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Page 41
Is it not obvious, then, that our task for a pagan society and a
self-contained humanity is to restore the balance of the religious
consciousness and to dwell, not on man's identity with Nature, but
on his far-flung difference; not on his self-sufficiency, but on his
tragic helplessness; not on the God of the market place, the office
and the street, an immanent and relative deity, but on the Absolute,
that high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity? Indeed, we are being
solemnly reminded today that the other-worldliness of religion, its
concern with future, supertemporal things, is its characteristic and
most precious contribution to the world. We are seeing how every human
problem when pressed to its ultimate issue becomes theological. Here
is where the fertile field for contemporary preaching lies. It
is found, not in remaining with those elements in the religious
consciousness which it shares in common with naturalism and humanism,
but in passing over to those which are distinctive to itself alone. It
has always been true, but it is especially true at this moment, that
effective preaching has to do chiefly with transcendent values.
Our task is to assert, first, then, the "otherness" of man, his
difference from Nature, to point out the illusoriness of her phenomena
for him, the derived reality and secondary value of her facts.
These are things that need religious elucidation. The phrase
"other-worldliness" has come, not without reason, to have an evil
connotation among us, but there is nevertheless a genuine disdain
of this world, a sense of high superiority to it and profound
indifference toward it, which is of the essence of the religious
attitude. He who knows that here he is a stranger, sojourning in
tabernacles; that he belongs by his nature, not to this world, but
that he seeks a better, that is to say, a heavenly country, will for
the joy that is set before him, endure a cross and will despise
the shame. He will have a conscious superiority to hostile facts of
whatever sort or magnitude, for he knows that they deceive in so
far as they pretend to finality. When religion has thus acquired a
clear-sighted and thoroughgoing indifference to the natural order,
then, and then only, it begins to be potent within that order. Then,
as Professor Hocking says, it rises superior to the world of facts and
becomes irresistible.[31]
[Footnote 31: _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, p. 518.]
The time is ripe, then, first, for the preacher to emphasize the
inward and essential difference between man and nature which exists
under the outward likeness, to remind him of this more-than-nature,
this "otherness" of man, without which he would lose his most precious
possession, the sense of personality. Faith begins by recognizing this
transcendent element in man and the acceptance of it is the foundation
of religious preaching. What was the worst thing about the war? Not
its destruction nor its horrors nor its futilities, but its shames;
the dreadful indignities which it inflicted upon man; it treated men
as though they were not souls! No such moral catastrophe could have
overwhelmed us if we had not for long let the brute lie too near the
values and practices of our lives, depersonalizing thus, in politics
and industry and morals and religion, our civilization. It all
proceeded from the irreligious interpretation of human existence, and
the fruits of that interpretation are before us.
The first task of the preacher, then, is to combat the naturalistic
interpretation of humanity with every insight and every conviction
that is within his power. If we are to restore religious values,
rebuild a world of transcendent ends and more-than-natural beauty, we
must begin here with man. In the popular understanding of the phrase
all life is not essentially one in kind; physical self-preservation
and reproduction are not the be-all and the end-all of existence.
There is something more to be expressed in man without which these are
but dust and ashes in the mouth. There is another kind of life mixed
in with this, the obvious. If we cannot express the other world, we
shall not long tolerate this one. To think that this world is all,
leans toward madness; such a picture of man is a travesty, not a
portrait of his nature. Only on some such basic truths as these can
we build character in our young people. Paganism tells them that it
is neither natural nor possible to keep themselves unspotted from the
world. Over against it we must reiterate, You can and you must! for
the man that sinneth wrongeth his own soul. You are something more
than physical hunger and reproductive instinct; you are of spirit no
less than dust. How, then, can you do this great sin against God!
How abundant here are the data with which religious preaching may
deal. Indeed, as Huxley and scores of others have pointed out, it is
only the religious view of man that builds up civilization. A great
community is the record of man's supernaturalism, his uniqueness. It
is built on the "higher-than-self" principle which is involved in the
moral sense itself. And this higher-than-self is not just a collective
naturalism, a social consciousness, as Durkheim and Overstreet and
Miss Harrison would say. The simplest introspective act will prove
that. For a man cannot ignore self-condemnation as if it were only a
natural difficulty, nor disparage it as though it were merely humanly
imposed. We think it comes from that which is above and without,
because it speaks to the solitary and the unique, not the social
and the common part of us. Hence conscience is not chiefly a tribal
product, for it is what separates us from the group and in our
isolation unites us with something other than the group. "Against
Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight." So
religious preaching perpetually holds us up above our natural selves
and the natural order.
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