The demand for Christ : addresses and sermons

Contents

PAGES

Foreword 7

I. Thb Gospel and the Crisis 9

II Ameeica And Wokld Democracy 1

The conviction that the king or emperor is ruler by divine right and that all other individuals and peoples exist for the state is the essence of autocracy. The conviction that government is a means to an end, that the welfare of the people constitutes the end, and that government is of the people, by the people, for the people, is the essence of democracy. The United States is the first successful experiment in democracy in the history of the world.

January 22, 1917, President Wilson delivered his famous address before the Senate on the League to Enforce Peace, In this address he maintained "that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful/ 5 ' This means a democracy of nations. April 2, 1917, Mr. Wilson followed his plea for the democracy of all nations by his famous address before both houses of Congress in which he summoned the people of the United States to join with the Allies in attempting to overthrow German autocracy and make democracy safe throughout the world. This is individual or personal democracy.

April 4 the Senate, by a vote of eighty-two to six, and April 6 the House, by a vote of three hundred and seventy- *From Good Housekeeping, August, 1917.

three to fifty, responded to Mr. Wilson's summons by the declaration that a state of war exists with the German empire by reason of her warlike acts upon the United States. April 14 the House by a unanimous vote, and April 17 the Senate by a unanimous vote, established a war budget of seven billion dollars for the prosecution of the war in the interest of the democracies of the world. This far-reaching and unselfish action, with the further sacrifices which these votes make necessary, will probably put the United States at the head of world democracy for the twentieth century.

The Rise and Pall of Personal Democracy

Probably before the close of the twentieth century all thoughtful people will recognize that the United States, of all nations, exercised the deepest political influence upon the human race during the nineteenth century. Down to the opening of that century the civilized world did not believe in a government of the people. With the exception of a few Christians, most of whom had been driven to distant lands by their refusal to submit to tyranny, the church, down to 1800, united with the state in upholding the divine right of kings. Coming events which now seem probable, if not inevitable, will show that democracy is slowly winning the victory over the human race. That democracy has been slowly winning its way during the past half -century is shown in the advance of parliamentary institutions in every country in Europe, in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, in South Africa; in the fact that every British colony left free to create its own political institutions has adopted a written constitution modeled after the American prototype ; in the struggle for the right of existence upon the part of the Russian Duma and the

AMERICA AND WO ELD DEMOCEACY 33

Chinese Parliament, even though divine prerogatives are claimed for the emperor; in the nascent and victorious struggle of women for the admission of their half of the race — by no means the weaker in insight or in morals — to large influence in shaping the institutions under which women as well as men must live; and above all in the present war, which we may all hope is the death grapple of autocracy with democracy.

The conditions that have bred the present unrest of the human race are in part economic as well as political. The fact that the nations before the present world war were spending $6,400,000,000 annually for armies, navies, fortifications, pensions, interest on war debts, and loss of productive power by the removal of soldiers from industrial life; the fact that before the present war the public debt in proportion to the wealth of the various nations, as compared with the United States, was resting with sixfold pressure upon the people of Great Britain, with elevenfold pressure on the people of Germany, with nineteenf old pressure on the people of Japan, and with twenty-onefold pressure on the people of Eussia ; the fact that the indebtedness of the warring nations already has added to the previous indebtedness the incredible and incalculable sum of seventy billion dollars, and the irreparable loss of the very flower of European manhood as the inevitable result of an attempt by rulers without consulting their peoples to thrust autocracy upon Europe and the world, all portend the inevitable downfall of militarism and autocracy in the not distant future. If, by some strange mischance, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey should win the present war, the triumph of autocracy would be only temporary. Economic causes will force the civilized world to limit militarism ; and when militarism disappears, autocracy will fall. The Kaiser cannot accomplish the task in which Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon failed.

Again, the gradual spread of popular education, the determination of laborers to secure a larger share in the products of industry, the outflow of settlers into the empty portions of the globe, the awakening of the Far East, the discoveries of the added possibilities of plant life under the Burbanks, and of mechanical power under the Deisels, the Wrights, the Edisons, are all stirring the human race. An aroused humanity will increasingly find its voice and express its will. But humanity finding its voice and having its will done, under whatever form of government, is democracy. Hence, the political philosopher may consider the problem of democracy as in process of solution, and he may give the United States credit for inaugurating the greatest political achievement of the human race thus far.

