USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Lynn > Celebration of the 275th anniversary of the First Church of Christ : Lynn, Massachusetts, Sunday, June ninth nineteen hundred seven > Part 7
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" Through the ages one increasing purpose runs."
Any fair and large-visioned knowledge of the past will deepen faith and quicken that reasonable optimism which pulsates in every great achievement for God and man.
And we need the larger historic vision which this occa- sion gives us that we may do justice to the past. The fruitfulness of the present is often rooted in the faithful- ness of the past. Those earlier seed sowings in sacrifice and heroism made possible the present harvestings in freedom and joy. We recall John Fiske's tribute to Puri- tanism in connection with modern civilization. It is a sure sign of immature thinking to speak of the fathers with a sneer. "They builded better than they knew;" but they builded, and with fewer and clumsier tools than are in the hands of their more favored children. To-night,
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therefore, we render homage to those valiant souls, faith- ful to the light that guided them, who wrought not for themselves alone, but for the coming generations. "Other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors." More than they realized, they lived and toiled for us. Whether as lonely watchers of the skies, reading the signs of their times, or as humble toilers in the common drudgery of life, they worked for the future. Were their songs crude, and sometimes in the minor key? The pathos and the power of the epic poem were in their souls. Was the mold of their thinking often narrow? They were governed by burning convictions, and an ounce of conviction is better than a pound of opinion. The ring of sincerity and of reverence was in their lives. Undoubtedly, they were bitterly dogmatic at times; but it is well to remember that narrowness is not the worst thing in the world. Indeed, there is a kind of narrowness always needed, that of the iron track of duty, making moral progress possible, and that of the unsheathed sword in defense of liberty. Their work was not that of the nerveless, inglorious sluggard, but rather of the indomitable hero in the strife. It is easy sometimes to idealize the past; but let us never forget that those men and women of bygone years lived in the power of their own ideals, for in them they saw celestial fire, and were not disobedient to the heavenly vision.
But while the wider historic vision is needed for a fair estimate of the past, it is also needed for a worthy appreci- ation of the living present. The God of our fathers is leading us to larger things. What are we doing with our more glorious opportunity? If greater privilege means
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increased responsibility, then upon the heart and con- science of the church to-day lies a burden of exceptional obligation. The freer thinking of to-day, the wider catho- licity, the richer sense of brotherhood, the multiplicity of the means of service, the flood of illumination, from vari- ous sources, upon the fundamental verities of our faith - these and other elements of our priceless opportunity are not merely superior advantages in which we may rejoice, but divine challenges to the church to meet the new duties of the new age in the old spirit of sacrifice, heroism, conse- cration and hope, and in the power of that ministering love which draws its inspiration from the cross of Calvary.
In all the triumphs of the past, in all the problems of our complex social life, in all the eager searchings for ultimate truth and reality, in all the unconscious and unvoiced needs of great masses of men waiting for a supreme leadership through the tangled perplexities of our restless life, we may hear the voice of Providence saying to the church, " Be- hold I have set before thee an open door."
And finally, the historic vision which this unique anni- versary makes possible to us serves to accentuate the truth, that in the great work for the triumph of the everlasting Kingdom all may have a share. The lowliest as well as the loftiest in station have their places in the ongoings of the redemptive purpose of God. The glorious inheritance which is ours represents not only the leadership of the commanding voices in the years that have gone, but the fidelity and devotion in the rank and file. The hills of time are thronged with the unknown laborers who had learned to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness and
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to desire to spend and be spent for the sake of others. God be praised for the wider and more potential ministry of the few choice and gifted souls who have enriched the world with their generous contributions of voice and pen; but let us also thank God for the services of the many - the humble unknown souls whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and whose prayers and praises and self-denials have made us their debtors. As in the mate- rial universe there is a place for the little flower by the roadside, the single blade of grass, and the diamond drops of dew, as well as for the mighty oak, the towering mountain, and the swelling ocean, bearing on its bosom the wealth of nations, so in the Kingdom of Grace every- one, whether having much or little, whether knowing much or little, may have a useful and fruitful part.
Thankful for the past, let us welcome the future with glad, earnest and brave hearts.
" Forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."
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Remarks - Pastor.
