THE DEMOCRACY OF GOD

OUR constant effort in these studies! has been to see the nature of God through his relation to his world and the meaning of God for the life of the world. This is distinctively the Christian method of knowing God as over against speculative philosophy on the one hand or dogmatic theology on the other. A theology which does not come from life is an ill-founded speculation; a theology which does not look out upon life is a useless abstraction. From such considerations in times past men have drawn the conclusion that we must have a theology of experience. Individual experience, subjective experience, is indeed important; but human experience is larger than that, and the world in which we are to find God and for which God has meaning is larger than that. In the last two lectures we have taken into account some of those changes in human experience which we express in terms of science: a universe whose boundaries have been pushed back inconceivably far in terms of time, of space, and of the infinitely small; a universe with the earth dislodged from its old place as central and supreme; a static world changed to one in which we seek to understand everything in terms of energy and of development; a world of universal order.

These changes largely concern the world of nature. But there is another world, and religion is supremely concerned with this; that is the world of human nature, individual and social. To that world, especially on its social side, we now turn. What is the relation of God to this associated life of men, the life which men live together in home and community and industry and state? What is God's method with men in this life? What character does he here reveal? What is his significance here?

To answer these questions rightly we must consider the changes that have been taking place in this social world, and note their bearing upon our idea of God. If there has been a revolution in our conception of the natural world, a thoughtful consideration will show an almost equally revolutionary change in this world of social life and institution, a change which is still in process, However briefly and inadequately done, the main significance of this change must be brought out for the purpose of this study. We will consider first the change of social condition, then the change in social ideal or thought.

The change in social condition or organization is a commonplace to students. Woodrow Wilson gave it effective statement when he said: "Yesterday, and ever since history began, men were related to one another as individuals. . . . To-day the everyday relationships of men are largely with great impersonal concerns, with organizations, not with other individual men. Now this is nothing short of a new social age, a new era of human relationship, a new stage-setting of the drama of life." ¹ These words Graham Wallas puts at the head of his great discussion of this theme in his book, "The Great Society." Science, invention and engineering have done their work. Steam, steel, and capital have been principal agents. The industrial revolution is a name given to one aspect of the great change. The results are plain; human life is bound together so intricately, so closely, with such complexity, as to have wrought a social revolution in the life of the race.

The industrial side is, of course, fundamental. Once we had literally manufacture, "hand-making," now we have machine-making. That simple change has brought vast aggregates of capital into the control of a few, masses of population living together, diversification of industry, nations facing each other in economic rivalry which is always threatening to break out in war, while at the same time these nations are dependent one upon the other, each in the end suffering or advancing with the rest Economically the world is one to-day, though we have not yet learned how to draw the conclusion and move from rivalry to cooperation.

Quite as significant is the change in the field of human intercourse. Even so late as the first years of this republic, men debated the wisdom of adding territories to the West, since it would make a country so large that its parts could not act together and so could not come under one government. Distance and mountains and seas were great barriers then; there are no barriers now. There have always been migrations of humankind when the pressure of need or the lust of conquest was felt; but on the whole they were at long intervals, and comparatively slow in movement. In our day we have seen a tide of a million people from a score of lands around the globe flowing into this country year after year. The intercourse of mind made possible by modern invention and made necessary by industry and politics has been even more striking. Telegraph, telephone, wireless, radio—these have already become commonplace; but we have not begun to measure their meaning in making the world one community, nor yet the influence of that air travel of which we see as yet only the infancy. It may be that we have here the conditions in the making which will at last compel a common speech for humankind. With the change in industry and the change in intercourse, though more slowly, there have come the political changes. World empires have long been known in history, but they were largely external, imposed from without, a matter of conquest on the one hand and of taxes on the other. What we see to-day is a world trying to find some way in which to express in political union the needs and the facts of that common life that is already here and the larger communal world life that is waiting to be born.

This, however, we must note clearly: there is a big difference between union and unity. Classes and races and nations have been thrown together, but so far we do not know whether out of it is to come a richer common life or a strife that will end in common destruction. The first result in all these spheres has been conflict: class against class in the industrial world, race prejudice and bitterness unknown in the days when in the main each race lived within given bounds, and the clash of nation with nation in economic rivalry and devastating wars.

