next to the danger of materialism or practical agnosticism in the church of christ comes perhaps the danger of opportunism. i suppose to the end of time there will be difference of opinion on the question of compromise. that a certain element of compromise must come into human life, as it is now arranged, seems to me inevitable. much as we chafe against it, we are bound to accept it, owing to the limitations of our existence here. to take one of many examples: i suppose there is no one of us who does not year by year contribute, through the payment of taxes either direct or indirect, to the maintenance of the army and the navy, and perhaps to other actions on the part of the state with which he equally disapproves. there is, however, a whole range of problems upon which opinions differ very greatly. the question to which i have made allusion—the question of peace—illustrates my meaning perhaps as well as any. at what point are we going to make our peace principles felt? 90there are certain fundamental propositions to which every member of the church of christ can be found to assent. that we should love our enemies: that we should do good to those that hate us: that we should show kindness to all men: and so forth. but at what point are you going to apply these principles? we are living in a world where some kind of physical force seems to be absolutely necessary. i doubt if there are any of us who would go as far as tolstoi in our rejection of it.
but does this mean that we must therefore accept war as a necessity of this present evil time, and therefore be prepared ourselves to take up arms, as many of our fellow-christians think? the “practical commonsense man” sees no other course, even if his conscience do cry out at times.
to take another of the great problems which press upon us in these days, viz: the relation of christianity to business. “business is business” too often means that christian principles cannot be applied to it. there are so many things a man “must do” if he is to get along at all. 91“it is better to leave religion out altogether in some of these practical affairs.” in non-christian countries we constantly see the divorce of ethics from religion; and i am afraid the evil is not confined to distant lands. we all know something of the pulpit that dare not denounce the sins practiced by the wealthiest of the congregation: the minister whose tongue is tied upon sweating and overcrowding: the church-member who is zealous in the observance of religion, but lacking in his business obligations.
what a need for the thoroughgoing christian who has ideals and maintains them in everyday life, who will not lower them to suit the exigencies of life, or the pressure of social custom, to whom expediency is a forbidden word even though its exclusion may mean the cross!
or turn to the great non-christian world with which we are daily brought into contact. here is one of the greatest problems, if not the greatest, which confronts our civilization to-day. how are we going to meet our fellow-men of other races? the 92politician has his solution: the commercial man has his. what is to be the solution of the citizen of the kingdom of god? there can only be one answer: we must go to these men as to those who are our brethren; we must see them not as wholly bad or depraved, but as those who have in them infinite potentialities, who are called into the same citizenship and the same sonship which we enjoy. we must reaffirm to-day our belief in that light which lighteth every man, but we dare not be content at that. as our forefathers led the way in the understanding of sympathy with other races; so we to whom these still more intricate problems present themselves, must stand for the ideal, however hard it seems—the ideal of spiritual kinship and the strenuous effort to realize it in our relationship with other races; and so it comes about that the foreign missionary enterprise seems to be of the very essence of quakerism, and that we find it closely akin to the great causes of peace and anti-slavery with which our society has ever been identified. is the church of christ playing 93the part which it ought to play in regard to these matters? is it taking the stand which it ought to take in regard to the color problem in this country, in regard to the export of spirituous liquors, and so forth? what, indeed, is to be our view of a christian mission college which deliberately includes in its curriculum military drill with the full paraphernalia of warfare, and this in the traditionally peace-loving empire of china? to me it seems evident that there is a great place for the society of friends in this movement, just because we stand upon the side of idealism in all these complicated issues.
right along the line quakerism ranks itself on this side. the society of friends, as i read its history, has stood for an idealism which is well in advance of the current practice. in the holding of our meetings for worship we have stood for the absolute ideal; many of our christian brethren admit it in theory, but regard it as quite outside the sphere of practical religion. the same seems to be true as regards the sacraments, oaths, and 94so forth. the idealist is needed as much to-day as ever he was. the moral reforms, to the achievement of which friends have contributed so much, have been attained by men who dared to be regarded as utterly impracticable, as mere dreamers and visionaries. when slavery, for example, was knit into the very fabric of society, when its abolition seemed certain to lead to an industrial cataclysm, friends were not wanting who boldly said, “whatever happens, we must liberate the slave;” and in the end the visionary was right and the practical common-sense man was wrong; and the simple secret of it all was that the visionary saw god first and his fellow-men in the light of god’s will for them.
no less has it been true in business affairs that friends have maintained the strictest standard of integrity in the face of opposition and probable loss. they recognized a higher obligation which must be obeyed whatever the consequence which faced them. and in the strength of that idealism they won their way to the respect and confidence of their fellows. in the end 95they were often found to be the more practical in spite of (or was it because of?) their unreasoning idealism. “it was in this focussing upon moral effort that the quakers differed most from the other sects of the commonwealth period. their ‘views’ were not novel or original. every one of their peculiar views had already been proclaimed by some individual or by some religious party. what was new was the fixing of their ideas into one living truth, which was henceforth to be done, was to be put into life and made to march.”7
and to-day, if the society is true to its past it will not lose the chance of standing on the same side for the ideal, the christian and the only final solution of these complex problems. the church needs a body of men and women who will dare to be fools, unpractical, dreamers, in following the light and who will act up to their ideals.
