When religion has thus acquired a
clear-sighted and thoroughgoing indifference to the natural order,
then, and then only, it begins to be potent within that order. Then,
as Professor Hocking says, it rises superior to the world of facts and
becomes irresistible.[31]
[Footnote 31: _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, p. 518.]
The time is ripe, then, first, for the preacher to emphasize the
inward and essential difference between man and nature which exists
under the outward likeness, to remind him of this more-than-nature,
this "otherness" of man, without which he would lose his most precious
possession, the sense of personality. Faith begins by recognizing this
transcendent element in man and the acceptance of it is the foundation
of religious preaching. What was the worst thing about the war? Not
its destruction nor its horrors nor its futilities, but its shames;
the dreadful indignities which it inflicted upon man; it treated men
as though they were not souls! No such moral catastrophe could have
overwhelmed us if we had not for long let the brute lie too near the
values and practices of our lives, depersonalizing thus, in politics
and industry and morals and religion, our civilization. It all
proceeded from the irreligious interpretation of human existence, and
the fruits of that interpretation are before us.
The first task of the preacher, then, is to combat the naturalistic
interpretation of humanity with every insight and every conviction
that is within his power.
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