374 RELIGIOUS WORK 



V. What Religious Work Must Bring to the Individual and to the 



Church 



It remains for me to touch in a clear and terse way upon the 

 effect which religious work is to have upon the individual Chris- 

 tian and upon the cause of Christianity in general. This is neces- 

 sary because there are many doubting hearts, seeking, like Uzzah, 

 to stay the ark as in their eyes it seems to totter; who fear that an 

 unsettled or a flabby faith may result from strenuous religious 

 living. Is it safe, say these doubting ones, for us to leave the 

 Word of God and serve tables? Dare we cease to enforce sound 

 doctrine and give ourselves to the enforcement of sound living? 

 Is not truth the greatest thing, after all? Setting aside the fact 

 that such has been the cry through the ages, with rather sickening 

 consequences both for the faith and for human life, let us face 

 the issue, and the issue is distinctly this, that no dogma can live 

 in solitude, but it must be shaken into active service. Madame 

 de la Guyon, that wonderful woman who lived in the time of 

 Louis XIV, said, in writing to a young preacher: " Preach nothing 

 but the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Preach it as a kingdom 

 near at hand, as something not a great way off, but to be received 

 and realized now." And her suggestion is timely to-day. We 

 have been preaching the kingdom as a dream of some far away 

 and unknown era, an ecclesiastical Utopia, a new republic of the 

 air. Truth is for the present. It has its place not in the case for 

 preservation, but in the dusty way where men are fighting. It is 

 not a deposit to be held from decay, but a seed to bear fruit, a 

 jewel to shine, a sunbeam to impart life. One must admit that 

 there is danger of erratic and Godless activity; but there is, alas, 

 much greater danger of atrophied faith, palsied dogma, mummified 

 truth. And just as the healthy, active child has a healthy and 

 active mind, so the religion which lives and works has a normal 

 faith which commends itself by its beauty and sanity. We can 

 claim, therefore, (1) that Christian work is to faith what an 

 exercised reason is to the brain. Hence the individual who works 

 for God learns of God as none other can. Two men seek for truth. 

 One gives himself to books and isolated speculative reason; the 

 other deals with men and human needs which he seeks to satisfy. 

 Which finds the truth first? The soul of man cannot live on husks, 

 and, therefore, he finds nourishment not in a God of theory, but 

 in a God of present help and power. No man's Christianity is 

 healthy which is not a working force in his daily living. (2) The 

 faith long held becomes for the man a living faith only when 

 exercised. It is a grave question whether there is any truth for 

 the man who is not himself true. Action, while it may not create 



