complacent selfishness which sought to destroy it? We need go no farther for an example of this than Jesus Christ. Perhaps this is a quality of Christ's character which was not sufficiently emphasized in the old teaching.

The religion we choose, therefore, in order to satisfy us, must contain a positive, militant righteousness. And it must not be a righteousness which has to do only with our own souls; it must also have a social meaning. In other words, it must have, in a democracy, something to do with the State. If this be so, let us call this positive righteousness the New Patriotism. Patriotism and religion have come hand in hand down the ages. If we believe in the New Patriotism, and if whatever religion we adopt be not in harmony with it, then we shall be doing violence to our deepest instincts.

Let us see of what the New Patriotism consists.

First, it involves, for the man or woman who has adopted it heart and soul, a change in the motive of life. The old motive in government lay in the acquisition of property; the new lies in service. This is not to say that, in an imperfect world, we should not acquire and hold property, but that we must subordinate this motive to the new and higher one. And when we look at the types which are the extreme expressions of each motive, we see that the first tends to make a man of ability into a Tweed, while the second produces a personality like Miss Jane Addams of Chicago. This change of motive is called by psychologists "rebirth." "Except a man be born again, he shall in no wise see the kingdom of God."

Second, the New Patriotism proclaims a positive and militant righteousness. It is by no means a gentle optimism, because it acknowledges the problem of evil and grapples with it. It seeks to put into government the maxim, "I am my brother's keeper."

Third, a striking note of the New Patriotism is open-mindedness, teachableness, and hence capacity for growth. Its greatest enemies are those with closed minds, the Pharisees of the modern world, who maintain that things are best as they are, "who neither go in themselves, neither suffer those who are entering to go in."

Fourth in the New Patriotism may

be mentioned the principle of individual worth, and this leads logically, through universal suffrage, to individual responsibility and democracy. We must, in government, trust those whom God trusts in His divine scheme. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

And fifth, in the New Patriotism we are beginning to recognize at last that "man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." We realize that it would not be sufficient to give, by legal decree, food and warmth and certain material luxuries, to our cold and starving brothers; that discontent and selfish greed are not to be overcome by distribution. Of what significance, otherwise, were the yearning which pervades all elements of the nation. to-day? Art, literature, science, music, and philosophy have their place,—yes, and religion. Are we not seeking for a religion?

Now, in whatever religion we adopt, are we going to throw these constituents of the New Patriotism away? That would be to deny the very process by which truth accumulates, to set our faces against the evolution of the centuries, to refuse to use the science and the modern economic knowledge which makes to-day, for the first time in history, the relief of human suffering on a national scale possible. But, if these constituents are to be embodied in our acts, they must perforce form part of our religion.

We shall have to admit, however, that they are taken bodily out of the gospels of a religion many of us thought we had discarded! Some persons will make the objection immediately that these constituents of the New Patriotism are not religion, but a system of ethics; that they are covered by the golden rule. Ethics is not religion. Religion is motive power. Let us admit it frankly. And these same persons, perhaps, will call this "boileddown" Christianity, with all that is repugnant to modern enlightenment eliminated.

Can we dismiss Christianity so summarily? If we are really open-minded, ought we not to give the evolution of nineteen centuries a chance to be heard?

"But," there are those who answer, "where shall we begin? There are many books, as you have said. There are many

opinions. And the Bible itself has been torn in pieces by what is called historical criticism."

My purpose in writing this article is to suggest a manner of going about the task. In the first chapter of John it is written:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. . In him was life; and the life was the light of men. . . . And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."

We are all familiar with these wonderfully beautiful verses, beautiful and mysterious. They are, we know, philosophy, the prevailing philosophy of the Roman Empire at the time this gospel was written, the neo-Platonic. It is the province of philosophy to explain spiritual phenomena, just as it is the province of physical science to explain physical phenomena. There had appeared, in obscure Palestine, a religious phenomenon of extraordinary magnitude, an individual so great that he had stirred all who heard and saw him; and who, after he had suffered death on the cross, had kindled, through his apostles, tens of thousands throughout the length and breadth of the empire. Here was a man incandescent with the Spirit of God as no man had ever been known to be before.

Therefore John, the unknown author of the fourth gospel, often called the spiritual gospel, accounted for this Event in terms of the neo-Platonic philosophy which he knew. The "Word" which he mentions, the Greek Logos, the "inner spirit of rationality, which constitutes the very soul of the universe," may be freely translated, I think, as the decree of the Spirit of the universe as to the meaning of our finite life, as to how life should be lived in this world in order to develop ourselves and do God's will. It is plain that this message could be brought home most effectively to groping humanity if it were actually lived in its completeness by a human being who incarnated it.

