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Page 1
TO MY WIFE
PREFACE
The chief, perhaps the only, commendation of these chapters is that
they pretend to no final solution of the problem which they discuss.
How to assert the eternal and objective reality of that Presence, the
consciousness of Whom is alike the beginning and the end, the motive
and the reward, of the religious experience, is not altogether clear
in an age that, for over two centuries, has more and more rejected the
transcendental ideas of the human understanding. Yet the consequences
of that rejection, in the increasing individualism of conduct which
has kept pace with the growing subjectivism of thought, are now
sufficiently apparent and the present plight of our civilization
is already leading its more characteristic members, the political
scientists and the economists, to re�xamine and reappraise the
concepts upon which it is founded. It is a similar attempt to
scrutinize and evaluate the significant aspects of the interdependent
thought and conduct of our day from the standpoint of religion which
is here attempted. Its sole and modest purpose is to endeavor to
restore some neglected emphases, to recall to spiritually minded men
and women certain half-forgotten values in the religious experience
and to add such observations regarding them as may, by good fortune,
contribute something to that future reconciling of the thought
currents and value judgments of our day to these central and precious
facts of the religious life.
Many men and minds have contributed to these pages. Such sources of
suggestion and insight have been indicated wherever they could be
identified. In especial I must record my grateful sense of obligation
to Professor Irving Babbitt's _Rousseau and Romanticism_. The chapter
on Naturalism owes much to its brilliant and provocative discussions.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface 11
I. The Learner, the Doer and the Seer 15
II. The Children of Zion and the Sons of Greece 40
III. Eating, Drinking and Being Merry 72
IV. The Unmeasured Gulf 102
V. Grace, Knowledge, Virtue 131
VI. The Almighty and Everlasting God 157
VII. Worship as the Chief Approach to Transcendence 184
VIII. Worship and the Discipline of Doctrine 209
CHAPTER ONE
THE LEARNER, THE DOER AND THE SEER
The first difficulty which confronts the incumbent of the Lyman
Beecher Foundation, after he has accepted the appalling fact that he
must hitch his modest wagon, not merely to a star, but rather to an
entire constellation, is the delimitation of his subject. There are
many inquiries, none of them without significance, with which he might
appropriately concern himself. For not only is the profession of the
Christian ministry a many-sided one, but scales of value change
and emphases shift, within the calling itself, with our changing
civilization. The mediaeval world brought forth, out of its need, the
robed and mitered ecclesiastic; a more recent world, pursuant to its
genius, demanded the ethical idealist. Drink-sodden Georgian England
responded to the open-air evangelism of Whitefield and Wesley; the
next century found the Established Church divided against itself
by the learning and culture of the Oxford Movement. Sometimes
a philosopher and theologian, like Edwards, initiates the Great
Awakening; sometimes an emotional mystic like Bernard can arouse
all Europe and carry men, tens of thousands strong, over the Danube
and over the Hellespont to die for the Cross upon the burning sands
of Syria; sometimes it is the George Herberts, in a hundred rural
parishes, who make grace to abound through the intimate and precious
ministrations of the country parson. Let us, therefore, devote this
chapter to a review of the several aspects of the Christian ministry,
in order to set in its just perspective the one which we have chosen
for these discussions and to see why it seems to stand, for the
moment, in the forefront of importance. Our immediate question is,
Who, on the whole, is the most needed figure in the ministry today?
Is it the professional ecclesiastic, backed with the authority and
prestige of a venerable organization? Is it the curate of souls,
patient shepherd of the silly sheep? Is it the theologian, the
administrator, the prophet--who?
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