can well be imagined; but for them all the Life was essentially the same. This ideal of life, together with a personal allegiance to him who taught it, is what all Christians have in common.

From time to time reformers have arisen who have sought to remove some of the crust of speculation from the preaching of the Christian Life. In our generation, after an era of keen theological disputation, the current is again setting toward the spiritual conception of religion; and the Church is putting its emphasis upon charity and purity and service. But always beneath its forbidding formularies and elaborate theologies it has kept alive a spark of the spirit of brotherliness and earnest consecration that inspired its Master, Christ, that glowed in the bosom of Paul and the apostles, that led St. Francis out to nurse the sick and dying, that has lifted many a humble and uncultivated man to a level above that of Cæsar or Napoleon. Read the Nicene or the Athanasian Creed, and Christianity will appear to be a sort of intellectual jugglery; look at the lives of the faithful, and you will see Christianity in its true essence and ultimate significance, as the life of the spirit, illuminating men's troubled hearts, bringing them inward power and peace.

"The first Christian associations were formed on a basis which was less intellectual than moral and spiritual. . . . It was a fellowship of a common ideal and a common enthusiasm of goodness, of neighborliness, and of mutual service, of abstinence from all that would arouse the evil passions of human nature, of the effort to crush the lower part of us in the endeavor to reach after God. . . . It is even possible that the baptismal formula may have consisted, not in an assertion of belief, but in a promise of amendment." But "the flocking into the Christian fold of the educated Greeks and Romans, who brought with them the intellectual habits of mind which dominated in the age, gave to the intellectual

...

element an importance which it had not previously possessed. Agreement in opinion, which had been the basis of union in the Greek philosophical schools, and later in the Gnostic societies, now came to form a new element in the bond of union within and between churches. . . . The insistence on that intellectual basis... checked the progress of Christianity. Christianity has won no great victories since its basis was changed." 1

Who is the true Christian?

A Christian is any one who is consciously a follower of Christ, who looks to Christ as his pattern and guide, and sincerely tries to live the Christ-life- the life of selfsurrender and purity and love, the life that aims not to be ministered unto but to minister in the midst of a selfish and sensual world.

The Christian will naturally wish to know what can now be known of God, and Christ, the human soul and its destiny; and he will gladly profess publicly his belief in what appears to him to be the truth. But Christ imposed no creedal test; rather, he had scant consideration for the orthodoxy of his times, and flung to men the question, "Why judge ye not of yourselves what is right?" So the Christian need know nothing of theology, hold no particular conception of the person of Christ, and bind himself to no creed.

The Christian will probably find inspiration for himself and be able best to help others by allying himself with one of the churches that have grown up about the name of Christ; and he will glory in open confession of his discipleship to the Master. But Christ founded no organization, and offered salvation to men not through sacraments or church-going but through repentance and espousal of the New Life. So

1 E. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages on the Christian Church, pp. 335-49, abridged.

the Christian need belong to no church; and if he does join one of the churches he will look upon his membership therein not as in itself constituting him a Christian but only as a means to quicken his spiritual life and enable him the better to serve his fellows.

The one essential requirement of the Christian is that he heed the admonition of the Apostle, "Let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity!" And yet, if he is conscious that he has sinned, if he despairs of his strength to keep pure and loyal, he will remember that Christ came to save that which was lost, called his followers from among just such sinful men, and bade his disciples forgive seventy times seven times. Whoever is sincerely repentant for past faults, is ready to take up his cross again and follow Christ, is willing to fight on against the sensual nature within him and to think most not of himself but of others, may, humbly but proudly, take to himself the name of Christian.

W. A. Brown, Essence of Christianity. C. C. Everett, The Distinctive Mark of Christianity (in Essays, Theological and Literary). A. Sabatier, Outlines of the Philosophy of Religion, bk. II, chap. II. Anon., Religion of Christ in the Twentieth Century (Putnam's, 1906). A. Harnack, What is Christianity? Christianity and History. J. Royce, Problem of Christianity, vol. 1. B. W. Bacon, Christianity Old and New. L. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity. A. Loisy, Gospel and the Church. G. Tyrrell, Christianity at the Crossroads. W. Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis. W. Bousset, What is Religion, chap. VII. B. H. Streeter, Restatement and Reunion, chap. I. W. H. P. Faunce, What Does Christianity Mean, chap. 1. Hibbert Journal, vol. 11, p. 717. New World, vol. 1, p. 401; vol. 9, p. 246. American Journal of Theology, vol. 16, p. 256. Harvard Theological Review, vol. 7, p. 16. Biblical World, vol. 44, p. 398.

SUMMARY OF PART II

What function does religion have in the life of man?

LIFE may be said to consist broadly of two activities, the adjustment of things to ourselves and the adjustment of ourselves to things; the former is the object of all practical work, the latter is the object of religion. If men are to live in any safety and comfort much labor must be performed upon the outer world; nature must be subdued and refashioned to become adapted to man's needs. But this is not all. When the highest degree of physical security and material luxury is wrested from mother earth, when knowledge is won and art developed, there remain sources of dissatisfaction and distress. That residuum in the nature of things which man cannot change confronts him and warns him that his human nature too must be tamed and reshaped if he is to attain to a sure and abiding happiness.

Thus, religion is not a merely adventitious source of satisfaction, an extra solace tacked on to life; it is a psychological necessity. In the broad and natural sense in which we are now using the word, every man must be religious if his life is to be a complete success. Beset as he is by warring and unwise impulses, surrounded by other human beings with wants and wills of their own, confronted by the obdurate facts of pain and separation and death, he must learn to weed out and harmonize his desires, to adjust his will to the welfare of those about him, and to set his heart upon such things that the uncertainties of life cannot take away his joy in living and plunge him into despair. To these fundamental and irremovable aspects of life he must adapt himself; he

must struggle till he attain to the life of purity, the life of love, the life of peace.

The necessary adjustment of life to its conditions is made when we have attained a harmony of our impulses with one another, with the wills of other people, and with the fortune that befalls us. By enlisting men's devotion to such ideals, by teaching a way of life that can save them from sensuality and sin, unite them in brotherhood and mutual service, and lift them above sorrow, religion has, for those who have really grasped its secret, proved a solution of the great problem of life. From the cold necessity of obedience to moral laws and of self-repression religion leads men to a love of righteousness and purity; from an enforced tribal loyalty and a legally prescribed justice religion lifts them to a love of their fellows, to a genuine unselfishness and charity; from a mere stunned submission to fortune or defiance of its injuries, religion lifts them to the peace that comes from complete self-surrender in the service of the Ideal. This disposition of the heart and will, through which a man comes to care for the highest things and to live in gentleness and inward calm above the surface aspects and accidents of life, we call, in its inner nature, Spirituality; when it is embodied in outward forms and institutions, and spreads among whole communities, we call it a religion.

This spiritual significance is to be found in some degree in all the religions, but in the fullest and highest expression only in Christianity. Christianity seeks to turn men from the life of impulse and selfishness to the larger and holier life; and the turning it calls Conversion. Often the change of heart is brought about only by long struggle and repeated endeavor. But not infrequently it is effected better, at a certain critical point, by grasping the higher life through the imagination, and claiming it, though yet unrealized, as an actual possession. This process orthodox Christianity calls