The Church and Modern Life

by Washington Gladden

The response of those invited shows the nature of the invitation. It indicates that the church has been putting a great deal of emphasis on the attractions which it has to offer. We can hardly imagine such replies to be made by those who were invited to listen to the preaching of Jesus or his apostles. They did not suppose that it was a question of entertainment that they were considering. They knew that it was a summons to service and sacrifice. That, beyond all doubt, was the nature of the appeal of the church in those earliest centuries, when it was marching over Asia and Europe, conquering and to conquer. It was not baiting men with soft cushions and pictured windows, with coddlings and comfits; it was calling them to hardship and warfare, to ignominy and ostracism; the words of the Master to which it gave emphasis were not mere metaphors: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

The call of the cross has never failed. The power of God and the wisdom of God are in it. And it is time for the church to take up this heroic note and sound it forth with new power. This is the new evangelism for which the world is waiting. It is not a call to be "carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease;" it is not an invitation to the sentimental soul to "sit and sing herself away to everlasting bliss;" it is the clarion of battle; it is the challenge to an enterprise which means struggle and suffering and self-denial.

The redemption of society is the objective of the new evangelism. How vast an undertaking this is was indicated in the last chapter. Let us look at it a little more in detail. How much does it signify, here and now, in the United States of America?

It means, first, the reconciliation of races. One thing that must be done is to take this chaotic mass of dissimilar, discordant, suspicious, antipathetic racial elements and blend them into unity and brotherhood. The first Christians had a task of this nature on their hands; they had to bring together in one fellowship Jews and Gentiles. But that was a pastime compared with the herculean labor intrusted to us,--the bringing together of whites and blacks, of Caucasians and Mongolians, of scores of groups divided by the barriers of language, of religion, of custom, and fusing them into one nationality. No task of the same dimensions was ever undertaken by any people; but this is ours, and we must perform it. It is the task of the nation; but the church of Jesus Christ is charged with the business of furnishing the sentiments and ideas by which alone it may be accomplished.

It means, secondly, the pacification of industry. The contending hosts of capital and labor must be brought together, and constrained to cease from their warfare and become friends and coöperators. It is absurd to suppose that the war of the industrial classes can continue to be waged, as at present, each seeking to overpower the other. Such a condition of things is simply irrational. All warfare is illogical and unnatural. Human beings are not made to live together on any such terms. They are made to be friends and helpers of one another. The elimination of war is the next step in industrial evolution. And it is the business of the church of Jesus Christ to speak the reconciling word. She has the word to speak, and when she utters it with authority it will be heard.

It means, thirdly, the moralization of business. The trouble with business is simply covetousness. The insatiable greed of gain is the source of all the dishonesties, the oppressions, the spoliations, the trickeries, the frauds, the adulterations, the cutthroat competitions, the financial piracies, the swindling schemes,--all the abuses and mischiefs which infest the world of commerce and finance. Against all these forms of evil the church must bear her testimony; but the root from which they all grow is the love of money, and it is this central and seminal sin of modern civilization that the church must assail with all the weapons of the spiritual warfare. "Covetousness is idolatry"--so St. Paul testifies; and a grosser or more debasing idolatry has never appeared on earth than the worship of material gain. Unless the bonds of that superstition can be broken, the race must sink into degradation. It is the one deadly enemy of mankind. And the church of Jesus Christ is called to lead in the battle with this foe. Against no other social evil was the testimony of Jesus so trenchant and uncompromising. Nothing more clearly evinces his unerring vision of moral realities than his judgment upon this encroaching passion. In his day it was an evil almost negligible compared with what it is to-day. It was because he foresaw the conditions which prevail to-day that his words were so hot against the rule of Mammon. The church is face to face with the danger which he discerned, and she must meet it in his spirit and with the energy of his passion. To make men see the hatefulness and loathsomeness of this greed of gain is the first duty of the church. When that is accomplished the worst evils of the business realm will disappear.

It means, fourthly, the extirpation of social vice. When covetousness is conquered, the procuring cause of much of this kind of evil will be cut up by the roots. The greed of gain is the motive which breeds and propagates social vice. But there are animal propensities to which these incitements make their appeal; and some way must be found of quickening the nobler affections, so that the spirit shall rule the flesh and not be in bondage to it. To fill the thoughts and wishes of men with something better worth while than the joys of animalism is the radical remedy for these degradations. And the church ought to be able to supply this remedy.

The redemption of society means, in the fifth place, the purification of politics. The dethronement of Mammon will go a long way toward this also; most of the corruptions of our political life spring from the love of money. Graft is the first-born of covetousness. But the love of power also plays a part in the debauchery of citizenship; and the central sin of using men as means to our ends is exhibited here on a stupendous scale. This is the vocation of the boss and the briber and the political machinist; and a deadlier way of destroying manhood it would be hard to find. It is not only the interest of other individuals, but the interest of the whole community that the corrupt politician sacrifices upon the altar of cupidity or ambition; and when a man has learned to turn the one great privilege of service and sacrifice which citizenship offers into an opportunity of private gain, he has sunk about as low as man can go. What more urgent task has the church upon her hands than that of making men see the treachery and infamy of this kind of conduct? And unless men can be made to see it and feel it, what hope is there for free government? Can anybody imagine that democracy can long endure if the ruling motive of the citizen in his relation to the commonwealth is a purpose to get as much out of it as he can and give it as little as he can? All political reforms which leave the citizen in this state of mind are futile. There is no salvation for a democracy which does not change the direction of the motive in the heart of the individual citizen. And this is the business of the church. Without this, social redemption is impossible, and there is no other agency which even proposes to accomplish this.

And, finally, the redemption of society means the simplification of life. Here, perhaps, we strike more nearly than anywhere else at the heart of the whole problem. The bottom trouble of the world in which we live is the enormous over-multiplication of our wants. In the multitude of ministrations to our senses, the life of the spirit is overlaid and smothered. Jesus said that a man's life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses; it is this elementary truth which the world has ceased to believe. For the most part our life is in our things; our happiness depends on them; our desires do not often rise above them.

The complexity, the artificiality, the profusion of our belongings absorbs the larger part of our interest. The energies of invention are mainly directed to the creation of new wants. As the resources of the earth are developed, life takes on an accumulating burden of cares and conventions and superfluities. We read, with a wonder which is a thinly disguised admiration, the stories of the extravagances of the people of the whirlpool, but most of us are jogging along after them, wishing that we could get into the swim ourselves. Our houses are cluttered with adornments; our social functions are spending matches; our feasts invite to satiation; our funerals are exhibitions of extravagance. This thing has been growing by leaps and bounds, and the time has come when we are fairly swamped by the abundance of the things which we possess. Nay, it can hardly be said that we possess this abundance; it possesses us:--