behind that is a deeper
tragedy still--people who believe in God but who have thoughts of him
so narrowly ecclesiastical that they themselves do not perceive his
presence, acknowledged or unacknowledged, in all the goodness and truth
and beauty of the universe.

Such an enlargement of the idea of God to meet the needs of this new
world is one of the innermost demands of religion to-day. When a man
believes in the living God as the Creative Power in this universe,
whose character was revealed in Christ and who, recognized or
unrecognized, reveals himself in every form of goodness, truth and
beauty which life anywhere contains, he has achieved a God adequate for
life. To such a man the modern progressive outlook upon the world
becomes exhilarating; all real advance is a revelation of the purpose
of this living God; and, far from being hostile to religion, our modern
categories furnish the noblest mental formulae in which the religious
spirit ever had opportunity to find expression. We who believe this
have no business to be modest and apologetic about it, as though upon
the defensive we shyly presented it to the suffrages of men. It is a
gospel to proclaim. It does involve a new theology but, with
multitudes of eager minds in our generation, the decision no longer
lies between an old and a new theology, but between new theology and no
theology. No longer can they phrase the deepest experiences of their
souls with God in the outgrown categories of a static world. In all
their other thinking they live in a world deeply permeated by ideas of
progress, and to keep their religion in a separate compartment,
uninfluenced by the best knowledge and hope of their day, is an
enterprise which, whether it succeed or fail, means the death of vital
faith. To take this modern, progressive world into one's mind and then
to achieve an idea of God great enough to encompass it, until with the
little gods gone and the great God come, life is full of the knowledge
of him, as the waters cover the sea, that is alike the duty and the
privilege of Christian leadership to-day.

In a world which out of lowly beginnings has climbed so far and seems
intended to go on to heights unimagined, God is our hope and in his
name we will set up our banners.

[1] Bertrand Russell: Philosophical Essays, II, The Free Man's Worship,
pp. 60-61.

[2] Max Nordau: The Interpretation of History, p. 217.

End of Project Gutenberg's Christi