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The Folly of Half-Way Humanism
Here is a scanning of one of the earliest Humanist out of copyright documents by the man who coined the term Humanism for the modern era, John Dietrich.
In these times of complacent and
compromised liberalism his words truer than ever. The concept of
"Half Way Liberalism" is still prescient. Read it in the time it was
written and ignore the prevailing sexist language, the religious
background etc as it is historical document, but it still is powerful, bold, eloquent and on target. - Mike Werner
THE FOLLY OF HALF‑WAY LIBERALISM
By John Dietrich (~1926?)
It is with
a deep sense of concern that I have entered upon this year's work in the pulpit.
More profoundly than ever do I realize the crying need for a
courageous,intelligent, and positive declaration of the principles of liberal
religion. Unless this declaration is made with all the seriousness and
earnestness born of a since reconviction in the minds and hearts of the liberals
of America, we are
headed for one of the worst periods of irreligion in the history of Western
civilization. Nothing can give to the confused religious aspirations in our
country a commanding place in the life of this century except a great awakening
and articulation of the scattered voices of religious liberalism. During the
summer, I have been trying to "get a line on," so to speak, the religious life
of America. I have
listened to and read about the inanities of the popular religion. I have seen
the ugliness and superstition and fear that parade under the holy banner of
religion. I have become more conscious than ever of the depths to which the
popular religion has sunk, and likewise of the timid and halting and
compromising way in which the liberals are trying to meet the situation. I feel
ashamed when I see the multitudes of people cowed by superstitious fear; but I
feel more ashamed of the thoughtless complacency among the liberals of this
generation, and more than ashamed of the encouragement which that complacency
receives from the reactionary leadership
of those who assume to wear the mantle of religious liberalism, yet who ‑
either through a caution born of worldly ambitions, or through a mind enfeebled
by the lack of intellectual discipline, or through a soul too weak to bear the
rigors of an open sea ‑ persist in giving comfort and aid to all those forces of reaction
that have bound their souls in the horrible shackles of fear and
darkness.
Against such complacency and against the leadership that
nourishes it, I believe it is high time to launch a crusade. It is time for a
concerted and determined advance on the part of all those who abhor the
fogginess of present day liberalism, on the one hand, and the mire of barbarous
medievalism into which orthodoxy has sunk, on the other. Let me, therefore, be
plain. I believe absolutely in the development and formulation of a religion
compatible with the facts of nature and of human experience as they have been
revealed to us by modem science. This theory liberalism has always professed,
but never practiced. It has advanced with undue caution and timidly compromised
with the established religion. Like so many other mediating positions, it is
losing significance as the issues become clearer. A compromise between the
supposed eternal truth of historic Christendom and the relative changing truth
of a growing world, liberalism is in a dilemma. It was an attractive movement in
the earlier days when the liberals appeared as the creators of a fresh and vital
Christianity, carrying the values of an outgrown past into new embodiment as a
new religion. In this task it was necessary to face both ways, but a vital
religion is not two‑faced. It faces forward, and the past lives only by losing
itself in the present. The average liberal faces both backward and forward. He
straddles a fissure between two radically different worlds of thought, and the
opening continues to widen. He must soon decide which way he is going, else he
will fall to ruin in the chasm. Either side of his precarious position offers a
secure footing, but there is no standing ground between them. Orthodox
fundamentalism is a consistent system for those who refuse to face modem
knowledge and who can and will stay wholly within its logical barricades.
Scientific naturalism carried through consistently on the social and human level
yields a vital religious world view and program. But one must choose; one cannot
forever stand haltingly between these two positions. It must be either one or
the other. It cannot be both one and the other. A compromise between these
positions ends in the dilemma of half‑way
liberalism.
Lest I be too severe on this type of thought, I might say a word in excuse, but not in justification, of it. These half‑way liberals are doing what all liberal religious leaders in the past have tried to do. They have attempted to face the issues of the present and at the same time to save the traditional values. The difficulty is in the materials. The old religion was grounded in the truth of revelation from a divine and supernatural world. Church and program of salvation had authority from that source. The doctrines, terminology technique, and attitudes of orthodox Christianity were all involved in that view of reality. But today educated men live in an entirely different universe. The natural, social, and religious sciences have undermined every phase and form of the inherited philosophy. The whole method of approach has been changed from a naive and primitive way of thinking to a realistic way dictated by scientific knowledge. It is radically different and it has definitely discredited the theologies and religious philosophies of the past. Between the old and the new there is a complete break of continuity. The new does not fulfill the old; it starts from different premises. The plight of half‑way liberalism follows from the futile effort to put new wine into old bottles, to make the new seem to be the old, to save the old by absorbing its meaning in the new. It may be excused on the basis that this has been the method of religious reformers in the past. But in all the eras of the development of religions since the primitive dawn, there has never been such a cleavage between the old world and the new. Categories that have been valid for hundreds of years have become useless. This compromising liberalism played its useful part while the last two generations in Europe and America were becoming accustomed to the change in intellectual climate; but it has no attractions for the citizens of the new world.
