the substance or in the form of preaching so long as its essential message is preserved. And all who understand the meaning of the War as it has been interpreted to us by the religious leaders out of the midst of it are ready to meet the changes without dread and with a clear idea of what must be done in the process of readjustment.

^For France and the Faith, p. 79. Copyright by the Association Press, publishers.

The fear has been expressed that preaching in such an age will lack opportunity. The very fact that the minds of men are so engrossed with the tasks of physical building has been supposed to make well-nigh impossible the declaration of great spiritual truths.

But quite the contrary is the fact. It is in the midst of a generation solemnized by the tremendous experiences of such a conflict that the profoundest truths have the field which they require for expression. In an age that is smitten with poignant grief and stirred to expressions of terrible wrath preaching finds its supreme opportunity.

This has been put concisely by A. Conan Doyle in the following words: "It is, however, when the human soul is ploughed and harrowed by suffering that the seeds of truth may be planted, and so some future spiritual harvest will surely rise from the days in which we live. "^

Thus instead of limiting the true function of the preacher the Great War simply opened the doors of opportunity to him, affording such privilege as he never has had before to bring the Christian message home to the hearts of men.

The question is often asked. Will there be such changes in the form and subjects of preaching as a result of the war that we can no longer expect results from the methods that have been successful before ? The changes which we anticipate in this respect are not radical. The Christian message always has been spoken home to the heart of humanity with the tender and persuasive accents of love and testimony. This will not be changed in times of peace, as it was not changed during the War.

'"The New Revelation," Metropolitan Magazine, January, 1918.

Donald Hankey, writing concerning his own methods of presenting the message of Christ, said:

When I was talking to them [the soldiers] at these services I always used to try and make them feel that Christ was the fulfilment of all the best things that they admired, that he was their natural hero. I would tell them some stories of heroism and meanness contrasted, of courage and cowardice, of noble forgiveness and vile cruelty, and so get them on the side of the angels. Then I would try and spring it upon them that Christ was the Lord of the heroes and the brave men and the noble men, and that he was fighting against all that was mean and cruel and cowardly, and that it was up to them to take their stand by his side if they wanted to make the world a little better instead of a little worse, and I would try to show them how in little practical ways in their homes and at their work and in the club they could do their bit for Christ.^

All this sounds strangely unlike the formal rules for preaching which have been systematized in the science of homiletics. But the permanent principles of preaching are all here. There is the old consciousness of the message to be given, the adapting of the message to the mind of the hearer and the world in which it is to be wrought out into rules for Hfe, and the appeal for such decisions as wUl make the truth vital.

As we sum up the influence of the new conditions upon the work of the preacher we are assured that the task of re-making the world is going to bring the pulpit its supreme opportunity instead of robbing the preacher of his privilege and power. Certainly the great assurances and comforts of religion never were more necessary than they are now. There never was greater need of inspiration and hope, which are peculiarly the gift of the

^A Student in Arms, Series 2, p, 156. Copyright by E. P. Button & Co., publishers.

preacher to the community. Ethical direction never was more necessary to sound community Hfe; and this comes especially from the pulpit. The war has given new warrant to the fact of personal leadership; and the true preacher is trained in the spirit of service. And thus we are justified in looking into the future with the greatest confidence, expecting that the man with the prophetic message and the loving heart will be able to preach as he never has been able to do since the first glowing tongues kindled the lips of the Christian heralds at Pentecost.