MAIN QUESTIONS IN RELIGION I WHAT IS THE GREAT REALITY IN RELIGION? W HEN a distinct and severe shock comes to the human soul, through some great calamity or bereavement, fundamental questions are likely to be raised anew. Secondary matters drop at once into their due subordination, while thought and feeling wrestle with the primary problems of being and the meaning of existence and the order of the universe. Words and phrases lightly uttered in happy hours suddenly acquire a doubtful significance; one is almost startled by a fresh, overpowering sense of the mystery of life; and, without rebellion or positive distrust, he simply bows himself in solemn wonder, and waits for light "more than they that watch for the morning." At the present moment the world is in the midst of a social cataclysm whose appalling destructiveness staggers the stoutest heart. The frightful conflict which is devastating Europe is like the inundation of a continent. No man can measure the magnitude of the disaster, or in imagination conceive its far-reaching consequences. Inevitably, therefore, it impresses and oppresses every thoughtful person; a mood of unwonted seriousness prevails among all classes; and many are asking what is the relation of this gigantic catastrophe to the spiritual faith which heretofore has sustained men's hearts. What is essential and substantial in that faith, what is vital and enduring in all our thinking and believing, in all our teaching and preaching, so that we may still speak to one another some honest word of hope and healing? Such a sober and searching attitude comes at a time when, from other causes, we have been led to look into the heart of things rather than upon their surface. For our age has been an expansive and critical one; the achievements of the nineteenth century immensely broadened and deepened human inquiry in every direction; and the twentieth century finds us trying to ascertain and utilize the net values of all this investigating, revolutionary thinking. As in parliamentary proceedings it often happens that, after the consideration of many side issues, with the adoption or rejection of amendments and counter-amendments, a point is at length reached where the main question is moved and put to vote, so it is in the intellectual deliberations of our time: we have discussed a thousand incidental or collateral interests, pursuing argument and research into every possible ramification; and we are now ready—at least some of us are ready to try to decide, for ourselves at any rate, some of the main questions of belief and conduct, leaving non-essentials where they belong, on one side. In other words, after all the centuries of theological debate and ecclesiastical strife, and especially after the last hundred years of scientific and philosophical research, it would seem as though it ought to be possible to sift the discussion down to a few principal issues, and with reference to these to find some working theory of life that may approve itself at once to our clearest understanding, our deepest moral instincts, our purest affections and our holiest aspirations. Such an attainment were surely desirable; and undoubtedly there are thousands of earnest people who, weary of profitless controversy and likewise of skepticism, yet perplexed and bewildered, and often sorrowing and yearning, are really hungry for some vital and valid message touching the most important things of life, whereon they may stay their souls. If the present writer may hope to offer any fragments of so good and great a message, it will only be because, after thirty years of service in the pastoral ministry of the Christian Church, followed by four years of leisure for reading and reflection, in the midst of which he was called to drink a deep draught from the cup of sorrow, he may claim to express his convictions with serious thoughtfulness, with absolute candor and with a constructive purpose. He sincerely desires to find some fixed stake in all this maddening maze of things to which his own spirit may cling, and to do what he can to help his fellowmen to reach a similar security. Phillips Brooks defined preaching as the communication of truth through personality. The personality of preacher or teacher is indeed an important factor, but it is like the stained-glass window: the blended hues of the light which it transmits are produced by the vari-colored medium, but the light itself is from without; and always we have to remember that the sunshine is infinitely greater than the window or the soft radiance which it diffuses within. If it is mainly our own personal experience that enables us to "speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen," we must not forget that other men have had other experi |