ement of the community. Family and class and state were dominant
factors then. But we have seen how, in the Renaissance and the
Romantic Movement, individualism supplanted these values. Now,
Protestantism was contemporary with that new movement, indeed, a part
of it. Its growing egotism and the colossal egotism of the modern
world form a prime cause for the impoverishment of worship in
Protestant churches.

And so this brings us, then, to the real reason for our devotional
impotence, the one to which we referred in the opening sentences of
the chapter. It is essentially due to the character of the regulative
ideas of our age. It lies in that world view whose expressions in
literature, philosophy and social organizations we have been
reviewing in these pages. The partial notion of God which our age has
unconsciously made the substitute for a comprehensive understanding of
Him is essentially to blame. For since the contemporary doctrine is
of His immanence, it therefore follows that it is chiefly through
observation of the natural world and by interpretation of contemporary
events that men will approach Him if they come to Him at all.
Moreover, our humanism, in emphasizing the individual and exalting his
self-sufficiency, has so far made the mood of worship alien and the
need of it superfluous. The overemphasis upon preaching, the general
passion of this generation for talk and then more talk, and then
endless talk, is perfectly intelligible in view of the regulative
ideas of this generation. It seeks its understanding of the world
chiefly in terms of natural and tangible phenomena and chiefly by
means either of critical observation or of analytic reasoning. Hence
preaching, especially that sort which looks for the divine principle
in contemporary events, has been to the fore. But worship, which finds
the divine principle in something more and other than contemporary
events--which indeed does not look outward to "events" at all--has
been thrown into the background.

It seems to me clear, then, that if we are to emphasize the
transcendent elements in religion; if they represent, as we have been
contending, the central elements of the religious experience, its
creative factors, then the revival of worship will be a prime step
in creating a more truly spiritual society. I am convinced that a
homilizing church belongs to a secularizing age. One cannot forget
that the ultimate, I do not say the only, reason for the founding