Here is a life clamant in its demand upon religion, desperate in its need of religion. Social humanity is somewhat In the plight of one of those unfortunates with the strength and the passions of a man, and the mentality and morality of a child. And the danger from the moron in a community is only a suggestion of the danger of this stage of human life. We have conquered the forces of nature, we have multiplied our wants, we have released all manner of passions, even fostering some of them behind high names like patriotism and religion; but we have not learned wisdom, and love and unselfishness and self-control and brotherhood in our communal life. And the Church is not blameless, the Church which has too often stood aside with an interest limited to the single soul and the life beyond, which has had no clear and commanding word about such great matters as war and social justice, and no great message about the meaning of God for these new tides of life such as the prophets had when they saw Jehovah in the life of Israel.

But now we must turn from social facts to social ideals. Such tremendous changes cannot go on without men concerning themselves as to their underlying

meaning and the moral ideals which should obtain in them. At the risk of the charge of over-simplification, let me select two social attitudes for purpose of description and contrast. That neither of these is ordinarily seen or stated in its full meaning does not alter the fact of their presence and profound influence in human society. They are indeed the rival social faiths competing for our suffrage to-day.

We may call the one the pagan faith. It can be stated very briefly. First, it believes that the highest values are material. The test of individual success is property and power; the goal of a nation is material well-being, extension of territory, balance of trade, command of markets and raw materials. Second, its rule of life is selfishness. In business its supreme appeal is to the motive of profit; it can conceive of no industry not based upon such an appeal and of no government acting from any motive except that of individual advantage. It has such mottoes as "Deutschland ueber Alles" and "America first, last, and all the time." As Bernard Shaw suggests, it is very ready to sing,

"Britons never shall be slaves,"

but it is not at all averse to Britons being masters, or to making sure that Britannia rules the waves. Third, its dependence is upon force and cunning, and these are its gods. It may have its chaplains and prayers for formal occasions, and in the old days when it formed "holy alliances" it put pious phrases in the treaties which were instruments of theft and oppression; but at heart it is quite convinced that "God is on the side of the heaviest battalions." In the industrial world the combination of selfishness and force takes other forms, but the principle upon which it holds secure a position of mastery is the same. Materialism, selfishness, and militarism—these are the three marks of paganism as a social creed.

To call the opposing position democracy may invite misunderstanding and criticism, especially if I go on to express the conviction that democracy rightly conceived is the expression of the Christian ideal in social relations. Nominally democracy represents the ideals of the American republic. In some of its larger meanings it received a noble exposition from Woodrow Wilson during the Great War, and a great deal of lip service from others who were following very different ideals at heart. In these years of cynicism and selfishness which have been the aftermath of the war it has been meeting a great deal of opposition from the most diverse of quarters, some of it outspoken, much of it veiled. Soviet Russia, "hundred per cent" patriots, the safe and sane business man who insists that we stand for republicanism and not democracy, the neo-aristocrats, whether scholars like McDougall or pamphleteers like Lathrop Stoddard, emancipated individualists like H. G. Mencken, the Nordic prophets with their new plan of world salvation, fundamentalist proclaimers of divine autocracy, Fascism abroad and its counterpart here, that latest misguided organization which compounds secrecy and reliance on force, and calls it Americanism—this strangely mixed company is one in being either frankly opposed to democracy or skeptical of it. Despite all this, democracy represents in its varied aspects the greatest social movement of modern times, not often clearly understood, appearing in many different forms, yet representing in the minds of thoughtful men the only way out for humanity.

There is evident need here of analysis and definition, for it must be confessed that democracy is like the word "evolution" in being widely acclaimed, of large influence, and yet having very different meanings even for its followers. Let it be said first that democracy as here used means something far more than a form of political organization. It might better be described as a form of social faith concerned with the assertion of human values and the ways in which these are to be achieved. The first of its underlying principles is the sacredness of human personality. The end of government is the welfare of men; the test of the good state is to be found in the kind of life that it fosters. If a conflict of interest comes between property or vested rights or any other special interest on the one hand, and human welfare on the other, there is only one choice for democracy. And human personality means here not a particular group or class or kind, not a hereditary nobility or a Nordic race or a white breed or the bearers of a certain culture; it includes all men as men. Democracy does not, indeed, mean a leveling down; it can make room for those differences between men which are obvious to all. But it counts as more significant the fact of the common humanity which unites than it does the differences that distinguish individuals or races. It insists that human beings as such, of every age and sex and race and kind, form one class, and that not the least member of this humankind should ever be treated as tool or property or mere means for some other who may be stronger or more cunning.

