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Page 23
[Footnote 18: _Rousseau and Romanticism_, p. 206.]
Now, such extreme naturalism has been the continuing peril and the
arch foe of every successive civilization. It is the "reversion to
type" of the scientist, the "natural depravity" of the older theology,
the scoffing devil, with his eternal no! in Goethe's _Faust_. It tends
to accept all powerful impulses as thereby justified, all vital and
novel interests as _ipso facto_ beautiful and good. Nothing desirable
is ugly or evil. It pays no attention, except to ridicule them, to
the problems that vex high and serious souls: What is right and wrong?
What is ugly and beautiful? What is holy and what is profane? It
either refuses to admit the existence of these questions or else
asserts that, as insoluble, they are also negligible problems. To all
such stupid moralizing it prefers the click of the castanets! The
law, then, of this naturalism always and everywhere is the law of
rebellion, of ruthless self-assertion, of whim and impulse, of cunning
and of might.
You may wonder why we, being preachers, have spent so much time
talking about it. Folk of this sort do not ordinarily flock to the
stenciled walls and carpeted floors of our comfortable, middle-class
Protestant meeting-houses. They are not attracted by Tiffany glass
windows, nor the vanilla-flavored music of a mixed quartet, nor the
oddly assorted "enrichments" we have dovetailed into a once puritan
order of worship. That is true, but it is also true that these are
they who need the Gospel; also that these folk do influence the
time-current that enfolds us and pervades the very air we breathe and
that they and their standards are profoundly influencing the youth of
this generation. You need only attend a few college dances to be sure
of that! One of the sad things about the Protestant preacher is his
usual willingness to move in a strictly professional society and
activity, his lack of extra-ecclesiastical interests, hence his narrow
and unskillful observations and perceptions outside his own parish and
his own field.
Moreover, there are other forms in which naturalism is dominating
modern society. It began, like all movements, in literature and
philosophy and individual bohemianism; but it soon worked its way
into social and political and economic organizations. Now, when we are
dealing with them we are dealing with the world of the middle class;
this is our world. And here we find naturalism today in its most
brutal and entrenched expressions. Here it confronts every preacher
on the middle aisle of his Sunday morning congregation. We are
continually forgetting this because it is a common fallacy of our
hard-headed and prosperous parishioners to suppose that the vagaries
of philosophers and the maunderings of poets have only the slightest
practical significance. But few things could be further from the
truth. It is abstract thought and pure feeling which are perpetually
moulding the life of office and market and street. It has sometimes
been the dire mistake of preaching that it took only an indifferent
and contemptuous interest in such contemporary movements in literature
and art. Its attitude toward them has been determined by temperamental
indifference to their appeal. It forgets the significance of their
intellectual and emotional sources. This is, then, provincialism and
obtuseness and nowhere are they by their very nature more indefensible
or more disastrous than in the preacher of religion.
Let us turn, then, to those organized expressions of society where
our own civilization is strained the most, where it is nearest to the
breaking point, namely, to our industrial and political order. Let us
ask ourselves if we do not find this naturalistic philosophy regnant
there. That we are surrounded by widespread industrial revolt, that we
see obvious political decadence on the one hand, and a determination
to experiment with fresh governmental processes on the other, few
would deny. It would appear to me that in both cases the revolt and
the decadence are due to that fierce, short creed of rebellion against
humane no less than religious standards, which has more and more
governed our national economic systems and our international political
intercourse. Let me begin with business and industry as they existed
before the war. I paint a general picture; there are many and notable
exceptions to it, human idealism there is in plenty, but it and they
only prove the rule. And as I paint the picture, ask yourselves the
two questions which should interest us as preachers regarding it.
First, by which of these three laws of human development, religious,
humanistic, naturalistic, has it been largely governed? Secondly, by
what law are men now attempting to solve its present difficulties?
The present industrial situation is the product of two causes. One
of them was the invention of machinery and the discovery of steam
transit. These multiplied production. They made accessible unexploited
sources of raw material and new markets for finished goods. The
opportunities for lucrative trading and the profitableness of
overproduction which they made possible became almost immeasurable.
Before these discoveries western society was generally agricultural,
accompanied by cottage industries and guild trades. It was largely
made up of direct contacts and controlled by local interests. After
them it became a huge industrial empire of ramified international
relationships.
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