The Washington herald., 1915-11-07
Renovating Religion.

The most remarkable intellectual phenomenon
of time is the fact that the Church has felt it,
self called upon to justify its existence hundred
years ago such thing would not have been pos
sible The Church WAS. Its processes were the
result of divine arrangement, its prelates were
Christs procounsuls in the domains Of the spirit.
Its practical activities bore the same imprint as
its spiritual admonitons and its dogma. The
ordinary standards of failure or success could not
be applied to them. This comfortable postulate
necessarily implied in the alternative the rather
formidable conclusion that all the other churches
merely thought they were But our fathers were
men of robust minds. They cheerfully advanced
the uncomplimentary alternative and while con-
tinuing to do business with the hereto in this
life mentally consigned him to damnation in the
next. For themselves, being of the elect, they
looked forward with satisfying certainty to a
state of beatitude in the next world that would
more than compensate for the temporary incon-
veniences of this.
As with the hereto so with the merely wicked.
Indeed the dividing line between wickedness and
heresy not too we'll defined. 1t was easy for
our forcfathers to presupposc heresy when they
behcld wrongdoing and not much more difficult
to postulate evil incnations in the heart of the
unbelever. In either case the assumption was
strongly favored that penurious condition was
tho hallmark of respectable orthodoxy while the
possession of riches savored strongly of heresy
and the bottomless phi.
1t docs not by any means follow tha. our fore
fathers were hypocrites In that they did not re-
list the acquisition of wealth-Satan's most in
sidious weapon-as ferceiy the dangerous cir
cumstances might seem to have demanded We
must remember that their view largely objec
tive. One was always of the elect in ones own
eypS lhpit in he view Of he fellOp--the
real heretic-one figured as a grovelling schis-
matte. As to riches, if possessed them one
admitted that their presence might endanger ones
chances OF redcmption-at least sufficiently to i'm
part a sporting element to the grisly tomb-yet
they might equally be regarded compliment
to ones superior capacity for resisting evil paid
by a Creator who in the kindness ofF1is heart ap
portioned the burden to the strength Of the back
that to bear it.
Being, as they were, long on dogma and pow
crty assuming indeed that Gods in His heaven"
was in essential contradiction to "Alls right with
the world" it did not occur to our forefathers
that the church could properly busy itself with
the distribution of other than purely spiritual re-
freshmcnt Being dcvout Christians they ap-
proved Of the Sermon on the Mount and applauded
the individual exercise of the virtue of charity,
not only in the layman but equally (since precept
official proponents of the faith. But to assume
that the church as an institution should busy
itself with the promiscuous relief of poverty or
suffering would have seemed even to their simple
minds illogical in the extreme. since they were
proclaiming in season and out of season that only
the poor and the suffering stood really good
chance of inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven.
1t is due rather to intense materialism than
to any intellectual enlightenment that we have
modified this view We still congregate on Sum
days and stoutly maintain that blessed the
poor and woe to We unbehevers. But on weekdays
we caught in whrling scheme Of things in
which poverty is reckoned as a disgrace and
dogma the last infrmity of middle-aged spinsters
and the stock in trade of the professional humbug.
We the seedy pietists gathering in holes and
corners, a pallid and emasculated few We see
the man who avows a cynical disbelief in every
thing and keeps a determined watch on his neigh
bors' pocketbooks waxing not merely prosperous
but also more happy and contented Looking i
deeper it is borne in us that the poor, however
blessed they may be, often the drunk and
usually the weak spirited, that Dives apart from
his agnostcism and his financial ability is a
model of all the Christian virtues Finally, as we
yield almost involuntarily to the urge of success
on the one hand and heterodoxy on the other We
than of shame at having repudiatcd the precepts
of the Author of being.
1t is not at all remarkable that as individ-
uals should have ceased to respond to the nebu-
ous assurances of the church that only the life
after death is worthy OF serious consideration and
should settle down to strong belief in the prime
Importance OF here and now. 1t is remarkable,
however, that the churches organized insttu-
IONS should be found subscribing to that belief, /
should relegate TO apparently secondary place
he once vital questions of dogma and busy them
selves in entirely practical way with the alb
,orbing question of human happiness earth.
Dur forefathers went to church to hear Genesis
cad and to enjoy realistic picture of the tor
nents that awaited the unbelieyer. We go for
PRACTICAL advice to how best to fight the battle
of life and when necessary for little material
powder and shot to help us through the next
kirmish. The churches in word have been COM
,cled to abandon dogma for conduct. Their in
lerent weakness lies in the fact that they ever
red to combine the two
All Matter of Taste.