THE EXPANSION OF RELIGION 257 



life may expand to diversity, comprehensiveness, richness, scope. 

 Provincialism is not directed to the untrue, but to the unimportant. 

 It is false perspective, like that which a Chinaman paints on a plate, 

 where the man is larger than the bridge he crosses, and the bridge 

 is larger than the castle it joins. The incorrect drawing of the 

 picture of life crowds the foreground with details which are larger 

 than the universe behind. 



The same defect of disproportion, or, in the language of economics, 

 the limitation of spiritual output, meets one as he traces the history 

 of the Christian religion. A person unfamiliar with the mechanics 

 of religion who should enter some Christian convocation and listen 

 to the hot debates of Christian ministers, might well find himself 

 astonished by the narrow range of topics which seemed to command 

 attention. What is this organization, he might ask, whose interests 

 are here considered? Is it a piece of machinery, to be adjusted and 

 repaired; is it a court, assigning its discipline and penalties; is it an 

 army, with its uniforms and drills; is it a theater, with its search for 

 a new sensation? It is not that these discussions are wholly illegiti- 

 mate or superfluous. Organization involves orderliness; worship 

 must have form. When, however, the spiritual is subordinated to 

 the mechanical, and a way of inspiration regarded as a way of organi- 

 zation, then there results provincialism, and religion is detached 

 from the real interests of the modern world, as the small-talk of the 

 village is detached from the great movements of the world. In the 

 preface to the last edition of Professor Paulsen's Ethics he remarks 

 that many controversies of theology recall to him a student's 

 reply to an examiner's question concerning the occupations of 

 the inhabitants of the Hebrides. " The people of the Hebrides," 

 answered this youth, " obtain a meager subsistence by washing 

 each other's clothes." A similar comment might be made on 

 the issues which divide religious sects and claim the first place in 

 conventions. The Christians, a looker-on might say, maintain a 

 meager existence by washing, or soiling, or criticising each other's 

 clothes. 



Even the highest themes of religion may be provincially approached. 

 The purposes of God and the destiny of man, though they are the 

 subjects of contemplation which environ human life like an atmos- 

 phere, without which it is impossible to draw full breath or to hold 

 one's soul erect, may become unreal, uninteresting, unrefreshing, 

 provincial. The habit of mind induced by theology easily develops 

 into a detached and specialized way of thought, unrelated to the 

 common duty of the world; and the theologian may discourse of the 

 highest concerns in a language quite unintelligible to the common 

 work-a-day world. Even theology is but a province of life, though 

 it be a province of lofty altitude and large horizon; and the air of 