The difficulties of the half‑way liberal all flow from his position of mediation and compromise. Since he tries to keep the old truth and yet cannot retain it in the ancient sense, his terminology becomes equivocal. His use of words is vague and obscure. He juggles them to suit his purposes. Authority, revelation, salvation, sin, immortality, God ‑all meaningful terms in the orthodox faith ‑ can no longer be used except with mental reservation. So there is a loss of frankness in speaking, and a loss of clarity in thinking. A religion that seeks to appeal to the leadership of thought in this age will make no headway by a muddled compromise. It is necessary to make the issue clear, and call the people to a definite choice. One day, as Wendell Phillips was going forth to deliver one of his great messages, his wife, who lay sick abed, dismissed him with these parting words: "Now, Wendell, whatever you do, don't shilly‑shally." For a generation now, liberal religion, when brought face to face with a vital parting of the ways, has hedged and shuffled and shilly‑shallied. Here and there individual men have stood out, free and unhampered, but the majority have compromised and been discreet.
I pause here to recall an instance from romantic fiction,
which may serve as a parable. You are acquainted with Robert Louis Stevenson's
Kidnapped. You remember the long flight of David Balfour and Alan Breck which
brought them to that thundering mountain torrent. They must cross this
torrential stream or stand the risk of being overtaken and hanged as rebels and
murderers. While standing on a rock halfway across, there came on David a deadly
sickness of fear, and he covered his eyes with his hand. Alan knew the danger
and the fell issue of the crisis. Behind were the soldiers with the gallows
looming in the rear. In front was the roaring stream, with its certainty to take
the life out of him who came short of the leap. Alan shouted and stamped upon
the rock, but the roaring of the falls and the trouble of his mind prevented
David from hearing. Then Alan, putting his hand to his mouth, and his mouth to
David's ear, shouted, "Hang or
drown" and leaped to the farther side. David had just wit
enough to know that if he did not leap at once, he should never leap at all, so
flung himself forward with a kind of despair. He just landed, slipped, and was
sliding back into the stream when Alan seized him by the hair and dragged him to
safety.
This story sets forth the choice before the liberals today. "Hang or drown": that is the dread alternative for those who have not the courage to make the leap; and like David they lack the courage to take the leap to the further shore of scientific truth. They stand midway in the raging torrent of modem thought and life, not daring to go back for fear of meeting a traitor's death at the hands of disappointed humanity, not daring to go forward for fear of being submerged amid the complex problems and movements, currents, and cross‑channels that make up the dumb‑foundering whole we call modem fife. Modem liberalism is haunted by a cowardly fear of consequences. The consideration "What may it lead to?" has held it and its supporters back from the leadership of men. Like David in midstream, liberalism has ever wriggled about to find excuses for remaining on the rock, for declining to leap across. It looks pathetically around on its dwindling resources and asks, "How much is left?" It prints volumes of apologies to show that the new is just the old in a more fashionable dress. It would like to leap back and is afraid to leap forward. It is taking the chance either of being dragged back with a rope 'round its neck to "hang" or of abiding high and dry upon the rock, refusing to take the plunge forward lest it drown among the currents and tides of modernism. Unless its whole attitude is changed its doom is certain. It has been pronounced by Alan Breck. It must either "hang or drown."
