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Chapter One: Introduction

The purpose of thisbook is not to decide the religious issue of the present day,but merely to present the issue as sharply and clearly as possible,in order that the reader may be aided in deciding it for himself.Presenting an issue sharply is indeed by no means a popular businessat the present time; there are many who prefer to fight theirintellectual battles in what Dr. Francis L. Patton has aptly calleda "condition of low visibility."1Clear-cut definition of terms in religious matters, bold facingof the logical implications of religious views, is by many personsregarded as an impious proceeding. May it not discourage contributionto mission boards? May it not hinder the progress of consolidation,and produce a poor showing in columns of Church statistics? Butwith such persons we cannot possibly bring ourselves to agree.Light may seem at times to be an impertinent intruder, but itis always beneficial in the end. The type of religion which rejoicesin the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of theirmeanings, or shrinks from "controversial" matters, willnever stand amid the shocks of life. In the sphere of religion,as in other spheres, the things

1. Francis L. Patton,in the introduction to William Hallock Johnson The Christian FaithUnder Modern Searchlight, [1916], p. 7.

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about which men areagreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding;the really important things are the things about which men willfight.

In the sphere of religion,in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the greatredemptive religion which has always been known as Christianityis battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief,which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith becauseit makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modernnon-redemptive religion is called "modernism" or "liberalism."Both names are unsatisfactory; the latter, in particular, is question-begging.The movement designated as "liberalism" is regardedas "liberal" only by its friends; to its opponents itseems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts. Andindeed the movement is so various in its manifestations that onemay almost despair of finding any common name which will applyto all its forms. But manifold as are the forms in which the movementappears, the root of the movement is one; the many varieties ofmodern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism—that is,in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (asdistinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connectionwith the origin of Christianity. The word "naturalism"is here used in a sense somewhat different from its philosophicalmeaning. In this non-philosophical sense it describes with fairaccuracy the real root of what is called, by what may turn outto be a degradation of an originally noble word, "liberal"religion.

The rise of this modernnaturalistic liberalism has not come by chance, but has been occasionedby important changes which have recently taken place in the conditionsof life. The past one hundred years have witnessed the beginningof a new era in human history, which may

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conceivably be regretted,but certainly cannot be ignored, by the most obstinate conservatism.The change is not something that lies beneath the surface andmight be visible only to the discerning eye; on the contrary itforces itself upon the attention of the plain man at a hundredpoints. Modern inventions and the industrialism that has beenbuilt upon them have given us in many respects a new world tolive in; we can no more remove ourselves from that world thanwe can escape from the atmosphere that we breathe.

But such changes inthe material conditions of life do not stand alone; they havebeen produced by mighty changes in the human mind, as in theirturn they themselves give rise to further spiritual changes. Theindustrial world of today has been produced not by blind forcesof nature but by the conscious activity of the human spirit; ithas been produced by the achievements of science. The outstandingfeature of recent history is an enormous widening of human knowledge,which has gone hand in hand with such perfecting of the instrumentof investigation that scarcely any limits can be assigned to futureprogress in the material realm.

The application of modernscientific methods is almost as broad as the universe in whichwe live. Though the most palpable achievements are in the sphereof physics and chemistry, the sphere of human life cannot be isolatedfrom the rest, and with the other sciences there has appeared,for example, a modern science of history, which, with psychologyand sociology and the like, claims, even if it does not deserve,full equality with its sister sciences. No department of knowledgecan maintain its isolation from the modern lust of scientificconquest; treaties of inviolability, though hallowed by all thesanctions of age-long tradition, are being flung ruthlessly tothe winds.

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In such an age, it isobvious that every inheritance from the past must be subject tosearching criticism; and as a matter of fact some convictionsof the human race have crumbled to pieces in the test. Indeed,dependence of any institution upon the past is now sometimes evenregarded as furnishing a presumption, not in favor of it, butagainst it. So many convictions have had to be abandoned thatmen have sometimes come to believe that all convictions must go.

If such an attitudebe justifiable, then no institution is faced by a stronger hostilepresumption than the institution of the Christian religion, forno institution has based itself more squarely upon the authorityof a by-gone age. We are not now inquiring whether such policyis wise or historically justifiable; in any case the fact itselfis plain, that Christianity during many centuries has consistentlyappealed for the truth of its claims, not merely and not evenprimarily to current experience, but to certain ancient booksthe most recent of which was written some nineteen hundred yearsago. It is no wonder that that appeal is being criticized today;for the writers of the books in question were no doubt men oftheir own age, whose outlook upon the material world, judged bymodern standards, must have been of the crudest and most elementarykind. Inevitably the question arises whether the opinions of suchmen can ever be normative for men of the present day; in otherwords, whether first-century religion can ever stand in companywith twentieth-century science.

However the questionmay be answered, it presents a serious problem to the modern Church.Attempts are indeed sometimes made to make the answer easier thanat first sight it appears to be. Religion, it is said, is so entirelyseparate from science, that the two, rightly defined,

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cannot possibly comeinto conflict. This attempt at separation, as it is hoped thefollowing pages may show, is open to objections of the most seriouskind. But what must now be observed is that even if the separationis justifiable it cannot be effected without effort; the removalof the problem of religion and science itself constitutes a problem.For, rightly or wrongly, religion during the centuries has asa matter of fact connected itself with a host of convictions,especially in the sphere of history, which may form the subjectof scientific investigation; just as scientific investigators,on the other hand, have sometimes attached themselves, again rightlyor wrongly, to conclusions which impinge upon the innermost domainof philosophy and of religion. For example, if any simple Christianof one hundred years ago, or even of today, were asked what wouldbecome of his religion if history should prove indubitably thatno man called Jesus ever lived and died in the first century ofour era, he would undoubtedly answer that his religion would fallaway. Yet the investigation of events in the first century inJudea, just as much as in Italy or in Greece, belongs to the sphereof scientific history. In other words, our simple Christian, whetherrightly or wrongly, whether wisely or unwisely, has as a matterof fact connected his religion, in a way that to him seems indissoluble,with convictions about which science also has a right to speak.If, then, those convictions, ostensibly religious, which belongto the sphere of science, are not really religious at all, thedemonstration of that fact is itself no trifling task. Even ifthe problem of science and religion reduces itself to the problemof disentangling religion from pseudo-scientific accretions, theseriousness of the problem is not thereby diminished. From everypoint of view, therefore, the problem in question is the mostserious concern

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of the Church. Whatis the relation between Christianity and modern culture; may Christianitybe maintained in a scientific age?

It is this problem whichmodern liberalism attempts to solve. Admitting that scientificobjections may arise against the particularities of the Christianreligion—against the Christian doctrines of the person ofChrist, and of redemption through His death and resurrection—theliberal theologian seeks to rescue certain of the general principlesof religion, of which these particularities are thought to bemere temporary symbols, and these general principles he regardsas constituting "the essence of Christianity."

It may well be questioned,however, whether this method of defense will really prove to beefficacious; for after the apologist has abandoned his outer defensesto the enemy and withdrawn into some inner citadel, he will probablydiscover that the enemy pursues him even there. Modern materialism,especially in the realm of psychology, is not content with occupyingthe lower quarters of the Christian city, but pushes its way intoall the higher reaches of life; it is just as much opposed tothe philosophical idealism of the liberal preacher as to the Biblicaldoctrines that the liberal preacher has abandoned in the interestsof peace. Mere concessiveness, therefore, will never succeed inavoiding the intellectual conflict. In the intellectual battleof the present day there can be no "peace without victory";one side or the other must win.

As a matter of fact,however, it may appear that the figure which has just been usedis altogether misleading; it may appear that what the liberaltheologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one Christiandoctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religionwhich is so entirely different from Christianity as to be

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long in a distinct category.It may appear further that the fears of the modern man as to Christianitywere entirely ungrounded, and that in abandoning the embattledwalls of the city of God he has fled in needless panic into theopen plains of a vague natural religion only to fall an easy victimto the enemy who ever lies in ambush there.

Two lines of criticism,then, are possible with respect to the liberal attempt at reconcilingscience and Christianity. Modern liberalism may be criticized(1) on the ground that it is un-Christian and (2) on the groundthat it is unscientific. We shall concern ourselves here chieflywith the former line of criticism; we shall be interested in showingthat despite the liberal use of traditional phraseology modernliberalism not only is a different religion from Christianitybut belongs in a totally different class of religions. But inshowing that the liberal attempt at rescuing Christianity is falsewe are not showing that there is no way of rescuing Christianityat all; on the contrary, it may appear incidentally, even in thepresent little book, that it is not the Christianity of the NewTestament which is in conflict with science, but the supposedChristianity of the modern liberal Church, and that the real cityof God, and that city alone, has defenses which are capable ofwarding of the assaults of modern unbelief. However, our immediateconcern is with the other side of the problem; our principal concernjust now is to show that the liberal attempt at reconciling Christianitywith modern science has really relinquished everything distinctiveof Christianity, so that what remains is in essentials only thatsame indefinite type of religious aspiration which was in theworld before Christianity came upon the scene. In trying to removefrom Christianity everything that could possibly be objected to

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in the name of science,in trying to bribe off the enemy by those concessions which theenemy most desires, the apologist has really abandoned what hestarted out to defend. Here as in many other departments of lifeit appears that the things that are sometimes thought to be hardestto defend are also the things that are most worth defending.

In maintaining thatliberalism in the modern Church represents a return to an un-Christianand sub-Christian form of the religious life, we are particularlyanxious not to be misunderstood. "Un-Christian" in sucha connection is sometimes taken as a term of opprobrium. We donot mean it at all as such. Socrates was not a Christian, neitherwas Goethe; yet we share to the full the respect with which theirnames are regarded. They tower immeasurably above the common runof men; if he that is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greaterthan they, he is certainly greater not by any inherent superiority,but by virtue of an undeserved privilege which ought to make himhumble rather than contemptuous.

Such considerations,however, should not be allowed to obscure the vital importanceof the question at issue. If a condition could be conceived inwhich all the preaching of the Church should be controlled bythe liberalism which in many quarters has already become preponderant,then, we believe, Christianity would at last have perished fromthe earth and the gospel would have sounded forth for the lasttime. If so, it follows that the inquiry with which we are nowconcerned is immeasurably the most important of all those withwhich the Church has to deal. Vastly more important than all questionswith regard to methods of preaching is the root question as towhat it is that shall be preached.

Many, no doubt, willturn in impatience from the inquiry—all those, namely, whohave settled the question in,

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such a way that theycannot even conceive of its being reopened. Such, for example,are the pietists, of whom there are still many. "What,"they say, "is the need of argument in defence of the Bible?Is it not the Word of God, and does it not carry with it an immediatecertitude of its truth which could only be obscured by defense?If science comes into contradiction with the Bible so much theworse for science!" For these persons we have the highestrespect, for we believe that they are right in the main point;they have arrived by a direct and easy road at a conviction whichfor other men is attained only through intellectual struggle.But we cannot reasonably expect them to be interested in whatwe have to say.

Another class of uninterestedpersons is much more numerous. It consists of those who have definitelysettled the question in the opposite way. By them this littlebook, if it ever comes into their hands, will soon be flung asideas only another attempt at defence of a position already hopelesslylost. There are still individuals, they will say, who believethat the earth is flat; there are also individuals who defendthe Christianity of the Church, miracles and atonement and all.In either case, it will be said, the phenomenon is interestingas a curious example of arrested development, but it is nothingmore.

Such a closing of thequestion, however, whether it approve itself finally or no, isin its present form based upon a very imperfect view of the situation;it is based upon a grossly exaggerated estimate of the achievementsof modern science. Scientific investigation, as has already beenobserved, has certainly accomplished much; it has in many respectsproduced a new world. But there is another aspect of the picturewhich should not be ignored. The modern world represents in somerespects an enormous improvement over the world in which our ancestors

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lived; but in otherrespects it exhibits a lamentable decline. The improvement appearsin the physical conditions of life, but in the spiritual realmthere is a corresponding loss. The loss is clearest, perhaps,in the realm of art. Despite the mighty revolution which has beenproduced in the external conditions of life, no great poet isnow living to celebrate the change; humanity has suddenly becomedumb. Gone, too, are the great painters and the great musiciansand the great sculptors. The art that still subsists is largelyimitative, and where it is not imitative it is usually bizarre.Even the appreciation of the glories of the past is graduallybeing lost, under the influence of a utilitarian education thatconcerns itself only with the production of physical well-being.The "Outline of History" of Mr. H. G. Wells, with itscontemptuous neglect of all the higher ranges of human life, isa thoroughly modern book.

This unprecedented declinein literature and art is only one manifestation of a more far-reachingphenomenon; it is only one instance of that narrowing of the rangeof personality which has been going on in the modern world. Thewhole development of modern society has tended mightily towardthe limitation of the realm of freedom for the individual man.The tendency is most clearly seen in socialism; a socialisticstate would mean the reduction to a minimum of the sphere of individualchoice. Labor and recreation, under a socialistic government,would both be prescribed, and individual liberty would be gone.But the same tendency exhibits itself today even in those communitieswhere the name of socialism is most abhorred. When once the majorityhas determined that a certain regime is beneficial, that regimewithout further hesitation is forced ruthlessly upon the individualman. It never seems to occur to modern legislatures that

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although "welfare"is good, forced welfare may be bad. In other words, utilitarianismis being carried out to its logical conclusions; in the interestsof physical well-being the great principles of liberty are beingthrown ruthlessly to the winds.

The result is an unparalleledimpoverishment of human life. Personality can only be developedin the realm of individual choice. And that realm, in the modernstate, is being slowly but steadily contracted. The tendency ismaking itself felt especially in the sphere of education. Theobject of education, it is now assumed, is the production of thegreatest happiness for the greatest number. But the greatest happinessfor the greatest number, it is assumed further, can be definedonly by the will of the majority. Idiosyncrasies in education,therefore, it is said, must be avoided, and the choice of schoolsmust be taken away from the individual parent and placed in thehands of the state. The state then exercises its authority throughthe instruments that are ready to hand, and at once, therefore,the child is placed under the control of psychological experts,themselves without the slightest acquaintance with the higherrealms of human life, who proceed to prevent any such acquaintancebeing gained by those who come under their care. Such a resultis being slightly delayed in America by the remnants of Anglo-Saxonindividualism, but the signs of the times are all contrary tothe maintenance of this half-way position; liberty is certainlyheld by but a precarious tenure when once its underlying principleshave been lost. For a time it looked as though the utilitarianismwhich came into vogue in the middle of the nineteenth centurywould be a purely academic matter, without influence upon dailylife. But such appearances have proved to be deceptive. The dominanttendency, even in a country like America, which

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formerly prided itselfon its freedom from bureaucratic regulation of the details oflife, is toward a drab utilitarianism in which all higher aspirationsare to be lost.

Manifestations of sucha tendency can easily be seen. In the state of Nebraska, for example,a law is now in force according to which no instruction in anyschool in the state, public or private, is to be given throughthe medium of a language other than English, and no language otherthan English is to be studied even as a language until the childhas passed an examination before the county superintendent ofeducation showing that the eighth grade has been passed.1 In other words, no foreign language,apparently not even Latin or Greek, is to be studied until thechild is too old to learn it well. It is in this way that moderncollectivism deals with a kind of study which is absolutely essentialto all genuine mental advance. The minds of the people of Nebraska,and of any other states where similar laws prevail,2 are to be kept by the power of the statein a permanent condition of arrested development.

It might seem as thoughwith such laws obscurantism had reached its lowest possible depths.But there are depths lower still. In the state of Oregon, on ElectionDay, 1922, a law was passed by a referendum vote in accordancewith which all children in the state are required to attend thepublic schools. Christian schools and private schools, at leastin the all-important lower grades, are thus wiped out of existence.Such laws, which if the present temper of the people prevailswill probably

1. See Laws, Resolutionsand Memorials passed by the Legislature of the State of Nebraskaat the Thirty-Seventh Session, 1919, Chapter 249, p. 1019.

2. Compare, for example, Legislative Acts of the General Assemblyof Ohio, Vol. cviii, 1919, pp. 614f.; and Act, and Joint Resolutionsof the General Assembly of Iowa, 1919, Chapter 198, p. 219.

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soon be extended farbeyond the bounds of one state,1 [which will] mean of coursethe ultimate destruction of all real education. When one considerswhat the public schools of America in many places already are—theirmaterialism, their discouragement of any sustained intellectualeffort, their encouragement of the dangerous pseudo-scientificfads of experimental psychology—onecan only be appalled by the thought of a commonwealth in whichthere is no escape from such a soul-killing system. But the principleof such laws and their ultimate tendency are far worse than theimmediate results.2 A public

1. In Michigan, a billsimilar to the one now passed in Oregon recently received an enormousvote at a referendum, and an agitation looking at least in thesame general direction is said to be continuing.

