“In religion, especially, this unhappy 'transvaluation of value' is
likely to be made. For long ages it has been systematically taught that
the emotional element in religion either summed it all up or was an
unmistakable token that, then and there, it had been all summed up for
us in the exchequer of the skies. The great transaction had passed, the
thing was done when your religious ecstasy swelled to the highest, and
you found yourself, as you confidently believed, borne on its billows to
the bosom of God.”
Now, we all recognize this emotional element only as a helpful factor in
religion, but not a permanent element. I have seen a few men accept
Christ without any emotion whatever. I remember a blue-eyed, fair
complexioned man saying, “I have no especial emotion. I am truly sorry
for my sins. I confess them now and here, and I claim 1 John 1:9, 'If we
confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' I ask God to cleanse me. I need it
and accept it, because He has said so.” Tracy lived all right as long as
we knew of him. If converts made in evangelistic meetings were taken
into careful Bible school, they would develop into useful Christians,
and there would be no backsliding.
Now, religion, in the sense in which we use it, is a “building” process,
not “inflation,” as the aeronaut would inflate his balloon. We all know
the class of religionists who hop, jump and shout in religious meetings;
they are so busy they do not see the basket as it passes; they give no
money, they do nothing that the world would call religious except these
physical manifestations. They are intolerant to all who do not believe
as they do, they are simply to be tolerated and petted along as
deficients who mean well but cannot be counted as part of the great
organized force of believers which God is using to bring about the
kingdom of God until by training and experience they can be used among
their own class. But, among these, every now and then there comes a man
of good mentality but without education, whom God can use. His church
has no room for him, yet he has the same orders that Jesus gave to the
eleven, “Go ye and preach the gospel to every nation,” and we find him
preaching on the side streets, later a hall or church is hired, and we
have a new sect.
You remember Jane Addams tells of the young college graduate who had
taken a course in a Bible training school and in a school of
philanthropy, who, on her return home, asked the rector for religious
work, and he replied, “You might arrange the flowers on the pulpit each
Sunday.” Think of that to a soul aflame with God!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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