The second principle of democracy is that of freedom. Freedom it counts a good in itself. By freedom it means not anarchy nor license, but man's determination of his own life in the light of ideals of truth and right. Such a life, and only such a life, is in the full sense human. For that reason men are not content, when once awakened, with the most benevolent autocracy, though it assure them work and bread and peace. For that reason the concern of labor in industry Is seen to be something more than wages and hours. The ideal which Christianity asserts for man's individual moral and religious life is held to obtain in the state and in industry.

Democracy here does not of course mean town meeting methods rule by the mob, or even the idea of a majority vote deciding all the details of political life. It does not exclude representative institutions of governments like those of Great Britain and the United States. It does involve the idea that in the important concerns of life represented by the state, the rank and file of men are to have a voice in determining what the conditions of their life shall be. Nothing more clearly illustrates this than the realization of the swift change in relation to the attitude toward war. But a little while ago the decision of war, affecting for life and death and for the welfare of posterity millions upon millions, could be made by a small group of men, or could be rendered an inevitable event by processes of diplomacy which were hidden often from all but two or three of even those in charge of government. The tide of democracy has changed that radically in only a few years. That same determination of the common man to help shape the conditions under which he must live is at the beginning of even more significant development in the social-industrial world.

The third principle is that of solidarity. Individualism is not democracy. Individual life is achieved only in social relations. Humanity is not a sum of units; it is an organism, to use the figure of Paul, a body. In the still better picture of Jesus, it is a family, a brotherhood. The whole is concerned with the welfare of each part, and each individual lives his real life only in and through the whole.

And finally democracy is a faith. It is a faith in men. Not a sentimental idealization of humanity; you cannot add ignorance to ignorance and get wisdom, or unite a mass of selfish individuals and get a common spirit of devotion to high ends. The voice of the people is not the voice of God. But democracy is the faith that the whole of men can better be trusted to govern themselves, than we can trust one man or a few to have absolute power over their fellows. It is the belief that in the end, if there be education and a chance to know the truth and a full discussion of issues, the common people will find their way to what is just and right. And that involves a deeper faith, the faith in truth and justice themselves. For in the end there are only two forces upon which we may depend for securing peace and order and a chance to live. The one force is physical and external; the autocracies of the world have depended upon this from of old. The other force is moral, rational, spiritual; upon this democracy relies. It believes that if truth be given a full opportunity it will make its way in the end. It believes that what is fair and just will in the end win the suffrage of men. It holds therefore to education and to the fullest freedom of thought and speech, not blind to the danger that lies in these, realizing fully how long the road will be and what errors will come by the way, but knowing also that no other road can lead to the goal and believing that the final victory is sure.

Even those who differ from these positions will admit that democracy, thus interpreted, represents the great social movement of modern times, and that the convictions that underlie it are to be distinguished from various efforts and experiments to give it expression in government, industry, and other forms of life, including international relations.

Fourth, democracy stands for authority, but for authority of a particular kind. It is true it rejects arbitrary and autocratic authority, but democracy is impossible without a rule, as is liberty itself. Nor is the final authority in democracy the will of the majority as is so often assumed. The will of the majority may be irrational, tyrannical, and utterly subversive of democracy. There can be only one ultimate authority for democracy and that is the authority of what is true and just. It is the task and obligation of the people to discover this and to incorporate it in law; they do not of themselves make it. And in no other government is the very life of the state dependent upon such recognition of authority as in a democracy. As James Bryce put it in the closing chapter of his "Modern Democracies": "Governments that have ruled by Force and Fear have been able to live without moral sanctions or to make their subjects believe that those sanctions consecrated them, but no free government has ever yet so lived and thriven."

