Life is so obviously
not worth its brevity, its suffering, its withheld conclusions, its
relative insignificance, if it must thus stand alone. All that can
save it, preserve to it worth and dignity, maintain its self-respect
and mastery, is to find that abundant power without which confesses,
certifies and seals the divinity within.
How foredoomed to failure, then, especially in an age when men are
surmounting life by placating it, enjoying it by being easy with
themselves--how foredoomed to failure is the preaching which continues
in the world of religion this exaltation of human sufficiency and
natural values, domesticating them within the church. It is to laugh
to see them there! It means so transparent a surrender, so pitiable a
confession of defeat. If anything can bring the natural man into the
sanctuary it is that there he has to bring his naturalness to the bar
of a more-than-natural standard. If he comes at all, it will not
be for entertainment and expansion but because there we insist on
reverence and restraint. If church and preacher offer only a pietized
and decorous naturalism, when he can get the real thing in naked and
unashamed brutality without; if they offer him only another form of
humanistic living, he will stay away. Such preaching is as boresome
as it is unnecessary. Such exercise of devotion is essentially
superfluous and a rather humorous imposition upon the world.
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