The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New Age

ion if we survey the evolution of Christianity from another standpoint,--the racial. In the preceding chapter the effort has been to show that Ch

, moreover, that Christianity has been, also, deeply affected by

sh Chri

e called a Christianized Judaism rather than a Jewish Christianity, for it was the old Judaism unchanged except by the acceptance of Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfilment of the national hope. The apostles remained good Jews, eve

ht almost be said, was its lack of almost all the featu

y did not seek to draw out its philosophical implications. They were interested in the construction neither of a creed nor of a theological system. They were content to hold their faith in Jesus as a vital loyalty and a great hope. Jesus was to them the long desired Messiah who would redeem Israel and establish the Kingdom of God upon t

postles preached; alms were distributed to those of the disciples who were in need. No programme was drawn up for the future; no propaganda among the Gentiles was even dreamed of. The whole attit

most unelaborated and democratic form of worship. It was a seed with the germinating impulse

kingly displayed in the early chapters of the book of the Acts and in the Epistle of James, which on most, at any r

econd century, does not fall within the limits of this sketch. It was, p

k Chris

g in this undeveloped Christiani

they had learned to speak the prevailing language of the countries around the Eastern Mediterranean, Greek, and had been, to a varying extent, intellectually broadened and quickened by contact with the Greek world. Large numbers of the

thinker, the first controversialist, and the first martyr of Christianity, belongs the honor of first discovering the universal principle of Christianity, and his interpr

open the door of Christianity to the Gentiles. "They therefore that were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to

o composed only of Jews which made necessary a new name applicable to the composite bo

d-wide, Christianity. From this centre the greatest of all Hellenist Jews, Saul of Tarsus, fired by that very universalism which had at first aro

never be content to ask, what? It must also ask, why, and how? To it we owe science, philosophy, all our ordered thinking. Christianity, as a mere affection felt for Jesus Christ or purely as a code of conduct, could not satisfy the Greek mind. The Greek mind, at first contemptuous of i

traditions of His ministry and organized into a coherent body of doctrine. The acutest minds of Greek Christianity disengaged the great problems which were involved in the worship paid to Christ and, after centuries of speculation and of strife (not a

the author of the Fourth Gospel, the still more mysterious author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and countless Greek dialecticians and theolo

st deplore, but he who repudiates Greek Christianity must also deny that Christianity had any mission to the Greek m

n Chris

sserted themselves and those races which had built up the Roman Empire, or as subjects of it had become embued with its spirit, applied their organizing genius to the Christian Church and moulded the Church of the West into a replica of the Empire, and in such closely-knit fashion that, when under its own inherent weaknesses and throu

dualism, discerned the possibilities of the Christian Church as an organization, and out of the simple piety of Jesus an

otestant Reformation to deny the providential character of Latin Christianity. No other form of Christianity has as yet rendered so great a service to the race. It is questionable whether any other form of Christianity, even if it had been in existence, could at that stage have rendered so great a service. It was precisely those

nic Chri

nevitable it was that a third development of Christianity should take place after it had been transplanted among the Teutonic peoples. That development was slower in taking place than either the Greek or Latin forms. Those northern races which, until their conversion to Christianity, had stood

r Latinized in spirit. When they attained intellectual maturity and sought the free development of their own nature, they shook off the authority of Rome and brought to light

f the determination, not always clearly conscious, of the Teutonic peoples to discover a Christianity which should be consonant with th

hat had been the boundary of the old Empire, and that that boundary is still the dividing line between those countries of Western Europe which are preponderatingly Protestant and those which are preponderatingly Roman Catholic. The Roman Church hel

rittany is the most fervidly Catholic part of France to-day. Celtic Ireland remains solidly and deeply Catholic. Celtic Scotland, despite overwhelming Protestant influences, is still largely Cathol

, but still a machine; and Protestant, or Teutonic, Christianity, in the last analysis, was the overthrow of the machine. To the Teutonic race belongs the honor of being the first on a racial scale to establish a religion without ceremo

nd duty of individual judgment, the supremacy of the individual conscience, the privilege of the individual access to God. It finds the aut

ree thinker, three hundred years before the Renaissance and four hundred years before Luther. Accused of heresy by the saintly but censorious and bigoted Bernard, and brought to trial before a tribunal carefully packed by his relentless and unscrupulous adversary, Abelard, despairing of a fair hearing, refused to defend himself and appealed to the Pope. A

s conscience. That is the supreme contras

n Chris

of Christian history has been the growth of a branch of Teutonic Christ

gnificant as any of its transplantations in the past, and t

Christianity was conscious of any departure from primitive Christianity. Indeed, to this day, in their conceptio

ianity. It is not wonderful, therefore, that hitherto, as far as I am aware, American Christianity has been, if at all, very

ant, independent. It is a youth, but a youth rapidly approaching manhood. Perhaps the characteristics that are unfolding themselves can be most clearly brought ou

istianity compa

in its simplicity of creed, its emphasis on the practical and ethical, and (

stianity is wise and knows its wisdom. It will not, like the Jewish Church, allow itself to be seduced into interminable theological controversies and into the superstition of orthodoxy. Seventeen

