It may not be in vain for our theology to hear and receive with patience a sociologist's definition of the "social mind." Upon this point Professor Giddings says explicitly: "There is no reason to suppose that society is a great being which is conscious of itself through some mysterious process of thinking, separate and distinct from the thinking that goes on in the brains of individual men. At any rate, there is no possible way yet known to man of proving that there is any such supreme social consciousness." Nevertheless, he adds: "To the group of facts that may be described as the simultaneous like-mental-activity of two or more individuals in communication with one another, or as a concert of the emotions, thought, and will of two or more communicating individuals, we give the name, the social mind. This name, accordingly, should be regarded as meaning just this group of facts and nothing more. It does not mean that there is any other consciousness than that of individual minds. It does mean that individual minds act simultaneously in like ways and continually influence one another; and that certain mental products result from such combined mental action which could not result from the thinking of an individual who had no communication with fellow-beings."[79]
Just so far, it may well be supposed, and no farther may we go, in theology, in moral and spiritual inferences from the unity of the race. We are members one of another for good and for ill, one in the unity of the inevitable, mutual influence of like-minded persons.
II. DEEPENING THE SENSE OF SIN
And this conviction, in the second place, not only deepens our sense of the real unity of the race, it deepens also the sense of sin. And we can hardly separate here the influence of the third element of the social consciousness—the sense of the value and sacredness of the person. As against a rather wide-spread and often expressed contrary feeling, this deepening sense of sin may yet, it is believed, be truthfully maintained, so far as the social consciousness is really making itself felt. There are some disintegrating tendencies here, no doubt, like the tendency under some applications of evolution and evolutionary philosophy to turn all sin into a necessary stage in the evolution. But had not Drummond reason to say: "There is one theological word which has found its way lately into nearly all the newer and finer literature of our country. It is not only one of the words of the literary world at present, it is perhaps the word. Its reality, its certain influence, its universality, have at last been recognized, and in spite of its theological name have forced it into a place which nothing but its felt relation to the wider theology of human life could ever have earned for a religious word. That word, it need scarcely be said, is sin."[80]
Contrast this modern sense of sin with the almost total lack of it among even so gifted a people of the ancient world as the Greeks, and feel the significance of the phenomenon. But it is particularly to be noted that this sense of sin in literature is largely due to a keener social conscience. In fact, if the social consciousness is not a thoroughly fraudulent phenomenon, it could hardly be otherwise; for the social consciousness, in its very essence, is a sense of what is due a person; and sin is always ultimately against a person, failure to be what one ought to be in some personal relation, including finally all the relations of the kingdom of God. We simply cannot deepen the sense of the meaning and value of personal relations, and not deepen, at the same time, the sense of sin. The meaning of the Golden Rule, and so the sense of sin under it, deepens inevitably with every step into the meaning of the person. If the one great commandment is love, then the sin of which men need most of all to be convicted is lack of love.
The self-tormenting and fanciful sins of some of our devotional books very likely are less felt. But the very existence of the social consciousness seems to be proof that there never was so much good, honest, wholesome sense of real sin as to-day—such sin as Christ himself recognizes in his own judgment test.
It may be that, in temporary absorption in the human relations, the relation of all this to the All-Father may seem forgotten; even so, we may well remember Christ's "Ye did it unto me." But, in fact, we must go much farther and say, The social consciousness can only be true to itself finally, as it goes on to see its acts in the light, most of all, of that single, personal relation which underlies all others. We have already seen that the social consciousness requires for its own justification its grounding in the manifest trend of the living will of God. With this felt identification of the will of God with love for men, men can still less shake off easily the conviction of sin.
Probably, most religious men argue a diminishing sense of sin, because they feel that less is made of those consequences of sin which have been usually connected with the future life. There may be real danger here from shallow thinking; but here, too, the social consciousness has only to be true to itself to be saved from any shallow estimate of the consequences of sin here or hereafter. As the sin itself is always, finally, in personal relations, so the most terrible results of sin, in this life and in all lives, are in personal relations. What it costs the man himself in cutting him off from the relations in which all largeness of life consists, what it costs those who love him, what it costs God,—this alone is the true measure of sin. So judged, sin itself is feared as never before. Surely, Principal Fairbairn is right in saying: "And so even within Christendom, sin is never so little feared as when hell most dominates the imagination; it needs to be looked at as it affects God, to be understood and feared."[81] But it is the inevitable result of the social consciousness to bring us to the deepest conviction of all these personal relations, and so to the deepest conviction of sin.
Another consideration deserves attention. We have a growing conviction that our social ideal is personally realized only in Christ, and we have given unequaled attention to that life and have such knowledge of it, in its detailed applications, as no preceding generation has ever had. This simply means that we have both such a sense of our moral calling, and are face to face with such a living standard, as must steadily deepen in us a genuine sense of real sin, in our falling so far short of the spirit of Christ.
Theology needs, further, to make unmistakably clear, and to use the fact, that this mutual influence of men holds for good as well as for evil; that few greater lies have ever been told, than the insinuation that only evil is contagious, the good not. And this conviction of the contagion of the good, of mutual influence for good, concerns theology particularly in three ways, all of which may be regarded simply as illustrations or aspects of the one kingdom of God. We are members one of another (1) in attainment of character, (2) in personal relation to God, and (3) in confession of faith. And each of these forms of mutual influence will need careful attention.