Thus far I have been speaking generally about the choice it is necessary for modem liberalism to make; let me now try to be more concrete by facing some of the definite decisions liberals are called upon to face. In that provocative book Can We Still Be Christians? Professor Eucken comments on that "sharp eitheror which runs through the whole of man's fife and finds its clearest expression in religion." This has come to be thought of as the philosophy of either‑or in contrast to the philosophy of both‑and, which seems to dominate the modern liberal. He is constantly telling us that things are both this and that, instead of either this or that. Would that our modem liberal would take the bun by the horns and grapple decisively with that tremendous either‑or. Either the things of which religion speaks are realities, or they are illusions. If they are realities, let us embrace them. If they are illusions, let us dismiss them. In either case we must know; and to know we must inquire, we must search, we must make a decision. Or if the things of religion are partly true and partly illusive, still we must inquire and search to ascertain the facts. There is nothing derogatory in an honest decision, either on one side or the other. We may honestly believe or we may honestly disbelieve. The one dishonest thing is to believe one thing and pretend to believe another, or to believe one thing and so disguise our thought by misleading terms as to give the impression that we believe another.
To reach a conclusion here it is necessary to apply this
same principle to some of the more important features of religion. Let us look
first at the source of religion itself. Whence came religion? Here we find
Professor Eucken's either‑or helpful. Either religion is something that has been
revealed to us by some higher power, or it is a natural product of human ideals
and aspirations that have been sanctioned by tradition and society. In other
words, either religion is revealed or it is natural. Either it is of God or it
is of man. Here is a vital issue, and there is no way of side‑stepping it. The
decision that a man makes here will consciously or unconsciously determine every
act of his life. Either he must turn to God for every ray of light that he may
hope to receive in the realm of truth and right, or he must turn to the results
of the study and experience of men and his own inner consciousness. There is no
middle way, and yet the average liberal halts between these two opinions and
thinks of religion as natural and yet somehow revealed, as something a little
more than the result of man's experience. To the careful and courageous student
of religious history, there is only one choice: namely, that religion is the
natural product of the peculiar human organism in its contact with and
adaptation to its environment.
Turn to what is said to be the revelation of God to men ‑ the Bible. Here again we apply Eucken's either‑or. Either the Bible is the word of God or it is not. Either it was written by men to whom God dictated his will, or it was written by men just as other books have been written by men. Again there is no middle course. The one alternative fits in naturally with the theory of revealed religion, the other with the idea of natural religion. It is without logic or sense to think of this book, as half‑way liberals do, as being not the word of God and yet somehow different from all other books. If there is a God who has revealed himself unto men, and if this Bible is such a revelation, then the supreme object of human fife should be to know and obey this book; for compared with knowing and doing the will of God there is nothing else in this world worthwhile. But on the other hand, if it is merely a collection of the early literature of a certain period of the Jewish people, then of what more authority is it than a collection of the literature of the English or American or any other people? It may indeed be a valuable portion of the religious literature of the world; but its authority is no greater than the authority of the truth it contains.
Yet the great majority of liberals stand here halting
between two opinions, saying that although the Bible is not the word of God, yet
it somehow is a different book from all the others in the world, having a
quality of inspiration about it that is unique, that sets it apart. They feel a
little shocked and troubled if you place the Bible on the same level with
Shakespeare or Goethe, if you propose to study and criticize it by precisely the
same methods, if you treat it simply as a human production. A melancholy
evidence of the cloudiness with which these liberals' thinking envelops the Bible is afforded by no
less a scholar than Washington Gladden, who, after showing that the Bible is not
the infallible word of God, says:
But I can imagine that someone may be saying, "If all this is true, then the Bible is no more than any other book." No, that does not follow. Between the two statements "literally and verbally infallible" and "no more than any other book" there is a long distance, and one can be far from the first without being anywhere near the second.... One may refuse to accept the traditional view of the Bible and still be very far from saying that it is reduced to the level of a purely human production.
I merely refer to this passage in Dr. Gladden's well‑known book, How Much Is Left of the Old Doctrines? as one of a thousand instances of similar sayings by men of the liberal Christian type, who are doing more than anyone else to befuddle the minds of people. Either the Bible is the word of God or it is the words of men. And anyone familiar with the results of the higher criticism and the study of comparative literature knows which.
Again, think of the method that shall be used in the
interpretation of religion and the Bible. Shall we use the traditional and
theological method, or shall we use the scientific and historical method? In
other words, shall we interpret everything in the light of the traditions and
dogmas of the church, or shall we interpret them in the light of science and
history? In the one case, men postulate a theory and then interpret the world
and human life in such manner as to make it fit the theory. In the other, men
begin, not with a theory, but with the observation of facts, and then postulate
such theory as these facts suggest. Here again the majority of our liberals
stand midway between, pretending to use the scientific method and yet permitting
all their conclusions to be colored by their reverence for the traditional
elements of their faith. They use the scientific method in the investigation of
all so‑called secular problems, but the moment they turn to religion they fall
back upon the traditional method. That is why even liberal religion is still at
odds with science. Its creeds and standards remain grotesquely antiquated,
laughably out of line with the facts and methods of physical science and the
teaching of history. Listen to the Bishop of Oxford: "You can hardly exaggerate
the disaster it has been to the education of children that they have been taught
to associate with religion things about the creation, the flood, and the
beginnings of our race which it was infallibly certain, when they grew up to
read the literature of their time, they would find false and would reject as
alien to the whole trend of the philosophy, science, and history of their day."
