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Page 18
In general, then, it seems to me abundantly clear that the humanistic
movement has both limited and secularized Christian preaching. It
dogmatically ignores supersensuous values; hence it has rationalized
preaching hence it has made provincial its intellectual approach and
treatment, narrowed and made mechanical its content. It has turned
preaching away from speculative to practical themes. It was,
perhaps, this mental and spiritual decline of the ministry to which a
distinguished educator referred when he told a body of Congregational
preachers that their sermons were marked by "intellectual frugality."
It is this which a great New England theologian-preacher, Dr. Gordon,
means when he says "an indescribable pettiness, a mean kind of retail
trade has taken possession of the preachers; they have substituted the
mill-round for the sun-path."
The whole world today tends toward a monstrous egotism. Man's
attention is centered on himself, his temporal salvation, his external
prosperity. Preaching, yielding partly to the intellectual and partly
to the practical environment, has tended to adopt the same secular
scale of values, somewhat pietized and intensified, and to move within
the same area of operation. That is why most preaching today deals
with relations of men with men, not of men with God. Yet human
relationships can only be determined in the light of ultimate ones.
Most preaching instinctively avoids the definitely religious themes;
deals with the ethical aspects of devotion; with conduct rather than
with worship; with the effects, not the causes, the expression, not
the essence of the religious life. Most college preaching chiefly
amounts to informal talks on conduct; somewhat idealized discussions
of public questions; exhortations to social service. When sermons do
deal with ultimate sanctions they can hardly be called Christian. They
are often stoical; self-control is exalted as an heroic achievement,
as being self-authenticating, carrying its own reward. Or they are
utilitarian, giving a sentimentalized or frankly shrewd doctrine of
expediencies, the appeal to an exaggerated self-respect, enlightened
self-interest, social responsibility. These are typical humanistic
values; they are real and potent and legitimate. But they are not
religious and they do not touch religious motives. The very difference
between the humanist and the Christian lies here. To obey a principle
is moral and admirable; to do good and be good because it pays is
sensible; but to act from love of a person is a joyous ecstasy, a
liberation of power; it alone transforms life with an ultimate and
enduring goodness. Genuine Christian preaching makes its final appeal,
not to fear, not to hope, not to future rewards and punishments, not
to reason or prudence or benevolence. It makes its appeal to love,
and that means that it calls men to devotion to a living Being, a
Transcendence beyond and without us. For you cannot love a principle,
or relinquish yourself to an idea. You must love another living
Being. Which amounts to saying that humanism just because it is
self-contained is self-condemned. It minimizes or ignores the living
God, in His world, but not to be identified with it; beyond it and
above it; loving it because it needs to be loved; blessing it because
saving it. In so doing, it lays the axe at the very root of the tree
of religion. Francis Xavier, in his greatest of all hymns, has stated
once for all the essence of the Christian motive and the religious
attitude:
"O Deus, ego amo te
Nec amo te ut salves me
Aut quia non amantes te
Aeternis punis igne.
"Nee praemii illius spe
Sed sicut tu amasti me
Sic amo et amabo te
Solem, quia Rex meus est."
What, then, has been the final effect of humanism upon preaching? It
has tempted the preacher to depersonalize religion. And since love is
the essence of personality, it has thereby stripped preaching of the
emotional energy, of the universal human interests and the
prophetic insight which only love can bestow. Over against this
depersonalization, we must find some way to return to expressing the
religious view and utilizing the religious power of the human spirit.
CHAPTER THREE
EATING, DRINKING AND BEING MERRY
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