Fifth, democracy involves the principle of obligation. It is true that the popular idea makes of democracy a kind of a universal struggle for rights, or a system by which rights are assured to all. But the selfish demands of innumerable individuals would never make a social order. There can be no individual rights without a common righteousness, and unless the individual is obligated to maintain that righteousness it cannot exist for a moment. So far from asking less, democracy demands more than any other form of government. And its principle of obligation is noblesse oblige; we owe in the measure in which we possess. Democracy rests not upon self-assertion, but on self-devotion.

We are dealing here with a fundamental way of looking at life. What is the relation between this and Christianity? What does all this mean for our idea of God and his relation to the world? The question of democracy, thus conceived, is one not simply for ethics but for theology.

From the standpoint of traditional theology, especially of the Augustinian-Calvinistic type, it must be said that Christianity has not much place for democracy. The relation of God to the world cannot be conceived on any such lines. God, is not simply King, but an autocratic King, conceived in terms of Oriental despotisms. It is not that benevolence is excluded—the most absolute autocracy does not involve that—but the Institutes 1 make abundantly plain that where power conflicts with moral ideal, even the ideal revealed in Jesus Christ, it is power that must be asserted. "Like the Scottist theologians with whom it is most natural to compare him, Calvin finds the essence of deity in will, and his supreme glory in the power of unrestricted choice." ² From this flows naturally the idea of a static society organized along the lines of authority and submission, the authority descending from God to the kings ordained by him, the supreme Christian duty being unquestioning submission. And this applied to evil kings as well as the good. "The most iniquitous kings" says Calvin, "are appointed by the same decree which establishes all regal authority." The idea of resistance or revolution is naturally out of place. In case of wickedness and oppression, we are to "call up the remembrance of our faults," and then "reflect that it belongs not to us to cure these evils, that all that remains for us is to implore the help of the Lord, in whose hands are the hearts of kings, and inclinations of kingdoms." ³ And as late as 1924 a committee of one of the largest Protestant bodies of this country reported at its national convention: "To declare unequivocally that war is sin is to say that the powers that declare war are not ordained of God."

The modern fundamentalist-premillennialist position is all on this side. The confident hopes of modern democracy concerning self-government are all doomed to disappointment, we are told.⁴ But beyond that the Christian ideal is that of a theocratic absolutism. "The American system of government is based on the principle, 'Governments receive their just powers from the consent of the governed'—which principle is false. Governments derive their just powers from God. Democracy is the antithesis of autocracy—God's ideal of government." ⁵

On the other side voices are raised which declare that democracy excludes Christianity, at least in any traditional form. "Loyalty to God," says a recent writer on "The Religion of the Social Passion," "is disloyalty to humanity." The opposition to religion on the part of Sovietism in Russia and at least .of the older socialism of Germany is well known. Religion for them, not without ground in their experience, was simply a sanction given to the ruling powers and groups of privilege. With the same interpretation of Christianity, Bertrand Russell assumes that it has lost its hold upon the modern man, and declares: "If a religious view of life and the world is ever to reconquer the thoughts and feelings of freeminded men and women, much that we are accustomed to associate with religion will have to be discarded. The first and greatest change that is required is to establish a morality of initiative, not a morality of submission, a morality of hope rather than of fear, of things to be done rather than left undone. . . .The religious life that we must seek will be inspired with a vision of what life may be, and will be happy with the joy of creation, living in a large free world of initiative and hope." ⁶

These two sides, then, agree at this point, that Christianity and democracy exclude each other. Are they not, however, both at fault in their understanding of the terms involved? Traditional Christianity, both as institution and doctrine, has tended to the autocratic, but religion in the terms of the prophets and of Jesus shows a different situation. As to democracy, if .the Church is to maintain its moral leadership, it must understand and appreciate, as it has not yet done, the significance of this movement. We may leave names to one side, we may choose some -other word than "democracy" or leave it unnamed; but we must face the fact that there has been a movement of thought as significant for the realm of social life and values as evolution has been in biology or Copernicanism in our thought of the heavens. There is no phase of our modern life, political, industrial, family, international, interracial where the ferment of the new ideals, is not working. The Church in fact is being profoundly influenced here. It sees that here is an expression of its vital concern, moral ideals and human values, and that these ideals and values are the fruitage and formulation of the Christian, spirit. But the Church must do something more; it must furnish this movement its basic faith, its underlying conception of God and the world. In so doing, its traditional autocratic conception of God will be affected, but it will find richer meanings in the idea of God and it will give truer expression to the faith of the prophets and of Jesus. Our discussion of the democracy of God will be in line with the principles of democracy as suggested above.