2. The evil principle is seen with special clearness in the so-called"Lusk Laws" in the state of New York. One of these refersto teachers in the public schools. The other provides that "Noperson, firm, corporation or society shall conduct, maintain oroperate any school, institute, class or course of instructionin any subjects whatever without making application for and beinggranted a license from the university of the state of New Yorkto so conduct, maintain or operate such institute, school, classor course." It is further provided that "A school, institute,class or course licensed as provided In this section shall besubject to visitation by officers and employees of the universityof the state of New York." See Laws of the State of New York,1921, Vol. III, Chapter 667, pp. 2049-2051. This law is so broadlyworded that it could not possibly be enforced, even by the wholeGerman army in its pre-war efficiency or by all the espionagesystem of the Czar. The exact measure of enforcement is left tothe discretion of officials, and the citizens are placed in constantdanger of that intolerable interference with private life whichreal enforcement of the provision about "courses of instructionin any subjects whatever" would mean. One of the exemptionsis in principle particularly bad. "Nor shall such licensehe required:' the law provides. "by schools now or hereafterestablished and maintained by a religious denomination or sectwell recognized as such at the time this section takes effect."One can certainly rejoice that the existing churches are freed,for the time being, from the menace involved in the law. But inprinciple the limitation of the exemption to the existing churchesreally runs counter to the fundamental idea Of religious liberty;for it sets up a distinction between established religions andthose that are not established. There was always tolerance forestablished religious bodies, even in the Roman Empire; but religiousliberty consists in equal rights for religious bodies that arenew. The other exemptions do not remove in the slightest the oppressivecharacter of the law. Bad as the law must be in its Immediateeffects, it is far more alarming in what it reveals about thetemper of the people. A people which tolerates such preposterouslegislation upon the statute books is a people that has wanderedfar away from the principles of American liberty. True patriotismwill not conceal the menace, but will rather seek to recall thecitizens to those great principles for which our fathers, in Americaand In England, were willing to bleed and die. There are someencouraging indications that the Lusk Laws may soon be repealed.If they are repealed, they will still serve as A warning thatonly by constant watchfulness can liberty be preserved.

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school system, in itself,is indeed of enormous benefit to the race. But it is of benefitonly if it is kept healthy at every moment by the absolutely freepossibility of the competition of private schools. A public schoolsystem, if it means the providing of free education for thosewho desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of moderntimes; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfectinstrument of tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thoughtin the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modernmethod is far more effective. Place the lives of children in theirformative years, despite the convictions of their parents, underthe intimate control of experts appointed by the state, forcethem then to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanityare crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialismof the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants ofliberty can subsist. Such a tyranny, supported as it is by a perversetechnique used as the instrument in destroying human souls, iscertainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past,which despite their weapons of fire and sword permitted thoughtat least to be free.

The truth is that thematerialistic paternalism of the present day, if allowed to goon unchecked, will rapidly

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make of America onehuge "Main Street," where spiritual adventure will bediscouraged and democracy will be regarded as consisting in thereduction of all mankind to the proportions of the narrowest andleast gifted of the citizens. God grant that there may come areaction, and that the great principles of Anglo-Saxon libertymay be rediscovered before it is too late! But whatever solutionbe found for the educational and social problems of our own country,a lamentable condition must be detected in the world at large.It cannot be denied that great men are few or non-existent, andthat there has been a general contracting of the area of personallife. Material betterment has gone hand in hand with spiritualdecline.

Such a condition ofthe world ought to cause the choice between modernism and traditionalism,liberalism and conservatism, to be approached without any of theprejudice which is too often displayed. In view of the lamentabledefects of modern life, a type of religion certainly should notbe commended simply because it is modern or condemned simply becauseit is old. On the contrary, the condition of mankind is such thatone may well ask what it is that made the men of past generationsso great and the men of the present generation so small. In themidst of all the material achievements of modern life, one maywell ask the question whether in gaining the whole world we havenot lost our own soul. Are we forever condemned to live the sordidlife of utilitarianism? Or is there some lost secret which ifrediscovered will restore to mankind something of the gloriesof the past?

Such a secret the writerof this little book would discover in the Christian religion.But the Christian religion which is meant is certainly not thereligion of the modern liberal Church, but a message of divinegrace, almost forgotten

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now, as it was in themiddle ages, but destined to burst forth once more in God's goodtime, in a new Reformation, and bring light and freedom to mankind.What that message is can be made clear, as is the case with alldefinition, only by way of exclusion, by way of contrast. In settingforth the current liberalism, now almost dominant in the Church,over against Christianity, we are animated, therefore, by no merelynegative or polemic purpose; on the contrary, by showing whatChristianity is not we hope to be able to show what Christianityis, in order that men may be led to turn from the weak and beggarlyelements and have recourse again to the grace of God.

PROCEED to Chapter Two: Doctrine

This book was made available on the internetvia REFORMATION INK(www.markers.com/ink).Refer any correspondence to Shane Rosenthal: SocietyCP@aol.com

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Chapter 2: Doctrine

Modern liberalism in the Church, whatever judgment may be passed upon it, is at any rate no longer merely an academic matter. It is no longer a matter merely of theological seminaries or universities. On the contrary its attack upon the fundamentals of the Christian faith is being carried on vigorously by Sunday-School "lesson-helps," by the pulpit, and by the religious press. If such an attack be unjustified, the remedy is not to be found, as some devout persons have suggested, in the abolition of theological seminaries, or the abandonment of scientific theology, but rather in a more earnest search after truth and a more loyal devotion to it when once it is found.

At the theological seminaries and universities, however, the roots of the great issue are more clearly seen than in the world at large; among students the reassuring employment of traditional phrases is often abandoned, and the advocates of a new religion are not at pains, as they are in the Church at large, to maintain an appearance of conformity with the past. But such frankness, we are convinced, ought to be extended to the people as a whole. Few desires on the part of religious teachers have been more harmfully exaggerated than the desire to "avoid giving offense." Only too often that desire has come perilously near dishonesty; the religious teacher, in his heart of hearts, is well aware of the radicalism of his

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views, but is unwilling to relinquish his place in the hallowed atmosphere of the Church by speaking his whole mind. Against all such policy of concealment or palliation, our sympathies are altogether with those men, whether radicals or conservatives, who have a passion for light.

What then, at bottom, when the traditional phrases have all been stripped away, is the real meaning of the present revolt against the fundamentals of the Christian faith? What, in brief, are the teachings of modern liberalism as over against the teachings of Christianity?

At the outset, we are met with an objection. "Teachings," it is said, "are unimportant; the exposition of the teachings of liberalism and the teachings of Christianity, therefore, can arouse no interest at the present day; creeds are merely the changing expression of a unitary Christian experience, and provided only they express that experience they are all equally good. The teachings of liberalism, therefore, might be as far removed as possible from the teachings of historic Christianity, and yet the two might be at bottom the same."

Such is the way in which expression is often given to the modern hostility to "doctrine." But is it really doctrine as such that is objected to, and not rather one particular doctrine in the interests of another? Undoubtedly, in many forms of liberalism it is the latter alternative which fits the case. There are doctrines of modern liberalism, just as tenaciously and intolerantly upheld as any doctrines that find a place in the historic creeds. Such for example are the liberal doctrines of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. These doctrines are, as we shall see, contrary to the doctrines of the Christian religion. But doctrines they are all the same, and as such they require intellectual

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defence. In seeming to object to all theology, the liberal preacher is often merely objecting to one system of theology in the interests of another. And the desired immunity from theological controversy has not yet been attained.

Sometimes, however, the modern objection to doctrine is more seriously meant. And whether the objection be well-founded or not, the real meaning of it should at least be faced.

That meaning is perfectly plain. The objection involves an out-and-out skepticism. If all creeds are equally true, then since they are contradictory to one another, they are all equally false, or at least equally uncertain. We are indulging, therefore, in a mere juggling with words. To say that all creeds are equally true, and that they are based upon experience, is merely to fall back upon that agnosticism which fifty years ago was regarded as the deadliest enemy of the Church. The enemy has not really been changed into a friend merely because he has been received within the camp. Very different is the Christian conception of a creed. According to the Christian conception, a creed is not a mere expression of Christian experience, but on the contrary it is a setting forth of those facts upon which experience is based.

But, it will be said, Christianity is a life, not a doctrine. The assertion is often made, and it has an appearance of godliness. But it is radically false, and to detect its falsity one does not even need to be a Christian. For to say that "Christianity is a life" is to make an assertion in the sphere of history. The assertion does not lie in the sphere of ideals; it is far different from saying that Christianity ought to be a life, or that the ideal religion is a life. The assertion that Christianity is a life is subject to historical investigation exactly as is the assertion that

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the Roman Empire under Nero was a free democracy. Possibly the Roman Empire under Nero would have been better if it had been a free democracy, but the historical question is simply whether as a matter of fact it was a free democracy or no. Christianity is an historical phenomenon, like the Roman Empire, or the Kingdom of Prussia, or the United States of America. And as an historical phenomenon it must be investigated on the basis of historical evidence.

Is it true, then, that Christianity is not a doctrine but a life? The question can be settled only by an examination of the beginnings of Christianity. Recognition of that fact does not involve any acceptance of Christian belief; it is merely a matter of common sense and common honesty. At the foundation of the life of every corporation is the incorporation paper, in which the objects of the corporation are set forth. Other objects may be vastly more desirable than those objects, but if the directors use the name and the resources of the corporation to pursue the other objects they are acting ultra vires of the corporation. So it is with Christianity. It is perfectly conceivable that the originators of the Christian movement had no right to legislate for subsequent generation; but at any rate they did have an inalienable right to legislate for all generations that should choose to bear the name of "Christian." It is conceivable that Christianity may now have to be abandoned, and another religion substituted for it; but at any rate the question what Christianity is can be determined only by an examination of the beginnings of Christianity.

The beginnings of Christianity constitute a fairly definite historical phenomenon. The Christian movement originated a few days after the death of Jesus of Nazareth. It is doubtful whether anything that preceded the

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death of Jesus can be called Christianity. At any rate, if Christianity existed before that event, it was Christianity only in a preliminary stage. The name originated after the death of Jesus, and the thing itself was also something new. Evidently there was an important new beginning among the disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem after the crucifixion. At that time is to be placed the beginning of the remarkable movement which spread out from Jerusalem into the Gentile world—the movement which is called Christianity.

About the early stages of this movement definite historical information has been preserved in the Epistles of Paul, which are regarded by all serious historians as genuine products of the first Christian generation. The writer of the Epistles had been in direct communication with those intimate friends of Jesus who had begun the Christian movement in Jerusalem, and in the Epistles he makes it abundantly plain what the fundamental character of the movement was.

But if any one fact is clear, on the basis of this evidence, it is that the Christian movement at its inception was not just a way of life in the modern sense, but a way of life founded upon a message. It was based, not upon mere feeling, not upon a mere program of work, but upon an account of facts. In other words it was based upon doctrine.

Certainly with regard to Paul himself there should be no debate; Paul certainly was not indifferent to doctrine; on the contrary, doctrine was the very basis of his life. His devotion to doctrine did not, it is true, make him incapable of a magnificent tolerance. One notable example of such tolerance is to be found during his imprisonment at Rome, as attested by the Epistle to the Philippians. Apparently certain Christian teachers at

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Rome had been jealous of Paul's greatness. As long as he had been at liberty they had been obliged to take a secondary place; but now that he was in prison, they seized the supremacy. They sought to raise up affliction for Paul in his bonds; they preached Christ even of envy and strife. In short, the rival preachers made of the preaching of the gospel a means to the gratification of low personal ambition; it seems to have been about as mean a piece of business as could well be conceived. But Paul was not disturbed. "Whether in presence, or in truth," he said, "Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice" (Phil. i. 18). The way in which the preaching was being carried on was wrong, but the message itself was true; and Paul was far more interested in the content of the message than in the manner of its presentation. It is impossible to conceive a finer piece of broad-minded tolerance.

But the tolerance of Paul was not indiscriminate. He displayed no tolerance, for example, in Galatia. There, too, there were rival preachers. But Paul had no tolerance for them. "But though we," he said, "or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed" (Gal. i. 8). What is the reason for the difference in the apostle's attitude in the two cases? What is the reason for the broad tolerance in Rome, and the fierce anathemas in Galatia? The answer is perfectly plain. In Rome, Paul was tolerant, because there the content of the message that was being proclaimed by the rival teachers was true; in Galatia he was intolerant, because there the content of the rival message was false. In neither case did personalities have anything to do with Paul's attitude. No doubt the motives of the Judaizers in Galatia were far from pure, and in an incidental way Paul does point out

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their impurity. But that was not the ground of his opposition. The Judaizers no doubt were morally far from perfect, but Paul's opposition to them would have been exactly the same if they had all been angels from heaven. His opposition was based altogether upon the falsity of their teaching; they were substituting for the one true gospel a false gospel which was no gospel at all. It never occurred to Paul that a gospel might be true for one man and not for another; the blight of pragmatism had never fallen upon his soul. Paul was convinced of the objective truth of the gospel message, and devotion to that truth was the great passion of his life. Christianity for Paul was not only a life, but also a doctrine, and logically the doctrine came first.1

But what was the difference between the teaching of Paul and the teaching of the Judaizers ? What was it that gave rise to the stupendous polemic of the Epistle to the Galatians? To the modern Church the difference would have seemed to be a mere theological subtlety. About many things the Judaizers were in perfect agreement with Paul. The Judaizers believed that Jesus was the Messiah; there is not a shadow of evidence that they objected to Paul's lofty view of the person of Christ. Without the slightest doubt, they believed that Jesus had really risen from the dead. They believed, moreover, that faith in Christ was necessary to salvation. But the trouble was, they believed that something else was also necessary; they believed that what Christ had done needed to be pieced out by the believer's own effort to keep the Law. From the

1. See The Origin of Paul's Religion, 1921, p. 168. It is not maintained that doctrine for Paul comes temporally before life, but only that it comes logically first. Here is to be found the answer to the objection which Dr. Lyman Abbott raised against the assertion in The Origin of Paul's Religion. See The Outlook, vol. 132, 1922, pp. 104f.

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modern point of view the difference would have seemed to be very slight. Paul as well as the Judaizers believed that the keeping of the law of God, in its deepest import, is inseparably connected with faith. The difference concerned only the logical—not even, perhaps, the temporal—order of three steps. Paul said that a man (1) first believes on Christ, (2) then is justified before God, (3) then immediately proceeds to keep God's law. The Judaizers said that a man (1) believes on Christ and (2) keeps the law of God the best he can, and then (3) is justified. The difference would seem to modern "practical" Christians to be a highly subtle and intangible matter, hardly worthy of consideration at all in view of the large measure of agreement in the practical realm. What a splendid cleaning up of the Gentile cities it would have been if the Judaizers had succeeded in extending to those cities the observance of the Mosaic law, even including the unfortunate ceremonial observances! Surely Paul ought to have made common cause with teachers who were so nearly in agreement with him; surely he ought to have applied to them the great principle of Christian unity.

As a matter of fact, however, Paul did nothing of the kind; and only because he (and others) did nothing of the kind does the Christian Church exist today. Paul saw very clearly that the differences between the Judaizers and himself was the differences between two entirely distinct types of religion; it was the differences between a religion of merit and a religion of grace. If Christ provides only a part of our salvation, leaving us to provide the rest, then we are still hopeless under the load of sin. For no matter how small the gap which must be bridged before salvation can be attained, the awakened conscience sees clearly that our wretched attempt at goodness is insufficient even to bridge that gap. The guilty soul

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enters again into the hopeless reckoning with God, to determine whether we have really done our part. And thus we groan again under the old bondage of the law. Such an attempt to piece out the work of Christ by our own merit, Paul saw clearly, is the very essence of unbelief; Christ will do everything or nothing, and the only hope is to throw ourselves unreservedly on His mercy and trust Him for all.

Paul certainly was right. The differences which divided him from the Judaizers was no mere theological subtlety, but concerned the very heart and core of the religion of Christ. "Just as I am without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me"—that was what Paul was contending for in Galatia; that hymn would never have been written if the Judaizers had won. And without the thing which that hymn expresses there is no Christianity at all.

Certainly, then, Paul was no advocate of an undogmatic religion; he was interested above everything else in the objective and universal truth of his message. So much will probably be admitted by serious historians, no matter what their own personal attitude toward the religion of Paul may be. Sometimes, indeed, the modern liberal preacher seeks to produce an opposite impression by quoting out of their context words of Paul which he interprets in a way as far removed as possible from the original sense. The truth is, it is hard to give Paul up. The modern liberal desires to produce upon the minds of simple Christians (and upon his own mind) the impression of some sort of continuity between modern liberalism and the thought and life of the great Apostle. But such an impression is altogether misleading. Paul was not interested merely in the ethical principles of Jesus; he was not interested merely in general principles of religion or of ethics. On the contrary, he was interested in the redeeming

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work of Christ and its effect upon us. His primary interest was in Christian doctrine, and Christian doctrine not merely in its presuppositions but at its center. If Christianity is to be made independent of doctrine, then Paulinism must be removed from Christianity root and branch.

But what of that? Some men are not afraid of the conclusion. If Paulinism must be removed, they say, we can get along without it. May it not turn out that in introducing a doctrinal element into the life of the Church Paul was only perverting a primitive Christianity which was as independent of doctrine as even the modern liberal preacher could desire?

