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Page 5
Here, certainly, is an endeavor which is always of primary importance.
There is an abiding peril, forever crouching at the door of ancient
organizations, that they shall seek refuge from the difficulties of
thought in the opportunities of action. They need to be continually
reminded that reforms begin in the same place where abuses do,
namely, in the notion of things; that only just ideas can, in the
long run, purify conduct; that clear thinking is the source of
all high and sustained feeling. I wish that we might essay the
philosopher-theologian's task. This generation is hungry for
understanding; it perishes for lack of knowledge. One reason for
the indubitable decline of the preacher's power is that we have been
culpably indifferent in maintaining close and friendly alliances
between the science and the art, the teachers and the practitioners of
religion. Few things would be more ominous than to permit any further
widening of the gulf which already exists between these two. Never
more than now does the preacher need to be reminded of what Marcus
Aurelius said: "Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also shall be
thyself; for the soul is dyed by its thoughts."
But such an undertaking, calling for wide and exact scholarship, large
reserves of extra-professional learning, does not primarily belong
to a discussion within the department of practical theology. Besides
which there is a task, closely allied to it, but creative rather than
critical, prophetic rather than philosophic, which does fall within
the precise area of this field. I mean the endeavor to describe
the mind and heart of our generation, appraise the significant
thought-currents of our time. This would be an attempt to give some
description of the chief impulses fermenting in contemporary society,
to ask what relation they hold to the Christian principle, and to
inquire what attitude toward them our preaching should adopt. If it be
true that what is most revealing in any age is its regulative ideas,
then what is more valuable for the preacher than to attempt the
understanding of his generation through the defining of its ruling
concepts? And it is this audacious task which, for two reasons, we
shall presume to undertake.
The first reason is that it is appropriate both to the temperament
and the training of the preacher. There are three grand divisions,
or rather determining emphases, by which men may be separated into
vocational groups. To begin with, there is the man of the scientific
or intellectual type. He has a passion for facts and a strong sense of
their reality. He moves with natural ease among abstract propositions,
is both critical of, and fertile in, theories; indicates his essential
distinction in his love of the truth for the truth's sake. He looks
first to the intrinsic reasonableness of any proposition; tends to
judge both men and movements not by traditional or personal values,
but by a detached and disinterested appraisal of their inherent worth.
He is often a dogmatist, but this fault is not peculiar to him, he
shares it with the rest of mankind. He is sometimes a literalist and
sometimes a slave to logic, more concerned with combating the crude
or untenable form of a proposition than inquiring with sympathetic
insight into the worth of its substance. But these things are
perversions of his excellencies, defects of his virtues. His
characteristic qualities are mental integrity, accuracy of statement,
sanity of judgment, capacity for sustained intellectual toil. Such
men are investigators, scholars; when properly blended with the
imaginative type they become inventors and teachers. They make good
theologians and bad preachers.
Then there are the practical men, beloved of our American life. Both
their feet are firmly fixed upon the solid ground. They generally
know just where they are, which is not surprising, for they do not,
for the most part, either in the world of mind or spirit, frequent
unusual places. The finespun speculations of the philosophers and the
impractical dreams of the artist make small appeal to them; the world
they live in is a sharply defined and clearly lighted and rather
limited place. They like to say to this man come and he cometh, and to
that man go and he goeth. They are enamored of offices, typewriters,
telegrams, long-distance messages, secretaries, programs, conferences
and drives. Getting results is their goal; everything is judged by the
criterion of effective action; they are instinctive and unconscious
pragmatists. They make good cheer leaders at football games in their
youth and impressive captains of industry in their old age. Their
virtues are wholesome, if obvious; they are good mixers, have shrewd
judgment, immense physical and volitional energy. They understand that
two and two make four. They are rarely saints but, unlike many of
us who once had the capacity for sainthood, they are not dreadful
sinners. They are the tribe of which politicians are born but, when
they are blended with imaginative and spiritual gifts, they become
philanthropists and statesmen, practical servants of mankind. They
make good, if conservative, citizens; kind, if uninspiring, husbands
and deplorable preachers.
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