A Statement: On the Future of This Church | Page 3

the pulpit distinguished itself in my mind from a platform or a teacher's desk, by the fact that it was always associated with the presence, visible and invisible, of an altar for divine worship. It was easy for me to picture myself as saying all I wanted to say in [6] college halls, in theater meetings, in public forums, but I craved for my work on behalf of truth the atmosphere and environment of spiritual devotion. It was my desire, in other words, to be not merely a teacher or speaker, but a preacher; not merely a prophet, but also a priest. This does not mean that I am a churchman, as such; or that I find any permanent significance in rituals or other forms of worship. But there is in me that which seeks the stimulus of praise and prayer, the uplift of conscious communion with the Eternal, the consolation of appeal to, and trust in, God. Not only from habit, but from temperament, I find myself at home amid religious rites. Nothing so moved me on my one trip to Europe, as the hours I spent under the shadows of the great cathedrals. As a quiet place of worship, as well as a high place of testimony, the church called me in those youthful years, and I gave answer.
A third motive for my choice of the ministry must not be forgotten. I refer to the appeal of the church as a place for action, a service station on behalf of public causes. My vision of what we mean by public causes was strangely limited. It scarcely went beyond the Unitarian denomination, and the works of charity and kindly reform with which it has always been identified. I was a passionate Unitarian in those days. I had read, and been deeply stirred by, the story of the achievements which Unitarianism had wrought on behalf of freedom, fellowship and character in religion. I reverenced its saints and prophets, and longed to follow in their train. Hence the eagerness with which I sought preparation for the Unitarian ministry--that I might serve the church--advance its glory and magnify its work.
It was with such ideas as these in my heart that I was ordained in February, 1904. Within two years there came an event which shook my life to its foundations, revolutionized my thought, and changed the whole character of my interest and work. I refer to what we have [7] learned to describe in our time as the social question. This question, of course, is nothing new. It has burned at the heart of life from the beginning, and at intervals has flamed forth like the eruption of a volcano, to the terror and glory of the world. Its latest phase, as we know it today in the religious field, made its appearance at about the time I entered the ministry. I recall that the book, which first revealed the fires so soon to burst upon us--Prof. Peabody's "Jesus Christ and the Social Question "--was published in 1903, the year before my ordination. I was not unprepared for what was coming. My deep-rooted reverence for Theodore Parker, the supreme prophet of applied Christianity in our time, and my enthusiastic study of his life, had revealed to me the meaning of socialized religion. But I had caught only the pure essence of its spirit; I had not thought to apply it to the social problems of today. Indeed, I was not aware of the existence of such problems. My whole approach to the question of truth and experience up to that time, had been along the lines of speculation in the field of theological, as contrasted with political or social, thought. In the second year of my ministry, however, I read Henry George's "Progress and Poverty"; then followed the writings of Henry D. Lloyd and Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch; then came the deep and prolonged plunge into the waters of socialism. For several years after I came to this church, I was in a state of intellectual and emotional upheaval impossible for me to describe. At last came a conviction which was a complete reversal of all my former ideas. I was as a man converted; I was as one who had seen a great light. Henceforth I was a social radical; and religion, pre-eminently not a testimony to theological truth but a crusade for social change. Of course, my interest in theology has persisted; but its place in my life has tended to become ever more subordinate to other and more directly practical interests. You know how the character of my preaching has changed since I first entered the Messiah pulpit. You know with what [8] waxing intensity of expression I have moved to the left of our various divisions on the social