The Church and Modern Life

by Washington Gladden

"Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind."

In recent years the cry has been rising for a simpler life. It is a voice in the wilderness; in the din and clatter of our complex civilization it seems faint and far off, but it is making itself heard; it begins to be evident to all thoughtful people that we must somehow manage to get away from these entanglements of sense and live a freer life. In these artificialities and extravagances the soul is enfeebled and belittled, and the national vigor is lost. If we want to save our nation from decay we must learn to live a simpler life. And this change will not be wrought out by evolutionary processes; it means revolution rather; not by violence, we may trust, but certainly by choice, by effort, by struggle and resistance we shall turn back these tides of materialism, and lead the current of our national life into safer channels.

We are not going to strip our lives bare of beauty, or to consign ourselves to the meagreness of the anchoretic regimen; we shall have beautiful homes and abundant pleasures; but we must learn to make our spiritual interests supreme, and not suffer our thought to be blurred and our faith enfeebled and our love stifled in the atmosphere of modern materialism.

Such, then, are some of the phases of that great work of social redemption which now confronts us. Other aspects of the work, not less serious, might be presented, but these are some of the outstanding needs of modern society. Certainly it is a tremendous work. To reconcile hostile and suspicious races; to pacify industrial classes; to moralize business; to extirpate social vice; to purify politics; to simplify life;--all this is an enterprise so vast that we may well be appalled by the thought of undertaking it. But this, and nothing less than this, is the business which the church has in hand. For which of these tasks is she not responsible? From which of them would she dare ask to be excused? To what other agency can she think of intrusting any of them? Nay, this is her proper and peculiar work. For this is she sent into the world.

In truth, the one thing that the church needs to-day is to envisage this task,--to take in its tremendous dimensions; to comprehend the overpowering magnitude of the work that is expected of her. It is this revelation that will rouse her. Never before, in all her history, has such a disclosure of her responsibility been made to her. And the enormity of the obligation will set her thinking. It will dawn upon her after a little, that it is for just such tasks that she is called and commissioned; that the achievement of the impossible is the very thing that she is always expected to do; that the strength on which she leans is omnipotence; that she can do all things through Christ who strengthened her. She will see and understand that her progress is not made by seeking the line of least resistance: some such worldly wisdom as this has been her undoing. She will learn that it is only when she undertakes the greatest things that she finds her resources equal to her needs.

This is the heroic note of the new evangelism. The work of making a better world of this is a tremendous work, but it can be done. It can be done, because it is commanded. If there is a God in heaven, what ought to be done can be done. To doubt that is to deny him. And there is one way of doing it, and that is Christ's way. For all this manifold, herculean labor on which we have been looking, there is no wisdom comparable with his. He said that he came to save the world, and he is going to save it. He has waited long, but he knows how to wait. The day of his triumph is drawing near. This world is going to be redeemed. This social order, so full of strife and confusion, of cruelty and oppression, of misery and sorrow, is going to be transformed, and the love of Christ shed abroad in the hearts of men will transform it. We are not going to wait another thousand years for our millennium; we are going to have it here and now. This is the gospel of the new evangelism which it has taken the church a long time to learn, but which she is now getting ready to proclaim with demonstration of the spirit and with power.

We must not hide from ourselves the fact that some great changes will need to take place in her own life before she can give effect to this great evangel. She must heal her divisions, and fling away her encumbering traditions, and greatly deepen her faith in her Lord and Leader. Above all, she must simplify her own life. She cannot bear witness, as she must, against the deadly influences of our modern materialism, until she utterly clears herself of all complicity with it. This means, in many quarters, a radical change in her administration.

When the church has thus envisaged her task, and comprehended its magnitude, and when, with her heart on fire with the greatness and glory of it, she has laid aside every weight and the sins that so easily beset her, and has girded herself with the truth as it is in Jesus, and has set the silver trumpet to her lips, she will have a gospel to proclaim, to which the world will listen.

It will tell the world, as it has always told the world, of forgiveness and hope, of comfort and peace, of the help and guidance that comes to the troubled soul in believing in Jesus. It will speak, as it has always spoken, of the rest that remaineth, and of the great joys and companionships of the eternal future. But it will have something more than this to tell.

The kingdoms of this world--this will be its message--are becoming the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. It is not an event to be awaited, but to be realized, here and now. Nothing is needed but that men should believe the word of Jesus Christ and live by it. We do believe it, and we mean to show our faith by our works. We believe that by simply living together as Jesus has taught us to live, we can make this world so much better than it now is, that men shall think heaven has come down to earth. We believe that the race question and the labor question and the trust question and the liquor question and the graft question and all the other questions will find a speedy solution when men have learned to walk in the way of Jesus. And we call you to come and walk with us in that way.