But while the battle is well begun, only a childish optimism regards the war as over. The tremendous struggles that are under way in Europe, the slower and more discouraging struggles that must attend the growth of parliamentary institutions in India, Africa, Mexico, and Turkey, the upheavals that will accompany the struggles of socialism, already beginning in Europe and sure to arise in America and other parts of the world, the struggles for the prohibition of the liquor traffic, for the withholding of all legal protection from vice, and the profound social changes that may accompany the extension of suffrage to woman, all combined promise many a royal battle between the forces of progress and of reaction during the twentieth century.

Americans often have had their patience tried by the delays of legislators in responding to the will of the people, by legislation in favor of the privileged classes, and in some

AMERICA AXD WOBLD DEMOCRACY cases by the corruption of State Legislatures and municipal councils. Hence even Americans have been forced to modify republican institutions by the government of cities through commissions and by the introduction of the initiative, the referendum, and the recall. We were compelled to modify local institutions still more seriously in the middle of the last century by the transfer of power from the States to the nation. It may increase our political modesty to remember that Xew Zealand has carried representative institutions further than has the United States, that Great Britain, under Asquith and Lloyd-George, and Germany, partly through the initiative of the emperor, have gone farther in the care of public health, in old age pensions, and in general relief of the working classes than has the United States, and that most European cities are notably better governed than are our American cities. It ought to contribute further to the political modesty of the whole Western world to know that the Chinese, handicapped by political traditions and by age-long corruption of officials, nevertheless have made far greater progress in overcoming the opium evil than have the Western nations in overthrowing intemperance.

The Future Problems of Democracy

Surely, further struggles for democracy are before our own nation and especially before the world. To dream that the prohibition of the liquor traffic, that the settlement of the present World War and the problems of Ireland, Poland, and the Balkan nations, and that the maintenance of a league to enforce peace embody no grave problems and involve no future struggles for representative institutions is to be blind to the great forces that are struggling for the mastery of the modern world. Even the United States, which has led in the inauguration of the political struggles for the extension of human freedom, by no means has reached her goal, as our Negro problem, our problem of the exclusion of the yellow races, and our labor problem prove. These great struggles for the extension of democracy throughout the earth, for the increase of economic efficiency, and especially for the protection of the lives and morals and enlargement of the economic opportunities of the masses, will not reach their final solution until they are settled upon the basis of righteousness and of love manifested by mutual service. Never has the outcome of building upon mere force and self-assertion, though attempted by the strongest powers on earth, had such ghastly illustration as in the present war. The substitution of righteousness and love for selfishness and force is the only solution of our problem; and this solution is only another name for an advance of the human race in applied Christianity.

National Democracy

Already our review brings us in sight of another pressing problem: the relation of local self-government to the government of the nation. Li Yuan-hung, in charge of a nation which in its possibilities is among the most potent and in its activities among the most impotent nations on earth, is being compelled to face the perennial problem of civil government, namely, the relation of the parts to the whole, of the provinces to the nation. A similar struggle took place in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Japan and a little earlier in Germany, in Italy, and in the United States. A similar struggle is to-day confronting Great Britain with her Irish problem, Eussia and Germany over Poland, Austria-Hungary, and the Balkan states.

AMEEICA AND WORLD DEMOCEACY 37

And yet I believe that the present struggle will demonstrate the fact that the republican form of government, allowing greater liberty of political action and of economic development to individuals and very large self-government to states and provinces and dominions, will in a long industrial struggle or in a Great War prove superior to completely centralized government. Apparently, both Germany and Japan were making more rapid industrial advancement, and therefore, apparently, their state control of industry furnished a more efficient industrial organization than was to be found in Great Britain or the United States. This impression, I believe, was due to the fact that it requires one or two generations for a false theory to produce its inevitable results in a state, whereas one or two decades will suffice to demonstrate its falsity in private enterprise. Both Germany and Japan, according to all indications, were skirting national bankruptcy through excessive taxation on the one side and on the other side through not encouraging individual initiative in business. Moreover, in war, when individuals and states must make large temporary surrenders to a central national authority, the deliberate choice of a people to embark in war will in the end lead them to endure greater hardships for a longer time, to make greater sacrifices, and to develop greater initiative in prosecuting great campaigns and in engaging in the deadly struggles of battle than will be possible on the part of a people robbed of the opportunity for initiative and of the responsibility for consequences.