This suggestion is clearly overruled by the historical evidence. The problem certainly cannot be solved in so easy a way. Many attempts have indeed been made to separate the religion of Paul sharply from that of the primitive Jerusalem Church; many attempts have been made to show that Paul introduced an entirely new principle into the Christian movement or even was the founder of a new religion.1 But all such attempts have resulted in failure. The Pauline Epistles themselves attest a fundamental unity of principle between Paul and the original companions of Jesus, and the whole early history of the Church becomes unintelligible except on the basis of such unity. Certainly with regard to the fundamentally doctrinal character of Christianity Paul was no innovator. The fact appears in the whole character of Paul's relationship to the Jerusalem Church as it is attested by the Epistles, and it also appears with startling clearness in the precious passage in 1 Cor. xv. 3-7, where Paul summarizes the tradition which he had received from the

1. Some recount of these attempts has been given by the present writer in The Origin of Paul' Religion, 1921.

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primitive Church. What is it that forms the content of that primitive teaching? Is it a general principle of the fatherliness of God or the brotherliness of man? Is it a vague admiration for the character of Jesus such as that which prevails in the modern Church? Nothing could be further from the fact. "Christ died for our sins," said the primitive disciples, "according to the Scriptures; he was buried; he has been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." From the beginning, the Christian gospel, as indeed the name "gospel" or "good news" implies, consisted in an account of something that had happened. And from the beginning, the meaning of the happening was set forth; and when the meaning of the happening was set forth then there was Christian doctrine. "Christ died"—that is history; "Christ died for our sins"—that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity.

It is perfectly clear, then, that the first Christian missionaries did not simply come forward with an exhortation they did not say: "Jesus of Nazareth lived a wonderful life of filial piety, and we call upon you our hearers to yield yourselves, as we have done, to the spell of that life." Certainly that is what modern historians would have expected the first Christian missionaries to say, but it must be recognized that as a matter of fact they said nothing of the kind. Conceivably the first disciples of Jesus, after the catastrophe of His death, might have engaged in quiet meditation upon His teaching. They might have said to themselves that "Our Father which art in heaven" was a good way of addressing God even though the One who had taught them that prayer was dead. They might have clung to the ethical principles of Jesus and cherished the vague hope that the One who

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enunciated such principles had some personal existence beyond the grave. Such redactions might have seemed very natural to the modern man. But to Peter, James and John they certainly never occurred. Jesus had raised in them high hopes; those hopes were destroyed by the Cross; and reflections on the general principles of religion and ethics were quite powerless to revive the hopes again. The disciples of Jesus had evidently been far inferior to their Master in every possible way; they had not understood His lofty spiritual teaching, but even in the hour of solemn crisis had quarreled over great places in the approaching Kingdom. What hope was there that such men could succeed where their Master had failed? Even when He had been with them, they had been powerless; and now that He was taken from them, what little power they may have had was gone.1

Yet those same weak, discouraged men, within a few days after the death of their Master, instituted the most important spiritual movement that the world has ever seen. What had produced the astonishing change? What had transformed the weak and cowardly disciples into the spiritual conquerors of the world? Evidently it was not the mere memory of Jesus' life, for that was a source of sadness rather than of joy. Evidently the disciples of Jesus, within the few days between the crucifixion and the beginning of their work in Jerusalem, had received some new equipment for their task. What that new equipment was, at least the outstanding and external element in it (to say nothing of the endowment which Christian men believe to have been received at Pentecost), is perfectly plain. The great weapon with which the disciples of Jesus set out to conquer the world was not

1. Compare "History and Faith," 1915 (reprinted from Princeton Theological Review for July, 1915), pp. 10f.

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a mere comprehension of eternal principles; it was an historical message, an account of something that had recently happened, it was the message, "He is risen."1

But the message of the resurrection was not isolated. It was connected with the death of Jesus, seen now to be not a failure but a triumphant act of divine grace; it was connected with the entire appearance of Jesus upon earth. The coming of Jesus was understood now as an act of God by which sinful men were saved. The primitive Church was concerned not merely with what Jesus had said, but also, and primarily, with what Jesus had done. The world was to be redeemed through the proclamation of an event. And with the event went the meaning of the event; and the setting forth of the event with the meaning of the event was doctrine. These two elements are always combined in the Christian message. The narration of the facts is history; the narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine. "Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried"—that is history. "He loved me and gave Himself for me"—that is doctrine. Such was the Christianity of the primitive Church.

"But," it may be said, "even if the Christianity of the primitive Church was dependent upon doctrine, we may still emancipate ourselves from such dependence; we may appeal from the primitive Church to Jesus Himself. It has already been admitted that if doctrine is to be abandoned Paul must be abandoned: it may now be admitted that if doctrine is to be abandoned, even the primitive Jerusalem Church, with its message of the resurrection, must be abandoned. But possibly we can still find in Jesus Himself the simple, non-doctrinal religion that we

1. Compare A Rapid Survey of the Literature and History of New Testament Times, published by the Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work, Student's Text Book, pp. 42f.

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desire." Such is the real meaning of the modern slogan, "Back to Christ."

Must we really take such a step as that? It would certainly be an extraordinary step. A great religion derived its power from the message of the redeeming work of Christ; without that message Jesus and His disciples would soon have been forgotten. The same message, with its implications, has been the very heart and soul of the Christian movement throughout the centuries. Yet we are now asked to believe that the thing that has given Christianity its power all through the centuries was a blunder, that the originators of the movement misunderstood radically the meaning of their Master's life and work, and that it has been left to us moderns to get the first inkling of the initial mistake. Even if this view of the case were correct, and even if Jesus Himself taught a religion like that of modern liberalism, it would still be doubtful whether such a religion could rightly be called Christianity; for the name Christian was first applied only after the supposed decisive change had taken place, and it is very doubtful whether a name which through nineteen centuries has been so firmly attached to one religion ought now suddenly to be applied to another. If the first disciples of Jesus really departed so radically from their Master, then the better terminology would probably lead us to say simply that Jesus was not the founder of Christianity, but of a simple, non-doctrinal religion, long forgotten, but now rediscovered by modern men. Even so, the contrast between liberalism and Christianity would still appear.

But as a matter of fact, such a strange state of affairs does not prevail at all. It is not true that in basing Christianity upon an event the disciples of Jesus were departing from the teaching of their Master. For

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certainly Jesus Himself did the same thing. Jesus did not content Himself with enunciating general principles of religion and ethics; the picture of Jesus as a sage similar to Confucius, uttering wise maxims about conduct, may satisfy Mr. H. G. Wells, as he trips along lightly over the problems of history, but it disappears so soon as one engages seriously in historical research. "Repent," said Jesus, "for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." The gospel which Jesus proclaimed in Galilee consisted in the proclamation of a coming Kingdom. But clearly Jesus regarded the coming of the Kingdom as an event, or as a series of events. No doubt He also regarded the Kingdom as a present reality in the souls of men; no doubt He represented the Kingdom in one sense as already present. We shall not really succeed in getting along without this aspect of the matter in our interpretation of Jesus' words. But we shall also not get along without the other aspect, according to which the coming of the Kingdom depended upon definite and catastrophic events. But if Jesus regarded the coming of the Kingdom as dependent upon a definite event, then His teaching was similar at the decisive point to that of the primitive Church; neither He nor the primitive Church enunciated merely general and permanent principles of religion; both of them, on the contrary, made the message depend upon something that happened. Only, in the teaching of Jesus the happening was represented as being still in the future, while in that of the Jerusalem Church the first act of it at least lay already in the past. Jesus proclaimed the event as coming; the disciples proclaimed part of it at least as already past; but the important thing is that both Jesus and the disciples did proclaim an event. Jesus was certainly not a mere enunciator of permanent truths, like the modern liberal preacher; on the contrary He was

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conscious of standing at the turning-point of the ages, when what had never been was now to come to be.

But Jesus announced not only an event; He announced also the meaning of the event. It is natural, indeed, that the full meaning could be made clear only after the event had taken place. If Jesus really came, then, to announce, and to bring about, an event, the disciples were not departing from His purpose, if they set forth the meaning of the event more fully than it could be set forth during the preliminary period constituted by the earthly ministry of their Master. But Jesus Himself, though by way of prophecy, did set forth the meaning of the great happening that was to be at the basis of the new era.

Certainly He did so, and grandly, if the words attributed to Him in all of the Gospels are really His. But even if the Fourth Gospel be rejected, and even if the most radical criticism be applied to the other three, it will still be impossible to get rid of this element in Jesus' teaching. The significant words attributed to Jesus at the Last Supper with regard to His approaching death, and the utterance of Jesus in Mk. x. 45 ("The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many"), have indeed been the subject of vigorous debate. It is difficult to accept such words as authentic and yet maintain the modern view of Jesus at all. Yet it is also difficult to get rid of them on any critical theory. What we are now concerned with, however, is something more general than the authenticity even of these precious words. What we are now concerned to observe is that Jesus certainly did not content Himself with the enunciation of permanent moral principles; He certainly did announce an approaching event; and He certainly did not announce the event without giving some account of its meaning. But when He

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gave an account of the meaning of the event, no matter how brief that account may have been, He was overstepping the line that separates an undogmatic religion, or even a dogmatic religion that teaches only eternal principles, from one that is rooted in the significance of definite historical facts; He was placing a great gulf between Himself and the philosophic modern liberalism which today incorrectly bears His name.

In another way also the teaching of Jesus was rooted in doctrine. It was rooted in doctrine because it depended upon a stupendous presentation of Jesus' own Person. The assertion is often made, indeed, that Jesus kept His own Person out of His gospel, and came forward merely as the supreme prophet of God. That assertion lies at the very root of the modern liberal conception of the life of Christ. But common as it is, it is radically false. And it is interesting to observe how the liberal historians themselves, so soon as they begin to deal seriously with the sources, are obliged to admit that the real Jesus was not all that they could have liked Jesus to be. A Houston Stewart Chamberlain,1 indeed, can construct a Jesus who was the advocate of a pure, "formless," non-doctrinal religion; but trained historians, despite their own desires, are obliged to admit that there was an element in the real Jesus which refuses to be pressed into any such mold. There is to the liberal historians, as Heitmuller has significantly said, "something almost uncanny" about Jesus.2

This "uncanny" element in Jesus is found in His Messianic consciousness. The strange fact is that this pure teacher of righteousness appealed to by modern liberalism, this classical exponent of the non-doctrinal religion

1. Mensch und Gott, 1921. Compare the review in Princeton Theological Review, xx, 1922 pp. 327-329.

2. Heitmuller, Jesus, 1913, p. 71. See The Origin of Paul's Religion, 1921, p. 157.

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which is supposed to underlie all the historical religions as the irreducible truth remaining after the doctrinal accretions have been removed—the strange fact is that this supreme revealer of eternal truth supposed that He was to be the chief actor in a world catastrophe and was to sit in judgment upon the whole earth. Such is the stupendous form in which Jesus applied to Himself the category of Messiahship.

It is interesting to observe how modern men have dealt with the Messianic consciousness of Jesus. Some, like Mr. H. G. Wells, have practically ignored it. Without discussing the question whether it be historical or not they have practically treated it as though it did not exist, and have not allowed it to disturb them at all in their construction of the sage of Nazareth. The Jesus thus reconstructed may be useful as investing modern programs with the sanctity of His hallowed name; Mr. Wells may find it edifying to associate Jesus with Confucius in a brotherhood of beneficent vagueness. But what ought to be clearly understood is that such a Jesus has nothing to do with history. He is a purely imaginary figure, a symbol and not a fact.

Others, more seriously, have recognized the existence of the problem, but have sought to avoid it by denying that Jesus ever thought that He was the Messiah, and by supporting their denial, not by mere assertions, but by a critical examination of the sources. Such was the effort, for example, of W. Wrede,1 and a brilliant effort it was. But it has resulted in failure. The Messianic consciousness of Jesus is not merely rooted in the sources considered as documents, but it lies at the very basis of the whole edifice of the Church. If, as J. Weiss has pertinently said, the disciples before the crucifixion had

1. Da' Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien, 1901.

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merely been told that the Kingdom of God was coming, if Jesus had really kept altogether in the background His own part in the Kingdom, then why when despair finally gave place to joy did the disciples not merely say, "Despite Jesus' death, the Kingdom that He foretold will truly come"? Why did they say rather, "Despite His death, He is the Messiah"?1 From no point of view, then, can the fact be denied that Jesus did claim to be the Messiah—neither from the point of view of acceptance of the Gospel witness as a whole, nor from the point of view of modern naturalism.

And when the Gospel account of Jesus is considered closely, it is found to involve the Messianic consciousness throughout. Even those parts of the Gospels which have been regarded as most purely ethical are found to be based altogether upon Jesus' lofty claims. The Sermon on the Mount is a striking example. It is the fashion now to place the Sermon on the Mount in contrast with the rest of the New Testament. "We will have nothing to do with theology," men say in effect, "we will have nothing to do with miracles, with atonement, or with heaven or with hell. For us the Golden Rule is a sufficient guide of life; in the simple principles of the Sermon on the Mount we discover a solution of all the problems of society." It is indeed rather strange that men can speak in this way. Certainly it is rather derogatory to Jesus to assert that never except in one brief part of His recorded words did He say anything that is worth while. But even in the Sermon on the Mount there is far more than some men suppose. Men say that it contains no theology) in reality it contains theology of the most stupendous kind. In particular, it

1. J. Weiss, "Des Problem der Entstehung des Christentums," in Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft? xvi. 1913, p. 466. See The Origin of Paul's Religion, 1921, p. 156.

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contains the loftiest possible presentation of Jesus' own Person. That presentation appears in the strange note of authority which pervades the whole discourse; it appears in the recurrent words, "But I say unto you." Jesus plainly puts His own words on an equality with what He certainly regarded as the divine words of Scripture; He claimed the right to legislate for the Kingdom of God. Let it not be objected that this note of authority involves merely a prophetic consciousness in Jesus, a mere right to speak in God's name as God's Spirit might lead. For what prophet ever spoke in this way? The prophets said, "Thus saith the Lord," but Jesus said, "I say." We have no mere prophet here, no mere humble exponent of the will of God; but a stupendous Person speaking in a manner which for any other person would be abominable and absurd. The same thing appears in the passage Matt. vii. 21-23: "Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many shall say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name cast out demons, and in thy name done many mighty works? And then I shall confess to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work lawlessness."' This passage is in some respects a favorite with modern liberal teachers; for it is interpreted—falsely, it is true, yet plausibly—as meaning that

all that a man needs to attain standing with God is an approximately right performance of his duties to his fellow-men, and not any assent to a creed or even any direct relation to Jesus. But have those who quote the passage 80 triumphantly in this way ever stopped to reflect upon the other side of the picture—upon the stupendous fact that in this same passage the eternal destinies of men are made dependent upon the word of Jesus ? Jesus here represents

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Himself as seated on the judgment-seat of all the earth, separating whom He will forever from the bliss that is involved in being present with Him. Could anything be further removed than such a Jesus from the humble teacher of righteousness appealed to by modern liberalism? Clearly it is impossible to escape from theology, even in the chosen precincts of the Sermon on the Mount. A stupendous theology, with Jesus' own Person at the center of it, is the presupposition of the whole teaching.

But may not that theology still be removed? May we not get rid of the bizarre, theological element which has intruded itself even into the Sermon on the Mount, and content ourselves merely with the ethical portion of the discourse? The question, from the point of view of modern liberalism, is natural. But it must be answered with an emphatic negative. For the fact is that the ethic of the discourse, taken by itself, will not work at all. The Golden Rule furnishes an example. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you"—is that rule a rule of universal application, will it really solve all the problems of society? A little experience shows that such is not the case. Help a drunkard to get rid of his evil habit, and you will soon come to distrust the modern interpretation of the Golden Rule. The trouble is that the drunkard's companions apply the rule only too well; they do unto him exactly what they would have him do unto them —by buying him a drink. The Golden Rule becomes a powerful obstacle in the way of moral advance. But the trouble does not lie in the rule itself; it lies in the modern interpretation of the rule. The error consists in supposing that the Golden Rule, with the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, is addressed to the whole world. As a matter of fact the whole discourse is expressly addressed to Jesus' disciples; and from them the great world outside is

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distinguished in the plainest possible way. The persons to whom the Golden Rule is addressed are persons in whom a great change has been wrought—a change which fits them for entrance into the Kingdom of God. Such persons will have pure desires; they, and they only, can safely do unto others as they would have others do unto them, for the things that they would have others do unto them are high and pure.

So it is with the whole of the discourse. The new law of the Sermon on the Mount, in itself, can only produce despair. Strange indeed is the complacency with which modern men can say that the Golden Rule and the high ethical principles of Jesus are all that they need. In reality, if the requirements for entrance into the Kingdom of God are what Jesus declares them to be, we are all undone; we have not even attained to the external righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and how shall we attain to that righteousness of the heart which Jesus demands ? The Sermon on the Mount, rightly interpreted, then, makes man a seeker after some divine means of salvation by which entrance into the Kingdom can be obtained. Even Moses was too high for us; but before this higher law of Jesus who shall stand without being condemned? The Sermon on the Mount, like all the rest of the New Testament, really leads a man straight to the foot of the Cross.

Even the disciples, to whom the teaching of Jesus was first addressed, knew well that they needed more than guidance in the way that they should go. It is only a superficial reading of the Gospels that can find in the relation which the disciples sustained to Jesus a mere relation of pupil to Master. When Jesus said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," he was speaking not as a philosopher calling pupils

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to his school) but as One who was in possession of rich stores of divine grace. And this much at least the disciples knew. They knew well in their heart of hearts that they had no right to stand in the Kingdom; they knew that only Jesus could win them entrance there. They did not yet know fully how Jesus could make them children of God; but they did know that He could do it and He alone. And in that trust all the theology of the great Christian creeds was in expectation contained.

