Preaching and Paganism | Page 9

to the inclusive life of our generation. We are tinkering here
and patching there, but attempting no grand evaluation. We have

already granted that sweeping generalizations, inclusive estimates, are
as difficult as they are audacious. Yet we have also seen that these
grand evaluations are of the very essence of religion and hence are
characteristic of the preacher's task. And, finally, it appears that ours is
an age which calls for such redefining of its values, some fresh and
inclusive moral and religious estimates. Hence we undertake the task.
There remains but one thing more to be accomplished in this chapter.
The problem of the selection and arrangement of the material for such a
summary is not an easy one. Out of several possible devices I have
taken as the framework on which to hang these discussions three
familiar divisions of thought and feeling, with their accompanying laws
of conduct, and value judgments. They are the humanistic or classic;
the naturalistic or primitive; and the religious or transcendent
interpretation of the world and life. One sets up a social, one an
individual, and one a universal standard. Under the movements which
these headings represent we can most easily and clearly order and
appraise the chief influences of the Protestant centuries. The first two
are largely preëmpting between them, at this moment, the field of
human thought and conduct and a brief analysis of them, contrasting
their general attitudes, may serve as a fit introduction to the ensuing
chapter.
We begin, then, with the humanist. He is the man who ignores, as
unnecessary, any direct reference to, or connection with, ultimate or
supernatural values. He lives in a high but self-contained world. His is
man's universe. His law is the law of reasonable self-discipline,
founded on observation of nature and a respect for social values, and
buttressed by high human pride. He accepts the authority of the
collective experience of his generation or his race. He believes,
centrally, in the trustworthiness of human nature, in its group capacity.
Men, as a race, have intelligently observed and experimented with both
themselves and the world about them. Out of centuries of critical
reflection and sad and wise endeavor, they have evolved certain criteria
of experience. These summations could hardly be called eternal laws
but they are standards; they are the permits and prohibitions for human
life. Some of them affect personal conduct and are moral standards;

some of them affect civil government and are political axioms; some of
them affect production and distribution and are economic laws; some of
them affect social relationships. But in every case the humanist has
what is, in a sense, an objective because a formal standard; he looks
without himself as an individual, yet to himself as a part of the
composite experience and wisdom of his race, for understanding and
for guides. Thus the individual conforms to the needs and wisdom of
the group. Humanism, at its best, has something heroic, unselfish,
noble about it. Its votaries do not eat to their liking nor drink to their
thirst. They learn deep lessons almost unconsciously; to conquer their
desires, to make light of toil and pain and discomfort; the true humanist
is well aware that Spartan discipline is incomparably superior to Greek
accidence. This is what one of the greatest of them, Goethe, meant
when he said: "Anything which emancipates the spirit without a
corresponding growth in self-mastery is pernicious."
All humanists then have two characteristics in common: first, they
assume that man is his own arbiter, has both the requisite intelligence
and the moral ability to control his own destiny; secondly, they place
the source and criterion of this power in collective wisdom, not in
individual vagary and not in divine revelation. They assert, therefore,
that the law of the group, the perfected and wrought out code of human
experience, is all that is binding and all that is essential. To be sure, and
most significantly, this authority is not rigid, complete, fixed. There is
nothing complete in the humanist's world. Experience accumulates and
man's knowledge grows; the expectation and joy in progress is a part of
it; man's code changes, emends, expands with his onward marching.
But the humanistic point of view assumes something relatively stable in
life. Hence our phrase that humanism gives us a classic, that is to say, a
simple and established standard.
It is to be observed that there is nothing in humanism thus defined
which need be incompatible with religion. It is not with its content but
its incompleteness that we quarrel. Indeed, in its assertion of the
trustworthiness of human experience, its faith in the dignity and
significance of man, its respect for the interests of the group, and its
conviction that man finds his true self only outside his immediate

physical person,