But if despotism is to be avoided and progress assured, local governments must enjoy large freedom. While much liberty may have to be surrendered in war, nevertheless war is not the normal or ordinary condition of the race ; and in this normal condition much will be gained through freedom. The claim of certain Western States to gains in civilization through woman suffrage, the claim of Kansas to have the greatest wealth per inhabitant through prohibition, the claim of Wisconsin to progress in agriculture and political reforms inaugurated through her State university, and the claim of New Zealand to economic progress through socialistic legislation, together with the opportunity to verify or correct these claims through the study of these experiments, furnish marked illustrations of the advantages of local self-government for political progress. On this ground the United States should not abandon its ideal for the self-government for the Philippines. However, instead of establishing a fixed date for the inauguration of self-control, we should pledge self-government whenever eighty-five per cent of the population under sixty years of age can read and write; and we should extend it to the various islands as rapidly as each reaches that educational goal. And we should promise the inhabitants of the Philippines at the close of this process either complete independence as a republic or such a federation with the United States as may then be agreed upon by themselves and us.

The Eternal Question oe States' Rights

But here again, if any one dreams that the problem of the relation of the states to a nation or of the dependencies to an empire has been solved, he has only to contemplate the perplexing problem of an Irish Parliament and of the maintenance of Austria-Hungary ; he has only to watch the determination of California, of Canada, of South Africa, and of Australia to exercise sovereign rights in excluding the people of J apan, China, and India from their

AMERICA AND WORLD DEMOCRACY 39 territories, and the grave danger in which such action must involve the nations of the earth.

If Lloyd-George or Mr. Asquith or Mr. Balfour can frame a federal government that will weld together the world-wide dependencies of the British empire and make them all integral parts of a world-wide democracy, he will rise as much above Bismarck in world statesmanship as Bismarck rose above Metternich in European politics. It is possible that by the solution of this problem of the relation of the parts to the whole the British people may exercise as deep an influence in world politics during the twentieth century as the United States exercised during the nineteenth century. But here again the problem can be solved only upon a basis of justice and of love manifested by service ; and this spells the advance of nations in applied Christianity.

International and Interracial Democracy

If, as Professor Seeley maintained, nationalism is the key to the political history of the nineteenth century, internationalism will prove the key to the history of the twentieth century. Probably Great Britain in dealing with India and the United States in dealing with the Philippines will be called to such renunciation as is always implied in motherhood. Instead of attempting to incorporate the three hundred million peoples of alien races on the opposite end of the globe into the British empire on equal terms with the Canadians and Australians, Great Britain may be called to set up India as a great Asiatic nation, bound by strong ties, or, better still, united by some sort of federation with the mother who adopted her and nourished her into national life.

Nor is the United States exempt from the race problem.

In addition to the Philippine question the United States has a graver unsolved problem in the Negro race. The Negroes have been granted political freedom, guaranteed by the constitution; but despite the guarantee they are virtually disfranchised in the South. Will the people of the United States be able to show the world that two races as distinct as the white and the black can live side by side in the same country, in the enjoyment of the same political and economic rights, in the maintenance of the purity of each race, and of peaceful and mutually helpful relations between the two? If so, we shall furnish the world a solution of one of the greatest problems in applied Christianity.

Our relations with the Japanese and the Chinese and the relations of Great Britain and her colonies with these two races and with the Indian races reveal a larger and more dangerous international and interracial problem. The division of the vast Chinese empire among the various nations, or the control of China by a single foreign nation, would mean the control or absorption of the commerce of the Pacific by that nation or those nations. The question of foreign trade is already a vital one and will become more and more important and vital to our growth as the country advances.

Providence has given us a strategic place for large commercial and moral influence in the Paeifis basin. Every one recognizes our long coast line upon the eastern side of the Pacific, with the great harbors of San Diego and Los Angeles, of San Francisco and Seattle, of Tacoma and the entire Puget Sound. But few people realize the value of our coast line across the northern borders of the Pacific, which carries American sovereignty to Chichagos Harbor in Attu Island, 186° 47' west longitude, or almost

AMEEICA AND WOELD DEMOCEACY 41 to the borders of Asia. This stretch of American seacoast across the northern borders of the Pacific furnishes the shortest route from San Francisco to Tokyo; and on account of the Japanese Current it is always free from ice. Moreover, it abounds in harbors like Eesurrection Bay, Chignik Bay, Denmark Bay, Dutch Harbor, Unalaska Bay, Constantine Harbor and Chichagos Harbor, each of which is large enough to hold the entire navy of the United States. These harbors probably will be recognized before the close of the twentieth century as the most important geographical discovery of the nineteenth century. These, with our present possession of the Philippine Islands and the possibility of our always maintaining a great harbor there, and with our possession of Guam and the Hawaiian Islands, give the United States the most strategic position on the Pacific basin of any nation.

