to the majority of men real and precious factors in the religious
experience. It would appear to be another instance, among the many, of
the fallacy of identifying the part with the whole. But the effect
of such pervasive thought currents, the more subtle and unfightable
because indirect and disguised in popular appearance and influence,
upon the ethical and spiritual temper of religious leaders, the
very audacity of whose tasks puts them on the defensive, is vast
and incalculable. At the worst, it drives man into a mechanicalized
universe, with a resulting materialism of thought and life; at the
best, it makes him a pragmatist with amiable but immediate objectives,
just practical "results" as his guide and goal. Morality as, in
Antigone's noble phrase, "the unwritten law of heaven" sinks down and
disappears. There is no room here for the Job who abhors himself and
repents in dust and ashes nor for Plato's _One behind the Many_; no
perceptible room, in such a world, for any of the absolute values, the
transcendent interests, the ethics of idealism, any eschatology, or
for Christian theodicy. That which has been the typical contribution
of the religious perceptions in the past, namely, the comprehensive
vision of life and the world and time _sub specie aeternitatis_ is
here abandoned. Eternity is unreal or empty; we never heard the music
of the spheres. We are facing at this moment a disintegrating age.
Here is a prime reason for it. The spiritual solidarity of mankind
under the humanistic interpretation of life and destiny is dissolving
and breaking down. Humanism is ingenious and reasonable and clever but
it is too limited; it doesn't answer enough questions.

Before going on, in a future chapter, to discuss the question as to
what kind of preaching such a world-view, seen from the Christian
standpoint, needs, we are now to inquire what the effect of this
humanistic movement upon Christian preaching has already been.