Chapter V · (continued 2)

The omission of any truth for which the other ancient systems stood mutilates and impoverishes the Christian view of life. Ascetic Puritanism, for instance, is Christianity minus the truth taught by Epicurus. Sentimental liberalism is Christianity without the Stoic note. Dogmatic orthodoxy is Christianity sadly in need of Plato's search-light of sincerity. Sacerdotal ecclesiasticism is Christianity that has lost the Aristotelian disinterestedness of devotion to intellectual and social ends higher and wider than its own institutional aggrandisement.

The time is ripe for a Christianity which shall have room for all the innocent joys of sense and flesh, of mind and heart, which Epicurus taught us to prize aright, yet shall have the Stoic strength to make whatever sacrifice of them the universal good requires; which shall purge the heart of pride and pretence by questionings of motive as searching as those of Plato, and at the same time shall hold life to as strict accountability for practical usefulness and social progress as Aristotle's doctrines of the end and the mean require. It is by some such world-wide, historical approach, and the inclusion of whatever elements of truth and worth other systems have separately emphasised, that we shall reach a Christianity that is really catholic.

To take the duties and trials, the practical problems and personal relationships of life up into the atmosphere of Love, so that what we do and how we treat people becomes the resultant, not of the outward situation and our natural appetites and passions, but of the outward situation and Love within our hearts,—this is what it means to live in the Christian Spirit; this is the essence of Christianity. Strengthened character and straightened conduct are sure to follow the maintenance of this spiritual relationship. Not that it will transform one's hereditary traits and acquired habits all at once, or save one from many a slip and flaw. Even the Christian Spirit of Love takes time to work its moral transformation. The tendency of it, however, is steady and strong in the right direction; and in due time it will conquer the heart and control the action of any man who, whether verbally or silently, whether formally or informally, maintains this conscious relationship to that Love at the heart of things which most of us call God. Jesus and all who have shared His spiritual insight tell us that the maintenance of this relationship, close, warm, and quick, is the pearl of great price, the one thing needful, the potency of righteousness, the secret of blessedness; and that there is more hope of a man with a bad record and many besetting sins who honestly tries to keep this relationship alive within his breast, than there is of the self-righteous man who boasts that he can keep himself outwardly immaculate without these inward aids.

Christianity of this simple, vital sort is the world's salvation. Criticised by enemies and caricatured by friends; fossilised in the minds of the aged, and forced on the tongues of the immature; mingled with all manner of exploded superstition, false philosophy, science that is not so, and history that never happened; obscured under absurd rites; buried in incredible creeds; professed by hypocrites; discredited by sentimentalists; evaporated by mystics; stereotyped by literalists; monopolised by sacerdotalists; it has lived in spite of all the grave-clothes its unbelieving disciples have tried to wrap around it, and holds the keys of eternal life.