Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/233

Christian Service 215 feared, a creature marked by changing cycles but the theatre and stuff of a steady upward movement, culminating in man. They have found the Christian Bible to contain the most significant segment of man's history, to be the transcript of that strenuous and sublime process by which the foundations of reverence and justice and truth were laid for Love to build upon. They have discovered Jesus of Nazareth to be Love's supreme crea- tion and channel. They believe the Christian function to be the transformation of human life by the energy of that Love. They find that mankind is to be led, as George W. Knox said, ' ' not along the road of dialectics to our God but by the great highway of service to our fellowmen." Consequently, with a growing scorn for sectarian problems and debates, they are applying themselves to the outstanding tasks of human society. Here many scholars and pastors have wrought nobly. In the earlier stages of this modem thought the books of Josiah Strong and C. Loring Brace and Edward Everett Hale' were of much avail. William J. Tucker made the chair of Practical Theology at Andover seem one of Sociology and directed the founding of the first settlement house in Boston. Joseph Tuckerman founded a pastorship-at-large in the same city and helped to crystallize Unitarian social sympathy in paths of definite ser- vice to the poor. These men and many others have con- tributed to what E. Winchester Donald of Trinity Church, Boston, so happily called in his Lowell lectures "The Expan- sion of Religion." From this social viewpoint, two eminent educators, in particular, have wrought at a revolution in theology, William DeWitt Hyde, already mentioned, and Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) of Rochester Theological Seminary — the latter perhaps the most creative spirit in the American theological world. The heart of their gospel may be presented, though inadequately, in a few sentences : This glorious work of helping to complete God's fair creation; this high task of making human life anci human society the realiza- tion of the Father's loving will for all his children; this is the real substance of the spiritual life, of which the services and devotions of the church are but the outward forms. They ought not to be separated. Yet if we can have but one, social service is of infinitely more worth than pious profession. . . . The world has been re- ' See Book III, Chaps, vi and xili.