THE PASTOR: From inquiries that have come to me during the day, it seems necessary that I should explain who the next speaker is, and what is his official position in the Congregational order. He is the Moderator of the National Council of Congregational Churches, which is the highest office of honor that these churches can be- stow. Perhaps some of you would understand better, if I should say that Dr. Gladden is the Archbishop of the Congregational Church. He has no official power, by the stroke of his pen to create or demolish churches, to install or to depose ministers, nor to dictate rules of procedure in the life of the churches. But he has the power of insight, which is characteristic of the true prophet. He has the power to bring a wide and thorough scholarship with a rich and varied experience, into the Councils of the church, for their good; he has the power to apply the prophetic vision to the problems of social and industrial righteous- ness for the benefit of all. His voice has been heard, and his worth has been recognized. He has been chosen to high official position, because of what he is. He does, in and through that position, what he, with God's help, is able to do. The position neither creates nor measures but only recognizes the power of the man. Such a one from his exalted view-point, with his keenness of vision, and from the richness of his scholarship and experience, will speak to us upon "The Church of the Future."
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.
Stretching forward to the things that are before - PHIL. III, 13. REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D., LL.D., Columbus, Ohio.
Y YOU know what words precede these, in this sentence: "Forgetting the things that are behind." The Apostle is describing his attitude as a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ. He has much to remember and much to hope for; but between the memories that detain him and the prom- ises that beckon to him he does not suffer himself to linger. "This one thing I do: forgetting the things that are be- hind and stretching forward to the things that are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
Shall we say that Paul's attitude, at this moment, is the right attitude for us always? No; we had better say noth- ing of the kind. It was a momentary attitude; it was a passing phase of Paul's experience; but you cannot harden a phrase like this into a maxim. There has been too much interpretation of the Bible that has followed some such rule. Just at this moment Paul felt like forgetting the things that were behind; there were other moments when he wisely and profitably remembered them. The past has its uses. None of us can afford to ignore the past. Some- times we need to remember it that we may be humbled; sometimes that we may be comforted and lifted up. It is often possible for us in the pauses of our march to set up the memorial of our gratitude and write upon it: "Hith-
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erto hath the Lord helped us." To fail of that is base in- gratitude.
You have not been forgetting, to-day, the things that are behind. You have been gratefully and piously re- membering them. They are worth remembering. Your hearts have been comforted and your hopes have been strengthened by these memories.
But the past is not our sole nor our best inheritance. The largest and most precious of our possessions are in the future. There is a time to remember and there is also a time to forget - a time to let the dead past bury its dead, and to stretch forward to the things that are before.
Sometimes our pride in our progenitors makes us con- temptuous of our neighbors. "We have Abraham to our father," bragged the Jews, despising all other races. That is the place for a wholesome forgetfulness.
Sometimes we are so elated by past achievements that we feel no need of present fidelity. That is the time for dropping a curtain upon the days gone by.
Sometimes we are depressed and burdened by past fail- ures. That is the time for forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before.
We see, then, that both these phases of experience are normal. It is good to look back that we may be humbled and comforted, but when the backward look makes us conceited or indolent or despondent we had better look the other way. You have had your backward look to-day, and I trust that it has brought you courage and inspira- tion; to-night you have chosen to turn your faces in the
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other direction, and you have asked me to come and speak to you about the church of the future.
It is wise, I think, for the church, as it gathers up the memories of past years, to consider well what the years to come have in store. We cannot do our work in the pres- ent unless we have some clear and definite conception of what the future is to be. The present is organically and vitally related to the future. Our thought of the harvest determines our sowing. The gardener and the husband- man would not know how to do the work of the spring if they had not some clear notion of what was expected in the autumn. In all our industries our plans for the pres- ent are determined by our thoughts about the future. Education is a blind and foolish enterprise unless we have some conception of what life means and what we are going to make of it.
The religion of which we are the inheritors has always kept the thoughts of disciples and worshippers fixed upon the future. This was true in a remarkable degree of the ancient Hebrew faith. Although very little emphasis was placed by Hebrew teachers and prophets upon the life after death, the generations of the future held all their hopes. The expectation of a Kingdom which was to fill the world with righteousness and peace, and of a King who was to reign in justice, to be the protector of the weak and the friend of the friendless and the champion of the op- pressed and the downtrodden - under whose scepter order and welfare and fruitfulness and beauty were to be universal - this was the great expectation which kindled the soul of the prophet and tuned the harp of the Psalmist
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through all the generations of Jewish history. The one theme of Hebrew thought was the Church of the Future. In the inspiring hopes which clustered about this theme the people found the uplift and the invigoration of their national life, and won the energies which have made them, through all the ages of their dispersion, a people of such wonderful vitality.
Christianity simply took up this Hebrew hope and trans- figured it; the thoughts of the apostles were always fixed upon the future; the glory of Christ yet to be revealed was the inspiration of all their life; the New Jerusalem, the glorious church of the future, into which were to be gath- ered all nations and kingdoms and tongues, was the goal of all their thinking and their striving.
