exploiting of each new social or industrial or political fad as it
arises--are strong deterrents to those who honestly and ardently hunger
for religion that _is_ religion and neither social service nor "big
business."
Christ said "you _cannot_ serve both God and mammon," and this is one of
the few cases where He stated a moral condition as a fact instead of
indicating the right or the wrong possibility in action. Organized
Christianity has for some time been trying to render this dual service,
and the penalty thereof is now on the world. This consideration seems to
me so important and so near the root of our troubles, and not in the
field of organized religion alone, that I am going to quote at length
from the Rev. Fr. Duffy of the American "Society of the Divine
Compassion." What he has said came to me while I was preparing this
lecture, and it is so much better than anything I could say that for my
present purpose I make it my own.
"To the thoughtful person, and the need of reformation will appeal only
to the thoughtful person, it must on reflection become abundantly
evident that the chief necessity of our times in the religious world is
the recovery of Faith. Probably lack of the true measure of Faith has
been the story of every generation, with few exceptions, in the long
history of Christianity, but there possibly never has been a time when
men talked more of it and possessed less than in our own day. * * * *"
"Christianity is a new thing of splendid vision for each and every
generation of men, unique in its promise and unapproached in its
attraction. And yet how small a factor we have made it in the world's
moulding compared with what it might be. We have not achieved a tiny
part of what we might have achieved, because we lack the essentials of
achievement; Faith and Faith's vision. Obsessed, after centuries of
discussion and persecution, with the notion that faith is made up of
mere belief, we have lost the secret of that victorious power that
overcomes the world, and are weakly dependent upon the world's means for
what spiritual operation we undertake. And so content have we grown with
things as they are, that what they might be comes only as a dream that
passes away quickly with the night; blind to our appalling
money-dependency in modern religion, satisfied that the Kingdom of
Heaven is as nigh to us as is possible under present conditions of
society, we practically have substituted for the theological virtues,
Faith, Hope and Charity, the ascending degrees of belief, resignation,
money. This is partly due to our religious inheritance and partly to
mental and spiritual sloth which dislikes the effort of thinking,
preferring easy acquiescence in conditions that are the resultants of
blinded vision. For dependency upon money is not something merely of the
present, but a condition in the spiritual sphere that is largely a
product of a long past. The really inexcusable thing is our willingness,
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