One of the comforts of the most modern, and I think most dependable, of our schools of philosophy I have delayed mentioning until now. This is that, after

I am going to take, in conclusion, the vital principle in this modern philosophy and apply it to Christianity, and that is the principle of Individuality, or Personality. When we read the gospels, we must bear in mind that they were written by zealous authors primarily to convert their readers to Christ, at a time when there was no science in the modern meaning of the word; when there were no critical biographical standards, no publications in the modern sense, no swift means of communication. Through tradition much extraneous matter has crept into these records. How are we to tell what is true and what is false concerning Christ?

Let us see, now, what happens when we apply to the gospels this principle of an enlightened philosophy-Personality. Let us take up our four gospels and begin to read them as though it were for the first time. Gradually, as we read on, keeping our minds free, a Personality begins to emerge from the pages; dimly, at first, but little by little becoming clearer until it stands out before us as a definite unity. It is a Personality whose utterances are not literal or dogmatic, yet are filled with hidden truths that keep dawning on us; a Personality capable of lightning-like wrath and incredible tenderness; of humor, of patience, of inflexible will; of a positive, militant righteousness which fights the battles of humanity. He understands evil and its power, and knows all the longings, all the discouragements of the human heart.

He

And it may befall, with this wonderful figure rising before us, that we find ourselves exclaiming: "This is in harmony. with that Personality! That is not. could n't have said this, or done that! It is n't in character! It is n't his expression!" Thus we practise our own criticism.

Scholars of the agnostic age through

which we have just passed declared that the teaching of this Personality failed to deal, for instance, with art, as contrasted with the religion of the Greeks. But what is it in Millet's reapers, in Rodin's toilers, that appeals to us so strongly? By the power of the personality of these artists the humble figures are transformed, are given a meaning. That is what art does, whether it is painting or writing or living, it gives a meaning, through personality, to the every-day things we see around us. So, gathered up into the Personality of the Christ, illuminated by its dazzling light, we behold picture after picture of homely, every-day existence: the publican at his table, the harlot in tears, the children at their joyous games in the market-place, the sower, the reaper, the peasants on the threshing floor, fan in hand, to purge the grain of chaff. All of these are his figures, even that of the smug, self-righteous Pharisee in his phylacteries!

But again the critic interposes. Christ's teaching, he declares, is not original. Buddha also taught some of the things Christ taught, and Epictetus others, and the ancient Indians had the conception of rebirth. Socrates, too, died for mankind. Let us admit it all, acknowledge the debt the world owes to these personalities; but still the mystery is not solved. Socrates, in dying for the truth, did indeed die for mankind. But let us question ourselves. While Socrates' death was valuable, was it as valuable for us? While Socrates' personality was great, was it as great, as significant, as that of Jesus Christ?

The point does not lie in what Christ taught, or in what Socrates or Buddha taught. If these ideas could be spoken in a colorless voice by a phonograph, or written in a book without giving some expression of a life, of a personality behind them, they would not appeal very strongly to us. No, it is these ideas incorporated by experience into the life of a man that move

through the open-minded contemplation of the Personality in the gospels, at the conclusion that it exceeds in dignity and greatness and power all other personalities which have come within our ken. We may see at length that an all-inclusive Personality, incarnate of the word of life, must gather within itself every content, every word of truth, every act of self-sacrifice of those other personalities which have gone before or succeeded it.

It will be strange indeed if we do not arrive at the further conviction that the world has still, in Jesus Christ, something to grow into instead of out of, and that when we shall have reached the boundaries He has set it will be time enough to think of a new prophet and of a new religion. But until then, until our spiritual evolution shall have filled the frame He made He must remain for us the "Word" of John, the Logos, life's secret and solution. As the ages roll on, stars glow for us anew out of the sky, stars which the astronomers tell us have been there all the time, whose light has been so long in reaching us. And thus, out of that Personality, new and shining truths are still appearing to our spiritual vision.

What is it we have lacked? What is it that made us lukewarm and unhappy? Is it not that, somehow, Jesus had lost His incandescence as the one all-inclusive Personality, as the only begotten Son of God, who suffered and died for our sakes, that we might have life, and have it more abundantly? And does not something deep within us, deeper than ourselves, tell us that if the Spirit of God were to come to us, were to take on our finiteness, He must come in just that way,―subject Himself to all, and rise again conquering the conditions created by our moral evils and sins, into His sublimer essence by self-sacrifice, "the logical structure of all Reality"? Would He not through personality, and personality alone, have given us just that message, inspired us with just that love, just that conviction of His patience, of His forgiveness, of His support and consolation? How otherwise, indeed, could He have made Himself manifest save by incarnate Personality?

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.