Not only by all the traditional influences of our religion are our eyes turned toward the future, but the philosophy now prevailing makes a similar demand upon our thought. The most brilliant piece of historical generalization re- cently produced develops this idea - that the dominat- ing force in evolution is the control of the present by the future. "From the very nature of the principle of Natural Selection," says Mr. Benjamin Kidd, "we see that it must produce its most efficient results where it acts through the largest numbers. The interests of the existing individuals and of the present time, as we see them, are of importance only as they are included in the interests of the unseen majority in the future."
According to this theory, which, indeed, lacks little of the force of a mathematical demonstration, those institu- tions only survive which are fitted to meet the demands of
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the future. It is the principle of "projected efficiency" which rules the movement of the evolutionary forces. "The types in the present around us to which the future belongs are those which will hold it under the operation of this principle. When the future arrives it will be the forms equipped to the best effect with the qualities through which this principle finds expression, which will have survived to represent it." (Western Civilization, Chap. 2.)
It would seem, therefore, to be in the highest degree rational that we should consider carefully what kind of a church the future is likely to demand, in order that we may shape our work as builders in the present to meet that demand. We want to build so that our work shall last. There is, St. Paul tells us, such a thing as building, on the true foundation, with gold, silver, precious stones - ma- terials that are practically indestructible; and there is such a thing as building on the same foundation with wood, hay, stubble, whose substance the fire wipes out, whose ashes the winds blow away. We want to build enduring walls on the good foundation.
I shall ask you, therefore, to think about the direction in which the church is likely to be developed in the genera- tions before us. It will be but the briefest and most meager outline of this development which I can suggest. On this summer evening we cannot undertake any careful or exhaustive study, but a mere pencil sketch may be ser- viceable, as giving some definiteness, to our thought and some direction to our labors.
Let us not, however, forget that the needs of the present
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must not be sacrificed in our care for the future. The church which would be perfectly adapted to the wants of the people at the end of the Twentieth Century would not be adapted to the wants of the people at the beginning of the century. Those of us who are optimists, and most of us are, believe that the church existing a hundred years from now will be a far more perfect church than the one existing to-day; yet probably the church of to-day is bet- ter for to-day than that more perfect church would be. It is not well for institutions, any more than for individ- uals, to be too far ahead of their time; but it is well for them to be a little distance ahead of it, and to have a clear notion of the way that their time is travelling - the direc- tion in which it is moving, the goal to which it is going. Every social instrument with which we work is, and must always be, far short of perfection; and those whose ideas of what constitutes perfection are the clearest are always called to make sacrifices of their ideals, for the sake of progress. If they are unwilling to make these sacrifices, if they insist on putting into immediate practice their idealisms, they become mere visionaries and accomplish nothing, for the age in which they live. Bear in mind, then, that our sketch of the church of the future indicates a goal to which we are travelling, and not a programme for the year 1907. Some of the changes suggested we may be ready for now; for others we must wait.
I. Will the church of the future have a creed? I think that it will. It may not be called a creed, but there will be certain principles and beliefs upon which it will rest and by which its work will be guided. Every organization
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which undertakes to do effective social work is founded on a creed. Political parties always have creeds. They change, somewhat, from decade to decade - not always so rapidly as they might; they often stick to old dogmas long after they are worn out; they often fail to incorporate new truth when it is greatly needed. Both of the great parties will soon be revising and republishing their creeds, in preparation for the coming campaign. There will be considerable dead and rotten wood in both of them, but they will serve as rallying cries. More or less perfectly they will represent the ideas for which these great political organizations stand and which they work to promote.
Every society or group of men has some such intellectual bond which generally finds expression in its constitution. The church of the future will have regulative ideas in which it will believe, and for the propagation of which its members will unite. These ideas will constitute its creed. Without such ideas it would have neither coherency nor purpose.
I doubt, however, whether the creed of the church of the future will be as long or as elaborate as some of the creeds of the past have been. So far as it finds expression in words it will be a very simple statement of the most ele- mentary and comprehensive truths of religion, and it will be used for instruction rather than for exclusion, as a rallying cry and not as a barrier. The political parties lay down their creeds, but they do not expect universal assent to them. Each of these parties, in the campaign just before us, will be very glad of the support of many
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persons who do not pretend to believe nearly all they proclaim, but who, in the main, agree with them.
My own belief is that faith in Christ will be in the future far more than it has ever been in the past, the central and constructive principle of the Christian Church. If any one thinks that His name or His power are likely to wane, as time goes on, I do not share that opinion. It seems to me that the entire movement of history, for the past nine- teen hundred years, makes such an expectation incredible.
