Produced by Al Haines
The Cole Lectures for 1922 delivered before Vanderbilt University
Christianity and Progress
By
Professor of Practical Theology in the
Union Theological Seminary;
Preacher at the First Presbyterian Church,
New York
Fleming H. Revell Company
Copyright, 1922, by
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
The late Colonel E. W. Cole of Nashville, Tennessee, donated toVanderbilt University the sum of five thousand dollars, afterwardsincreased by Mrs. E. W. Cole to ten thousand, the design and conditionsof which gift are stated as follows:
"The Object of this fund is to establish a foundation for a perpetualLectureship in connection with the School of Religion of theUniversity, to be restricted in its scope to a defense and advocacy ofthe Christian religion. The lectures shall be delivered at suchintervals, from time to time, as shall be deemed best by the Board ofTrust; and the particular theme and lecturer will be determined by theTheological Faculty. Said lecture shall always be reduced to writingin full, and the manuscript of the same shall be the property of theUniversity, to be published or disposed of by the Board of Trust at itsdiscretion, the net proceeds arising therefrom to be added to thefoundation fund, or otherwise used for the benefit of the School ofReligion."
Preface
No one who ever has delivered the Cole Lectures will fail to associatethem, in his grateful memory, with the hospitable fellowship of theelect at Vanderbilt University. My first expression of thanks is dueto the many professors and students there, lately strangers and nowfriends, who, after the burdensome preparation of these lectures, madetheir delivery a happy and rewarding experience for the lecturer. I amhoping now that even though prepared for spoken address the lecturesmay be serviceable to others who will read instead of hear them. Atany rate, it seemed best to publish them without change inform—addresses intended for public delivery and bearing, I doubt not,many marks of the spoken style.
I have tried to make a sally into a field of inquiry where, within thenext few years, an increasing company of investigators is sure to go.The idea of progress was abroad in the world long before men becameconscious of it; and men became conscious of it in its practicaleffects long before they stopped to study its transforming consequencesin their philosophy and their religion. No longer, however, can weavoid the intellectual issue which is involved in our new outlook upona dynamic, mobile, progressive world. Hardly a better descriptioncould be given of the intellectual advance which has marked the lastcentury than that which Renan wrote years ago: "the substitution of thecategory of becoming for being, of the conception of relativity forthat of the absolute, of movement for immobility." [1] Underneath allother problems which the Christian Gospel faces is the task of choosingwhat her attitude shall be toward this new and powerful f