"The situation is repeated on a vaster scale to-day. If Jesus stood to-day amid our modern life, with that outlook on the condition of all humanity which observation and travel and the press would spread before him, and with the same heart of humanity beating in him, he would create a new apostolate to meet the new needs in a new harvest time of history.
"To any one who knows the sluggishness of humanity to good, the impregnable intrenchments of vested wrongs, and the long reaches of time needed from one milestone of progress to the next, the task of setting up a Christian social order in this modern world of ours seems like a fair and futile dream. Yet, in fact, it is not one tithe as hopeless as when Jesus set out to do it. When he told his disciples, 'Ye are the salt of the earth; ye are the light of the world,' he expressed the consciousness of a great historic mission to the whole of humanity. Yet it was a Nazarene carpenter speaking to a group of Nazarene peasants and fishermen. Under the circumstances at that time it was an utterance of the most daring faith,--faith in himself, faith in them, faith in what he was putting into them, faith in faith. Jesus failed and was crucified, first his body by his enemies and then his spirit by his friends; but that failure was such an amazing success that to-day it takes an effort on our part to realize that it required any faith on his part to inaugurate the kingdom of God and to send out his apostolate.
"To-day, as Jesus looks out upon humanity, his spirit must leap to see the souls responsive to his call. They are sown broadcast through humanity, legions of them. The harvest field is no longer deserted. All about us we hear the clang of the whetstone and the rush of the blades through the grain and the shout of the reapers. With all our faults and our slothfulness, we modern men in many ways are more on a level with the mind of Jesus than any generation that has gone before. If that first apostolate was able to remove mountains by faith, such an apostolate as Christ could now summon might change the face of the earth."[28]
The time is ripe for such an apostolate. The old type of evangelism has plainly had its day. Strenuous efforts are put forth to revive it, but their success is meagre. It is easy by expending much money in advertising, by organizing a great choir, and employing the services of gifted and earnest men, to draw large congregations; but the great mass of those who attend these services are church members,--the outside multitude is scarcely, touched by them. Those who are gathered into the church in these meetings are mainly children from the Sunday schools. There may be evangelists who, by an extravagant and grotesque sensationalism, contrive to get the attention of the non-churchgoers, and who are able to report considerable additions to the churches; but the permanence of these gains is not yet shown, and we have no means of enumerating the thousands who, by such clownish exhibitions, are driven in disgust from the churches.
The failure of the modern evangelism is not conjectural: the year-books show it. The growth of membership in several of our leading denominations has either ceased or is greatly retarded; the Sunday schools and the young people's societies report decreasing numbers; the benevolent contributions are either waning, or increasing at a rate far less than that of the growth of wealth in the membership. It is idle to blink these conditions; we must face them and find out what they mean. This slackening and shrinkage is not a fact of long standing; it represents only the tendencies of the past twenty years.
We hear rather frantic demands for a return to the old methods of evangelism, but that is a foolish cry:--
"The mill will never grind
With the water that is past."
The old appeal, which fixed attention upon the interest of the individual, has lost its power. It is not possible to stir the average human being of this generation, as the average human being of fifty years ago was stirred, by pictures of the terrors of hell and the felicities of heaven. These conceptions have far less influence over human lives than once they had,--less, doubtless, than they ought to have; for there are realities under these symbols which we cannot afford to ignore. But the fundamental defect of that old appeal was the emphasis which it placed upon self-interest. "Look out for yourself!" was its constant admonition. "Think of the perils that threaten, of the blisses that invite! Do not risk the pain; do not miss the blessedness!" To-day this does not seem a wholly worthy motive. At any rate, it is below the highest. Men feel that the religion of Christ has a larger meaning than this. A presentation of the gospel which makes the welfare of the individual central does not grip the conscience and arouse the emotions as once it did. For the conception of human welfare as social rather than individual has become common; that "great fund of altruistic feeling," which, as Mr. Benjamin Kidd tells us, is the motive power of all our social reforms, is constantly stirring in human hearts; and although there are few whose lives are wholly ruled by this motive, there are fewer still who do not recognize it as the commanding motive; and a religious appeal which is based upon considerations essentially egoistic does not, therefore, awaken any large response in human hearts.
If the church wishes to regain her hold upon the people, she must learn to speak to the highest that is in them. A man's religion must consecrate his ideals. A religion which invites him to live on a lower plane than the highest on which his thought travels cannot win his respect. And therefore the new evangelism must learn to find its motive not in self-love, no matter how refined, but in the love that identifies the self with the neighbor. It must bring home to the individual the truth which he already dimly knows, that his personal redemption is bound up with the redemption of the society to which he belongs; that he cannot be saved except as he becomes a savior of others; nay, that the one central sin from which he needs to be saved is indifference to the welfare of others, and a willingness to prosper at their expense.
The time has come for the church to take an entirely new attitude in offering men the gospel. It has been too well content with pressing the personal advantages of religion, with trying to lure them into discipleship with baits addressed to their selfishness. It has been inventing attractions of all sorts,--fine buildings, sumptuous upholstery and decorations, artistic music, brilliant oratory; it has thought it possible to enlist men by pleasing their tastes and gratifying their sensibilities. So far has this gone that the average churchgoer consciously justifies his presence in church or his absence from it on the ground of pleasure. If it pleases him enough, he goes; if not, he reads the Sunday paper or goes out with his automobile. It is a simple question of enjoyment.