But faith in Christ is likely to take on a different mean- ing as time passes. The church will believe in Christ in quite another sense than that in which they now, gener- ally, believe in Him. What is meant by faith in Christ, for the most part, is faith in Him as a mediator between God and man, as our substitute before the law, as the medium through whom we receive the forgiveness of our sins and the assurance of salvation. Faith in Christ is the appointed means by which we secure the salvation of our souls and an inheritance among them that are sancti- fied.
Now I do not wish to disparage this kind of faith; in its essential meaning I accept it for myself, and seek to bring others into the same experience. But after we are able to say all this, are we not far short of what is meant by faith in Christ? It seems to me that the faith in Christ which is really vital and essential means a great deal more than this. It is faith in Him as the Lord of life, the Prince of life, the Leader and Captain and King of men.
To believe in Christ must be, first of all, to believe that what He has said about life and conduct is true; that His
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way of living is the right way. That was what He said about Himself: "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life." We might give to these phrases a deep metaphysi- cal or theological sense, as men have always been doing, but why not take them in the simplest and most natural sense? Why not say that the way of Jesus is the true way, and the living way - that to live as He lived is the only right way of living?
That was the interpretation which the earliest disciples put upon His words. They had so much to say about the new "way" of life, that men began to call them the people of "The Way," and they seem to have adopted the epithet.
What that early church tried to do, and but feebly suc- ceeded in doing, the church of the future will be con- strained to do. It will put at the foundation of all its work and worship faith in Jesus Christ, faith in Him as the Way and the Truth and the Life. It will clearly under- stand that its business in this world is to live in it as Jesus lived; to make His law of love the law of its life; to trust the Father as Jesus trusted Him; to love the brother as Jesus loved him. It will understand that faith in Jesus means nothing at all save as it helps us to be, here in the world, such men as Jesus was, and to do, here in the world, such work as Jesus did.
It is hardly necessary for me to stop and prove that this has not, hitherto, been what is meant by faith in Christ. Many of us have had faith in Him as a personal Redeemer, but not many of us have had faith in Him as the director of practical affairs, and as the organizer and ruler of human
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society. We were ready to believe what He said about the saving of our souls; we were not at all ready to believe what he said about our every-day life in this world. The church, as a body, has never been willing to admit that the law of Christ can be applied to all the relations of human life. It has never supposed that business and politics, and society and art and amusements, and all the rest could be Christianized - at least, not yet. By and by, in the millennium, this rule would be practical, but not now. For the present the law of competition, the law of struggle, with self-interest, enlightened self-interest, of course, as the regulative principle - this was the regimen to which we must conform. Of course there were oppor- tunities for compassion and self-denial; these assuaged somewhat the wounds and the bitterness of the struggle, but strife was the law and good-will was the merciful ex- ception. That Christ's way of living is practicable or possible in this world has been constantly and consistently denied by most of those who bear the name of Christ. What Malthus, the great English economist and publicist (who, by the way, was a clergyman), most explicitly said, has been echoed by the social philosophers of every gen- eration: "The great Author of Nature, with that wisdom which is apparent in all His works, has made the passion of self-love beyond comparison stronger than the passion of benevolence." According to this when Jesus bids us love our neighbor as ourselves, He commands us to repudiate and contemn the law of God as revealed in the nature He has given us. What right have we to be loving our neigh- bors as ourselves, when the great Author of Nature has
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illustrated His wisdom by prompting us to love our- selves more, beyond comparison, than we love others?
Such teachings as these have been assumed, even when they have not been boldly asserted, by most Christians who have undertaken to tell us how we ought to live in this world. Jowett, the great Master of Balliol, was an- other clergyman of eminence; and we have his word for it, that "Providence has been pleased to rest the world on a firmer basis than is supplied by the fleeting emotions of philanthropy, viz., self-interest." While Archbishop Magee one of the most brilliant and popular of recent English ecclesiastics, declared that the Sermon on the Mount was not a practical rule of life; that any attempt to live by its precepts would simply reduce society to chaos. These great ecclesiastics only give expression to the common sentiment of the church. Have we not heard, all our lives, the constant protest that the morality of Jesus is not workable, in existing social conditions; that it is a " counsel of perfection" which we ought to admire but cannot at present be expected to follow? Is it not the prevailing belief that no man can live by the Golden Rule in business? When one man, a few years ago, ventured to frame it and hang it up in his factory, was not that fact trumpeted all over Christendom as a unique experiment, and did not nine-tenths of our Christian people shake their heads and say that the thing could never be done?
What does all this prove but that the church does not believe and never has believed in Jesus Christ? We have tried to believe in Him enough to get our individual souls saved from the wrath to come and made sure of heaven,
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