For the God of the Christians, as for democracy, the sacredness of humanity is fundamental. The God of the prophets and of Jesus is a God who cares for men. His supreme concern is righteousness; and righteousness is not obedience to arbitrary rules, it is first of all justice between man and man. The; service which he desires is not fasting and offerings, but a service rendered to men: "Cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." ⁷ For Jesus men were not worms of the earth, they were children of God and of infinite worth. A single soul outweighed in value the whole earth. ⁸ God was concerned with the very least of these, so that the man who did injury even to a little child might better be drowned in the depths of the sea. ⁹ And this principle of reverence for human personality is not simply one which God imposes, but one which he himself obeys. He does not use men as things or treat them as puppets'. He speaks to them as beings of his own kind: "Son of man," he says, "stand upon thy feet." "Come now, and let us reason together." And each one has value for him and a claim upon him, as does the lost sheep with the shepherd, or the errant son with his father. Such a faith, need it be said, is humanity's first Magna Charta of freedom. Over against all the autocracies of the past and the oppressions of the present, against the aristocracies with which men lift themselves above their fellows, there stands this God who counts all men his children and who declares, "I am for men."

Second, for this God of ours freedom represents both goal and method in his work with men. How often have men thought that religion meant suppression, subordination, subjection, a sacrifice somewhere of mind or will, of beauty or truth or freedom. And so they have set their humanisms against religion and have pleaded for the chance of a free and full human life. And there has been some ground for this mistake. There have always been those who have thought of Christianity as an institution to which men must submit, a matter of rules or ritual or organization claiming a right to dominate. Not so Jesus. For him religion was a life to which he invited men, the life of a son, not the submission of a servant. The heart of Paul's great conflict with the' Judaizers in the Church lay in this same insistence: "For freedom did Christ set you free." ¹⁰ The goal of God is a free humanity, men who believe because the truth of God has spoken to their minds, men who love and obey because the law is within their hearts, men who have found a free life and the fullest life in fellowship with God,

And this free life is the goal not simply for the individual but for the group, The old Messianic conception of the Jews was patterned after the autocracies with which men were familiar in that day, and its method was not changed by the fact that it was to be a benevolent autocracy. The idea survives as a strange anachronism in the premillennialism of to-day, but it does not represent the Christian thought of to-day any more than that of Jesus or Paul. As God lifts man higher in the fellowship of truth and love, there will be less need for constraint and compulsion and not more, less need of scepter and army and force applied from without. The goal can be nothing less than a humanity which has learned freely and in common action to shape all its associated life by the spirit of Christ. Ruled by the spirit of truth and justice and mercy, with enlightened mind that will at last have found the true way, it will mold home and school and state and industry according to the will of God. Another world might do for a race of servants, only such a world would be a worthy goal for the free sons of God.

But the idea of freedom belongs to the method of God as well as to the goal. It is not altogether easy to adjust our thinking to this idea. Theology has usually begun by simply asserting the absolute power of God. "Our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he please. ¹¹ "He commanded, and it stood fast."¹² That was all, and that was enough, simply to assert the power of God. But there is something more than that There is a mode of action in the world of the spirit that corresponds with the principle of order, the reign of law, which now determines our conception of the world of nature. You cannot get results by compulsion in the realm of the spirit. Calvinism, with its sovereign decrees and its irresistible grace and its total depravity, is the mistaken effort along this line. It is true there are certain inevitabilities, certain necessities, in the divine order of the world, otherwise it would be an irrational universe. And there is the plain dependence of man upon God. But the highest life can come only by the way of freedom. Love is not love except when it is free; righteousness is an inner attitude and not an action under compulsion. There is only one real goodness and that is the goodness of the free spirit. There is only one way to character and that is by a free loyalty that persistently .chooses the right. And that determines the method of God. He does not fling commandments at men. He does not override the. will when he offers his grace and help; with a fine reverence for the human personality which he has made, he says: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock." ¹³ And in the picture which one great painter has made of that scene, the latchstring is on the inside.