At this point, an objection may arise. May we not—the modern liberal will say—may we not now return to that simple trust of the disciples? May we not cease to ask how Jesus saves; may we not simply leave the way to Him? What need is there, then, of defining "effectual calling," what need of enumerating "justification, adoption and sanctification and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them"? What need even of rehearsing the steps in the saving work of Christ as they were rehearsed by the Jerusalem Church; what need of saying that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he has been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures"? Should not our trust be in a Person rather than in a message; in Jesus, rather than in what Jesus did; in Jesus' character rather than in Jesus' death?

Plausible words these are—plausible, and pitifully vain. Can we really return to Galilee; are we really in the same situation as those who came to Jesus when He was on earth? Can we hear Him say to us, "Thy sins are forgiven thee"? These are serious questions, and they cannot possibly be ignored. The plain fact is that Jesus of Nazareth died these nineteen hundred years ago. It was possible for the men of Galilee in the first century to trust Him; for to them He extended His aid. For them, life's

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problem was easy. They needed only to push in through the crowd or be lowered through some Capernaum roof and the long search was over. But we are separated by nineteen centuries from the One who alone could give us aid. How can we bridge the gulf of time that separates us from Jesus?

Some persons would bridge the gulf by the mere use of the historical imagination. "Jesus is not dead," we are told, "but lives on through His recorded words and deeds; we do not need even to believe it all; even a part is sufficient; the wonderful personality of Jesus shines out clear from the Gospel story. Jesus, in other words, may still be known; let us simply—without theology, without controversy, without inquiry about miracles—abandon ourselves to His spell, and He will heal us."

There is a certain plausibility about that. It may readily be admitted that Jesus lives on in the Gospel record. In that narrative we see not merely a lifeless picture, but receive the impression of a living Person. We can still, as we read, share the astonishment of those who listened to the new teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. We can sympathize with the faith and devotion of the little band of disciples who would not leave Him when others were offended at the hard saying. We feel a sympathetic thrill of joy at the blessed relief which was given to those who were ill in body and in mind. We can appreciate the wonderful love and compassion of Him who was sent to seek and to save that which was lost. A wonderful story it is indeed—not dead, but pulsating with life at every turn.

Certainly the Jesus of the Gospels is a real, a living Person. But that is not the only question. We are going forward far too fast. Jesus lives in the Gospels—so much may freely be admitted—but we of the twentieth century,

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how may we come into vital relation to Him? He died nineteen hundred years ago. The life which He now lives in the Gospels is simply the old life lived over and over again. And in that life we have no place; in that life we are spectators, not actors. The life which Jesus lives in the Gospels is after all for us but the spurious life of the stage. We sit silent in the playhouse and watch the absorbing Gospel drama of forgiveness and healing and love and courage and high endeavor; in rapt attention we follow the fortunes of those who came to Jesus laboring and heavy laden and found rest. For a time our own troubles are forgotten. But suddenly the curtain falls, with the closing of the book, and out we go again into the cold humdrum of our own lives. Gone are the warmth and gladness of an ideal world, and "in their stead a sense of real things comes doubly strong." We are no longer living over again the lives of Peter and James and John. Alas, we are living our own lives once more, with our own problems and our own misery and our own sin. And still we are seeking our own Savior.

Let us not deceive ourselves. A Jewish teacher of the first century can never satisfy the longing of our souls. Clothe Him with all the art of modern research, throw upon Him the warm, deceptive calcium-light of modern sentimentality; and despite it all common sense will come to its rights again, and for our brief hour of self-deception—as though we had been with Jesus—will wreak upon us the revenge of hopeless disillusionment.

But, says the modern preacher, are we not, in being satisfied with the "historical" Jesus, the great teacher who proclaimed the Kingdom of God, merely restoring the simplicity of the primitive gospel? No, we answer, you are not, but, temporally at least, you are not so very far wrong. You are really returning to a very primitive

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stage in the life of the Church. Only, that stage is not the Galilean springtime. For in Galilee men had a living Savior. There was one time and one time only when the disciples lived, like you, merely on the memory of Jesus. When was it? It was a gloomy, desperate time. It was the three sad days after the crucifixion. Then and then only did Jesus' disciples regard Him merely as a blessed memory. "We trusted," they said, "that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel." "We trusted"—but now our trust is gone. Shall we remain, with modern liberalism, forever in the gloom of those sad days? Or shall we pass out from it to the warmth and joy of Pentecost?

Certainly we shall remain forever in the gloom if we attend merely to the character of Jesus and neglect the thing that He has done, if we try to attend to the Person and neglect the message. We may have joy for sadness and power for weakness; but not by easy half-way measures, not by avoidance of controversy, not by trying to hold on to Jesus and yet reject the gospel. What was it that within a few days transformed a band of mourners into the spiritual conquerors of the world? It was not the memory of Jesus' life; it was not the inspiration which came from past contact with Him. But it was the message, "He is risen." That message alone gave to the disciples a living Savior; and it alone can give to us a living Savior today. We shall never have vital contact with Jesus if we attend to His person and neglect the message; for it is the message which makes Him ours.

But the Christian message contains more than the fact of the resurrection.1 It is not enough to know that Jesus is alive; it is not enough to know that a wonderful Person

1. For what follows compare A Rapid Survey of the History and Literature of New Testament Times, published by the Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work, Teacher's Manual, pp. 44f.

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lived in the first century of the Christian era and that Person still lives, somewhere and somehow, today. Jesus lives, and that is well; but what good is it to us? We are like the inhabitants of far-off Syria or Phoenicia in the days of His flesh. There is a wonderful Person who can heal every ill of body and mind. But, alas, we are not with Him, and the way is far. How shall we come into His presence? How shall contact be established between us and Him? For the people of ancient Galilee contact was established by a touch of Jesus' hand or a word from His lips. But for us the problem is not so easy. We cannot find Him by the lake shore or in crowded houses; we cannot be lowered into any room where He sits amid scribes and Pharisees. If we employ only our own methods of search, we shall find ourselves on a fruitless pilgrimage. Surely we need guidance, if we are to find our Savior.

And in the New Testament we find guidance full and free—guidance so complete as to remove all doubt, yet so simple that a child can understand. Contact with Jesus according to the New Testament is established by what Jesus does, not for others, but for us. The account of what Jesus did for others is indeed necessary. By reading how He went about doing good, how He healed the sick and raised the dead and forgave sins, we learn that He is a Person who is worthy of trust. But such knowledge is to the Christian man not an end in itself, but a means to an end. It is not enough to know that Jesus is a Person worthy of trust; it is also necessary to know that He is willing to have us trust Him. It is not enough that He saved others; we need to know also that He has saved us.

That knowledge is given in the story of the Cross. For us Jesus does not merely place His fingers in the ears and

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say, "Be opened'; for us He does not merely say "Arise and walk." For us He has done a greater thing—for us He died. Our dreadful guilt, the condemnation of God's law—it was wiped out by an act of grace. That is the message which brings Jesus near to us, and makes Him not merely the Savior of the men of Galilee long ago, but the Savior of you and me.

It is vain, then, to speak of reposing trust in the Person without believing the message. For trust involves a personal relation between the one who trusts and him in whom the trust is reposed. And in this case the personal relation is set up by the blessed theology of the Cross. Without the eighth chapter of Romans, the mere story of the earthly life of Jesus would be remote and dead; for it is through the eighth chapter of Romans, or the message which that chapter contains, that Jesus becomes our Savior today.

The truth is that when men speak of trust in Jesus' Person, as being possible without acceptance of the message of His death and resurrection, they do not really mean trust at all. What they designate as trust is really admiration or reverence. They reverence Jesus as the supreme Person of all history and the supreme revealer of God. But trust can come only when the supreme Person extends His saving power to us. "He went about doing good," "He spake words such as never man spake," "He is the express image of God"—that is reverence; "He loved me and gave Himself for me"—that is faith.

But the words "He loved me and gave Himself for me" are in historical form; they constitute an account of something that happened. And they add to the fact the meaning of the fact; they contain in essence the whole profound theology of redemption through the blood of Christ. Christian doctrine lies at the very roots of faith.

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It must be admitted, then, that if we are to have a nondoctrinal religion, or a doctrinal religion founded merely on general truth, we must give up not only Paul, not only the primitive Jerusalem Church, but also Jesus Himself. But what is meant by doctrine? It has been interpreted here as meaning any presentation of the facts which lie at the basis of the Christian religion with the true meaning of the facts. But is that the only sense of the word? May the word not also be taken in a narrower sense? May it not also mean a systematic and minute and one-sidedly scientific presentation of the facts? And if the word is taken in this narrower sense, may not the modern objection to doctrine involve merely an objection to the excessive subtlety of controversial theology, and not at all an objection to the glowing words of the New Testament, an objection to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and not at all to the first century? Undoubtedly the word is so taken by many occupants of the pews when they listen to the modern exaltation of "life" at the expense of "doctrine." The pious hearer labors under the impression that he is merely being asked to return to the simplicity of the New Testament, instead of attending to the subtleties of the theologians. Since it has never occurred to him to attend to the subtleties of the theologians, he has that comfortable feeling which always comes to the churchgoer when some one else's sins are being attacked. It is no wonder that the modern invectives against doctrine constitute a popular type of preaching. At any rate, an attack upon Calvin or Turrettin or the Westminster divines does not seem to the modern churchgoer to be a very dangerous thing. In point of fact, however, the attack upon doctrine is not nearly so innocent a matter as our simple churchgoer supposes; for the things Objected to in the theology of the Church are also at

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the very heart of the New Testament. Ultimately the attack is not against the seventeenth century, but against the Bible and against Jesus Himself.

Even if it were an attack not upon the Bible but only upon the great historic presentations of Biblical teaching, it would still be unfortunate. If the Church were led to wipe out of existence all products of the thinking of nineteen Christian centuries and start fresh, the loss, even if the Bible were retained, would be immense. When it is once admitted that a body of facts lies at the basis of the Christian religion, the efforts which past generations have made toward the classification of the facts will have to be treated with respect. In no branch of science would there be any real advance if every generation started fresh with no dependence upon what past generations have achieved. Yet in theology, vituperation of the past seems to be thought essential to progress. And upon what base slanders the vituperation is based! After listening to modern tirades against the great creeds of the Church, one receives rather a shock when one turns to the Westminster Confession, for example, or to that tenderest and most theological of books, the "Pilgrim's Progress" of John Bunyan, and discovers that in doing so one has turned from shallow modern phrases to a "dead orthodoxy" that is pulsating with life in every word. In such orthodoxy there is life enough to set the whole world aglow with Christian love.

As a matter of fact, however, in the modern vituperation of "doctrine," it is not merely the great theologians or the great creeds that are being attacked, but the New Testament and our Lord Himself. In rejecting doctrine, the liberal preacher is rejecting the simple words of Paul' "Who loved me and gave Himself for me," just as much as the homoousion of the Nicene Creed. For the word "doctrine"

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is really used not in its narrowest, but in its broadest sense. The liberal preacher is really rejecting the whole basis of Christianity, which is a religion founded not on aspirations, but on facts. Here is found the most fundamental difference between liberalism and Christianity—liberalism is altogether in the imperative mood, while Christianity begins with a triumphant indicative; liberalism appeals to man's will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God.

In maintaining the doctrinal basis of Christianity, we are particularly anxious not to be misunderstood. There are certain things that we do not mean.

In the first place, we do not mean that if doctrine is sound it makes no difference about life. On the contrary, it makes all the difference in the world. From the beginning, Christianity was certainly a way of life; the salvation that it offered was a salvation from sin, and salvation from sin appeared not merely in a blessed hope but also in an immediate moral change. The early Christians, to the astonishment of their neighbors, lived a strange new kind of life—a life of honesty, of purity and of unselfishness. And from the Christian community all other types of life were excluded in the strictest way. From the beginning Christianity was certainly a life.

But how was the life produced? It might conceivably have been produced by exhortation. That method had often been tried in the ancient world; in the Hellenistic age there were many wandering preachers who told men how they ought to live. But such exhortation proved to be powerless. Although the ideals of the Cynic and Stoic preachers were high, these preachers never succeeded in transforming society. The strange thing about Christianity was that it adopted an entirely different method. It transformed the lives of men not by appealing to the

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human will, but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the narration of an event. It is no wonder that such a method seemed strange. Could anything be more impractical than the attempt to influence conduct by rehearsing events concerning the death of a religious teacher? That is what Paul called "the foolishness of the message." It seemed foolish to the ancient world, and it seems foolish to liberal preachers today. But the strange thing is that it works. The effects of it appear even in this world. Where the most eloquent exhortation fails, the simple story of an event succeeds; the lives of men are transformed by a piece of news.

It is especially by such transformation of life, today as always, that the Christian message is commended to the attention of men. Certainly, then, it does make an enormous difference whether our lives be right. If our doctrine be true, and our lives be wrong, how terrible is our sin! For then we have brought despite upon the truth itself. On the other hand, however, it is also very sad when men use the social graces which God has given them, and the moral momentum of a godly ancestry, to commend a message which is false. Nothing in the world can take the place of truth.

In the second place, we do not mean, in insisting upon the doctrinal basis of Christianity, that all points of doctrine are equally important. It is perfectly possible for Christian fellowship to be maintained despite differences of opinion.

One such difference of opinion, which has been attaining increasing prominence in recent years, concerns the order of events in connection with the Lord's return. A large number of Christian people believe that when evil has reached its climax in the world, the Lord Jesus will return to this earth in bodily presence to bring about a reign of

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righteousness which will last a thousand years, and that only after that period the end of the world will come. That belief, in the opinion of the present writer, is an error, arrived at by a false interpretation of the Word of God; we do not think that the prophecies of the Bible permit so definite a mapping-out of future events. The Lord will come again, and it will be no mere "spiritual" coming in the modern sense—so much is clear—but that so little will be accomplished by the present dispensation of the Holy Spirit and so much will be left to be accomplished by the Lord in bodily presence—such a view we cannot find to be justified by the words of Scripture. What is our attitude, then, with regard to this debate? Certainly it cannot be an attitude of indifference. The recrudescence of "Chiliasm" or "premillennialism" in the modern Church causes us serious concern; it is coupled, we think, with a false method of interpreting Scripture which in the long run will be productive of harm. Yet how great is our agreement with those who hold the premillennial view! They share to the full our reverence for the authority of the Bible, and differ from us only in the interpretation of the Bible; they share our ascription of deity to the Lord Jesus, and our supernaturalistic conception both of the entrance of Jesus into the world and of the consummation when He shall come again. Certainly, then, from our point of view, their error, serious though it may be, is not deadly error; and Christian fellowship, with loyalty not only to the Bible but to the great creeds of the Church, can still unite us with them. It is therefore highly misleading when modern liberals represent the present issue in the Church, both in the mission field and at home, as being an issue between premillennialism and the opposite view. It is really an issue between Christianity, whether premillennial or not, on the one side,

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and a naturalistic negation of all Christianity on the other.

Another difference of opinion which can subsist in the midst of Christian fellowship is the difference of opinion about the mode of efficacy of the sacraments. That difference is indeed serious, and to deny its seriousness is a far greater error than to take the wrong side in the controversy itself. It is often said that the divided condition of Christendom is an evil, and so it is. But the evil consists in the existence of the errors which cause the divisions and not at all in the recognition of those errors when once they exist. It was a great calamity when at the "Marburg Conference" between Luther and the representatives of the Swiss Reformation, Luther wrote on the table with regard to the Lord's Supper, "This is my body," and said to Zwingli and Oecolampadius, "You have another spirit." That difference of opinion led to the breach between the Lutheran and the Reformed branches of the Church, and caused Protestantism to lose much of the ground that might otherwise have been gained. It was a great calamity indeed. But the calamity was due to the fact that Luther (as we believe) was wrong about the Lord's Supper; and it would have been a far greater calamity if being wrong about the Supper he had represented the whole question as a trifling affair. Luther was wrong about the Supper, but not nearly so wrong as he would have been if, being wrong, he had said to his opponents: "Brethren, this matter is a trifle; and it makes really very little difference what a man thinks about the table of the Lord." Such indifferentism would have been far more deadly than all the divisions between the branches of the Church. A Luther who would have compromised with regard to the Lord's Supper never would have said at the Diet of Worms, "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise,

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Chapter3:"God & Man"

It has been observed in the lastchapter that Christianity is based on an account of somethingthat happened in the first century of our era. But before thataccount can be received, certain presuppositions must be accepted.The Christian gospel consists in an account of how God saved man,and before that gospel can be understood something must be known(1) about God and (2) about man. The doctrine of God and the doctrineof man are the two great presuppositions of the gospel. With regardto these presuppositions, as with regard to the gospel itself,modern liberalism is diametrically opposed to Christianity.

It is opposed to Christianity,in the first place, in its conception of God. But at this pointwe are met with a particularly insistent form of that objectionto doctrinal matters which has already been considered. It isunnecessary, we are told, to have a "conception" ofGod; theology, or the knowledge of God, it is said, is the deathof religion; we should not seek to know God, but should merelyfeel His presence.

With regard to thisobjection, it ought to be observed that if religion consists merelyin feeling the presence of God, it is devoid of any moral qualitywhatever. Pure feeling, if there be such a thing, is non-moral.What makes affection for a human friend, for example, such anennobling thing is the knowledge which we possess of the

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character of our friend. Human affection, apparently so simple,is really just bristling with dogma. It depends upon a host ofobservations treasured up in the mind with regard to the characterof our friends. But if human affection is thus really dependentupon knowledge, why should it be otherwise with that supreme personalrelationship which is at the basis of religion ? Why should webe indignant about slanders directed against a human friend, whileat the same time we are patient about the basest slanders directedagainst our God? Certainly it does make the greatest possibledifference what we think about God; the knowledge of God is thevery basis of religion.

