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

ossom into a yet richer and more varied loveliness than it at present gives promise of. Of all actual forms of Christianity it se

to discern at least the outline of t

As much of primitive Jewish Christianity as refused to merge in the large Catholic Christianity

shattered, helpless welter of vituperative sects, powerless to spread the Gospel,

dom and progress which, with few exceptions, every Roman Catholic people ha

ng faith. And judgment has fallen on it in its loss of unity, its bitter and wasteful sectarian wrangles, and t

ty. Roman Catholicism, too, has been a fighting faith, and in the appalling century and a half of religious wars that set in with the Protestant

ights and now is helpless before the selfish conflict of

ing its height, one may safely prophesy Pr

; she has taught them to cherish fre

may be fitting and useful to point out more specifically the defects of Protestantism than the defects of o

trinal reformation. There was not much more of the spirit of Jesus, His gentleness, meekness, love, on one side than on the

to recognize any duties to the serf except that of giving him the Gospel. Luther washed his hands of the peasants and calmly

dogmatic, self-reliant, in a word, masculine. The gentler femini

ion of Charles I., of Jenny Geddes' stool, the solemn League and Covenant and the bloody field of Drumclog; of the soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, singing Luther's great hymn, Ein'feste Burg ist unser Gott, as they moved on to the glorious but dear-bought victory of Lützen; we think of the massacre of Drogheda and the undying defence of Derry; and of that

Perhaps Protestantism has been of necessity a man of war from its youth. Yet primitive Christianity encountered fiercer persecution and did not take the sword. Prot

yond the territory won in the first rush of evangelical enthusiasm, and has lost territories she at first held. It is the demonstration of the futility of a fighting Christianity. Nowh

been proud, vigorous, masterful, impatient of control, and to her have been given the kin

it. Protestantism is not pure or primitive or ultimate Christianity. It is Teutonic Christianity, no more fitte

h shrewdness, vigilance, self-reliance written on almost every face, would think of saying, "Fear not, little flock"? Freedom is what Protestantism has demanded and fought for, freedom to think for

zed with stammering lips and despondent heart,[#] Its spirit cannot solve the problems of the new age. It must become meek and lowly in heart. It must learn to love. Rich man and poor man must stand in its churches as they stand in the sig

men in the Protestant Churches, but, also, with the full conviction that these are slight and partial compared with the outburst of devotion and service which will be ar

ut that task must be broadly Christian and broadly human. It must be a spiritual ta

ith his harshness and his militancy, nor Calvin with his hatred of those whom he thought God's enemies

, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly." Two wings for service and four for worship! A Roman Catholic, meeting a friend who had b

produce faces like those. Shrewd, intelligent, alert, at best reliable, frank, kindly, they often are; humble, not often; reverent, adoring, still mor

glittering with brass work, where the people sit with wide-open eyes and curiously watch the preacher while he prays, and where the preacher with conscious cleverness clears up all the mysteries of life and coloratura quartettes display their technique (an ultra type, confessedly, and not common,

that it should look particularly to three great leaders and saints--St. Francis of Assisi, St

t, perhaps, of all who have passionately set themselves to reproduce the life of Jesus, St. Francis in his utter humility, his complete unworldliness, and his overflowing tenderness can best bring home to Protestantism its hardness and shrewdness, its worldly-wisdom and its self-complacency. What a far-distant world is the world of the man who renounced all possessions, went about to preach and serve in

cessful in trade and manufacture, St. Francis gives us a glimpse into the simplicity and childlikeness,

e dance and the theatre, eschewing all quarrels, praying and fasting more regularly, practising a more systematic beneficence than ordinary Christians. And it is noteworthy that, in 1882 on the seven hundredth annive

e, too, had a passion for the souls of men, all of St. Francis' pity for the poor, and he won a wealth of reverence and love. He was a far wiser man, living in a more rational age. But he was not o

f purity with such vastness of influence. In genuine Christian influence it has surpassed even the Reformation. Modern Christianity (and there is a distinguishable modern Christianity) is of all forms that Christianity has assumed the nearest to the Christianity of Jesus, and in its fashioning the Methodist Revival has been the chief agency. Yet Methodism has not realized the ideals of its human founder. It did not perpetuate his unworldliness. It failed, as R. W. Dale pointed out, to the great loss of Christendom, to develop the ethical implications of his great doctrine of perfect love. It cherished his memory and his organization,

tween the former and Methodism. No two movements, perhaps, so widely apart in time and methods

ably wrought little improvement on the face of Europe--on its ferocity, chronic warfare, sensuality, oppression of the poor. The Salvation Army has rede

