Nothing has happened in the progress o£ research, or in the field of discovery, which gives legitimate ground for a collapse of faith in the central truths of Christianity. On the contrary, through what has been discovered and what has been demonstrated, a clearer basis for spiritual religion is emerging. W. J. Locke in one of his novels has the hero of it say: “I was going about in a state of suspended spiritual animation.” That condition of “suspended spiritual animation” has become a familiar feature of modem life, but the “suspense” is not due to a breakdown of the foundations on which faith is builded. They still abide. The loss of faith has come largely from confusions of thought and perplexities of mind in the face of new and crowding issues. The crossroads have multiplied, the guideboards are missing, and it is easy to lose the sure track. There would come a revival of “spiritual animation” if once more a clear light were thrown on the path of the sincere wayfarer.
What the sincere soul most needs is a fresh reinterpretation of the central truths of Christianity in the light of all that is now known, and especially has the [ p. 202 ] [ p. 203 ] hour struck for a practical application of these truths to the entire range and scope of human life and social relations. In his farewell charge to the Pilgrim Fathers, as they were leaving for the new world, John Robinson called upon them to be ready to receive and welcome any new light that might break forth to them.
Old orders change, yielding place to new, and we must learn that God fulfills Himself in many ways, not in one unvarying way. The great pastor of the Pilgrim flock in Leyden expected the new light to break forth through ordained and sacred channels. But sometimes new light comes through channels that have not been marked out as sacred and which seem strangely secular. “The marriage of the East and West,” which unconsciously was accomplished by Alexander the Great, appears now to have been an essential preparation for the spread of Christianity. The emergence of the pagan races which overran and overthrew the Roman Empire in the fifth century proved to be a highway for the wider dissemination of Christian faith. We cannot divide truth into “sacred” and “secular” compartments. Clement of Alexandria, when Christianity was still young, said that “Truth by whomever spoken is from God,” and we have slowly become ready for that brave conclusion. The historians who construct and verify and the scientific seekers who discover and demonstrate, belong among the prophets, for they can become and do become channels for new light to break forth through.
[ p. 204 ]
The defenders of the faith have long enough — in fact too long — thought of Christian truth as a fixed and finished deposit, entrenched behind ancient battlements to be guarded at all costs, and they have been mmin g their guns of defense in many instances against those who were engaged in demonstrating the very truths that are essential to the life and power of Christianity to-day. The prophet Jeremiah, if he were here, would say again to-day: “Take away the battlements, they are not of the Lord.”
If the stream of life, which burst forth in Galilee and Judea nearly two thousand years ago, is to flow on with enriched volume, it must not be a piped and exclusive stream, it must accumulate and carry forward every contribution that is essential to its vital and healing work in the world of the twentieth century. We must hold our spiritual truth in ways that are consonant with all truth that is, or that can be, verified and established. God is the God of order, not of confusion. He is the God of the universe; not alone of some tiny area over which our little banners of private truth float. Fear and timidity do not keep house with the faith that is to overcome the world. The major tasks of Christianity, however, will not all be in the field of thought; they will be in the sphere of life and action. The Christian prophets of the new time will come to grips not with pagan hordes out of northern forests, but with cramping methods of education, with the dis- [ p. 205 ] integration o£ home life, with the weakened significance of the marriage relationship, with wasteful preparation for wars, with the overcrowding of city populations, with corruption and entrenched evils, with forms of injustice under which multitudes hopelessly struggle, in a word, with situations involved in die type and structure of the present industrialized and militant civilization.
The group of persons who have labored together on this Preface, which is literally a Preface, propose to go on with their labors in the application of Christ’s way of life and of Christian ideals to these and other concrete and specific tasks which confront the world today. “We want to add,” as a wise man has recently said, “not more years to life, but more life to years.” We who are working at these tasks have an unconquered faith in the coming expansion of Christian life and truth and in the revitalization of human society. In any case, the new life and power will come, as they always have come, through the recovery of fresh insight, through the reception of spiritual energies and through the practice and transmission of self-giving love, rather than by the proclamation of abstract notions and of finely constructed theories. John Woolman was speaking as a true prophet when he said: “It must become the business of our lives to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love.” That must be done and not merely talked about, and we must learn [ p. 206 ] how to turn “ourselves” as well as “all that we possess” into these living, healing streams of life, so that there may be “a river of the water of life in the midst of the streets of the city.”
Above everything, the new emphasis will be on life, a way of life and complete moral and spiritual health. The salvation which most concerns men and women today in all parts of the world is a salvation that brings to a person a liberated, enlarged and transformed life. He must find himself at greater depth. He must discover a greater dynamic to live by. He must learn how to love with increased richness and purity. He must gain control over h is lower nature. He must acquire steadiness and patience in the midst of adversity and frustration. He must enter into a spirit of consecration and loyalty which delights to struggle for the lives of others. That kind of life will be equally suited to an earthly or a heavenly sphere. It will be prepared for whatever comes in the unfolding wisdom and purpose of God. It will be a type of life that overcomes the world and brings order out of its confusions.