Now, there is truth behind this, both as to the part of God and as to the part of man in the matter. We are social, we are brethren, we must organize. God, so all Christians say and many philosophers, no more leaves us to ourselves than he leaves to itself any part of his worlds. But Christians formally declare in their Creed that he is no machine-maker; he is Lord and Giver of Life. They complain, too, against science on the ground that (as they have come to believe) it must of its constant character set material mechanism above life in the order of the world. They are pledged to oppose this; and when they complain against science for a fault and failure which is soon—so many biologists and philosophers declare—to be a fault and a failure of the past, they are faithful to their pledge. But they are men, with the faults and failures of men. Habit has its snares for them; the complication of needs that meets them in their effort to maintain themselves, body, mind and spirit, in the world, entangles them. The short cut, the provided means, everything and anything that seems to make matters easy or safe—in short, the logical or legalistic or institutional machine—is attractive. And for most men this machine in any of its protean forms, is perhaps only the more attractive the more valued is the treasure it seems to ensure or to protect. The faith once for all delivered—how precious that is! Salvation in this world and the next—can anything be of greater import for man? Let us make these things secure, whatever else we risk. Only fools or the reckless would embrace chances of adventure where so much is at stake.
So, in spite of the Christian avowal of the superiority and the supremacy of life over its instruments, Christianity has everywhere given disastrous place to the letter and the tool.
Against this the first prophet and the last, in every religion, must always protest. It is the enemy of enemies for all prophets. You can see war waged against it in the Old Testament; you can see that war carried to the utmost in the Gospel of the New. Now the challenge rings among us more clearly than it has rung for this long time. And, as ever, it has new notes and a new phrasing of its music.... That, perhaps, is why so many of us fail to recognize it for what it is. That, certainly, is why the due honour paid to prophets of the past does not prevent men from stoning or neglecting those of the present. The voice is always different, because it is the voice of life.
