The fact that the social consciousness tends to emphasize in religion the concretely historically Christian, has been so inevitably involved in the preceding discussions, that it can be treated very briefly.
I. THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS NEEDS HISTORICAL JUSTIFICATION
The justification of the social consciousness, we have seen,[53] must be preëminently from history. Neither nature nor speculation can satisfy it. It needs to be able to believe in a living God who is in living relation to living men. It needs just such a justification as historical Christianity, and only historical Christianity, can give; it needs the assurance of an objective divine will in the world, definitely working in the line of its own ideals. It needs also to be able to give such definite content to the thought of God as shall be able to satisfy its own strong insistence upon the rational and the ethical as historical.
II. CHRISTIANITY'S RESPONSE TO THIS NEED
If religion is to be a reality to the social consciousness, then, there must be a real revelation of a real God in the real world, in actual human history, not an imaginary God, nor a dream God, nor a God of mystic contemplation. This discernment of God in the real world, in actual history, is the glory even of the Old Testament; and it came, as we have seen, along the line of the social consciousness. And it is such a real revelation of the real God that Christianity finds preëminently in Christ. It can say to the social consciousness: Make no effort to believe, but simply put yourself in the presence of a concrete, definite, actual, historical fact, with its perennial ethical appeal; put yourself in the presence of Christ—the greatest and realest of the facts of history,—and let that fact make its own legitimate impression, work its own natural work; that fact alone, of all the facts of history, gives you full and ample warrant for your own being.
If this be true, it can hardly be doubted that, so far as the social consciousness understands itself and influences religion at all, it will tend to emphasize, not to underestimate, the concretely, historically Christian.
The natural influence of the social consciousness upon religion, then, may be said to be fourfold: it tends to draw away from the falsely mystical; it tends to emphasize the personal in religion, and so to keep the truly mystical; it tends to emphasize the ethical in religion; and it needs the concretely, historically Christian.
[53] Cf above, pp. 59 ff.