stretched arms the return of the Saviour and the overthrow of this whole order by supernatural power. Its primary interest was eschatological. Its deepest feeling was expressed by St. Paul when he relegated all social relations and arrangements to the region of unimportance. "But this, I say, brethren, the time has been cut short, that

ves in the progressive and aggressive amelioration of things. It believes in this life and its glorious possibilities. It is bent on attaining them as no other sort of Christianity ever was before. It is steeped in optimism. It believes that the leaven of Christianity possesses the power to leaven all the relation

the mountains and the

see the beauty and t

h waiting, and the nigh

is breaking and we

e starlight we may

are paling in the sp

are glowing as with

are stirring with the

the barriers, He i

is angels to build

are human, not the

His army are the hea

istianity compa

unctilious orthodoxy of the former, its bitter doctrinal polemic are utterly abhorrent to American Christianity. American Christianity is more and mo

f all Christendom, past and present, the most tolerant country, yet it is, at the same time, a hotbed of religious speculation, even of religious vagaries. But, at last, there has bee

eat sympathy with the bold and free and comprehensive thought of the great Alexandrians, Clement and Origen. It is the later and narrower and bigote

istianity compa

can and Latin Christian

n appreciate. The competent ecclesiastical manager has its respect. The religious leader and pastor it can thoroughly understand and cordially recognize where genuine. But that any class of men should occupy a mediating position between God and man or possess a monopoly of any spiritual gifts is foreign to the American consciou

n, shadowy form of sacerdotalism, clericalism. The way in which the garb and badges of

High Church theory at all. It is a High Clerical theory. The Church has been virtually identified with the clergy. Against the over-weening claims of Boniface VIII., Philip of France protested that "Holy Church, the spouse of Christ, is made up not of clergy only but of laymen." But that is not the working theory of Latin Christianity. A quaint medieval preac

no layman, not even a King or a Prince; in it were the Pope with his Cardinals and Bishops, and the Holy Ghost hovered over them, directing their course, while priests and monks managed the oars and the sails, and thus they went sailing heavenwards. The

.C.A. and Y.W.C.A., the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor and the Epworth League, the Laymen's Missionary Mo

with which Washington inspired the young republic in regard to entangling alliances with European nations, its intensely American and democratic consciousness, all conspire to make the idea of a foreign ruler

all danger of challenge. The American Catholic is not conscious of any restraint in the tie

n Christianity. There are no Catholics to whom the monastic life makes so faint an appeal as the Catholics of the United States. P

bably surpasses even the modern German whose great organizing capabilities have less of individual initiative, and the ancient Roman with whom, again, it was the

arian, even anti-sectarian. It does not glory in division and isolation. There is in it a growing passion for unity, a growing yearning for a strong, commanding, national type of Christianity that is much more akin to the imperialism of the great Popes, like Gregory VII.

stianity compare

s not wholly within the organized Protestantism of America that the new Christianity is developing. There is an unknown but vast amount of the new American Christianity outside the organized Churches of America. A part of this was once in the organized Churches but has lost interest in their spirit and aims. A part of it has never been attracted by the organized Churches. Another great--probably the greatest--element in the coming American Christianity is the Labor movement w

at least,

is negative. It has no positive or vital content. It carries with it the unhappiness and partialness of division. It is essentially and incurably sectarian. The more extensive and

reflects upon the name, it must disown it. American Christianity is too essentially catholic and comprehensive, too little concerned with t

rnal societies. It is Rudyard Kipling, I think, who has said that of the famous revolutionary motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the Frenchman cares only for equality, the Englishman is resolute for liberty and despises both equality and fraternity, while the American who know

terest in what is human rather than in what is supernatural. It stands chiefly, he thought, for the idea of morality. It encourages a strong recognition

f Christian unity is only the co-operation of all for the increased establishment of fraternity and solidarity. High above sects whose diversity seems a matter of indifferenc

*

from a philosophy. American positivism is only a Christianity which has evolved.... The American religion may be called a Christian positivism or a positive Christianity. It has received from the past the traditional and the evangelical spirit.

*

one broad enough to designate it; yet this must be taken in its evangelical s

hen and is now developing still more rapidly under the forcing conditions of the war and the great reconstruction. The work of reconstruction will not have been carrie

have a very simple and brief and intelligible creed. Not a shallow creed, however, but a deep and vital one. It will put, pro

laced it, not on opinions, but on

e, be as well, for democracy

tablish the Kingdom of God on the earth. Its helpful, healing, redeeming, Chr

issionaries there will be, but the gulf that has divided these from the laity will be

nt the new and distinct type of Christianity which is developing in the Protestant churches of the United States and Canada and also, though less markedly, in

ting, especially in that western section in which the coming Canada seems to be most clearly discernible, that the younger and smaller and so, perhaps, the more mobile country may outstrip her older and greater neighbor in the formation, out of, at least, the Protestant denominations, of a nationa