How, then, shall Godbe known; how shall we become so acquainted with Him that personalfellowship may become possible? Some liberal preachers would saythat we become acquainted with God only through Jesus. That assertionhas an appearance of loyalty to our Lord, but in reality it ishighly derogatory to Him. For Jesus Himself plainly recognizedthe validity of other ways of knowing God, and to reject thoseother ways is to reject the things that lay at the very centerof Jesus' life. Jesus plainly found God's hand in nature; thelilies of the field revealed to Him the weaving of God. He foundGod also in the moral law; the law written in the hearts of menwas God's law, which revealed His righteousness. Finally Jesusplainly found God revealed in the Scriptures. How profound wasour Lord's use of the words of prophets and psalmists! To saythat such revelation of God was invalid, or is useless to us today,is to do despite to things that lay closest to Jesus' mind andheart.

But, as a matter offact, when men say that we know God only as He is revealed inJesus, they are denying all real knowledge of God whatever. Forunless there be

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some idea of God independent of Jesus, the ascription of deityto Jesus has no meaning. To say, "Jesus is God," ismeaningless unless the word "God" has an antecedentmeaning attached to it. And the attaching of a meaning to theword "God" is accomplished by the means which have justbeen mentioned. We are not forgetting the words of Jesus in theGospel of John, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."But these words do not mean that if a man had never known whatthe word "God" means, he could come to attach an ideato that word merely by his knowledge of Jesus' character. On thecontrary, the disciples to whom Jesus was speaking had alreadya very definite conception of God; a knowledge of the one supremePerson was presupposed in all that Jesus said. But the disciplesdesired not only a knowledge of God hut also intimate, personalcontact. And that came through their intercourse with Jesus. Jesusrevealed, in a wonderfully intimate way, the character of God,but such revelation obtained its true significance only on thebasis both of the Old Testament heritage and of Jesus' own teaching.Rational theism, the knowledge of one Supreme Person, Maker andactive Ruler of the world, is at the very root of Christianity.

But, the modern preacherwill say, it is incongruous to attribute to Jesus an acceptanceof "rational theism"; Jesus had a practical, not a theoretical,knowledge of God. There is a sense in which these words are true.Certainly no part of Jesus' knowledge of God was merely theoretical;everything that Jesus knew about God touched His heart and determinedHis actions. In that sense, Jesus' knowledge of God was "practical."But unfortunately that is not the sense in which the assertionof modern liberalism is meant. What is frequently meant by a "practical"knowledge of God in modern parlance is

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not a theoretical knowledge of God that is also practical, buta practical knowledge which is not theoretical—in other words,a knowledge which gives no information about objective reality,a knowledge which is no knowledge at all. And nothing could possiblybe more unlike the religion of Jesus than that. The relation ofJesus to His heavenly Father was not a relation to a vague andimpersonal goodness, it was not a relation which merely clotheditself in symbolic, personal form. On the contrary, it was a relationto a real Person, whose existence was just as definite and justas much a subject of theoretic knowledge as the existence of thelilies of the field that God had clothed. The very basis of thereligion of Jesus was a triumphant belief in the real existenceof a personal God.

And without that beliefno type of religion can rightly appeal to Jesus today. Jesus wasa theist, and rational theism is at the basis of Christianity.Jesus did not, indeed, support His theism by argument; He didnot provide in advance answers to the Kantian attack upon thetheistic proofs. But that means not that He was indifferent tothe belief which is the logical result of those proofs, but thatthe belief stood so firm, both to Him and to His hearers, thatin His teaching it is always presupposed. So today it is not necessaryfor all Christians to analyze the logical basis of their beliefin God; the human mind has a wonderful faculty for the condensationof perfectly valid arguments, and what seems like an instinctivebelief may turn out to be the result of many logical steps. Or,rather' it may be that the belief in a personal God is the resultof a primitive revelation, and that the theistic proofs are onlythe logical confirmation of what was originally arrived at bya different means. At any rate, the logical confirmation of thebelief in God is a vital concern

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to the Christian; at this point as at many others religion andphilosophy are connected in the most intimate possible way. Truereligion can make no peace with a false philosophy, any more thanwith a science that is falsely so-called; a thing cannot possiblybe true in religion and false in philosophy or in science. Allmethods of arriving at truth, if they be valid methods, will arriveat a harmonious result. Certainly the atheistic or agnostic Christianitywhich sometimes goes under the name of a "practical"religion is no Christianity at all. At the very root of Christianityis the belief in the real existence of a personal God.

Strangely enough, atthe very time when modern liberalism is decrying the theisticproofs, and taking refuge in a "practical" knowledgewhich shall somehow be independent of scientifically or philosophicallyascertained facts, the liberal preacher loves to use one designationof God which is nothing if not theistic; he loves to speak ofGod as "Father." The term certainly has the merit ofascribing personality to God. By some of those who use it, indeed,it is not seriously meant; by some it is employed because it isuseful, not because it is true. But not all liberals are ableto make the subtle distinction between theoretic judgments andjudgments of value; some liberals, though perhaps a decreasingnumber, are true believers in a personal God. And such men areable to think of God truly as a Father.

The term presents avery lofty conception of God. It is not indeed exclusively Christian;the term "Father" has been applied to God outside ofChristianity. It appears, for example, in the widespread beliefin an "All- Father," which prevails among many raceseven in company with polytheism; it appears here and there inthe Old Testament, and in pre-Christian Jewish writings subsequentto

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the Old Testament period. Such occurrences of the term are byno means devoid of significance. The Old Testament usage, in particular,is a worthy precursor of our Lord's teaching; for although inthe Old Testament the word "Father" ordinarily designatesGod in relation not to the individual, but to the nation or tothe king, yet the individual Israelite, because of his part inthe chosen people, felt himself to be in a peculiarly intimaterelation to the covenant God. But despite this anticipation ofthe teaching of our Lord, Jesus brought such an incomparable enrichmentof the usage of the term, that it is a correct instinct whichregards the thought of God as Father as something characteristicallyChristian.

Modern men have beenso much impressed with this element in Jesus' teaching that theyhave sometimes been inclined to regard it as the very sum andsubstance of our religion. We are not interested, they say, inmany things for which men formerly gave their lives; we are notinterested in the theology of the creeds; we are not interestedin the doctrines of sin and salvation; we are not interested inatonement through the blood of Christ: enough for us is the simpletruth of the fatherhood of God and its corollary, the brotherhoodof man. We may not be very orthodox in the theological sense,they continue, but of course you will recognize us as Christiansbecause we accept Jesus' teaching as to the Father God.

It is very strange howintelligent persons can speak in this way. It is very strangehow those who accept only the universal fatherhood of God as thesum and substance of religion can regard themselves as Christiansor can appeal to Jesus of Nazareth. For the plain fact is thatthis modern doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God formedno part whatever of Jesus' teaching. Where is it that Jesus maybe supposed to have taught the universal

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fatherhood of God? Certainly it is not in the parable of the ProdigalSon. For in the first place, the publicans and sinners whose acceptanceby Jesus formed the occasion both of the Pharisees' objectionand of Jesus' answer to them by means of the parable, were notany men anywhere, but were members of the chosen people and assuch might be designated as sons of God. In the second place,a parable is certainly not to be pressed in its details. So herebecause the joy of the father in the parable is like the joy ofGod when a sinner receives salvation at Jesus' hand, it does notfollow that the relation which God sustains to still unrepentantsinners is that of a Father to his children. Where else, then,can the universal fatherhood of God be found ? Surely not in theSermon on the Mount; for throughout the Sermon on the Mount thosewho can call God Father are distinguished in the most emphaticway from the great world of the Gentiles outside. One passagein the discourse has indeed been urged in support of the moderndoctrine: "But I say unto you, love your enemies and prayfor them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Fatherwho is in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on evil and goodand sendeth rain on just and unjust" (Matt. v. 44, 45). Butthe passage certainly will not bear the weight which is hung uponit. God is indeed represented here as caring for all men whetherevil or good, but He is certainly not called the Father of all.Indeed it might almost be said that the point of the passage dependson the fact that He is not the Father of all. He cares even forthose who are not His children but His enemies; so His children,Jesus' disciples, ought to imitate Him by loving even those whoare not their brethren but their persecutors. The modern doctrineof the universal fatherhood of God is not to be found in the teachingof Jesus.

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And it is not to be found in the New Testament. The whole NewTestament and Jesus Himself do indeed represent God as standingin a relation to all men, whether Christians or not, which isanalogous to that in which a father stands to his children. Heis the Author of the being of all, and as such might well be calledthe Father of all. He cares for all, and for that reason alsomight be called the Father of all. Here and there the figure offatherhood seems to be used to designate this broader relationshipwhich God sustains to all men or even to all created beings. Soin an isolated passage in Hebrews, God is spoken of as the "Fatherof spirits" (Heb. xii. 9). Here perhaps it is the relationof God, as creator, to the personal beings whom He has createdwhich is in view. One of the clearest instances of the broaderuse of the figure of fatherhood is found in the speech of Paulat Athens, Acts xvii. 28: "For we are also His offspring."Here it is plainly the relation in which God stands to all men,whether Christians or not, which is in mind. But the words formpart of an hexameter line and are taken from a pagan poet; theyare not represented as part of the gospel, but merely as belongingto the common meeting-ground which Paul discovered in speakingto his pagan hearers. This passage is only typical of what appears,with respect to a universal fatherhood of God, in the New Testamentas a whole. Something analogous to a universal fatherhood of Godis taught in the New Testament. Here and there the terminologyof fatherhood and sonship is even used to describe this generalrelationship. But such instances are extremely rare. Ordinarilythe lofty term "Father" is used to describe a relationshipof a far more intimate kind, the relationship in which God standsto the company of the redeemed.

The modern doctrineof the universal fatherhood of

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God, then, which is being celebrated as "the essence of Christianity,"really belongs at best only to that vague natural religion whichforms the presupposition which the Christian preacher can usewhen the gospel is to be proclaimed; and when it is regarded asa reassuring, all-sufficient thing, it comes into direct oppositionto the New Testament. The gospel itself refers to something entirelydifferent; the really distinctive New Testament teaching aboutthe fatherhood of God concerns only those who have been broughtinto the household of faith.

There is nothing narrowabout such teaching; for the door of the household of faith isopen wide to all. That door is the "new and living way"which Jesus opened by His blood. And if we really love our fellowmen, we shall not go about the world, with the liberal preacher,trying to make men satisfied with the coldness of a vague naturalreligion. But by the preaching of the gospel we shall invite theminto the warmth and joy of the house of God. Christianity offersmen all that is offered by the modern liberal teaching about theuniversal fatherhood of God; but it is Christianity only becauseit offers also infinitely more.

But the liberal conceptionof God differs even more fundamentally from the Christian viewthan in the different circle of ideas connected with the terminologyof fatherhood. The truth is that liberalism has lost sight ofthe very center and core of the Christian teaching. In the Christianview of God as set forth in the Bible, there are many elements.But one attribute of God is absolutely fundamental in the Bible;one attribute is absolutely necessary in order to render intelligibleall the rest. That attribute is the awful transcendence of God.From beginning to end the Bible is concerned to set forth theawful gulf that separates the creature from the Creator. It is

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true, indeed, that according to the Bible God is immanent in theworld. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him. But he isimmanent in the world not because He is identified with the world,but because He is the free Creator and Upholder of it. Betweenthe creature and the Creator a great gulf is fixed.

In modern liberalism,on the other hand, this sharp distinction between God and theworld is broken down, and the name "God" is appliedto the mighty world process itself. We find ourselves in the midstof a mighty process, which manifests itself in the indefinitelysmall and in the indefinitely great—in the infinitesimallife which is revealed through the microscope and in the vastmovements of the heavenly spheres. To this world-process, of whichwe ourselves form a part, we apply the dread name of "God."God, therefore, it is said in effect, is not a person distinctfrom ourselves; on the contrary our life is a part of His. Thusthe Gospel story of the Incarnation, according to modern liberalism,is sometimes thought of as a symbol of the general truth thatman at his best is one with God.

It is strange how sucha representation can be regarded as anything new, for as a matterof fact, pantheism is a very ancient phenomenon. It has alwaysbeen with us, to blight the religious life of man. And modernliberalism, even when it is not consistently pantheistic, is atany rate pantheizing. It tends everywhere to break down the separatenessbetween God and the world, and the sharp personal distinctionbetween God and man. Even the sin of man on this view ought logicallyto be regarded as part of the life of God. Very different is theliving and holy God of the Bible and of Christian faith.

Christianity differsfrom liberalism, then, in the first place, in its conception ofGod. But it also differs in its conception of man.

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Modern liberalism has lost all sense of the gulf that separatesthe creature from the Creator; its doctrine of man follows naturallyfrom its doctrine of God. But it is not only the creature limitationsof mankind which are denied. Even more important is another difference.According to the Bible, man is a sinner under the just condemnationof God; according to modern liberalism, there is really no suchthing as sin. At the very root of the modern liberal movementis the loss of the consciousness of sin.1

The consciousness ofsin was formerly the starting-point of all preaching; but todayit is gone. Characteristic of the modern age, above all else,is a supreme confidence in human goodness; the religious literatureof the day is redolent of that confidence. Get beneath the roughexterior of men, we are told, and we shall discover enough self-sacrificeto found upon it the hope of society; the world's evil, it issaid, can be overcome with the world's good; no help is neededfrom outside the world.

What has produced thissatisfaction with human goodness? What has become of the consciousnessof sin? The consciousness of sin has certainly been lost. Butwhat has removed it from the hearts of men?

In the first place,the war has perhaps had something to do with the change. In timeof war, our attention is called so exclusively to the sins ofother people that we are sometimes inclined to forget our ownsins. Attention to the sins of other people is, indeed, sometimesnecessary. It is quite right to be indignant against any oppressionof the weak which is being carried on by the strong. But sucha habit of mind, if made permanent, if carried over into the daysof peace, has its dangers. It joins forces

1. For what follows,see "The Church In the War," in The Presbyterian forMay 29,1919, pp. 10f.

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with the collectivism of the modern state to obscure the individual,personal character of guilt. If John Smith beats his wife nowadays,no one is so old-fashioned as to blame John Smith for it. On thecontrary, it is said, John Smith is evidently the victim of somemore of that Bolshevistic propaganda; Congress ought to be calledin extra session in order to take up the case of John Smith inan alien and sedition law.

But the loss of theconsciousness of sin is far deeper than the war; it has its rootsin a mighty spiritual process which has been active during thepast seventy-five years. Like other great movements, that processhas come silently—so silently that its results have beenachieved before the plain man was even aware of what was takingplace. Nevertheless, despite all superficial continuity, a remarkablechange has come about within the last seventy-five years. Thechange is nothing less than the substitution of paganism for Christianityas the dominant view of life. Seventy-five years ago, Westerncivilization, despite inconsistencies, was still predominantlyChristian; today it is predominantly pagan.

In speaking of "paganism,"we are not using a term of reproach. Ancient Greece was pagan,but it was glorious, and the modern world has not even begun toequal its achievements. What, then, is paganism? The answer isnot really difficult. Paganism is that view of life which findsthe highest goal of human existence in the healthy and harmoniousand joyous development of existing human faculties. Very differentis the Christian ideal. Paganism is optimistic with regard tounaided human nature' whereas Christianity is the religion ofthe broken heart.

In saying that Christianityis the religion of the broken heart, we do not mean that Christianityends with the

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broken heart; we do not mean that the characteristic Christianattitude is a continual beating on the breast or a continual cryingof "Woe is me." Nothing could be further from the fact.On the contrary, Christianity means that sin is faced once forall, and then is cast, by the grace of God, forever into the depthsof the sea. The trouble with the paganism of ancient Greece, aswith the paganism of modern times, was not in the superstructure,which was glorious, but in the foundation, which was rotten. Therewas always something to be covered up; the enthusiasm of the architectwas maintained only by ignoring the disturbing fact of sin. InChristianity, on the other hand, nothing needs to be covered up.The fact of sin is faced squarely once for all, and is dealt withby the grace of God. But then, after sin has been removed by thegrace of God, the Christian can proceed to develop joyously everyfaculty that God has given him. Such is the higher Christian humanism—ahumanism founded not upon human pride but upon divine grace.

But although Christianitydoes not end with the broken heart, it does begin with the brokenheart; it begins with the consciousness of sin. Without the consciousnessof sin, the whole of the gospel will seem to be an idle tale.But how can the consciousness of sin be revived? Something nodoubt can be accomplished by the proclamation of the law of God,for the law reveals transgressions. The whole of the law, moreover,should be proclaimed. It will hardly be wise to adopt the suggestion(recently offered among many suggestions as to the ways in whichwe shall have to modify our message in order to retain the allegianceof the returning soldiers) that we must stop treating the littlesins as though they were big sins. That suggestion means apparentlythat we must not worry too much about the little sins, but mustlet them remain unmolested.

