The social consciousness, moreover, has almost entirely to do with men, and hence naturally must lay stress on human history, rather than on nature, as a source of religious ideas. Indeed, it will have no doubt that what nature is made to mean religiously will be chiefly determined by the prevalent social ideals. It can, therefore, least of all ignore the historical in Christianity. The social consciousness recognizes increasingly, too, with the clearing of its own ideals and with the deepening study of the teaching of Jesus, that it really is only demanding, in the concrete, and in detailed application to particular problems, and to all of them, the spirit shown in its fullness only in Christ, as Professor Peabody's eminently sane treatment of the social teaching of Jesus seems to me fairly to have proven. The social consciousness, therefore, cannot help becoming more and more consciously and emphatically Christian. In a single sentence, because of the steps of its own long evolution, the social consciousness instinctively distrusts the highly emotional, unless it is manifestly under equally strong rational control, and unless it has equal ethical insight and power, and is historically justified. It tends, therefore, necessarily to draw away from the falsely mystical in religion, which is lacking in all these respects. And the same reasons, which array the social consciousness against the falsely mystical in religion, lead it into natural sympathy with a positive emphasis upon the personal, the ethical, and the historically concretely Christian in religion. [29] Nash, _Ethics and Revelation_, p. 33. [30] Herrmann, _The Communion of the Christian with God_, pp. 19, 20. [31] Herrmann, _Op. cit._, p. 27. [32] Giddings, _Elements of Sociology_, p. 321; cf. also pp. 155 ff, 302, 320, 327. [33] McCurdy, _History, Prophecy, and the Monuments_, Vol. II, p. 223; cf. pp. 214, ff. [34] G. A. Smith, _The Book of the Twelve Prophets_, Vol. I, pp. 30, 84, 89; Cornill, _The Prophets of Israel_, pp. 41, 46; _The Expository Times_, Jan., Feb., 1902, article, _Prophetic Ecstasy_. CHAPTER VI _THE EMPHASIS OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS UPON THE PERSONAL RELATION IN RELIGION, AND SO UPON THE TRULY MYSTICAL_ I. THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS TENDS POSITIVELY TO EMPHASIZE THE PERSONAL RELATION IN RELIGION 1. _Emphasizes Everywhere the Personal._--The social consciousness sees man as preëminently the social animal, made for personal relations, irrevocably and essentially knit up with other persons. It deepens everywhere our sense of persons and of personal relations. It may be itself almost defined as the sense of the fully personal.