We are coming to realize more deeply to-day the significance of this method for the social life, where before we thought of it only in relation to the individual. Men have dreamed of some single deed, some great experience, by which the world might be made over into the kingdom of God; they have been slow to learn what is the patience and wisdom of God. He does not "strive nor cry aloud.". He does not drive. He is not a direct actionist. Direct action is a temptation, even to the good man and especially the reformer. If only we had power with a single blow to wipe out every vestige of the liquor traffic, or to destroy the last weapon of war! But God does not work that way. The appeal of truth to reason, the summons of right to conscience, the hard tuition of suffering that comes when men and nations do wrong, the help that comes to those who try, the blessing for those that walk the way of justice and mercy—by ways like this God has led the race. In a striking paragraph on modern English conditions the late Arthur Gleason wrote: "God has always granted England time to grope. He is a slow and constitutional worker himself, using trial and error. The devil is a fiery revolutionary."

But what of the principle of authority," and where is the sovereignty of God? The Christian principle of authority abides, but it needs to be understood. The heart of the highest religion lies in the fact that man finds something which for him is holy—that is, something that has the right to command. The error has been that this right to command has so often been found in something merely external. When that happens, it ceases to be something that liberates and becomes that which enslaves, an arbitrary authority. It may be in a dogma or the letter of a sacred writing or the assumption of the ecclesiast; but it is not a spiritual authority, an authority that has a right to command free men, except as it establishes its right within the soul. When that happens, obedience becomes the way of freedom. Such is the authority of God. If God were sheer power compelling submission, then the highest deed of man might be a Promethean defiance. But God is not a mere Power above that compels; he is a truth and a right that we know within. When we summon men to give themselves to this God, we are asking them to give themselves! to truth and righteousness and love and beauty which have their being in him. It is that to which Jesus summoned men to surrender.

Further, the Christian God acknowledges for himself the law of obligation which is essential to democracy. Democracy at its highest, as we saw, is not a clamor for rights but a passion for righteousness, the vision of a new and higher order in which humanity shall have its true life, and the devotion of self to that end. And such obligation, we noted, was to be in the measure of possession. That law ,of obligation Jesus recognized for himself. Was he a revelation of God in this? He must have been or else we have found something to worship that is higher than God himself, and have gone back to the pagan idea that God is power transcending right. It is an error, of course, to speak of God being under the law of obligation in the sense that right is something apart from him or above him. This holy obligation of love is God; this is his very nature as revealed to us. The cross was not an unnatural episode; the life of utter love and service which the incarnation shows was only the making clear to men of the eternal spirit of God. Love, service, sacrifice—that is God. By the infinite measure of his wisdom and power and goodness, God is the obligated servant and savior of man. We make it present tense: "In all their affliction He is afflicted, and the angel of his presence saves them."¹⁴ . And the obligation comes not from our, deserving, but from the nature of mercy and goodness itself, which is his nature.

There is a final element in democracy which we find in God and that is the element of faith—faith in men first of all, and then faith in the power of moral and spiritual forces, in truth and righteousness and love. A study of the anti-democratic movements and forces of the world to-day will usually show two aspects. First that of selfishness, the desire of one group or class or people to retain the privileges and power which they have. Secondly, there is a fundamental feeling of distrust, a lack of faith in men, in the common man, in the colored man, in the foreigner, or as the case may be. The Christianity of Christ stands for a directly opposed spirit. It declares, with Whitman, that it will not ask for itself what others cannot have upon equal terms; and it is ready to trust the common man. We know the confidence that Jesus put in common men. It was to a little group of common men that he committed the deepest interests with which he was concerned, and it was to common people that he brought the gifts of his love and of those transforming ideas which he poured out so prodigally in his speech. He did not, however, put his trust simply in men as he found them; he believed in the men that were to be. He believed that human nature could be transformed. He believed that men would answer to truth and justice and love. Men are saying to-day, "Look at human nature; with human nature as it is you cannot have democracy, you cannot expect to abolish war," just as they said a while ago, "You cannot wipe out the brothel or the saloon, with human nature as it is." Democracy does not believe that its ideals can come with a humanity as it is, with the ignorance and passions and selfishness that we have to-day; but it believes in a humanity that can be educated and informed and changed. Christianity believes that human nature can be redeemed and it trusts in moral and spiritual forces to achieve this. That is the faith of democracy. That was the faith of Jesus, ' and we believe that here, too, Jesus is the revelation of God.

