368 RELIGIOUS WORK 



meaning in morality aside from the will of a perfect God; but he can 

 never think of weakening the moral law by claiming human exemp- 

 tion from effort. He acknowledges failure, but he acknowledges also 

 the power of love to turn failure into success and to heal the wounds 

 of the fall. And with his right hand extended towards God, 

 towards heaven, towards Christ, and with his left stretched over 

 the world towards his fellows, he fights for God's righteousness, 

 for God's love, for God's honesty and purity, with a power drawn 

 from the throne of his King. 



I have dwelt long upon the delineation of the ideal because I 

 wish to make clear the character of the agent in all modern church 

 work. Religion is measured in the absolute by the character of 

 religious people or of the religious man. Work is what it is to-day 

 because of the workers. And when you have an ideal of Christian 

 manhood realized at least in desire and intent, then you have a 

 power in religious work which tells. This standard must never 

 be lowered. No one must dare to lessen in any way this fullness 

 of Christian manhood. The glory of it is the active power which 

 makes all men, like the man Christ, saviors of the world, giving 

 themselves to the work of redemption because they are so lovingly 

 loyal to the Head, so fully alive to the great truth of God's will and 

 God's purpose. 



II. Present Ideal of a Christian Church 



What, then, is the Church to-day? It is simply a union of the 

 Christians we have been describing. In one way it is inorganic 

 and invisible after an earthly fashion. In another sense it is 

 organic through the strength of tradition, or the exact adhesion 

 of its parts. But there can be no Church real and vital in its union 

 with the Head of all, unless there is a clear and determined effort 

 to save the world now and here. The conception of the Church 

 as a body of a few faithful folk who hold to a creed and accept a 

 form of worship, and wait for death to exalt them, is so much of 

 an anachronism that it cannot stand for a moment to-day. It is 

 a poor survival of a time of ignorance at which the dear God winked, 

 that is, which he graciously permitted for a season, but which he 

 never sanctioned. The idea of the Church as exclusive, with high 

 gates and difficult entrance, can hold no longer. Nor can the 

 idea of an exact and calm worship of a few respectable people once 

 a week endure. Nor yet can the holding to a future salvation, 

 regardless of a present and glorious salvation from wrong and 

 injustice and impurity and intemperance, stand as an identifica- 

 tion of the Church. Creeds are not to be despised. A right belief 

 is a great part, we may almost say an essential part, of right action, 



