As God communicates himself or gives himself to us men, in sheer love of us, so must we communicate or give ourselves to all we seek. This is the way of that life the Christian calls eternal. No man follows it unless God be with him; but every man may follow it, and will, unless he refuses God.
What, then, is it to refuse God? The answer is always the same. It is to enclose the life of self within a prison of self-seeking, to shut outside anything that seems likely to disturb this concentrated worship, to try to drag inside anything likely to profit its narrow interests, to use things and persons as its instruments of self-guarding and self-seeking. And if self-guarding and self-seeking extend to the use of the instruments of religion, as well they may in men and women of due prudence and ambition, we have the type of Pharisee whom Jesus denounced, or the type of priest who judged him and condemned him as the enemy of God. All these are in some degree refusers of God. And a religion that panders to self-guarding and self-seeking and encourages greed or makes play with fear may be popular, but however well-established, must be corrupt. So far as this goes, life is not in it, and it does but help men to disguise from themselves their loss of life.
The incarnation of God and the atonement of man with man and with God in Christ are wrought by self-giving, that is by love. The whole process of nature is a sacrament of God's self-giving, rising to the full revelation of love. These things are one. It is profoundly true that 'a religion that is not founded in nature is all fiction and falsity, and as mere a nothing as an idol.' Yet the Christian religion, pre-eminently founded in nature though it assuredly is, has been perverted, over and over again, to be an organized means by which men falsify a nature that is capable of an utmost self-giving to man and to God. The greedy and the fearful have too often captured its organization, and the adventurer of love has been driven out. But both beyond and within those built-up walls the true religion of Christ has always lived and is lasting now. Like the ferment in the meal it is everywhere alive in those who, despite all the religious self-seeking around them, share the self-sharing of God. These have always had the alchemist's touch; they have turned dross to gold and have used it to ends of God. Like the divine powers they overrule the errors of men. But the pity is that this very fact not rarely hinders both the detection and the setting right of those errors. 'See,' men say, 'this is the nursery of saints.' And confusion of judgement goes on. It is a pragmatic test that shows the danger of pragmatic tests. Let us get back to principles, for who shall dare to say whether this or that is the nurture of saints. All things work together for their good, as all things work together for the truth-seeker's truth and for beauty in its discerner's eyes. For these, nothing is common or unclean.