THEOLOGY AND THE
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
A STUDY OF THE RELATIONS OF THE
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS TO THEOLOGY
BY
HENRY CHURCHILL KING
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY
IN OBERLIN COLLEGE
SECOND EDITION
HODDER & STOUGHTON
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1902
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped September, 1902
Reprinted February, 1904;
July, 1907; August, 1910; April, 1912.
To the Members of the
Harvard Summer School of Theology
OF THE YEAR 1901
IN RECOGNITION OF THEIR INTEREST IN THE LECTURES
THAT FORMED THE BASIS OF THIS BOOK
PREFACE
There is no attempt in this book to present a complete system of theology, though much of such a system is passed in review, but only to study a special phase of theological thinking. The precise theme of the book is the relations of the social consciousness to theology. This is the subject upon which the writer was asked to lecture at the Harvard Summer School of Theology of 1901; and the book has grown out of the lectures there given. In preparing the book for the press, however, the lecture form has been entirely abandoned, and considerable material added.
The importance of the theme seems to justify a somewhat thorough-going treatment. If one believes at all in the presence of God in history—and the Christian can have no doubt here—he must be profoundly interested in such a phenomenon as the steady growth of the social consciousness. Hardly any inner characteristic of our time has a stronger historical justification than that consciousness; and it has carried the reason and conscience of the men of this generation in rare degree. Having its own comparatively independent development, and yet making an ethical demand that is thoroughly Christian, it furnishes an almost ideal standpoint from which to review our theological statements, and, at the same time, a valuable test of their really Christian quality.