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With regard to such an expedient, it may perhaps be suggestedthat in the moral battle we are fighting against a very resourcefulenemy, who does not reveal the position of his guns by desultoryartillery action when he plans a great attack. In the moral battle,as in the Great European War, the quiet sectors are usually themost dangerous. It is through the "little sins" thatSatan gains an entrance into our lives. Probably, therefore, itwill be prudent to watch all sectors of the front and lose notime about introducing the unity of command.

But if the consciousnessof sin is to be produced, the law of God must be proclaimed inthe lives of Christian people as well as in word. It is quiteuseless for the preacher to breathe out fire and brimstone fromthe pulpit, if at the same time the occupants of the pews go ontaking sin very lightly and being content with the more' standardsof the world. The rank and file of the Church must do their partin so proclaiming the law of God by their lives that the secretsof men's hearts shall be revealed.

All these things, however,are in themselves quite insufficient to produce the consciousnessof sin. The more one observes the condition of the Church, themore one feels obliged to confess that the conviction of sin isa great mystery' which can be produced only by the Spirit of God.Proclamation of the law, in word and in deed, can prepare forthe experience, but the experience itself comes from God. Whena man has that experience, when a man comes under the convictionof sin, his whole attitude toward life is transformed; he wondersat his former blindness, and the message of the gospel, whichformerly seemed to be an idle tale, becomes now instinct withlight. But it is God alone who can produce the change.

Only, let us not tryto do without the Spirit of God.

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The fundamental fault of the modern Church is that she is busilyengaged in an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engagedin calling the righteous to repentance. Modern preachers are tryingto bring men into the Church without requiring them to relinquishtheir pride; they are trying to help men avoid the convictionof sin. The preacher gets up into the pulpit, opens the Bible,and addresses the congregation somewhat as follows: "Youpeople are very good," he says; "you respond to everyappeal that looks toward the welfare of the community. Now wehave in the Bible—especially in the life of Jesus—somethingso good that we believe it is good enough even for you good people."Such is modern preaching. It is heard every Sunday in thousandsof pulpits. But it is entirely futile. Even our Lord did not callthe righteous to repentance, and probably we shall be no moresuccessful than He.

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Chapter4:"The Bible"

Modern liberalism,it has been observed so far, has lost sight of the two great presuppositionsof the Christian message—the living God, and the fact ofsin. The liberal doctrine of God and the liberal doctrine of manare both diametrically opposite to the Christian view. But thedivergence concerns not only the presuppositions of the message,but also the message itself.

The Christian messagehas come to us through the Bible. What shall we think about thisBook in which the message is contained?

According to the Christianview, the Bible contains an account of a revelation from God toman, which is found nowhere else. It is true, the Bible also containsa confirmation and a wonderful enrichment of the revelations whichare given also by the things that God has made and by the conscienceof man. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmamentshoweth his handywork"—these words are a confirmationof the revelation of God in nature; "all have sinned andfall short of the glory of God"—these words are a confirmationof what is attested by the conscience. But in addition to suchreaffirmations of what might conceivably be learned elsewhere—asa matter of fact, because of men's blindness, even so much islearned elsewhere only in comparatively obscure fashion—theBible also contains an account of a revelation which is absolutelynew. That new revelation concerns the way

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by which sinful man can come into communion with the living God.

The way was opened,according to the Bible, by an act of God, when, almost nineteenhundred years ago, outside the walls of Jerusalem, the eternalSon was offered as a sacrifice for the sins of men. To that onegreat event the whole Old Testament looks forward, and in thatone event the whole of the New Testament finds its center andcore. Salvation then, according to the Bible, is not somethingthat was discovered, but something that happened. Hence appearsthe uniqueness of the Bible. All the ideas of Christianity mightbe discovered in some other religion, yet there would be in thatother religion no Christianity. For Christianity depends, notupon a complex of ideas, but upon the narration of an event. Withoutthat event, the world, in the Christian view, is altogether dark,and humanity is lost under the guilt of sin. There can be no salvationby the discovery of eternal truth, for eternal truth brings naughtbut despair, because of sin. But a new face has been put uponlife by the blessed thing that God did when He offered up Hisonly begotten Son.

An objection is sometimesoffered against this view of the contents of the Bible.1Must we, it is said, depend upon what happened so long ago? Doessalvation wait upon the examination of musty records? Is the trainedstudent of Palestinian history the modern priest without whosegracious intervention no one can see God? Can we not find, instead,a salvation that is independent of history, a salvation that dependsonly on what is with us here and now?

The objection is notdevoid of weight. But it ignores one of the primary evidencesfor the truth of the gospel record. That evidence is found inChristian experience.

1. For what followscompare History and Faith, 1915, pp. 13-15.

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Salvation does depend upon what happened long ago, but the eventof long ago has effects that continue until today. We are toldin the New Testament that Jesus offered Himself as a sacrificefor the sins of those who should believe on Him. That is a recordof a past event. But we can make trial of it today, and makingtrial of it we find it to be true. We are told in the New Testamentthat on a certain morning long ago Jesus rose from the dead. Thatagain is a record of a past event. But again we can make trialof it, and making trial of it we discover that Jesus is trulya living Savior today.

But at this point afatal error lies in wait. It is one of the root errors of modernliberalism. Christian experience, we have just said, is usefulas confirming the gospel message. But because it is necessary,many men have jumped to the conclusion that it is all that isnecessary. Having a present experience of Christ in the heart,may we not, it is said, hold that experience no matter what historymay tell us as to the events of the first Easter morning? Maywe not make ourselves altogether independent of the results ofBiblical criticism? No matter what sort of man history may tellus Jesus of Nazareth actually was, no matter what history maysay about the real meaning of His death or about the story ofHis alleged resurrection, may we not continue to experience thepresence of Christ in our souls?

The trouble is thatthe experience thus maintained is not Christian experience. Religiousexperience it may be, but Christian experience it certainly isnot. For Christian experience depends absolutely upon an event.The Christian says to himself: "I have meditated upon theproblem of becoming right with God, I have tried to produce arighteousness that will stand in His sight; but when I heard thegospel message I learned that what I had

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weakly striven to accomplish had been accomplished by the LordJesus Christ when He died for me on the Cross and completed Hisredeeming work by the glorious resurrection. If the thing hasnot yet been done, if I merely have an idea of its accomplishment,then I am of all men most miserable, for I am still in my sins.My Christian life, then, depends altogether upon the truth ofthe New Testament record."

Christian experienceis rightly used when it confirms the documentary evidence. Butit can never possibly provide a substitute for the documentaryevidence. We know that the gospel story is true partly becauseof the early date of the documents in which it appears, the evidenceas to their authorship, the internal evidence of their truth,the impossibility of explaining them as being based upon deceptionor upon myth. This evidence is gloriously confirmed by presentexperience, which adds to the documentary evidence that wonderfuldirectness and immediacy of conviction which delivers us fromfear. Christian experience is rightly used when it helps to convinceus that the events narrated in the New Testament actually didoccur; but it can never enable us to be Christians whether theevents occurred or not. It is a fair flower, and should be prizedas a gift of God. But cut it from its root in the blessed Book,and it soon withers away and dies.

Thus the revelationof which an account is contained in the Bible embraces not onlya reaffirmation of eternal truths—itself necessary becausethe truths have been obscured by the blinding effect of sin—butalso a revelation which sets forth the meaning of an act of God.

The contents of theBible, then, are unique. But another fact about the Bible is alsoimportant. The Bible might contain an account of a true revelationfrom God, and yet the account be full of error. Before the full

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authority of the Bible can be established, therefore, it is necessaryto add to the Christian doctrine of revelation the Christian doctrineof inspiration. The latter doctrine means that the Bible not onlyis an account of important things, but that the account itselfis true, the writers having been so preserved from error, despitea full maintenance of their habits of thought and expression,that the resulting Book is the "infallible rule of faithand practice."

This doctrine of "plenaryinspiration" has been made the subject of persistent misrepresentation.Its opponents speak of it as though it involved a mechanical]theory of the activity of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, it is said,is represented in this doctrine as dictating the Bible to writerswho were really little more than stenographers. But of courseall such caricatures are without basis in fact, and it is rathersurprising that intelligent men should be so blinded by prejudiceabout this matter as not even to examine for themselves the perfectlyaccessible treatises in which the doctrine of plenary inspirationis set forth. It is usually considered good practice to examinea thing for one's self before echoing the vulgar ridicule of it.But in connection with the Bible, such scholarly restraints aresomehow regarded as out of place. It is so much easier to contentone's self with a few opprobrious adjectives such as "mechanical,"or the like. Why engage in serious criticism when the people preferridicule? Why attack a real opponent when it is easier to knockdown a man of straw?1

1. It is not deniedthat there are some persons in the modern Church who do neglectthe context of Bible quotations and who do ignore the human characteristicsof the Biblical writers. But in an entirely Unwarrantable mannerthis defective way of using the Bible is attributed, by insinuationat least, to the great body of those who Ye held to the inspirationof Scripture.

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As a matter of fact, the doctrine of plenary inspiration doesnot deny the individuality of the Biblical writers; it does notignore their use of ordinary means for acquiring information;it does not involve any lack of interest in the historical situationswhich gave rise to the Biblical books. What it does deny is thepresence of error in the Bible. It supposes that the Holy Spiritso informed the minds of the Biblical writers that they were keptfrom falling into the error" that mar all other books. TheBible might contain an account of a genuine revelation of God,and yet not contain a true account. But according to the doctrineof inspiration, the account is as a matter of fact a true account;the Bible is an "infallible rule of faith and practice."

Certainly that is astupendous claim, and it is no wonder that it has been attacked.But the trouble is that the attack is not always fair. If theliberal preacher objected to the doctrine of plenary inspirationon the ground that as a matter of fact there are errors in theBible, he might be right and he might be wrong, but at any ratethe discussion would be conducted on the proper ground. But toooften the preacher desires to avoid the delicate question of errorsin the Bible—a question which might give offence to the rankand file—and prefers to speak merely against "mechanical"theories of inspiration, the theory of "dictation,"the "superstitious use of the Bible as a talisman,"or the like. It all sounds to the plain man as though it werevery harmless. Does not the liberal preacher say that the Bibleis "divine"—indeed that it is the more divine becauseit is the more human ? What could be more edifying than that?But of course such appearances are deceptive. A Bible that isfull of error is certainly divine in the modern pantheizing senseof "divine," according to which God is just anothername for the course of the world

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with all its imperfections and all its sin. But the God whom theChristian worships is a God of truth.

It must be admittedthat there are many Christians who do not accept the doctrineof plenary inspiration. That doctrine is denied not only by liberalopponents of Christianity, but also by many true Christian men.There are many Christian men in the modern Church who find inthe origin of Christianity no mere product of evolution but areal entrance of the creative power of God, who depend for theirsalvation, not at all upon their own efforts to lead the Christlife, but upon the atoning blood of Christ—there are manymen in the modern Church who thus accept the central message ofthe Bible and yet believe that the message has come to us merelyon the authority of trustworthy witnesses unaided in their literarywork by any supernatural guidance of the Spirit of God. Thereare many who believe that the Bible is right at the central point,in its account of the redeeming work of Christ, and yet believethat it contains many errors. Such men are not really liberals,but Christians; because they have accepted as true the messageupon which Christianity depends. A great gulf separates them fromthose who reject the supernatural act of God with which Christianitystands or falls.

It is another question,however, whether the mediating view of the Bible which is thusmaintained is logically tenable, the trouble being that our LordHimself seems to have held the high view of the Bible which ishere being rejected. Certainly it is another question—anda question which the present writer would answer with an emphaticnegative—whether the panic about the Bible, which gives riseto such concessions, is at all justified by the facts. If theChristian make full use of his Christian privileges, he findsthe seat of authority in the whole

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Bible, which he regards as no mere word of man but as the veryWord of God.

Very different is theview of modern liberalism. The modern liberal rejects not onlythe doctrine of plenary inspiration, but even such respect forthe Bible as would be proper over against any ordinarily trustworthybook. But what is substituted for the Christian view of the Bible?What is the liberal view as to the seat of authority in religion?1

The impression is sometimesproduced that the modern liberal substitutes for the authorityof the Bible the authority of Christ. He cannot accept, he says,what he regards as the perverse moral teaching of the Old Testamentor the sophistical arguments of Paul. But he regards himself asbeing the true Christian because, rejecting the rest of the Bible,he depends upon Jesus alone.

This impression, however,is utterly false. The modern liberal does not really hold to theauthority of Jesus. Even if he did so, indeed, he would stillbe impoverishing greatly his knowledge of God and of the way ofsalvation. The words of Jesus, spoken during His earthly ministry,could hardly contain all that we need to know about God and aboutthe way of salvation; for the meaning of Jesus' redeeming workcould hardly be fully set forth before that work was done. Itcould be set forth indeed by way of prophecy, and as a matterof fact it was so set forth by Jesus even in the days of His flesh.But the full explanation could naturally be given only after thework was done. And such was actually the divine method. It isdoing despite, not only to the Spirit of God, but also to JesusHimself, to regard the teaching of the Holy Spirit,

1. For what follows,compare "For Christ or Against Him," in The Presbyterian,for January 20, 1921, p. 9.

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given through the apostles, as at all inferior in authority tothe teaching of Jesus.

As a matter of fact,however, the modern liberal does not hold fast even to the authorityof Jesus. Certainly he does not accept the words of Jesus as theyare recorded in the Gospels. For among the recorded words of Jesusare to be found just those things which are most abhorrent tothe modern liberal Church, and in His recorded words Jesus alsopoints forward to the fuller revelation which was afterwards tobe given through His apostles. Evidently, therefore, those wordsof Jesus which are to be regarded as authoritative by modern liberalismmust first be selected from the mass of the recorded words bya critical process. The critical process is certainly very difficult,and the suspicion often arises that the critic is retaining asgenuine words of the historical Jesus only those words which conformto his own preconceived ideas. But even after the sifting processhas been completed, the liberal scholar is still unable to acceptas authoritative all the sayings of Jesus; he must finally admitthat even the "historical" Jesus as reconstructed bymodern historians said some things that are untrue.

So much is usually admitted.But, it is maintained, although not everything that Jesus saidis true, His central "life-purpose" is still to be regardedas regulative for the Church. But what then was the life-purposeof Jesus ? According to the shortest, and if modern criticismbe accepted, the earliest of the Gospels, the Son of Man camenot to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his lifea ransom for many" (Mark x. 45). Here the vicarious deathis put as the "life-purpose" of Jesus. Such an utterancemust of course be pushed aside by the modern liberal Church. Thetruth is that the life-purpose of Jesus discovered by modern liberalismis not the life

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purpose of the real Jesus, but merely represents those elementsin the teaching of Jesus—isolated and misinterpreted—whichhappen to agree with the modern program. It is not Jesus, then,who is the real authority, but the modern principle by which theselection within Jesus' recorded teaching has been made. Certainisolated ethical principles of the Sermon on the Mount are accepted,not at all because they are teachings of Jesus, but because theyagree with modern ideas.

It is not true at all,then, that modern liberalism is based upon the authority of Jesus.It is obliged to reject a vast deal that is absolutely essentialin Jesus' example and teaching—notably His consciousnessof being the heavenly Messiah. The real authority, for liberalism,can only be "the Christian consciousness" or "Christianexperience." But how shall the findings of the Christianconsciousness be established? Surely not by a majority vote ofthe organized Church. Such a method would obviously do away withall liberty of conscience. The only authority, then, can be individualexperience; truth can only be that which "helps" theindividual man. Such an authority is obviously no authority atall; for individual experience is endlessly diverse, and whenonce truth is regarded only as that which works at any particulartime, it ceases to be truth. The result is an abysmal skepticism.

The Christian man, onthe other hand, finds in the Bible the very Word of God. Let itnot be said that dependence upon a book is a dead or an artificialthing. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was founded uponthe authority of the Bible, yet it set the world aflame. Dependenceupon a word of man would be slavish, but dependence upon God'sword is life. Dark and gloomy would be the world, if we were leftto our own devices and had no blessed Word of God. The Bible,to the Christian

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is not a burdensome law, but the very Magna Charta of Christianliberty.

It is no wonder, then,that liberalism is totally different from Christianity, for thefoundation is different. Christianity is founded upon the Bible.It bases upon the Bible both its thinking and its life. Liberalismon the other hand is founded upon the shifting emotions of sinfulmen.

PROCEED to ChapterFive: Christ

This article was made available on theinternet via REFORMATIONINK (www.markers.com/ink).Refer any correspondence to Shane Rosenthal: SocietyCP@aol.com

÷CHRISTIANITY & LIBERALISM,page 80

Chapter5:"Christ"

Three points of difference betweenliberalism and Christianity have been noticed so far. The tworeligions are different with regard to the presuppositions ofthe Christian message, the view of God and the view of man; andthey are also different with regard to their estimate of the Bookin which the message is contained. It is not surprising, then,that they differ fundamentally with regard to the message itself.But before the message is considered, we must consider the Personupon whom the message is based. The Person is Jesus. And in theirattitude toward Jesus, liberalism and Christianity are sharplyopposed.