And yet that same Bishop of Oxford mumbles through his medieval creeds and
prayers and litanies every day of his life. This is the kind of thing liberals
are doing all the time, standing timidly between the traditional and scientific
methods of interpretation, unwilling to accept either in its entirety. Yet I am
sure of one thing, and that is that liberal religion has
no future save as it remains utterly faithful to the
scientific spirit. This means on the one hand that it must accept the
conclusions of modern science in every department of learning, and on the other
that it must use in its own particular inquiries the principles and standards of
the scientific method.
So far, I have spoken of religion, its origin, its supposed revelation, the method of interpreting it. Now let me speak of theology. Here the same thoroughgoing decision has to be made ‑ not merely among the several dogmas of Christianity, as to which is true and which is false, which is to be accepted and which rejected, but with regard to the complete body of Christian doctrine. The question is, shall we accept or reject dogmatic Christianity? Either the one alternative or the other; for when you examine the structure of Christian doctrine, you find that it is of one piece, all compact. It admits of no alteration or repair. Remove one dogma and the entire structure tumbles about the ears of the churchmen who uphold it. The builders of the creeds may have been deficient in ethics, but they were masters of logic and metaphysic. They built their creeds solid, as they built their cathedrals. The Catholic church has the sense to see this. That is why it stoutly resists all innovation and change. The Catholic church, as I have said many times before, is the only logical form of Christianity. It stands for the scheme, the whole scheme, and nothing but the scheme. Either we must accept this scheme or we must reject it.
If we ask what the principle dogma of Christianity is, we must answer, the incarnation. The incarnation means that the eternal God took upon himself the human form, and did this in order that he might offer sufficient atonement for the awful human guilt, which came as the result of the disobedience of the first man, and be able to forgive it, thus satisfying love and vindicating justice, and completing the scheme with heaven for the elect and hell for the damned. The incarnation, therefore, is the central pillar of the structure. It is the foundation of the temple, the keystone of the arch. Remove it and the whole thing tumbles. The other distinctive doctrines ‑ such as the miraculous birth, the atonement, the resurrection, the ascension, the trinity, heaven, and hell ‑ are the necessary inferences, the inevitable developments, the logical results of the dogma of the incarnation. There is no logical half‑way house. You must accept all or reject all, up to the fairy heaven and down to the fiendish hell. Yet, here again, we find these half‑way liberals claiming to be Christians while they reject the structure of Christian dogma.
Now this prodigious dogmatic pyramid of Christianity rests, as I have said, upon the theory of the incarnation: that is, upon Jesus ‑ the person and work of Jesus, the cosmical significance of Jesus, the metaphysical nature of Jesus, not to mention the small matter of the historical existence of Jesus. The Godhead became the God‑man ‑ that is the core of Christianity. Take that away and the wall and buttresses fall apart. Here then is an issue of the most tremendous importance, and we can again apply the either‑or of Professor Eucken. Jesus was either god or man. Which? "I have no illusion left," said the tireless wit, Sydney Smith, "but the archbishop of Canterbury." But, let me say, the archbishop of Canterbury ‑ illusion or no illusion ‑ is possible only because of the illusion about the God‑man. It is the God‑man who brings the archbishop on the scene. The God‑man could not be created and expounded and defended and kept going without the archbishop. Nay, the whole portentous array of them, from humblest acolyte to enthroned pope, are the necessary and inevitable products of the dogma of the God‑man. Which reminds me again of that satirical wit, Benjamin Disraeli, to whom the liberal dean of Westminster was holding forth against dogma, when he was stopped in mid‑career by the politician's shrewd aphorism, "That is all very well, Stanley; but remember, no dogma, no dean." That was a home thrust ‑ no dogma, no dean!
