In former times we were wont to hear of several kinds of faith, such as saving faith, historical faith, the [170] faith of trust, etc. Now we hear of doctrinal Christianity, applied Christianity, practical Christianity, etc., as though Christianity, instead of being a unit, as faith is, was this and that and something else.

      So goes the talk of the day, and so the Arena, which is by no means a Christian magazine, published in its December number a symposium on "Practical Christianity." The contributors to the symposium are Edward A. Horton, Rufus B. Tobey, Mary A. Livermore, Robert E. Bisbee and Edward Everett Hale. All of these except the woman in the case have the "Rev." prefixed to their names.

      The first writer, Mr. Horton, is the English clergyman who visited this country last year to deliver lectures to the divinity students of Yale University, and taught that a man should never go into the pulpit without a message to deliver which he had received direct from God. He should not deliver Paul's message, but his own. At the beginning of his article, he attempts a definition of "practical Christianity." He begins by saying:

      There is not a sect in Christendom that may not claim to be developing "practical Christianity." Why, then, this revolt, and this modern emphasis on the word "practical"? If all denominations are trying to make the world of mankind better, it would seem as if our definition might be found in the ordinary terms of the average theologies and creeds.

      This is a very broad insinuation that all denominations are not trying to make mankind better, though it is quite certain that this is what they all claim to be doing. If one element of practical Christianity is to cast doubt upon the honesty of a neighbor's avowed intentions, I suppose that Mr. Horton has Christianity of the practical kind. But further on he answers his own question by the following definition: [171]

      Practical Christianity, from my point of view and work, is one of the mighty agencies provided by the evolution of history for our use in civilizing the world. It is a product of Hebrew rootage, now adapted to the wants of the Anglo-Saxon race.

      Practical Christianity, then, is not for our use in saving men from sin and hell, but for our use in "civilizing the world." For this purpose it is just one of the mighty agencies provided; and it is provided, not by a divine revelation, but "by the evolution of history." This is to me, I confess, a new kind of evolution. I was not aware before that history, which is but a record of past events, had ever evolved anything; and I have never dreamed that it has evolved practical Christianity, or any other kind of Christianity. Moreover, I had supposed, from reading the Bible, that Christianity was a product of the divine mind working through inspired men and through the Son of God. I did not know that it was "a product of Hebrew rootage." I thought, too, that it was adapted to the wants of the whole human race, inasmuch as the Founder commanded that it be preached to the whole race; so it is news to me that it is now adapted "to merely the Anglo-Saxon race." If this news is true news, the missionaries to the heathen lands may be at once called home.

      In passing, Mr. Horton remarks that Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, on the basis of agnosticism, has preached an "inspiring message;" and he says a number of other things about as inspiring and about as true as these which I have quoted. He winds up with the following sage remarks:

      Slowly, but surely, the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount begins to dawn. It differs somewhat from Paul's, from Augustine's, from Calvin's, but it is the Christianity of Jesus, from whom Paul, Augustine and Calvin imperfectly, though honestly, took their watchwords. [172]

      The reader will recognize in this last quotation the "Back to Jesus!" cry of which I have made mention more than once of late. It puts Paul down in the company of Augustine, Calvin, and others, who have taken their "watchwords" merely from Jesus, but have done even this imperfectly. No wonder that Mr. Horton wants to deliver his own message instead of Paul's. I wonder what will become of the world when he dies!

      Mr. Tobey is more misty than Mr. Horton, and consequently his expression of views is not so tangible; but a single sentence gives the keynote to his article. It is this:

      The record of what Christ did is as emphatic as the report of what he said, and one of his most striking utterances upon eschatology is the threatened punishment, not for refusal to believe, but for a failure to act.

      He does not cite that utterance, but I suppose he refers to the sentence, "Depart, ye cursed, to eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and ye fed me not," etc. I wonder if he thinks this utterance any more striking than the familiar one which Ingersoll pronounces "the most infamous saying in the Bible": "He that believeth not shall be damned." This looks as if failure to believe is with Jesus about on a par with failure to act.

