I often wonder whether I have made it quite clear to you why it is possible to hold in high esteem personally the workers of Hull House and these other philanthropists, while detesting their views as formulated into a dogma. Just after I had sent off my last letter to you I met with something in a morning paper which will throw light on my position. In an address before Princeton Theological Seminary Dr. Lyman Abbott is reported to have used these words:
“To follow Christ is, first of all, to give yourself to the service of God by serving your fellow-men. This is more important than the question of the Trinity, of the atonement, or of creeds.”
Now the question of the Trinity or of the atonement may not seem essential to me. My faith has passed out of them—beyond them, I trust; and at least I do not call myself a Christian. But remember that Dr. Abbott is a teacher of Christianity and was on this occasion addressing students of theology. Certainly to him and to his audience these are, they must be, the first of all matters in the realm of ideas, whether accepted or rejected, and to speak slightingly of them is to show contempt for everything that transcends the material world. I know that Dr. Abbott, like some others, makes this service of our fellow-men to be a form of the service of God; but the slightest knowledge of the spirit of the day, indeed any intelligent reading of the words I have quoted, makes plain how entirely this “service of God” is a tag, a meaningless concession to an older form of speech. What seriously concerns our humanitarians is the service of mankind. Now am I not justified in saying that true religion would at least change the order of ideas and declare that to serve mankind is, first of all, to give one’s self to the service of God? This is not a quibbling of words, but a radical distinction. It is because I find in all so-called humanitarians this tendency to place humanity before God, material needs before ideals, that I call them, when all is said, the most insidious foes of true religion. Their very virtues make them more dangerous than outspoken materialists and scoffers. It is largely due to them and their creed that we have no art and no literature; for art and literature depend, at the last analysis, on a reaching out after ideas, on an attempt to transmute material things into spiritual values,—on faith, in a word. The humanitarians cry out against the materialism and the commercial spirit of the age. They do not perceive that the only remedy against this degeneracy is the renewal of faith in something greater and higher than our material needs. Let them preach for a while the blessings of poverty and other-worldliness. The attempt to instil benevolence or so-called human justice into society as the chief message of religion is merely to play into the hands of the enemy. Do you see why I call them the real followers of Simon Magus, who sought to buy the gift of God with a price? “Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter; for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.”
Consider how impossible it would have been in any age of genuine or real creativeness for a leading preacher of Christianity to have pronounced Dr. Abbott’s words, and you will see how far humanitarianism has fallen from faith in the spirit. I know that passages maybe quoted from the Bible which might seem to make Christ himself responsible for this new Simony; but Satan, too, may quote Scripture. Surely the whole tenor of Christ’s teaching is the strongest rebuke to this lowering of the spirit’s demands. He spent his life to bring men into communion with God, not to modify their worldly surroundings. Indeed, the world was to him a place of misery and iniquity, doomed to speedy destruction. He sought to save a remnant from the wrath of judgment as a brand is plucked from the fire, and he separated his disciples utterly from acquiescence in the comforts of this earth; they were to be in the world but not of it: “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” He taught poverty and not material progress. Those he praised were the poor and the meek and the unresisting and the persecuted—those who were cut off from the hopes of the world.
And now, dear girl, do you ask me to apply my preaching to my own case? Of a truth I have faith. I think it my true service to men that I should learn to love you greatly; and out of that love shall flow charity and justice and righteousness toward the world. Let it be my meed of service that men shall see the beauty of my homage.
XXV
PHILIP TO JESSICA
Dear Jessica:
The end has come even sooner than I looked for it. This afternoon, little Jack, our goblin boy, came to my office and I followed him back to the dismal court where his father lay expecting me. I had arranged that the poor wretch should be carried into a room where at least there was a bed and where a ray of clean sunshine might greet his soul when departing on the long journey; and there I found him lying perfectly quiet save for the twitching of his hands outstretched on the counterpane. I thought a glimmer of content lightened his dull eyes as I sat down beside him. I talked with him a little, but he seemed scarcely to heed my words. Then turning his head towards me he plucked from under his pillow an old thumb-worn copy of Virgil (so bedraggled and spotted that no second-hand book-seller would have looked at it) and thrust it out to me, intimating by a gesture that he would have me read to him. I asked him where I should begin, and he held up two fingers as if to indicate the second book of the Æneid; and there I began with the fall of Troy-town.