Well then, we have to make up our minds about the dogma of the God‑man. Either Jesus was God or he was man. Which? That is an issue that cannot be put off forever by men and women of intelligence. Only when viewed as God can Jesus be regarded as the unquestioned lord and master of the human race to whom all ages must continue to bow. Only as God can he be the accepted type and standard and pattern of what all human life and character must be, to the end of time and amid every variety of people. If, on the other hand, he was man, then to make him an object of worship, however pure his humanity might be, is idolatry ‑ the kind of idolatry from which, if he correspond at all to the gospel pictures of him, he would have fled in horror. If he was Jesus the Christ, the second person in the trinity, then the entire scheme of theology and the whole structure of ecclesiasticism is justified and is necessary; but, if Jesus was man, we dare not make him the permanent center of a cult, we dare not pledge the future of humanity to him in an oath of unconditional obedience.
There is the tendency among liberals today ‑ it is the tendency, I regret to say, in certain quarters of Unitarianism ‑ to deny the deity of Jesus, but to place him on a pinnacle as the greatest teacher and the most sublime revelation of the good that has ever lived. The great cry among half‑way liberals is to return to the teachings of Jesus, for therein lies the secret of all good. "Back to Jesus," we hear on every hand. The Christianity of the churches is a corruption of the teachings of Jesus, let us have a "renewed Christianity," let us have the "Christianity of Jesus." "The churches must return to the pure teachings of Jesus." Why? "Because Jesus was the greatest moral teacher the world has ever seen. " Now, if Jesus was God, then we might well return to him; but if Jesus was man, like any other teacher, then why all this ado about him? Why should we not depart from him or advance beyond him, just as we depart from and advance beyond any other teacher? Why must we stop with him? Why must we interpret everything in the name of Jesus? Let me remind you of a few facts; and what I say, may it be understood, is said in reverence and admiration of everything that Jesus ever said or did or was; but it must be said in the interest of truth and clear thinking. Jesus was not an educated man; he had never come into contact with the rudiments of what we consider education today. He had no business or political experience. He never traveled for study or observation, probably never having been over fifty miles from his isolated home. He was not surrounded with men of culture or extensive knowledge, his only associates being rough country fishermen. He never met the great minds or leaders of the day, who lived in Rome and Greece. He kept in the ranks of the rear guard of humanity. He led the life of a hermit with "no place where to lay his head." He lived, in all probability, on charity. He was never married nor had children nor, if we accept the gospel records, any sex experience at all; and he died at the age of thirty. How could so young and so untutored and so inexperienced a man, unless he was God, be accepted as "the greatest teacher the world has ever seen?" I should be very glad to have someone explain to me how this young Jew, unless he was God, managed to make himself the intellectual and moral colossus of the ages. I confess it would be much easier for me to believe in the orthodox Jesus than in this Jesus who was a man and yet somehow different from other men. No, we must say of Jesus what we said of the Bible a moment ago. If he was man, then his teachings have just as much authority as the truth they contain, and no more; and this also may be said of every other teacher the world over. This phase of hero‑worship or cult‑worship, through which liberalism is passing, is not and cannot possibly remain a permanent condition. There is no middle way. Every attempt at compromise crumbles at the touch of that relentless either‑or. Slowly but surely science and historical criticism are driving the half‑way liberals to make a decision. What that decision will be admits of no doubt. It will not be the decision of the Nicene creed.
This course of thought drives us down and ever down towards the deepest and most fundamental and most vital of all issues ‑ I was going to say the issue between theism and atheism, but that decision has practically been made (or perhaps I should say never can be made, because it is beyond the scope of man's knowledge). But this, after all, is an issue largely of terms. Everybody believes in some great force permeating the universe. If he does not call it God, it is because the word God has been identified with so many crude and impossible things that he does not wish to risk misunderstanding. But so far as men's practice is concerned, there is still an important choice to be made, and that is the choice between theism and humanism, between the theory that this world is controlled by an almighty personal being outside of it, or by men inside of it. And here is our sharp either‑or again. Either God controls the world or men control it; either we must look to God for help or we must depend upon ourselves; either we should praise and honor God for all that has been accomplished in the world, or we should praise and honor men. We cannot always halt as we do today between two opinions ‑ talking about a God‑governed world and living as though it were a man‑governed world, Let us try to understand the significance of this choice.
