"[38]
[Footnote 37: _Culture and Restraint_, p. 104.]
[Footnote 38: _Ethics_, Book VII, ch. v, p. 215.]
Now, so finespun a discussion of intricate and psychological
subtleties is mildly interesting presumably to middle-aged scholars,
but I submit that a half truth that needs so much explanation and
so many admissions before it can be made safe or actual, is a rather
dangerous thing to offer to adolescence or to a congregation of
average men and women. It cannot sound to them very much like the good
news of Jesus. Culture is a precious thing, but no culture, without
the help of divine grace and the responsive affection on our part
which that grace induces, will ever knit men together in a kingdom
of God, a spiritual society. As long ago as the second century Celsus
understood that. He says in his polemic against Christianity, as
quoted by Origen, "If any one suppose that it is possible that the
people of Asia and Europe and Africa, Greeks and barbarians, should
agree to follow one law, he is hopelessly ignorant."[39] Now, Celsus
was proceeding on the assumption that Christianity was only another
philosophy, a new intellectual system, and he was merely exposing the
futility of all such unaided intellectualism.
[Footnote 39: _Origen, contra Celsum_, VIII, p. 72.]
It is, therefore, of prime importance for the preacher to remember
that humanism, or any other doctrine which approaches the problem of
life and conduct other than by moral and spiritual means, can never
take the place of the religious appeal, because it does not touch the
springs of action where motives are born and from which convictions
arise.
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