The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-04-09

the enhancement of thine ultimat
The truly dismaying thing, of
course, is the lukewarmneSs, the
wishy-washy goody- goodness, the
infantile irrelevancy of the church
itself. Millions of people still bring
Joy to their individual souls by
attending a church service.
I know that there are millions
of Catholics and high church
Episcopalians alone who obtain
extraordinary comfort from the
celebration in due form of the
Holy Eucharist, the very thing
which John Knox felt was more
dangerous than ten thousand
armed men.
Millions of other church going
people find rest for their souls in
attending church service but here
all too often, there tends to arise
a disputatious attitude concerning
ethical matters discussed in the
sermon and more appropriate to
a weekday lecture course than to
a Sabbath worship in the house
of God.
You are all acquainted with
fine, cultured, tolerant people who
reserve their sharp practices and
grabbing tendencies for the hard
life of the business world and who
are delightful and enjoyable COM
panions in the social life of eve
ningS and holidays. They yearn
for more satisfactory business
existence, but do not know exactly
how to bring it to pass.
MOST of them, unless they are
1V1 only two or three generations
removed from sanity ancestors,
are decidedly materialistic and
Skeptical about the existence of
God, or future life.
They want their children to go
to Sunday school and learn the
Ten Commandments and the sa-
lent facts of the Bible, but they
themselves are convinced of the
fundamental truth of evolution,
the struggle for existence and
laissez faire, dog-eat-dog eco
Monies. They know that they
have to "get" if they are not to
be gotten" and while they don't
like this kind of business any
better than YOU or I, they don't
know of anything practical to do
about it. Therefore, the most de-
cent of the well-educated, mate
rialists accept, some form of
"Lippmannesque" humanism as
the way of making the best of a
bad job.
Now, humanists are, as rule,
specifically agnostic yet reso-
lutely practice the good life as
they see it, and do their best to
bring that life to pass for other
people as we'll. Many of them
get considerable pleasure out of
making fun Of the sacred super
stitions of the preceding genera
ton and are doubtless a health
full influence in many ways be-
cause they puncture the hypo-
critical pretensionS of people who
duly profess religion" and sharp
ly practice business.
In ordinary everyday life, huma-
nists are interesting, amusing,
stimulating and humble. People
of this sort always will be very
useful in keeping religious peo-
pie from taking themselves per-
maturely seriously.
The religion of the future must
affirm in unmistakable terms the
fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man, not merely
by way of giving mystical glow
to the individual worShiper, but
also by way of bringing the king
dom of heaven on earth. The
church of the twelfth and thir-
tenth centuries sought to bring
this about in a very definite way
by theocracy, by way Of life
where economic activity was sub
ordinate to a religious conscious
ness. Over large areas of Eu-
rope, tremendous efforts were
made to fix just prices, fair
wages, right conditions Of labor,
all with the ideea of building a
social state fit to glorify God.
DURING this period, Europe
IL searched its mind and heart
as never before or since. Some of
the manifestations of that search
were embodied in beautiful cathe-
Grals.