The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New Age

by Salem Goldworth Bland

It may be that Latin Christianity and Teutonic combined do not represent the full splendor and power of Christianity, and that the drastic social changes which must be carried out in the next quarter of a century, or even in a briefer period, call for the re-inforcement of another race and another sort of Christianity.

The distinctive Greek Christianity of the first five or six centuries made its contribution and passed away with the vanishing of the original and pure Hellenic race. But there is a Greek Christianity which has found a new lease of life and a new home in that race which has largely replaced the Greek in his own home and has diffused itself over most of eastern Europe, the Slavonic. There is a great Christianity which is still called Greek, but which is rather Slavonic Christianity, and which might more narrowly and specifically be called Russian Christianity, after that people who constitute the largest section of Greek Christianity and promise to be the most influential.

It may well be that the Great Christianity which the world so desperately needs will be neither Latin nor Teutonic Christianity nor both in combination, but a blend of Latin and Teutonic and American and Russian Christianity, and it does not seem unlikely that the contribution of the last of the four may be the most precious and vital of them all. Perhaps in the part Russia is destined to play in the next fifty years will be found the most striking example in all history of how it is God's way to choose the foolish things of the world that He may put to shame them that are wise; and the weak things of the world that He may put to shame the things that are strong; and the base things of the world and the things that are despised that He may bring to nought the things that are.

The Slav has been the Cinderella of the European sisterhood. Perhaps we might say, the ugly duckling. From a military point of view he has been no match for the Teuton. In the long struggle of the last thousand years between the Teuton and the Slav, the Teuton has nearly always showed himself the stronger. For centuries he has ruled over the Slav. In the industrial arts, in all that pertains to the utilization of natural resources for the material well-being of men, in agriculture and mining and manufacturing and trading, the Slav has been immeasurably more backward.

Mastered and oppressed by the Teuton on the West, subjugated for centuries by the Tartar on the East, the Slav has remained until yesterday a people forgotten and despised, shrouded in poverty, ignorance, mystery. And now out of that twilight he has stepped, ignorant, fanatical, and in his ignorance or superstition capable of ferocity, yet essentially the most child-like, the most religious, the most brotherly, the most idealistic of European peoples. What other people call their country, what the Russian calls his--holy Russia?

The peoples of the West, especially the Teutonic or the Anglo-Saxon, are weak where they are strong. It is their practicalness that has given them their high place; it is their practicalness which keeps them from the highest. It is hard for them to believe in a Holy City. If they do believe in it, they do not care to seek it till they are sure of a practicable road. But the Slav instinctively believes in a Holy City, and only needs to be told where it is to be found to set out forthwith over rivers, bogs, and rugged mountain ranges.

And it is just these things the Western world needs in this crisis--the spirit of the little child, the spirit of brotherhood, the sense of the pre-eminence of religion, the idealism that will risk everything for a dream.

The first movements of the awakened Russian may be unsteady. His new found freedom may act on him with intoxicating, almost deranging power. But they know little of the real Russian soul who dread the liberation of that long-prisoned soul and its free play on the Western world.

In the material ground-work of our civilization, its farming, its mining, its building of steamships, of railroads, of modern cities, the Teutonic races have taken the lead. They have builded the house. Now, it may be, when the finer problems arise of living in the home in harmony and helpfulness and in a high and holy spirit, it is the Slav who, in his turn, will take the lead. The Greek, the Italian, the Frank, the Spaniard, the Anglo-Saxon have successively held the premier place. The day of the Slav may now be dawning.

Nor yet is our forecast of the Great Christianity complete. It may be that there awaits us, though in a more distant future, a still more striking illustration of how God chooses for honor the despised things of the world. Of all races the most despised, the most oppressed, has been the African, and that not for generations or centuries but for millenniums. Europe, Asia, and America have all made Africa their servant. The dark Continent stands pre-eminent in suffering and in service. But it is in suffering and in service that He, too, the Coming King, has been pre-eminent. One reason why Africa has been the hunting ground of the slaver from immemorial times is because in the African nature immemorially and inextinguishably is the readiness to serve. All other races love to rule; some of them, like the Latin and the Teutonic, have been intensely proud, greedy of power, and averse from service. The African race is the one race which has by nature the spirit of Him who came not to be ministered unto but to minister. The African race, too, is of all races the most child-like, the most care-free, the one most ready to delight in simple things and the things of to-day. The white races, in comparison, are old, vigilant, suspicious, anxious, care-worn. There is no question which, in these respects, is nearest the ideal of Jesus. The greedy, ambitious spirit of the Western nations, never contented, their delight in to-day always poisoned by the fear or the fascination of to-morrow, is far from the spirit of Jesus. It may be that the white man will yet have to sit at the feet of the black, and that, when Christ is glorified, it will be that race that has, beyond all other races, trodden Christ's path of suffering and service which, beyond all others, will be glorified with Him.