“We have discovered that religion as a purely emotional experience may have no religion in it at all, though kindled by the emotional stimuli that religion commands. There is an emotional element in religion, of course, deep, powerful, pervasive; and when you give way to it, enveloping your whole being as in an atmosphere of flame. Those tender feelings which enter so largely into the deeper currents of our domestic and social life—love, pity, joy, hope, the striking of the glad hand, comradeship locking arms under the same great banner to do deeds of heroism in the same great cause—religion calls them all up, and fires them all with a conquering zeal.
“But, manifestly, the zeal may burn out before the deeds of heroism have been begun. We have learned to know that the same emotional fires may be kindled when religion is not the theme. A great crowd, an orator of fluent and persuasive speech, music filling the air with the imaginary shouts of an “Io triumphe” come to stay—it matters very little what may be the occasion that has called these people together, the emotional part of their campaign has been achieved. But, whether in religion or in politics, it would be stupidly unwise to conclude that the excitement itself was the end to be attained—emotion being set down as the deed itself; or, in some way, an assured equivalent of the deed.
“In all such cases fanaticism is the result, and fanaticism has never been an aid, but always, in the long run, an embarrassment to any great cause. Fanaticism stops with the excitement—absurdly confounds excitement with the cause to be maintained.
“In religion, especially, this unhappy 'transvaluation of value' is likely to be made. For long ages it has been systematically taught that the emotional element in religion either summed it all up or was an unmistakable token that, then and there, it had been all summed up for us in the exchequer of the skies. The great transaction had passed, the thing was done when your religious ecstasy swelled to the highest, and you found yourself, as you confidently believed, borne on its billows to the bosom of God.”
Now, we all recognize this emotional element only as a helpful factor in religion, but not a permanent element. I have seen a few men accept Christ without any emotion whatever. I remember a blue-eyed, fair complexioned man saying, “I have no especial emotion. I am truly sorry for my sins. I confess them now and here, and I claim 1 John 1:9, 'If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' I ask God to cleanse me. I need it and accept it, because He has said so.” Tracy lived all right as long as we knew of him. If converts made in evangelistic meetings were taken into careful Bible school, they would develop into useful Christians, and there would be no backsliding.
Now, religion, in the sense in which we use it, is a “building” process, not “inflation,” as the aeronaut would inflate his balloon. We all know the class of religionists who hop, jump and shout in religious meetings; they are so busy they do not see the basket as it passes; they give no money, they do nothing that the world would call religious except these physical manifestations. They are intolerant to all who do not believe as they do, they are simply to be tolerated and petted along as deficients who mean well but cannot be counted as part of the great organized force of believers which God is using to bring about the kingdom of God until by training and experience they can be used among their own class. But, among these, every now and then there comes a man of good mentality but without education, whom God can use. His church has no room for him, yet he has the same orders that Jesus gave to the eleven, “Go ye and preach the gospel to every nation,” and we find him preaching on the side streets, later a hall or church is hired, and we have a new sect.
You remember Jane Addams tells of the young college graduate who had taken a course in a Bible training school and in a school of philanthropy, who, on her return home, asked the rector for religious work, and he replied, “You might arrange the flowers on the pulpit each Sunday.” Think of that to a soul aflame with God!
Macaulay touches off this kind of blindness in his essay on “Ranke's History of the Popes,” in this way: “Far different is the policy of Rome. The ignorant enthusiasts whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and, whatever the learned and polite may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion; she bids him nurse his beard, covers him with a gown and hood of coarse dark stuff, ties a rope around his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her nothing. He takes not a ducat away from the revenues of her beneficed clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual character and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches not exactly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of the uneducated hearers, and all his influence is employed to strengthen the church of which he is a minister. To that Church he becomes as strongly attached as any of the cardinals, whose scarlet carriages and liveries crowd the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of dissent. Even for female agencies there is a place in her system for devout women; she assigns them spiritual functions, dignities and magistracies.”
How different from these enthusiasts who have not entered a church for years; their stock in trade is largely vituperation of the churches until they are trained into a better understanding of relative social service. The Church is doing the real Christian work of the world in keeping people from going wrong. Missions and their branches only hope to catch the driftwood of humanity before it floats out into the great ocean of eternity.
But every church in the land should have an investment in money or personal representatives in the nearest city rescue mission. The young people of the churches should be the choirs of the missions. They will get inspiration as to how to do work for God in securing the conversion of every soul committed to their care in the church and community work.