However great the strength of the United States, it is not safe in forecasting the future to underestimate the vast potential resources of China. The Chinese as individuals are perhaps the strongest and hardiest people on earth. Four facts stand out in regard to this people:

1. The Chinese have the oldest living civilization, and they are the world's oldest nation. Their history began with that of Egypt and Babylon and Assyria. China has historical documents extending back to the middle of the eighth century before Christ; and Confucius, who lived five hundred years before Christ, affirmed that the historical records which he possessed carried him back twenty-two hundred years before Christ. This carries Chinese civilization back four thousand years.

2. A priori, it would seem far more reasonable that a small and select race like the Jews or the Greeks might maintain its civilization and its natural life for an unparalleled period. But the Chinese are not simply the oldest race, they are the most numerous single race upon the earth; they number between three and four hundred millions.

3. However weak the nation, wherever the Chinese as individuals compete with the members of other races and nations in neutral ports, such as Hongkong and Singapore, they soon become the dominant factors in industrial and commercial life. Even the white man must have large capital if he is to maintain his position of fancied superiority.

4. The Chinese show no signs of exhaustion through their long career; on the contrary, they have transformed their government into a republic, are eagerly accepting Western inventions, and are entering upon a new stage of civilization.

These four facts make the Chinese the most remarkable Tace in existence. Indeed, C. H. Pearson, in National Life and Character, after the fullest comparison of Chinese civilization with other civilizations of the world, reluctantly expresses the depressing conclusion that the Chinese will in time destroy white competition in industries and commerce within their area and in the end will dominate the Pacific basin ; and he gives some very solid reasons for his conviction. Upon the whole I do not share his fears. But all students of China recognize that the race which Pearson portrays in such threatening terms must be reckoned with in our forecasts of the struggles that will take place around the Pacific basin.

Brewing a Mightier World War

Thus far the white race has seized the control of Australia, North and South America, Europe and Africa,

AMEEICA AND WOELD DEMOCEACY 43 and of the northern and southern portions of Asia. A still more menacing manifestation of the spirit of white autocracy is the exclusion of the yellow races from five of these six continents and from the northern portion of Asia. When we remember that the people of China, India, Japan, and Malaysia number some eight hundred millions, the unfairness of tlieir exclusion from five continents and their limitation to one half of the sixth continent becomes clear. Such treatment of our yellow brothers is neither Christian nor statesmanlike. Moreover, under the laws of the universe it will bring its inevitable conflict, just as the present efforts of strong nations to dominate the earth have brought on the present dreadful and disastrous conflict.

Before the war the white races in Europe were doubling once in a hundred years, but with a decreasing rate of increase. The war is destroying the very flower of European manhood and must be followed by a physical deterioration and a slower increase of the white races. On the other hand, the Chinese are doubling their population once in eighty years, while some writers hold that the Japanese are doubling their population every fifty years. If, therefore, the white races refuse the yellow races access to five continents, another century will not have gone by until we may be facing a conflict between the races, in comparison with which the present world war may seem a mere skirmish.

One has no right to marshal these grave problems unless he sees some possible solution of the danger. But a solution is within our reach. No forecast of the outcome is possible without some insight into the material and spiritual forces and the principles of civilization and religion that are destined to survive and to dominate the race during the coming centuries. At this point the struggle is clearly between a materialistic interpretation of evolution and the Christian interpretation of human life. Abraham Lincoln said in opening his great debate with Senator Douglas, "If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could best judge what to do and how to do it."

The intellectual struggle between the rival interpretations of evolution and views of life began with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, in 1859. Darwin summed up the remarkable doctrine that has revolutionized the modern world in the phrase, "the survival of the fittest." Darwin selected the word "fittest" as the condition of the survival because the word "strongest" did not quite express the full meaning that he had in view; for Darwin was a supporter of Christian missions, and did not rest in a crude materialism. But inasmuch as in his arguments and illustrations he used the word "fittest" frequently in the sense of "strongest," all thinkers with a predisposition toward a materialistic interpretation of science began substituting the latter word for the former. Upon the other hand, those who favored a Christian interpretation of history failed to master the truth in Darwin's volumes, but carelessly rejected his entire teaching as materialistic, thus joining with the other parties in fixing a false interpretation upon the indisputable facts that Darwin had discovered.

