GOD IN ALL AND OVER ALL

WARREN SEYMOUR ARCHIBALD

PITTSFIELD, MASS.

Each generation and each century seems to have its own peculiar danger and its own peculiar genius. The Christian church, for example, was confronted in the early centuries with the dangerous and subtle opposition of Greek thought; and the genius of the church victoriously faced this opposition with that spiritual interpretation of the life and teachings of Jesus which we find in the Fourth Gospel. Later, in the sixteenth century, the danger appeared in a materialistic church, and the genius of the Reformation was unmistakably present in the religion of the spirit and the liberty of the individual. In the eighteenth century the peril was seen in dogma, or irreligion, or a tepid morality; and the opposition developed Pietism in Germany, Methodism in England, and the Great Awakening in New England. Every century appears to be led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil in some new guise, and is compelled to find the apt, victorious text in Scripture.

And yet, whatever be the temptation and whatever be the triumphant reply, the issues are always the same,-sin and salvation. In the Greek myth of Proteus, when that old man of the sea was grappled with, he assumed most horrible and terrifying forms. Now he was a fire, now a wild stag, now a screaming seabird, now a three-headed dog, now a serpent. Sin is always protean, and presents to the wrestling centuries new and terrible aspects. What, then, we ask, seem to be the principalities and protean powers against which we are compelled to wrestle? I venture to think they may be suggested in one word, Materialism.

This is most noticeable in our economic life. Within a very short period, virtually since 1870, unprecedented fortunes have been made in America. Through all classes the great desire for money has spread like fire. The college man who enters the

broker's office on Wall Street and the Greek immigrant who starts a fruit-stand on the sidewalk are both in search of wealth.

America has become synonymous with money. All this is so well known that there is no necessity for any lengthy exposition of it. I wish only to emphasize-what any careful student of events well knows-that this great material prosperity has produced a striking capacity to see the material and a corresponding incapacity to see the ideal.

Nor is this materialism confined to our economic life. For one reason and another much of the keenest thinking of our time is materialistic. The doctrine of the superman and the theory of the survival of the fittest are the stars in the intellectual firmament of many students. A philosophy like that of Nietzsche influences the man in college, in the settlement house, and in the café. The magazines with their adulation or their execration of the great masters of wealth, the theatre with the drama of Sudermann, Hauptmann, and Pinero, give prominence to the value of the material and the futility of the ideal. Christianity is openly ridiculed as a system which perpetuates the socially unfit, violently attacked as the defender of an unjust industrial system, or silently disregarded as an obsolete institution. Not only without the churches but also within our fellowships we find altogether too often the absence of that capacity to see the ideal, and to endure as seeing Him who is invisible. The congregation in more than one church has become the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Even in the church of a great spiritual leader the mid-week service will be deserted for the opera. In the summer the city church is closed, while the country club is open. Our athletic men and maidens speak much of God's out-of-doors, and quote the Christ who went into the country, who climbed the hills, who knew the flowers of the field and the birds of the air. They do not seem to recollect, however, the rather striking fact that the only habit known to us in the youth of Christ is his custom of going into the church of his fathers on the Sabbath-day. The plain fact is that many people of church-going ancestry are not going to church. A group of young business men in Boston, who happen to belong to the same organization, may be taken as representatives of a large class.

mansions in the sky will be accepted as a substitute for intolerable rents on earth. "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbor's service without wages and giveth him not for his work." This prophetic preaching constitutes the ancient and modern message of social justice.

The other message of our time is the authority of the spirit. The character of the last century was the spirit of authority, whether it was found in science, or religion, or ecclesiastical councils. Today the preacher turns to the authority of the spirit. Of course the peril here is the old danger of antinomianism, that Serbonian bog where armies whole have sunk. But into that disaster the intelligent and humble preacher who governs his thought by the classic experience of the past and by communion with the eternal will not fall. Such a source of authority may be called mystical, spiritual, idealistic. Whatever we call it, it is that region above time and space where all leaders in spiritual guidance, Paul, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, have conferred not with flesh and blood, but with the eternal God. It is, above all, the region from which Jesus Christ our Lord drew that power and influence so impressive to men that they remembered him as one having authority. This capacity to speak as seeing him who is invisible, this ability to make the ideal a more glorious reality than food and raiment, this genius for the mystical approach to God, constitutes the authority of the spirit.

Now over these two aspects so conspicuous in the thought of our time are the two eternal ideals of the kingdom of God and the vision of God. The kingdom of God is the ideal which looms above the question of social justice, the question of man's relation to man. The vision of God is the ideal which hovers above the religion of the spirit, the question of man's relation to God. It is of the latter that I wish to speak more particularly here.

The thought of God's relation to the world which appeals convincingly to our generation has two mutually complementary aspects,-God's pervasive indwelling in the world and God's supreme purpose of perfection for the world.

God is present in our universe, for the world is the work of his hands and the firmament is his handiwork. God is present in

Their fathers were deacons, elders, members of the church, and ministers. Only two out of two dozen in this group attend church. Here are thoroughly good men, actively interested in civic questions, good citizenship, and the body politic, but they are not interested in church attendance. They are proud, and justly proud, of their fathers, but they should remember that even all these, though they obtained a good report through faith, obtained not the promises, God having provided some better thing for their descendants, that the fathers without the sons should not be made perfect. At the bottom of all this feeling, whether we find it in the churches or out of the churches, whether in economic or intellectual forms, is, I am compelled to think, the belief consciously or unconsciously entertained that the things which are seen are of more value than the things which are unseen. Food and raiment are more to be desired than righteousness and the beauty of holiness, because people see very clearly the value of things which perish, and very darkly the unsearchable riches of Christ. For I dare to believe that if men can see God in the churches, they will come to church. To see God in the churches! To make God a visible reality! That is the awful task to which the ministers commit themselves. Without this vision the people turn to things which are visible, temporal, sensual. This is materialism. Whether you find it in economic greed, injustice, and brutality, in social discontent, hypocrisy, and beastliness, in intellectual doubt and spiritual indifference, it is materialism,— the peculiar peril of our time and our country.

To this evil genius of our country the religion of the present opposes two emphatic ideals: social and spiritual. By the social ideal, I mean the proclamation of social justice between employer and employed, capital and labor, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, for we are all brethren and we must all live under the shadow of a great name. By the spiritual, I mean emphasis on the authority of the spirit rather than the spirit of authority. Any one familiar with the young men in the ministry and the congregation will again and again note the appearance of these two aspects in the religious utterance of our time,-social justice and the authority of the spirit. No other-worldly justice can be preached as a compensation for injustice in this world. No