[2] Quoted in the Hibbert Journal, Vol. III, January 1905, p. 296.
[3] Psalm 19:1.
[4] Ernst Haeckel: The Wonders of Life, p. 413.
[5] Arthur Schopenhauer: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Zweiter Band, Kapital 46, Von der Nichtigkeit und dem Leiden des Lebens, p. 669.
LECTURE III
THE GOSPEL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS
I
Our last lecture started with the proposition that the dominant influence in the intellectual and practical activity of the modern age is man's scientific mastery over life. This present lecture considers one of the consequences of this primary fact: namely, the humanitarian desire to take advantage of this scientific control of life so to change social conditions that mankind may be relieved from crushing handicaps which now oppress it. For the growth of scientific knowledge and control has been coincident with a growth of humanitarian sentiment. This movement for human relief and social reform, in the midst of which we live, is one of the chief influences of our time. It has claimed the allegiance of many of the noblest folk among us. Its idealism, its call to sacrifice, the concreteness of the tasks which it undertakes and of the gains which it achieves, have attracted alike the fine spirits and the practical abilities of our generation. What attitude shall the Christian Church take toward this challenging endeavour to save society? How shall she regard this passionate belief in the possibility of social betterment and this enthusiastic determination to achieve it? The question is one of crucial importance and the Church is far from united on its answer. Some Christians claim the whole movement as the child of the Church, born of her spirit and expressing her central purpose; others disclaim the whole movement as evil and teach that the world must grow increasingly worse until some divine cataclysm shall bring its hopeless corruption to an end; others treat the movement as useful but of minor import, while they try to save men by belief in dogmatic creeds or by carefully engineered emotional experiences. Meanwhile, no words can exaggerate the fidelity, the vigour, the hopefulness, and the elevated spirit with which many of our best young men and women throw themselves into this campaign for better conditions of living. Surely, the intelligent portion of the Church would better think as clearly as possible about a matter of such crucial import.
At first sight, the devotee of social Christianity is inclined impatiently to brush aside as mere ignorant bigotry on the Church's part all cautious suspicion of the social movement. But there is one real difficulty which the thoughtful Christian must perceive when he compares the characteristic approach to the human problem made by the social campaign, on the one side, and by religion, on the other. Much of the modern social movement seems to proceed upon the supposition that we can save mankind by the manipulation of outward circumstance. There are societies to change everything that can be changed and, because the most obvious and easy subjects of transformation are the external arrangements of human life, men set themselves first and chiefly to change those. We are always trying to improve the play by shifting the scenery. But no person of insight ever believed that the manipulation of circumstance alone can solve man's problems. Said Emerson, "No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character." Said Herbert Spencer, "No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts." Said James Anthony Froude, "Human improvement is from within outwards." Said Carlyle, "Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of." Said Mrs. Browning:
"It takes a soul,
To move a body: it takes a high-souled man
To move the masses even to a cleaner stye:
….. Ah, your Fouriers failed,
Because not poets enough to understand
That life develops from within."