It remains for us to note what Christianity as a religion has to offer to that growing democracy which represents the highest social ideals of our day. What does the faith in a God like this mean to the men who hold these ideals?

First, it offers an ideal of life. It summons men to freedom. It has that morality of initiative and responsibility for which Bertrand Russell calls in his religion of the future. Its God is not an autocrat demanding blind submission. It summons men not to servitude, but to free fellowship with the infinite Spirit of good will. It shows men a world that is in the making and a God who invites man to share in his creative task.

Second, it affords democracy an authority that it can accept, one that is not arbitrary and external, but that presents itself to mind and conscience as the appeal of justice and truth. In such an authority it supplies one of democracy's deepest needs. For the danger of democracy is that, having overthrown the old autocracies, it will find itself without any authority at all. And that is largely the situation to-day. Men are insistent upon their rights and their desires; they fail to see that unless they unite in a common obedience to truth and justice and a common devotion of life, there can be no freedom and no large social life. So we have disunion and disorganization between class and class, between land and land. That weakness can be healed alone by finding some highest Righteousness, a God in whom goodness and power are one, and whom men can obey.

Third, it offers a moral dynamic. Democracy is not simply a form of organization waiting merely to be adopted and then able to run itself. It is a social faith and a moral power that must first live in the hearts of men. It demands vision, patience, self-control, self-subordination, devotion, cooperation. These are spiritual qualities, and without them democracy will fail. Christianity is a religion that has the power to produce this spirit in men.

Finally, it offers a needed faith. It bids men believe in the midst of their struggles for a better world, that the final power that rules this world is a God of righteousness and good will. However strong brute force may seem, however deeply intrenched may be injustice and oppression, whatever the depth of ignorance, the issue is never in doubt. Whatever the temporary turn of battle, he who fights on God's side and that of man never fights in vain. For God himself is fighting. He is no idle spectator, no distant and indifferent ruler. He is the comrade of men, he is their fellow toiler. Nay, more, he works in men and through men. It is his passion for righteousness that burns in their hearts, his courage that fills their breasts, his strength that strikes down evil, his love that binds them together, Bertrand Russell has pictured "A Free Man's Worship": "Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest, to-morrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day." ¹⁵ This is no free man's worship, but only his cry of despair. Not in such a universe may we ever expect a free humanity, but rather in one in which a God of freedom and righteousness summons men to the faith and the task, and gives them assurance of the final issue.

1) "The New Freedom," pages 6, 7.

2) William Adams Brown, American Journal of Theology, X, 392.

3) "Institutes," Book IV, Chapter XX, pages 27, 29.

4) S. B. Kellogg, Bibliotheca Sacra, XLV, 273, 274.

5) From a letter in the Christian Workers' Magazine, official organ of the Moody Bible School. The editor approves: "We agree that, scripturally viewed, the basis on which our government rests is false,"

6) In "Principles of Social Reconstruction"; quoted by Matthews, "Studies in Christian Philosophy," pages 70, 71. Compare William James, M A Pluralistic Universe," pages 27, 30: "The older monarchical theism is obsolete or obsolescent. The place o! the divine in the world must be more organic and intimate." With the theistic view, he declares, "Man, being an outsider and a mere subject to God, not his intimate partner, a character of externality invades the field. God is not heart of our heart, and reason of our reason, but our magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however strange they may be, remains our only moral duty."

7) Isaiah i.16,17.

8) Mark viii. 36.

9) Mark ix. 42.

10) Galatians v. 1.

11) Psalm cxv. 3.

12) Psalm xxxtii. 9.

13) Revelation iii. 20.

14) Isaiah Ixiii. 9.

15) "Mysticism and Logic," pages 56, 57.