Chapter 13

Such an enlargement of the idea of God to meet the needs of this new world is one of the innermost demands of religion to-day. When a man believes in the living God as the Creative Power in this universe, whose character was revealed in Christ and who, recognized or unrecognized, reveals himself in every form of goodness, truth and beauty which life anywhere contains, he has achieved a God adequate for life. To such a man the modern progressive outlook upon the world becomes exhilarating; all real advance is a revelation of the purpose of this living God; and, far from being hostile to religion, our modern categories furnish the noblest mental formulae in which the religious spirit ever had opportunity to find expression. We who believe this have no business to be modest and apologetic about it, as though upon the defensive we shyly presented it to the suffrages of men. It is a gospel to proclaim. It does involve a new theology but, with multitudes of eager minds in our generation, the decision no longer lies between an old and a new theology, but between new theology and no theology. No longer can they phrase the deepest experiences of their souls with God in the outgrown categories of a static world. In all their other thinking they live in a world deeply permeated by ideas of progress, and to keep their religion in a separate compartment, uninfluenced by the best knowledge and hope of their day, is an enterprise which, whether it succeed or fail, means the death of vital faith. To take this modern, progressive world into one's mind and then to achieve an idea of God great enough to encompass it, until with the little gods gone and the great God come, life is full of the knowledge of him, as the waters cover the sea, that is alike the duty and the privilege of Christian leadership to-day.

In a world which out of lowly beginnings has climbed so far and seems intended to go on to heights unimagined, God is our hope and in his name we will set up our banners.

[1] Bertrand Russell: Philosophical Essays, II, The Free Man's Worship, pp. 60-61.

[2] Max Nordau: The Interpretation of History, p. 217.

End of Project Gutenberg's Christianity and Progress, by Harry Emerson Fosdick