CHAPTER TWO
THE CHILDREN OF ZION AND THE SONS OF GREECE
We are not using the term "humanism" in this chapter in its strictly
technical sense. Because we are not concerned with the history of
thought merely, but also with its practical embodiments in various
social organizations as well. So we mean by "humanism" not only those
modes and systems of thought in which human interests predominate but
also the present economic, political and ecclesiastical institutions
which more or less consistently express them. Hence, the term as
used will include concepts not always agreeing with each other, and
sometimes only semi-related to the main stream of the movement. This
need not trouble us. Strict intellectual consistency is a fascinating
and impossible goal of probably dubious value. Moreover, it is
this whole expression of the time spirit which bathes the sensitive
personality of the preacher, persuading and moulding him quite as much
by its derived and concrete manifestations in contemporary society as
by its essential and abstract principles.
There are then two sets of media through which humanism has affected
preaching. The first are philosophical and find their expression in a
large body of literature which has been moulding thought and feeling
for nearly four centuries. Humanism begins with the general abstract
assumption that all which men can know, or need to know, are "natural"
and human values; that they have no means of getting outside the
inexorable circle of their own experience.
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