There are two theories of the world ‑ the theistic view,
which holds that the world is under the control of a supernatural being, that
everything that is done is done in accordance with his will, and that without
his will nothing can be done. The other is the humanistic view, which teaches
that everything that is done in this world is done by man in accordance with the
laws of nature. In the theistic order, all acts whatsoever are the result of the
will of the supreme being, man's will or action amounting to little or nothing
except as a medium for God's will. At best man can only pray and hope. If he
wants more rain, let him pray. If he wants freedom from disease, let him
petition his God. If he wants food, let him ask and perhaps some raven will
bring it. If he fears any natural force, such as wind, fire, storm, let him pray
for protection from his God. In this view, all the evils of the world are
considered a necessary part of the supernatural order of things, and hence
little effort has been made to remove them. The believers in this kind of a
world did not attempt to banish illness, for illness was simply a visitation of
the divine wrath. They made no attempt to abolish poverty, for they consoled
themselves with the thought of their master: "The poor ye have always with you"
and "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven."
The humanistic view of the world order holds that this is
man's world and that it depends upon man what the world shall be like. The
adherents of this view hold that if man wants more water, he must build
reservoirs and lay pipelines; if he wants freedom from pestilence, he must
develop medical science; if he wants food, he must cultivate the soil; if he
fears natural forces, like fire and water, he must devise his own protection,
build dikes and form fire companies; if he would eliminate his woes, he must do
it himself. The method of progress in humanistic religion is human effort, not
divine intervention. Any dependence upon a supernatural power to do anything is
disastrous to mankind. Man in his own strength must grapple with the forces of
nature, Man in his own strength must face and solve his problems. Man in his own
strength must work out his own salvation. There are no ministering angels; the
good fairies are gone forever. Recognizing these facts, the men who have
accomplished things in this world have laid aside their theology and taken up
science, and by means of science wonderful achievements have been attained. For
instance, fifty years ago we knew practically nothing about the great plagues,
but today science has wiped them out of existence; and scientific thought and
earnest endeavor are rapidly accomplishing the things men prayed for in vain for
centuries.
Here is a tremendous alternative, and if we would be
logical the choice must be made. There are logical theists who believe in a
personal God who controls everything and who act accordingly, and there are logical humanists who place all their
faith in the loyalty and ability of men
and act accordingly; but the majority of liberals still stand in the gap, not daring
to discard the one theory and lay hold of the other, but clinging to both in the
hope that they may be reconciled. But this is absolutely impossible. Either one
theory or the other is correct, and the sooner the liberal world makes this
choice, the better it Will
be for liberal religion. So far as I am concerned I have
made the choice. I believe that we are the actual creators of this world in
which we five. Everything that makes this world different from the jungle has
been accomplished by man. I am assured that we cannot depend upon an external
supernatural force for guidance, but that we must depend upon ourselves.
Besides, I am assured that we have no need for such a God ‑ nay, that he is our
enemy to the extent that men are led to depend upon him for the results they
should accomplish for themselves. Man has within himself the power to recreate
the world and human life. So long as we pray to another this power is neglected.
Until it is awakened there is no salvation.
We need, therefore, to preach, as never before, a faith in man and his ability to make of this world what he will. The future Ides wide open before us. We are no longer oppressed by having to do the will of another and superior being. We can choose what we will and do what we choose. We can mark out our own goal and take our own line to that goal. If all the people of this world should decide upon a certain kind of world and the way to attain it, there is no outside power that could prevent its accomplishment. This is a standpoint that must profoundly affect our whole attitude of mind. Its importance cannot be exaggerated. Think of it, men and women, we can make of this world what we will; and we are responsible for what we do make of it. In the light of the responsibility that rests upon us who make this decision, I feel that my most important work in this world is to help people make this decision in favor of humanism in order that their thoughts may be turned from the altars of the gods to the tasks that he about them, for once we turn men's efforts from prayer and supplication to a firm and confident reliance upon themselves the future is assured.
Danger is greatest when things grow to equality, said Lord Bacon, meaning things social and political. Truly we may apply his words to those conditions of our time that tend to create equality between revealed and natural religion, between the Bible as the word of God and the words of men, between theology and science, between Jesus as God and Jesus as man, between theism and humanism. The future depends upon the choice of these tremendous issues, which shallow interpretations seek to neutralize and explain away. Most of the confusion of this modem time is due to those people who, unwilling to break entirely with the old and unable to comprehend entirely the new, make an attempt to fuse the two together. Let us think things through. Let us dare to be logical. There is great anxiety about the churches, but what is really needed is a faith built upon scientific truth. This will demand more than compromise, more than half‑way liberalism.