366 RELIGIOUS WORK 



and with God became as important a matter as exactness in creed. 

 This did not come in a day; nor did it come without serious 

 struggles which for a time tended to unbalance all truth, and make 

 religion a mere matter of philanthropy. Even yet it has not 

 mastered men sufficiently to make all Christians and all churches 

 true to the light which has beamed forth. And yet it has become 

 so largely recognized as to mark a new and happy era in the 

 history of religion. Christian work and Christian faith have been 

 married. The Paul and the James of the imperfect theologians 

 have become one. To believe and to do have taken the lead in 

 the world's advancement, and no human power can separate them 

 or stay their progress. 



If we had time it would be of great interest to trace the natural 

 causes of this great reform, found in three particulars: (1) A re- 

 action from a severe and one-sided statement of faith; (2) an 

 advance in intelligence which refused to think of a God cruel and 

 terrible, or, in other words, a rebellion against a return to the igno- 

 rant ideas of the past; and (3) a leaping up of pity and love, 

 born of God out of the modern mingling of all elements of humanity 

 in the democracy of common living. It would well repay a pro- 

 found study also, to show how this era of religious activity has had 

 a perfectly natural growth from the past, and can be traced by 

 theological evolution as clearly as modern methods of living can 

 be traced from the imperfect conditions of past ages. But we must 

 confine ourselves to a few of the characteristics of this glorious 

 flowering of Christianity which has shed its fragrance and its beauty 

 in the darkest places of common and personal life. It has been 

 shown how greatly the missionary zeal of this age has profited, 

 and how the very spirit of missions has caught the glow resulting 

 from a clear understanding of what Christianity has to say to the 

 men of nations who have not been in the path of its progress. 

 The purpose of this paper shall be to show how large and rich 

 religious work has become in the personal experience of the Chris- 

 tian, and in. the sphere where the Christian Church is called upon 

 to minister. 



I. The Present Ideal of a Christian 



What is it to be a Christian? Evidently to follow Christ, and 

 one cannot follow him unless he believes in him. Here at once 

 we strike that broad conception of truth which, though Jesus 

 taught it plainly enough, it has taken humanity yes, and the 

 Church eighteen hundred years to grasp. From one side to the 

 other men have swayed, with tangent variations in many directions, 

 until conscience, personal as well as ecclesiastical, has become 