e Army have the

The weakest element in the latter is its willingness to accept gifts from even those who have made their wealth out of the degradation of men and women, and its seeming reluctance t

of Francis and of General Booth, is for the man who withdraws from the ordinary work of the world, turns away from its culture, crucifies a thousand human instincts, breaks all the string

ripping up the matted prairie sod with gasoline engines; he likes his wife and children and does not feel called upon to become a missionary to China or Central Africa. The need is for the leader who can show this ordinary man how to bring the truest love and the deepest pie

ts than we theirs. This judgment of ours may be right or wrong, but we have no right to pass it until we ourselves have recognized the limitations of Protestantism and set ourselves heartily to appropriate the great elements of the Christian li

than to medieval feudalism. There is a drift from Protestantism to-day, but the drift from Roman Catholicism has been far greater. To fulfil its destiny, Roman Catholicism must accept freedom of th

r its divisions, religious and social. It must become more bro

stianity will pass away. They will change. They are alread

nturies is drawing to a close. Latin Christianity needed Protestantism. It was the Protestant Reformation that inspired the counter-reformation. Roman Catholicism owes to Luther and Calvin a purer f

. It is hard to see how any one who believes Roman Catholicism to be a tissue of errors can account for its

n this earth that two people who try to get as far away from each other as possible must meet at last; and hatred is nearer

tree but, like denominationalism, it is hollow within. Some day the great win

, poets, Dante, the greatest of Christian theologians, Aquinas, the greatest of Popes, Innocent III., the two most winsome of saints, St. Francis and St. Louis of France. In all its greatness, the thirteenth century is distinctively Roman Catholic. The nineteenth century, also, is another of the less than half a

e the right of those two great historic forms of Christ

unity. At great cost it has preserved unity. It has not

valued unity. It has even gloried in division. But unity is a diviner thing than even liber

l extinguish neither Latin nor Teutonic Christianity but comprehend and blend them, the simple, yet free and varied, democratic, passionate Ch

can be rightly solved only by a great religious devotion, and it is difficult to see how that devotion can be secured excep

Great Christianity is

tilated and destroyed with a fury unknown in history, there the Great Christianity has disclosed itself. There at the mouth of hell unfolded the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed on earth. There in the brotherhood of the trenches became visible the Great Chri

ther, it is not the same as yours. You don't like the Catholics or the Church of England, but, father, we love everybod

ver crowd into our churches as they crowded to the colors till those churches are the home of a Christianity that

ust be said about th

ristianity, and that the drastic social changes which must be carried out in the next quarter of a century

se of life and a new home in that race which has largely replaced the Greek in his own home and has diffused itself over most of eastern Europe, the Slavonic. There is a great Christianity which is still called Greek, but whic

he contribution of the last of the four may be the most precious and vital of them all. Perhaps in the part Russia is destined to play in the next fifty years will be found the most striking example in all history of how it is God's way to choose the foolish thi

f the last thousand years between the Teuton and the Slav, the Teuton has nearly always showed himself the stronger. For centuries he has ruled over the Slav. In the industrial arts, in all t

ded in poverty, ignorance, mystery. And now out of that twilight he has stepped, ignorant, fanatical, and in his ignorance or superstition capable of ferocity, yet essentially th

acticalness which keeps them from the highest. It is hard for them to believe in a Holy City. If they do believe in it, they do not care to seek it till they are sure of a practic

pirit of the little child, the spirit of brotherhood, the sense of the pr

n him with intoxicating, almost deranging power. But they know little of the real Russian so

ey have builded the house. Now, it may be, when the finer problems arise of living in the home in harmony and helpfulness and in a high and holy spirit, it is the Slav who, in

ca has been the hunting ground of the slaver from immemorial times is because in the African nature immemorially and inextinguishably is the readiness to serve. All other races love to rule; some of them, like the Latin and the Teutonic, have been intensely proud, greedy of power, and averse from service. The African race is the one race which has by nature the spirit of Him who came not to be ministered unto but to minister. The African race, too, is of all races the most child-like, the most care-free, the one most ready to delight in simple things and the things of to-day. The white races,

ow races to that religion in which alone they can find their fullest development--is another fascinating subject for enquiry and specul

CLU

ion that is demanded. It must be accomplished with speed. All the Western nations are involved. There have been other reconstructions

er what touch men ordinarily much more deeply, their livelihood and their profits, and the war has seemed to sho

almest and kindliest spirit. But many who will be foremost in the task of reconstruction

and its fulness, not a Christianity wasting its energy on doctrinal controversy, broken by denominational divisions, or absorbed in

the sky but its roots deep in common earth; treating institutions, even the most venerable, as the mere temporary contrivances that they ar

o's & Rutt

ookbinders, To