      Mrs. Livermore is a very fine lecturer; is said to be a very good woman; but her conception of Christianity is about as crude and false as those of her male companions in this symposium.

      She is an evolutionist, an optimist, and a disbeliever in the historicity of the Old Testament, as the following extract clearly shows:

      Every religion has always been the best possible at the time. It has expressed the highest thought and sentiments of the [173] generation accepting it, and its intention has always been toward a nobler ideal of perfection than had existed before. Each has prepared the way for something better. And through them the race has been steadily climbing higher for tens of thousands of years, as it has advanced in civilization and grown more intellectual and more ethical, until the Christian religion has been evolved with its simple, universal and eternal truths.

      According to these utterances, our race has been steadily climbing for tens of thousands of years, say fifty thousand, and in that time the tribes of Africa have climbed no higher than fetish worship, while the Chinese, nearly one-third of the race, have climbed only a step or two higher. Slow climbing, I should say. But slow or fast makes no difference, for according to this wise woman every religion is the best possible at the time; that of China is the best possible for the Chinese at the present time, and that of Africa the best possible for the Africans, while the Mohammedan religion is the best possible for the Turks, even if it does make them massacre the Armenians. Here is another reason for calling home all the missionaries who have been sent to heathen and Mohammedan lands.

      Mrs. Livermore, strange to say, after reading the preceding, joins the crowd in the cry of "Back to Jesus!" After remarking that we must judge a religion only as it was propounded by its founder, she says: "We must go back to Jesus Christ, its author, and learn what he thought." As she has, of course, done this, we may conclude, I suppose, that Jesus thought that the religion of the scribes and Pharisees of his day was the best possible for the time.

      Mr. Bisbee, the fourth writer in the symposium, expresses himself, in the main, more cautiously; but he writes two sentences which show what he thinks of practical Christianity": [174]

      To me, "practical Christianity" means the removal of the causes of evil, the destruction of the motives for wrong, the creation of an atmosphere of purity, truth and love. . . . The first duty of practical Christianity may sometimes be to destroy the church itself.

      Mr. Bisbee is evidently a smasher; for he thinks that the church itself ought to be destroyed, sometimes; and in this he opposes not Paul only, but Christ, for the former says: "If any man destroy the church of God, him will God destroy;" while the latter says that the church is built on a rock, and that the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

      Edward Everett Hale, the noted Unitarian orator and writer, comes next and last. After saying that when you meet a man who is interested in prisons, and makes himself useful to others who are being tried, or have been tried, you say, "Here is a piece of practical Christianity," he adds:

      It is certainly very curious, it is very melancholy, that ninety-nine hundredths of the books which have been written about Christianity in the last nineteen hundred years make no reference to such practical matters. Generally speaking, they are useless discussions about sin and the nature of sin. Sometimes they mount so high as to give some good advice to some one individual how to save his soul. But the definite business of enlarging life, of making the world a stronger and wiser and better world, is passed by in such literature, as if it were a business with which men have as little to do as butterflies seem to have.

      I have not read nineteen-twentieths of the books that have been written the last nineteen centuries, as Mr. Hale seems to have done, but with regard to nineteen-twentieths of those which I have read, leaving out those written by Unitarians and other unbelievers, his statement is as false as it can be. He certainly has a strong prejudice against books written about Christianity, and [175] especially against those written about sin. It appears to me that books written about sin are very well calculated to make the world stronger and wiser and better; for if we are not reminded of our sins we are very likely to go on in them.

      Adopting some of the words of Mr. Hale, I must say, in conclusion, "It is certainly very curious, it is certainly very melancholy," that such a mixture of skepticism and Ritschlianism should issue from the pen of four men with a title which indicates that they profess to preach the gospel, and that one woman of high standing, in the literary world should be found in such company. I wonder if their religion is the best possible at this time for them! If so, I pity them.

[SEBC 170-176]