In describing a religious society three main aspects are to be borne in mind:
The teaching, the organization, the worship.
A. The Teaching
In the religious society as here conceived there is to be worked out a body of doctrine, and there is to be a body of specially designated teachers. An ethico-religious society cannot ignore or dispense with a general philosophy of life and statements of belief. It cannot restrict itself to encouraging practical morality without regard to what are called metaphysical subtleties. A moral society of this kind would soon become ossified. On the contrary, an ethico-religious society should excel in the fertility with which it gives rise to new metaphysical constructions and original formulations of ethical faith. The will cannot be divorced from the intellect. The active volitional life cannot be successfully stimulated and guided without the assistance of the mind as well as of the imagination.
But the relation between philosophy and formulas of belief on the one hand and volitional experience on the other should be the reverse of what it has been in the past. Here there must be a new departure. The doctrine, the formulations, whatever they may be, must not be dogmatic but flexible. Growing originally out of ethical experience, they must ever prove themselves apt to enlarge and deepen ethical experience. By this test they will be judged and they must therefore ever be subject to revision and correction. Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience. But then it claimed for itself eternal validity, compressing the spiritual life within its mold, and checking further development. The body of doctrine which I desire and foresee will likewise be an interpretation of ethical experience, intended to make explicit the fundamental principles implicit in ethical experience, and thereby clarifying it, and assisting its further unfolding. But it is not and should never be allowed to become dogmatic. The difference, I take it, is plain: in the one case experience contracted in procrustean fashion into a rigid formula, in the other case an elastic formula adapted to and subordinated to the experience.
Thus much for the body of teachings. There should also be a body of teachers. A teacher in an ethico-religious society will retain something of the character of his predecessors—priest, prophet, rabbi, pastor. The priest is the mediator of grace; the prophet is the seer of visions; the rabbi is learned in the Divine law, and the pastor is the helper of the individual in securing his individual salvation. But these functions will now be seen in an altered light, and will be radically modified in their exercise. The magical attribute of the priest disappears. The confident prediction of future events, based on the assumption that the moral order is to be completely realized in human society, has ceased to be convincing. The Divine law is no longer identical with the Law revealed in the Scriptures and their commentaries, and the salvation of the individual is to be accomplished by other means.
The religious teacher of the new kind is to resemble his predecessors in being a specialist. The word specialist in this connection may, perhaps, awaken misgivings, and these must be removed. He is not a specialist in the sense of having a conscience unlike that of others, or in being the keeper of other men’s consciences. Nor shall he impose his philosophy of life or his belief authoritatively, but propose it suggestively. His best results will be gained if he succeeds in so stimulating those whom he influences that they will attain an individualized spiritual outlook of their own, consonant with their own individual nature and need. But specialists of this kind are indispensable. The generality of men have neither the time nor the mental equipment to think out the larger problems of life without assistance, and the attempt on their part to do so leads to crudities and eccentricities of which one meets nowadays with many pathetic examples among those who have severed their connection with the traditional faiths, and have tried in their groping fashion to invent a metaphysic or a creed of their own.[101]
The preparation of the ethical teacher for his special task consists in making himself thoroughly acquainted with the great religious systems of the past, in which much that is of permanent spiritual value is enshrined.[102] He is to fit himself to revitalize what is vital, not to repristinate what is obsolete. There is required of him a first-hand knowledge of the great ethical systems, and of their philosophical backgrounds: furthermore acquaintance, so far as it is as yet accessible, with the moral history of mankind, as distinguished from the history of ethical thinking; in addition, he should intensively study the economic, social and political problems of the time from the ethical point of view, and the psychology both of individual and national character, so far as that fascinating and difficult subject has been opened up by competent writers. Apprenticeship in the social reform movements of the day, direct touch with the inner life of people, on its healthful as well as on its sick side, is also presupposed.
Since no single person can be adequately prepared in these various subjects, and since a variety of gifts and talents is demanded, it follows that the teaching function shall be exercised by a body or group of teachers, not by a single pastor at whose feet the congregation are supposed to sit. Some of the persons engaged in this work will excel as public speakers, others as writers, others as teachers of the young, others as leaders of vocational groups. But all these different functionaries must learn to work, not only in harmony, but in organic, reciprocal support, themselves illustrating in their group life the spiritual relation, the knowledge and the practice of which they are to carry out into the world. The guild or group idea must be applied to the religious teachers of the future.