The doctrine of evolution was almost immediately applied to man, and here the white race interpreted the doctrine in accordance with its preconceptions. Our race consciousness had led us to the conviction that the white race is the strongest race upon the earth, and under the teaching of evolutionary science, is therefore destined to

AMEEICA AND WOELD DEMOCEACY 45 survive and dominate all other races. But the German people, with their characteristic thoroughness, made a more logical embodiment of the theory than any other nation. This found expression in the writings of Nietzsche, Treitschke, Bernhardi, and a host of lesser thinkers. It was the perception of the inherent contradiction between this philosophy of force and the Christian philosophy of love that led some Germans, thoroughly saturated with scientific materialism, to make a far more vigorous and persistent attempt to undermine the historical character of Christianity than any other writers.

The Fate of Aggressive Nations

Unfortunately, most of the nations in modern history have embodied the materialistic doctrine of might rather than the Christian doctrine of right. The exploitation of Mexico by the United States in 1848, the division of Poland between Eussia and Germany, the steady conquest of the ruder races of the world by England, her greed in thrusting the opium traffic upon China, and the single fact that all the unorganized portions of our globe have been recently divided as spoils among modern nations — all illustrate the effect of human selfishness and a false philosophy upon political activity. I am convinced that the present war, in which all the aggressive nations are being called upon to bear incalculable losses, is the answer of Almighty God through human history to the doctrine that might makes right.

Japan's notable triumph over Eussia in the war of 1904-05 was the first notice of the revolt of the yellow races against the wicked doctrine of white supremacy. Unfortunately, however, Japan's triumphant entrance into national life among the great nations of the earth, while serving more thoughtful statesmen as an ominous warning against the doctrine that might makes right, was immediately interpreted by the partisans of militarism as a confirmation of that doctrine. They said at once that the doctrine had a wider application than they realized, and that even a "despised" colored race which cultivates might to a sufficient extent can take its place among the allconquering races of the earth; and Japan herself, instead of rejecting the false doctrine that had tended to keep the yellow races in subjection, adopted Herbert Spencer as her patron philosopher and was confirmed by him in a materialistic interpretation of evolution.

The First Law of Natuhe

A closer study of science, instead of supporting the doctrine of selfishness, supports the doctrine of service. It is said that self-preservation is the first law of nature. This is a lie, and comes from the father of lies. Not self-preservation, but the preservation of the species to which the individual belongs is the first law of nature. Grass will defy every effort to prevent it bearing seed by immediately starting to grow again after every cutting. If it is kept continually cut until the summer is passing and the fall approaches, it will attempt to head out long before it reaches its normal height in order that it may bear seed for the preservation and propagation of the species. The deepest law of animal life is not self-preservation, but the law of motherhood or service.

The law of service is grounded in the very nature of life upon our globe because it is essential to the life of those who are served. Species have increased after their kind; there are probably countless stalks of each useful grain, like wheat and rice and corn for instance, in existence

AMERICA AND WORLD DEMOCRACY 47 to-day as compared with a single stalk ten thousand years ago. This is due not so much to the superior strength of these grains in comparison with other grains in which they are in competition as to the will and effort of the human race for whose existence wheat and rice and corn are essential. In the same manner the political theories and the forms of religion that seek the support of man must depend for their survival upon their power to minister to the race. It is simply because democracy appeals to the fundamental instincts of humanity, it is because it ministers to the needs and aspirations of the peoples of every nation vastly more than autocracy can ever do, that under the stern and uncompromising law of the survival of the fittest autocracy is doomed and democracy is certain to survive.

God is thrusting Christianity into the welter of pagan religions and apparently is saying to all these rival forms of faith, "Serve the world or perish." The difficulty with polytheism is that it tends to prevent the development of any strong type, even an outstanding evil type of manhood. Ceres demanded her worship through the unremitting cultivation of the soil; Mars demanded worship through the neglect of the soil by men in order to engage in slaughter; Bacchus and Venus demanded worship through the neglect of both soil and slaughter for the sake of self-indulgence. One who worships all pagan gods consequently cannot become even a strong devil. No strong or consistent personality is possible to one who accepts the pull of the passions in opposite directions each as the call of a god. Paganism fell before Mohammedanism through the latter's use of the sword ; but the strength of the Mohammedan's right arm, which wielded the sword, was due to the fact that he believed in one God and held himself in obedience to a moral code, which, if it was not lofty, was at least single and consistent. But Mohammedanism, with its doctrine of the subjection of womanhood, with its doctrine of human slavery, with its contempt of modern science, with its paralyzing doctrine of fate, has lost the control even of its own uncounted millions to Christian states, simply because in the hard struggles of earthly history Christian states develop the stronger type of manhood. Who doubts that in the long run Christianity, with its doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, with its open Book, and its doctrine of a future life, will supplant all pagan faiths simply because it does more for the race that adopts it than any other possible competitor?