RELIGIOUS WORK 



FLOYD WILLIAMS TOMKINS 



[Floyd Williams Tomkins, Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia, b. New 

 York City. A.B. Harvard, 1872; General Theological Seminary, New York 

 City, 1875; S.T.D. University of Pennsylvania. Rector of Saint James 

 Church, Chicago, 1891-95; Grace Church, Providence, Rhode Island, 1895-99. 

 Member of Contemporary Club, American Academy Political and Social Sci- 

 ence, Department of Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania. Author of The 

 Christian Life; Following Christ; My Best Friend, etc.] 



THERE have been many changes and developments in connection 

 with religion since humanity's first vital appearance on the scroll 

 of history. Yet it remained for Christianity to bring a change 

 so marked and almost revolutionary that it has affected the whole 

 growth of civilization, and made religion a new thing. The suc- 

 cessive stages of religious life are readily marked and lead up to 

 this modern revelation of truth in a way so beautiful as to prove 

 the ruling of God. Man in his crude state, differentiated from 

 the brute only by the possession of brain and conscience, found his 

 first ways opened by this brain and this conscience towards some 

 superior power, recognized but unknown. God was ignorantly 

 worshiped, but He was the unknown God and, therefore, feared 

 and dreaded. Then as brain and conscience grew, and so a way 

 was opened for a revelation, God spoke to man and became to 

 human consciousness a Person. Power became an intelligent 

 power. Finally, the growth was sufficiently advanced, " in the 

 fullness of time," for the richer revelation of God as a Father to be 

 loved rather than a power to be feared. God himself came to 

 man, his glory veiled, that love might be planted in the human 

 heart. In Jesus Christ there came the great demarcation line of 

 history. God showed himself, and those who saw him clearly 

 were born again. To serve, to worship, to believe God, were the 

 essentials of religion and of life as taught by our Lord and Saviour. 

 And yet in all this fullness of light men went astray. They began 

 to make the test upon which religion was to stand or fall in the 

 individual case a matter of philosophical interpretation rather than 

 of loyal and personal affection. Who Jesus was, and what were 

 the plan of his life and the meaning of his death, held men so 

 closely that they forgot to follow the natural line of the new reli- 

 gion, marked in the example of the Christ and in his declaration 

 of a new kingdom. Their reasoning about him, united to their 

 worship of him, shadowed their service. And this has practically 

 continued until within the memory of our present generation, when 

 again a new stage of development was reached, and work for God 



