It can hardly help affecting the thought of election. Election will, indeed, be thought of as qualified by the character of the chosen; for even Paul's argument in Romans clearly recognizes this, and is, in fact, itself a distinct argument against a narrow doctrine of election, as others have recognized.[57] But, beyond this, the conviction of the like-mindedness of men will especially view election as a choice for service. The divine method of election must be in harmony with Christ's fundamental principle of his kingdom, and with the developing social consciousness: "Whosoever shall be first among you, shall be servant of all."[58] It is no accident that this thought of election as choice for preëminent service, which is indeed soundly biblical, has come into special prominence in these days of the social consciousness. The same change is passing over our view of the "elect," as of the "privileged" and "governing" classes. We shall not return to the older feeling of prime favorites of God, and the problem of evil will find herein a certain alleviation. We shall feel increasingly that each race and each individual have their calling and have their compensating advantages; and that, when it comes down to the final test of opportunity, the differences in opportunity between individuals are far less than they seem; for to each one is given the possibility of the largest service any man can render—the possibility of touching closely with the very spirit of his life a few other lives. "There are compensations," as James says, "and no outward changes of condition in life can keep the nightingale of its eternal meaning from singing in all sorts of different men's hearts."[59]
II. THE GREAT UNIVERSAL QUALITIES AND INTERESTS,
THE MOST VALUABLE
Moreover, since equality of need among men,[60] implies, as we have seen, a common capacity—even if in varying degrees—of entering into the most fundamental interests of life, this belief in the essential likeness of men is likely to carry with it that most wholesome conviction for theology, that the great universal qualities and interests are the most valuable. Not that which distinguishes us from one another, but that which we have in common is most valuable. As Howells tells the boys in his A Boy's Town, "the first thing you have to learn here below, is that in essentials you are just like every one else, and that you are different from others only in what is not so much worth while."[61] This consideration is no small help in facing that most difficult problem for any ideal view of the world—the problem of evil.
In God's world, we feel that the most common things ought to be the best. And this growing conviction of the social consciousness comes in to confirm our faith. The constant and simple insistence of Christ on receptivity as a fundamental quality in his kingdom is built, in fact, on an optimistic faith in the value of the common things.
It is interesting to notice the varied confirmations of the value of the common. How often we have to feel that the deepest discussions come out with only deeper insight into the great common truths; and, on the other hand, that in stilted philosophizing, what seems at first sight a great discovery, proves only a perversely obscure way of putting a common truth.
It is the very mission of genius—of the poet in the larger sense, we are coming to feel, to bring out the value of the common. His distinctive mark is that he has kept a fresh sense for the great common experiences of life. So Kipling prays:
"It is enough that through Thy grace I saw naught common on Thy earth. Take not that vision from my ken."
So, the greatest in art, Hegel contends, has a universal appeal.
It is a wholesome and heartening conviction, I say, to bring into theology, that the really best things are common, accessible to all, actually shared in, to an extent beyond that which our superficial vision seems to show. For, after all, this conviction of the social consciousness is only bringing home to us, in a new and appreciable way, Christ's own optimism and his own faith in the love of the Father. It is only another illustration of Fairbairn's principle of the Christian consciousness becoming more Christian, and so better able to understand and interpret Christ.
And it leads us back by this route of the social consciousness, to emphasize in life, and in our theological thinking upon the conditions of entering the kingdom of God, Christ's own insistence upon the two universally human characteristics found in every child—susceptibility and trust, which, voluntarily cherished, become teachableness and belief in love. If God is Father indeed, and we are intended to come to our best in association with him, these qualities must be the most fundamental ones. And they imply no lack of virility, either, for the highest self-assertion, as Professor Everett pointed out in his criticism of Nietzsche, is in complete self-surrender to such a will as God's. "When Jesus said, 'He that loseth his life shall save it,' he said in effect—The self-surrender to which I call you is the truest self-assertion. We find thus in the teachings of Christianity a summons to strength far greater than that implied by the self-assertion which is most characteristic of the teachings of Nietzsche, because it is the assertion of a larger self."[62]