Our sense of obligation deepens with all this deepening of the value of men, and our conscience becomes only a true response to God's own life and character—in no mere figurative sense the voice of God in us.

And our love becomes simply entering a little way into God's own love, a sharing more and more in his life.

And when one has once seen the social consciousness so transfigured in the light of Christ's revelation, he must believe that then, for the first time, he has seen the social consciousness at its highest, and that it is impossible for him to go back to the lower ideal. If the social consciousness is not an illusion, Christ's thought of God and of the life with God ought to be true; and if the world is an honest world, it is true. It is not only true that Christ has a social teaching, but that the social consciousness absolutely requires Christ's teaching for its own final justification. The Christian truth is so great that it alone can give the social consciousness its fullest meaning, alone can enable it to understand itself, and alone can give it adequate motive and power; for, in Keim's words, "to-day, to-morrow, and forever we can know nothing better than that God is our Father, and that the Father is the rest of our souls."[28]

[18] James, Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 367, 368.
[19] The Philosophical Review, May, 1896, p. 228.
[20] Psychology, Briefer Course, p. 461.
[21] Microcosmus, Vol. II, p. 599.
[22] See King, Reconstruction in Theology, pp. 54, 84, 102.
[23] Theory of Thought and Knowledge, pp. 91, 111.
[24] Ethics and Revelation, pp. 50, 243, 244.
[25] Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 8, 9, 313.
[26] Searchings in the Silence, p. 46.
[27] Quoted by Orr, The Christian View of God and the World, pp. 160, 72.
[28] Quoted by Bruce, The Kingdom of God, p. 157.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
UPON THE CONCEPTION OF RELIGION

INTRODUCTION

From the question of the support which Christian faith and doctrine give to the social consciousness, we turn now to the second part of our inquiry: How does this growing social consciousness, not by any means always consciously religious, naturally react upon and affect our conceptions of religion and of theological doctrines?

In this inquiry, we cannot always be sure historically of the exact connection, and, for our present purpose, this is not of prime importance. But we can see, for example, in this second division of our theme, the relations of religion and the social consciousness, and how religion must be conceived if the social consciousness is fully warranted; and this is the main question.

If the definition of theology which has been suggested be adopted—the thoughtful and unified expression of what religion means to us—then it is obvious that any change in conception or emphasis in religion will necessarily affect theological statement. Our inquiry as to the influence of the social consciousness, therefore, naturally begins with religion.