The Christian attitudetoward Jesus appears in the whole New Testament. In examiningthe New Testament witness it has become customary in recent yearsto begin with the Epistles of Paul.1 This custom is sometimes basedupon error; it is sometimes based upon the view that the Epistlesof Paul are "primary" sources of information, whilethe Gospels are considered to be only "secondary." Asa matter of fact, the Gospels, as well as the Epistles, are primarysources of the highest possible value. But the custom of beginningwith Paul is at least convenient. Its convenience is due to thelarge measure of agreement which prevails with regard to the PaulineEpistles

1. This method of approachhas been followed by the present writer in The Origin of Paul'sReligion, 1921.

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About the date and authorshipof the Gospels there is debate; but with regard to the authorshipand approximate date of the principal epistles of Paul all serioushistorians, whether Christian or non-Christian, are agreed. Itis universally admitted that the chief of the extant epistlesattributed to Paul were really written by a man of the first Christiangeneration, who was himself a contemporary of Jesus and had comeinto personal contact with certain of Jesus' intimate friends.What, then, was the attitude of this representative of the firstChristian generation toward Jesus of Nazareth?

The answer cannot beat all in doubt. The apostle Paul clearly stood always towardJesus in a truly religious relationship. Jesus was not for Paulmerely an example for faith; He was primarily the object of faithThe religion of Paul did not consist in having faith in God likethe faith which Jesus had in God; it consisted rather in havingfaith in Jesus. An appeal to the example of Jesus is not indeedabsent from the Pauline Epistles, and certainly it was not absentfrom Paul's life. The example of Jesus was found by Paul, moreover,not merely in the acts of incarnation and atonement but even inthe daily life of Jesus in Palestine. Exaggeration with regardto this matter should be avoided. Plainly Paul knew far more aboutthe life of Jesus than in the Epistles he has seen fit to tell;plainly the Epistles do not begin to contain all the instructionwhich Paul had given to the Churches at the commencement of theirChristian life. But even after exaggerations have been avoided,the fact is significant enough. The plain fact is that imitationof Jesus, important though it was for Paul, was swallowed up bysomething far more important still. Not the example of Jesus,but the redeeming work of Jesus, was the primary thing for Paul.The religion of Paul was not

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primarily faith in Godlike Jesus' faith; it was faith in Jesus; Paul committed to Jesuswithout reserve the eternal destinies of his soul. That is whatwe mean when we say that Paul stood in a truly religious relationto Jesus.

But Paul was not thefirst to stand in this religious relation to Jesus. Evidently,at this decisive point, he was only continuing an attitude towardJesus which had already been assumed by those who had been Christiansbefore him. Paul was not indeed led to assume that attitude bythe persuasions of the earlier disciples; he was converted bythe Lord Himself on the road to Damascus. But the faith so inducedwas in essentials like the faith which had already prevailed amongthe earlier disciples. Indeed, an account of the redeeming workof Christ is designated by Paul as something that he had "received";and that account had evidently been accompanied already in theprimitive Church by trust in the Redeemer. Paul was not the firstwho had faith in Jesus, as distinguished from faith in God likethe faith which Jesus had; Paul was not the first to make Jesusthe object of faith.

So much will no doubtbe admitted by all. But who were the predecessors of Paul in makingJesus the object of faith? The obvious answer has always beenthat they were the primitive disciples in Jerusalem, and thatanswer really stands abundantly firm. A strange attempt has indeedbeen made in recent years, by Bousset and Heitmuller, to castdoubt upon it. What Paul "received," it has been suggested,was received, not from the primitive Jerusalem Church, but fromsuch Christian communities as the one at Antioch. But this attemptat interposing an extra link between the Jerusalem Church andPaul has resulted in failure. The Epistles really provide abundantinformation as to Paul's relations to Jerusalem. Paul was deeplyinterested in the Jerusalem Church; in opposition

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to his Judaizing opponents,who had in certain matters appealed to the original apostles againsthim, he emphasizes his agreement with Peter and the rest. Buteven the Judaizers had had no objection to Paul's way of regardingJesus as the object of faith; about that matter there is not inthe Epistles the least suspicion of any debate. About the placeof the Mosaic law in the Christian life there was discussion,though even with regard to that matter the Judaizers were entirelyunjustified in appealing to the original apostles against PaulBut with regard to the attitude toward Jesus the original apostleshad evidently given not even the slightest color for an appealto them against the teaching of Paul. Evidently in making Jesusthe object of religious faith—the thing that was the heartand soul of Paul's religion—Paul was in no disagreement withthose who had. been apostles before him. Had there been such disagreement,the "right hand of fellowship," which the pillars ofthe Jerusalem Church gave to Paul (Gal. ii. 9), would have beenimpossible. The facts are really too plain. The whole of earlyChristian history is a hopeless riddle unless the Jerusalem Church,as well as Paul, made Jesus the object of religious faith. PrimitiveChristianity certainly did not consist in the mere imitation ofJesus.

But was this "faithin Jesus" justified by the teaching of Jesus Himself? Thequestion has really been answered in Chapter 2. It was there shownthat Jesus most certainly did not keep His Person out of His gospel,but on the contrary presented Himself as the Savior of men. Thedemonstration of that fact was the highest merit of the late JamesDenney. His work on "Jesus and the Gospel" is faultyin some respects; it is marred by an undue concessiveness towardsome modern types of criticism. But just because of its concessivenesswith regard to many

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important matters, itsmain thesis stands all the more firm. Denney has shown that nomatter what view be taken of the sources underlying the Gospels,and no matter what elements in the Gospels be rejected as secondary,still even the supposed "historical Jesus," as He isleft after the critical process is done, plainly presented Himself,not merely as an example for faith, but as the object of faith.

It may be added, moreover,that Jesus did not invite the confidence of men by minimizingthe load which He offered to bear. He did not say: "Trustme to give you acceptance with God, because acceptance with Godis not difficult; God does not regard sin so seriously after all."On the contrary Jesus presented the wrath of God in a more awfulway than it was afterwards presented by His disciples; it wasJesus—Jesus whom modern liberals represent as a mild-manneredexponent of an indiscriminating love—it was Jesus who spokeof the outer darkness and the everlasting fire, of the sin thatshall not be forgiven either in this world or in that which isto come. There is nothing in Jesus' teaching about the characterof God which in itself can evoke trust. On the contrary the awfulpresentation can give rise, in the hearts of us sinners, onlyto despair. Trust arises only when we attend to God's way of salvation.And that way is found in Jesus. Jesus did not invite the confidenceof men by a minimizing presentation of what was necessary in orderthat sinners might stand faultless before the awful throne ofGod. On the contrary, he invited confidence by the presentationof His own wondrous Person. Great was the guilt of sin, but Jesuswas greater still. God, according to Jesus, was a loving Father;but He was a loving

Father, not of the sinfulworld, but of those whom He Himself had brought into His Kingdomthrough the Son

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The truth is, the witnessof the New Testament, with regard to Jesus as the object of faith,is an absolutely unitary witness. The thing is rooted far toodeep in the records of primitive Christianity ever to be removedby any critical process. The Jesus spoken of in the New Testamentwas no mere teacher of righteousness, no mere pioneer in a newtype of religious life, but One who was regarded, and regardedHimself, as the Savior whom men could trust.

But by modern liberalismHe is regarded in a totally different way. Christians stand ina religious relation to Jesus; liberals do not stand in a religiousrelation to Jesus—what difference could be more profoundthan that? The modern liberal preacher reverences Jesus; he hasthe name of Jesus forever on his lips; he speaks of Jesus as thesupreme revelation of God; he enters, or tries to enter, intothe religious life of Jesus. But he does not stand in a religiousrelation to Jesus. Jesus for him is an example for faith, notthe object of faith. The modern liberal tries to have faith inGod like the faith which he supposes Jesus had in God; but hedoes not have faith in Jesus.

According to modernliberalism, in other words, Jesus was the Founder of Christianitybecause He was the first Christian, and Christianity consistsin maintenance of the religious life which Jesus instituted.

But was Jesus reallya Christian? Or, to put the same question in another way, arewe able or ought we as Christians to enter in every respect intothe experience of Jesus and make Him in every respect our example?Certain difficulties arise with regard to this question

The first difficultyappears in the Messianic consciousness of Jesus. The Person whomwe are asked to take as our example thought that He was the heavenlySon of

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Man who was to be thefinal Judge of all the earth. Can we imitate Him there? The troubleis not merely that Jesus undertook a special mission which cannever be ours. That difficulty might conceivably be overcome;we might still take Jesus as our example by adapting to our stationin life the kind of character which He displayed in His. But anotherdifficulty is more serious. The real trouble is that the loftyclaim of Jesus, if, as modern liberalism is constrained to believe,the claim was unjustified, places a moral stain upon Jesus' character.What shall be thought of a human being who lapsed so far fromthe path of humility and sanity as to believe that the eternaldestinies of the world were committed into His hands? The truthis that if Jesus be merely an example, He is not a worthy example;for He claimed to be far more.

Against this objectionmodern liberalism has usually adopted a policy of palliation.The Messianic consciousness, it is said, arose late in the experienceof Jesus, and was not really fundamental. What was really fundamental,the liberal historians continue, was the consciousness of sonshiptoward God—a consciousness which may be shared by every humbledisciple. The Messianic consciousness, on this view, arose onlyas an afterthought. Jesus was conscious, it is said, of standingtoward God in a relation of untroubled sonship. But He discoveredthat this relation was not shared by others. He became aware,therefore, of a mission to bring others into the place of privilegewhich He Himself already occupied. That mission made Him unique,and to give expression to His uniqueness He adopted, late in Hislife and almost against His will, the faulty category of Messiahship.

Many are the forms inwhich some such psychological reconstruction of the life of Jesushas been set forth in recent years. The modern world has devotedits very best

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literary efforts tothis task. But the efforts have resulted in failure. In the firstplace, there is no real evidence that the reconstructed Jesusis historical. The sources know nothing of a Jesus who adoptedthe category of Messiahship late in life and against His will.On the contrary the only Jesus that they present is a Jesus whobased the whole of His ministry upon His stupendous claim. Inthe second place, even if the modern reconstruction were historicalit would not solve the problem at all. The problem is a moraland psychological problem. How can a human being who lapsed sofar from the path of rectitude as to think Himself to be the judgeof all the earth—how can such a human being be regarded asthe supreme example for mankind? It is absolutely no answer tothe objection to say that Jesus accepted the category of Messiahshipreluctantly and late in life. No matter when He succumbed to temptationthe outstanding fact is that, on this view, He did succumb; andthat moral defeat places an indelible stain upon His character.No doubt it is possible to make excuses for Him, and many excusesare as a matter of fact made by the liberal historians. But whathas become then of the claim of liberalism to be truly Christian?Can a man for whom excuses have to be made be regarded as standingto his modern critics in a relationship even remotely analogousto that in which the Jesus of the New Testament stands to theChristian Church?

But there is anotherdifficulty in the way of regarding Jesus as simply the first Christian.This second difficulty concerns the attitude of Jesus toward sin.If Jesus is separated from us by his Messianic consciousness,He is separated from us even more fundamentally by the absencein Him of a sense of sin.

With respect to thesinlessness of Jesus modern liberal historians find themselvesin a quandary. To affirm that

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He was sinless meansto relinquish much of that ease of defending liberal religionwhich the liberal historians are anxious to preserve, and involveshazardous assumptions with regard to the nature of sin. For ifsin is merely imperfection, how can an absolute negation of itbe ventured upon within a process of nature which is supposedto be ever changing and ever advancing? The very idea of "sinlessness,"much more the reality of it, requires us to conceive of sin astransgression of a fixed law or a fixed standard, and involvesthe conception of an absolute goodness. But to that conceptionof an absolute goodness the modern evolutionary view of the worldproperly speaking has no right.. At any rate, if such absolutegoodness is to be allowed to intrude at a definite point in thepresent world-process, we are involved in that supernaturalismwhich, as will be observed later, is the very thing that the modernreconstruction of Christianity is most anxious to avoid. Onceaffirm that Jesus was sinless and all other men sinful, and youhave entered into irreconcilable conflict with the whole modernpoint of view. On the other hand, if there are scientific objections,from the liberal point of view, against an affirmation of thesinlessness of Jesus, there are also very obvious religious objectionsagainst an opposite affirmation of His sinfulness—difficultiesfor modern liberalism as well as for the theology of the historicChurch. If Jesus was sinful like other men, the last remnant ofhis uniqueness would seem to have disappeared, and all continuitywith the previous development of Christianity would seem to bedestroyed.

In the face of thisquandary the modern liberal historian is inclined to avoid rashassertions. IIe will not be sure that when Jesus taught His disciplesto say, "Forgive us our debts," He did not pray thatprayer with them; on the other hand he will not really face theresults

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that logically followfrom his doubt. In his perplexity, he apt to be content with theassertion that whether Jesus was sinless or not He was at anyrate immeasurably above the rest of us. Whether Jesus was "sinless"is an academic question, we shall probably be told, that concernsthe mysteries of the absolute; what we need to do is to bow insimple reverence before a holiness which compared with our impurityis as a white light in a dark place.

That such avoidanceof the difficulty is unsatisfactory hardly requires proof; obviouslythe liberal theologian is trying to obtain the religious advantagesof an affirmation of sinlessness in Jesus at the same time thathe obtains the supposed scientific advantages of its denial. Butjust for the moment we are not concerned with the question atall; we are not concerned to determine whether as a matter offact Jesus was sinless or no. What we need to observe just nowis that whether Jesus was sinful or sinless at any rate in therecord of His life which has actually come into our hands He displaysno consciousness of sin. Even if the words "Why callest thoume good?" meant that Jesus denied the attribute of goodnessto Himself—which they do not—it would still remain truethat He never in His recorded words deals in any intelligibleway with sin in His own life. In the account of the temptationwe are told how He kept sin from entering, but never how He dealtwith it after its entrance had been effected. The religious experienceof Jesus, as it is recorded in the Gospels, in other words, givesus no information about the way in which sin shall be removed.

Yet in the Gospels Jesusis represented constantly as dealing with the problem of sin.He always assumes that other men are sinful; yet He never findssin in Himself. A stupendous difference is found here betweenJesus' experience and ours.

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That differences preventsthe religious experience of Jesus from serving as the sole basisof the Christian life. For clearly if Christianity is anythingit is a way of getting rid of sin. At any rate, if it is not thatit is useless; for all men have sinned. And as a matter of factit was that from the very beginning. Whether the beginning ofChristian preaching be put on the day of Pentecost or when Jesusfirst taught in Galilee, in either case one of its first wordswas "Repent." Throughout the whole New Testament theChristianity of the primitive Church is represented clearly asa way of getting rid of sin. But if Christianity is a way of gettingrid of sin, then Jesus was not a Christian; for Jesus, so faras we can see, had no sin to get rid of.

Why then did the earlyChristians call themselves disciples of Jesus, why did they connectthemselves with His name? The answer is not difficult. They connectedthemselves with His name not because He was their example in theirridding themselves of sin, but because their method of riddingthemselves of sin was by means of Him. It was what Jesus did forthem, and not primarily the example of His own life, which madethem Christians. Such is the witness of all our primitive records.The record is fullest, as has already been observed, in the caseof the Apostle Paul; clearly Paul regarded himself as saved fromsin by what Jesus did for him on the cross. But Paul did not standalone. "Christ died for our sin`" was not somethingthat Paul had originated; it was something he had "received."The benefits of that saving work of Christ, according to the primitiveChurch, were to be received by faith; even if the classic formulationof this conviction should prove to be due to Paul, the convictionitself clearly goes back to the very beginning. The primitiveChristians felt themselves in need of salvation. How,

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they asked, should theload of sin be removed? Their answer is perfectly plain. Theysimply trusted Jesus to remove it. In other words they had "faith"in Him.

Here again we are broughtface to face with the significant fact which was noticed at thebeginning of this chapter; the early Christians regarded Jesusnot merely as an example for faith but primarily as the objectof faith. Christianity from the beginning was a means of gettingrid of sin by trust in Jesus of Nazareth. But if Jesus was thusthe object of Christian faith, He Himself was no more a Christianthan God is a religious being. God is the object of all religion,He is absolutely necessary to all religion; but He Himself isthe only being in the universe who can never in His own naturebe religious. So it is with Jesus as related to Christian faith.Christian faith is trust reposed in Him for the removal of sin;He could not repose trust (in the sense with which we are hereconcerned) in Himself; therefore He was certainly not a Christian.If we are looking for a complete illustration of the Christianlife we cannot find it in the religious experience of Jesus.

This conclusion needsto be guarded against two objections.

In the first place,it will be said, are we not failing to do justice to the truehumanity of Jesus, which is affirmed by the creeds of the Churchas well as by the modern theologians? When we say that Jesus couldnot illustrate Christian faith any more than God can be religious,are we not denying to Jesus that religious experience which isa necessary element in true humanity? Must not Jesus, if He betrue man, have been more than the object of religious faith; mustHe not have had a religion of His own? The answer is not far toseek. Certainly Jesus had a religion of His own; His prayer wasreal prayer, His

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faith was real religiousfaith. His relation to His heavenly Father was not merely thatof a child to a father; it was that of a man to his God. CertainlyJesus had a religion; without it His humanity would indeed havebeen but incomplete. Without doubt Jesus had a religion; the factis of the utmost importance. But it is equally important. to observethat that religion which Jesus had was not Christianity. Christianityis a way of getting rid of sin, and Jesus was without sin. Hisreligion was a religion of Paradise, not a religion of sinfulhumanity. It was a religion to which we may perhaps in some sortattain in heaven, when the process of our purification is complete(though even then the memory of redemption will never leave us);but certainly it is not a religion with which we can begin. Thereligion of Jesus was a religion of untroubled sonship; Christianityis a religion of the attainment of sonship by the redeeming workof Christ.

But if that be true,it may be objected, in the second place, that Jesus is being removedfar from us, that on our view He is no longer our Brother andour Example. The objection is welcome, since it helps us to avoidmisunderstandings and exaggerations.

Certainly if our zealfor the greatness and uniqueness of Jesus led us so to separateHim from us that He could no longer be touched with the feelingof our infirmities, the result would be disastrous; Jesus' comingwould lose much of its significance. But it ought to be observedthat likeness is not always necessary to nearness. The experienceof a father in his personal relation to his son is quite differentfrom that of the son in his relation to his father; but just thatvery difference binds father and son all the more closely together.The father cannot share the specifically filial affection of theson, and the son cannot share the specifically paternal affectionof the father:

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yet no mere relationshipof brotherhood, perhaps, could be quite so close. Fatherhood andsonship are complementary to each other; hence the dissimilarity,but hence also the closeness of the bond. It may be somewhat thesame in the case of our relationship to Jesus. If He were exactlythe same as ourselves, if He were merely our, Brother, we shouldnot be nearly so close to Him as we are when He stands to us inthe relationship of a Savior.

Nevertheless Jesus asa matter of fact is a Brother to us as well as a Savior—anelder Brother whose steps we may follow. The imitation of Jesushas a fundamental place in Christian life; it is perfectly correctto represent Him as our supreme and only perfect example.

Certainly so far asthe field of ethics is concerned there can be no dispute. No matterwhat view may be taken of His origin and His higher nature, Jesuscertainly led a true human life, and in it He came into thosevaried human relationships which provide opportunity for moralachievement. His life of perfect purity was led in no cold aloofnessfrom the throng and press; His unselfish love was exercised notmerely in mighty deeds, but in acts of kindness which the humblestof us has the power, if only we had the will, to imitate. Moreeffective, too, than all detail is the indefinable impressionof the whole; Jesus is felt to be far greater than any of Hisindividual words or deeds. His calmness, unselfishness and strengthhave been the wonder of the ages; the world can never lose theinspiration of that radiant example.

Jesus is an example,moreover, not merely for the relations of man to man but alsofor the relation of man to God; imitation of Him may extend andmust extend to the sphere of religion as well as to that of ethics.Indeed religion and ethics in Him were never separated; no singleelement in His life can be understood without reference

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to His heavenly Father.Jesus was the most religious man who ever lived; He did nothingand said nothing and thought nothing without the thought of God.If His example means anything at all it means that a human lifewithout the conscious presence of God—even though it be alife of humanitarian service outwardly like the ministry of Jesus—isa monstrous perversion. If we would follow truly in Jesus' steps,we must obey the first commandment as well as the second thatis like unto it; we must love the Lord our God with all our heartand soul and mind and strength. The difference between Jesus andourselves serves only to enforce, certainly not to invalidate,the lesson. If the One to whom all power was given needed refreshmentand strengthening in prayer, we more; if the One to whom the liliesof the field revealed the glory of God yet went into the sanctuary,surely we need such assistance even more than He; if the wiseand holy One could say "Thy will be done," surely submissionis yet more in place for us whose wisdom is as the foolishnessof children.

Thus Jesus is the supremeexample for men. But the Jesus who can serve as an example isnot the Jesus of modern liberal reconstruction, but only the Jesusof the New Testament. The Jesus of modern liberalism advancedstupendous claims which were not founded upon fact—such conductought never to be made a norm. The Jesus of modern liberalismall through His ministry employed language which was extravagantand absurd—and it is only to be hoped that imitation of Himwill not lead to an equal extravagance in His modern disciples.If the Jesus of naturalistic reconstruction were really takenas an example, disaster would soon follow. As a matter of fact,however, the modern liberal does not really take as his examplethe Jesus of the liberal historians;

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what he really doesin practice is to manufacture as his example a simple exponentof a non-doctrinal religion whom the abler historians even ofhis own school know never to have existed except in the imaginationof modern men.

Very different is theimitation of the real Jesus—the Jesus of the New Testamentwho actually lived in the first century of our era. That Jesusadvanced lofty claims; but His claims, instead of being the extravagantdreams of an enthusiast, were sober truth. On His lips, therefore,language which in the reduced Jesus of modern reconstruction wouldbe frenzied or absurd becomes fraught with blessing for mankind.Jesus demanded that those who followed Him should be willing tobreak even the holiest ties—He said, "If a man comethto me and hateth not his father and mother . . . he cannot bemy disciple," and "Let the dead bury their dead."Coming from the mere prophet constructed by modern liberalism,those words would be monstrous; coming from the real Jesus, theyare sublime. How great was the mission of mercy which justifiedsuch words! And how wonderful the condescension of the eternalSon! How matchless an example for the children of men! Well mightPaul appeal to the example of the incarnate Savior; well mighthe say, "Let the same mind be in you which was also in ChristJesus." The imitation of the real Jesus will never lead aman astray.

But the example of Jesusis a perfect example only if He was justified in what He offeredto men. And He offered, not primarily guidance, but salvation;He presented Himself as the object of men's faith. That offeris rejected by modern liberalism, but it is accepted by Christianmen.

There is a profounddifference, then, in the attitude

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assumed by modern liberalismand by Christianity toward Jesus the Lord. Liberalism regardsHim as an Example and Guide; Christianity, as a Savior: liberalismmakes Him an example for faith; Christianity, the object of faith.

This difference in theattitude toward Jesus depends upon a profound differences as tothe question who Jesus was. If Jesus was only what the liberalhistorians suppose that He was, then trust in Him would be outof place; our attitude toward Him could be that of pupils to aMaster and nothing more. But if He was what the New Testamentrepresents Him as being, then we can safely commit to Him theeternal destinies of our souls. What then is the difference betweenliberalism and Christianity with regard to the person of our Lord?

The answer might bedifficult to set forth in detail. But the essential thing canbe put almost in a word—liberalism regards Jesus as the fairestflower of humanity; Christianity regards Him as a supernaturalPerson.

The conception of Jesusas a supernatural Person runs all through the New Testament. Inthe Epistles of Paul, of course, it is quite clear. Without theslightest doubt Paul separated Jesus from ordinary humanity andplaced Him on the side of God. The words in Gal. i. 1, "notfrom men nor through a man but through Jesus Christ and God theFather who raised Him from the dead," are only typical ofwhat appears everywhere in the Epistles. The same contrast betweenJesus Christ and ordinary humanity is everywhere presupposed.Paul does indeed call Jesus Christ a man. But the way in whichhe speaks of Jesus as a man only deepens the impression whichhas already been received. Paul speaks of the humanity of Jesusapparently as though the fact that Jesus was a man were somethingstrange, something wonderful. At

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any rate, the reallyoutstanding fact is that in the Epistles of Paul, Jesus is everywhereseparated from ordinary humanity; the deity of Christ is everywherepresupposed. It is a matter of small consequence whether Paulever applies to Jesus the Greek word which is translated "God"in the English Bible; certainly it is very difficult, in viewof Rom. ix. 5, to deny that he does. However that may be, theterm "Lord," which is Paul's regular designation ofJesus, is really just as much a designation of deity as is theterm "God." It was a designation of deity even in thepagan religions with which Paul's converts were familiar; and(what is far more important) in the Greek translation of the OldTestament which was current in Paul's day and was used by theApostle himself, the term was used to translate the "Jahwe"of the Hebrew text. And Paul does not hesitate to apply to Jesusstupendous passages in the Greek Old Testament where the termLord thus designates the God of Israel. But what is perhaps mostsignificant of all for the establishment of the Pauline teachingabout the Person of Christ is that Paul everywhere stands in areligious attitude toward Jesus. He who is thus the object ofreligious faith is surely no mere man, but a supernatural Person,and indeed a Person who was God.

Thus Paul regarded Jesusas a supernatural Person. The fact would be surprising if it stoodalone. Paul was a contemporary of Jesus. What must this Jesushave been that He should be lifted thus quickly above the limitsof ordinary humanity and placed upon the side of God?

But there is somethingfar more surprising still. The truly surprising thing is thatthe view which Paul had of Jesus was also the view which was heldby Jesus' intimate friends.1 The fact appears in the PaulineEpistles themselves

1. Compare The Originof Paul's Religion, 1921, pp. 118-137.

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to say nothing of otherevidence. Clearly the Epistles presuppose a fundamental unitybetween Paul and the original apostles with regard to the Personof Christ; for if there had been any controversy about this matterit would certainly have been mentioned. Even the Judaizers, thebitter opponents of Paul, seem to have had no objection to Paul'sconception of Jesus as a supernatural Person. The really impressivething about Paul's view of Christ is that it is not defended.Indeed it is hardly presented in the Epistles in any systematicway. Yet it is everywhere presupposed. The inference is perfectlyplain—Paul's conception of the Person of Christ was a matterof course in the primitive Church. With regard to this matterPaul appears in perfect harmony with all Palestinian Christians.The men who had walked and talked with Jesus and had seen Himsubject to the petty limitations of earthly life agreed with Paulfully in regarding Him as a supernatural Person, seated on thethrone of all Being.

Exactly the same accountof Jesus as that which is presupposed by the Pauline Epistlesappears in the detailed narrative of the Gospels. The Gospelsagree with Paul in presenting Jesus as a supernatural Person,and the agreement appears not in one or two of the Gospels, butin all four. The day is long past, if there ever was such a day,when the Gospel of John, as presenting a divine Jesus, could becontrasted with the Gospel of Mark, as presenting a human Jesus.On the contrary, all four Gospels clearly present a Person liftedfar above the level of ordinary humanity; and the Gospel of Mark,the shortest and according to modern criticism the earliest ofthe Gospels, renders particularly prominent Jesus' superhumanworks of power. In all four Gospels Jesus appears possessed ofa sovereign power over the forces of

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nature; in all fourGospels, as in the whole New Testament, He appears clearly asa supernatural Person.1

But what is meant bya "supernatural Person"; what is meant by the supernatural?

The conception of the"supernatural" is closely connected with that of "miracle";a miracle is the supernatural manifesting itself in the externalworld. But what is the supernatural? Many definitions have beenproposed. But only one definition is really correct. A supernaturalevent is one that takes place by the immediate, as distinguishedfrom the mediate, power of God. The possibility of the supernatural,if supernatural be defined in this way, presupposes two things—itpresupposes (1) the existence of a personal God, and (2) the existenceof a real order of nature. Without the existence of a personalGod, there could be no purposive entrance of God's power intothe order of the world; and without the real existence of an orderof nature there could be no distinction between natural eventsand those that are above nature—all events would be supernatural,or rather the word "supernatural" would have no meaningat all. The distinction between "natural" and "supernatural"does not mean, indeed, that nature is independent of God; it doesnot mean that while God brings to pass supernatural events, naturalevents are not brought to pass by Him. On the contrary, the believerin the supernatural regards everything that is done as being thework of God. Only, he believes that in the events called natural,God uses means, whereas in the events called supernatural He usesno means, but puts forth His creative power. The distinction betweenthe natural and the supernatural, in other words, is simply thedistinction between God's works of providence and God's work ofcreation; a miracle is a

1. Compare "History and Faith," 1915, pp.5f.

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work of creation justas truly as the mysterious act which produced the world.

This conception of thesupernatural depends absolutely upon a theistic view of God. Theismis to be distinguished (1) from deism and (2) from pantheism.

According to the deisticview, God set the world going like a machine and then left itindependent of Himself. Such a view is inconsistent with the actualityof the supernatural; the miracles of the Bible presuppose a Godwho is constantly watching over and guiding the course of thisworld. The miracles of the Bible are not arbitrary intrusionsof a Power that is without relation to the world, but are evidentlyintended to accomplish results within the order of nature. Indeedthe natural and the supernatural are blended, in the miraclesof the Bible, in a way entirely incongruous with the deistic conceptionof God. In the feeding of the five thousand, for example, whoshall say what part the five loaves and two fishes had in theevent; who shall say where the natural left off and the supernaturalbegan? Yet that event, if any, surely transcended the order ofnature. The miracles of the Bible, then, are not the work of aGod who has no part in the course of nature; they are the workof a God who through His works of providence is "preservingand governing all His creatures and all their actions."

But the conception ofthe supernatural is inconsistent, not only with deism, but alsowith pantheism. Pantheism identifies God with the totality ofnature. It is inconceivable, then, on the pantheistic view thatanything should enter into the course of nature from outside.A similar incongruity with the supernatural appears also in certainforms of idealism, which deny real existence to the forces ofnature. If what seems to be connected in nature is really onlyconnected in the divine mind, then it

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is difficult to makeany distinction between those operations of the divine mind whichappear as miracles and those which appear as natural events. Again,it has often been said that all events are works of creation.On this view, it is only a concession to popular phraseology tosay that one body is attracted toward another in accordance witha law of gravitation; what really ought to be said is that whentwo bodies are in proximity under certain conditions they cometogether. Certain phenomena in nature, on this view, are alwaysfollowed by certain other phenomena, and it is really only thisregularity of sequence which is indicated by the assertion thatthe former phenomena "cause" the latter; the only realcause is in all cases God. On the basis of this view, there canbe no distinction between events wrought by the immediate powerof God and those that are not; for on this view all events areso wrought. Against such a view, those who accept our definitionof miracle will naturally accept the common-sense notion of cause.God is always the first cause, but there are truly second causes;and they are the means which God uses, in the ordinary courseof the world, for the accomplishment of His ends. It is the exclusionof such second causes which makes an event a miracle.

It is sometimes saidthat the actuality of miracles would destroy the basis of science.Science, it is said, is founded upon the regularity of sequences;it assumes that if certain conditions within the course of natureare given, certain other conditions will always follow. But ifthere is to be any intrusion of events which by their very definitionare independent of all previous conditions, then, it is said,the regularity of nature upon which science bases itself is brokenup. Miracle, in other words, seems to introduce an element ofarbitrariness and unaccountability into the course of the world.

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The objection ignoreswhat is really fundamental the Christian conception of miracle.According to the Christian conception, a miracle is wrought bythe immediate power of God. It is not wrought by an arbitraryand fantastic despot, but by the very God to whom the regularityof nature itself is due—by the God, moreover, whose characteris known through the Bible. Such a God, we may be sure, will notdo despite to the reason that He has given to His creatures; Hisinterposition will introduce no disorder into the world that Hehas made. There is nothing arbitrary about a miracle, accordingto the Christian conception. It is not an uncaused event, butan event that is caused by the very source of all the order thatis in the world. It is dependent altogether upon the least arbitraryand the most firmly fixed of all the things that are—namelyupon the character of God.

The possibility of miracle,then, is indissolubly joined with "theism." Once admitthe existence of a personal God, Maker and Ruler of the world,and no limits, temporal or otherwise, can be set to the creativepower of such a God. Admit that God once created the world, andyou cannot deny that He might engage in creation again. But itwill be said, the actuality of miracles is different from thepossibility of them. It may be admitted that miracles conceivablymight occur. But have they actually occurred?

This question loomsvery large in the minds of modern men. The burden of the questionseems to rest heavily even upon many who still accept the miraclesof the New Testament. The miracles used to be regarded as an aidto faith, it is often said, but now they are a hindrance to faith;faith used to come on account of the miracles, but now it comesin despite of them; men used to believe in

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Jesus because He wroughtmiracles, but now we accept the miracles because on other groundswe have come to believe in Him.

A strange confusionunderlies this common way of speaking. In one sense, certainly,miracles are a hindrance to faith—but who ever thought thecontrary? It may certainly be admitted that if the New Testamentnarrative had no miracles in it, it would be far easier to believe.The more commonplace a story is, the easier it is to accept itas true. But commonplace narratives have little value. The NewTestament without the miracles would be far easier to believe.But the trouble is, it would not be worth believing. Without themiracles the New Testament would contain an account of a holyman—not a perfect man, it is true, for He was led to makelofty claims to which He had no right—but a man at leastfar holier than the rest of men. But of what benefit would sucha man, and the death which marked His failure, be to us? The loftierbe the example which Jesus set, the greater becomes our sorrowat our failure to attain to it; and the greater our hopelessnessunder the burden of sin. The sage of Nazareth may satisfy thosewho have never faced the problem of evil in their own lives; butto talk about an ideal to those who are under the thralldom ofsin is a cruel mockery. Yet if Jesus was merely a man like therest of men, then an ideal is all that we have in Him. Far moreis needed by a sinful world. It is small comfort to be told thatthere was goodness in the world, when what we need is goodnesstriumphant over sin. But goodness triumphant over sin involvesan entrance of the creative power of God, and that creative powerof God is manifested by the miracles. Without the miracles, theNew Testament might be easier to believe. But the thing that wouldbe believed would be entirely different from

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that which presentsitself to us now. Without the miracles we should have a teacher;with the miracles we have a Savior.

Certainly it is a mistaketo isolate the miracles from the rest of the New Testament. Itis a mistake to discuss the question of the resurrection of Jesusas though that which is to be proved were simply the resurrectionof a certain man of the first century in Palestine. No doubt theexisting evidence for such an event, strong as the evidence is,might be insufficient. The historian would indeed be obliged tosay that no naturalistic explanation of the origin of the Churchhas yet been discovered, and that the evidence for the miracleis exceedingly strong; but miracles are, to say the least, extremelyunusual events, and there is a tremendous hostile presumptionagainst accepting the hypothesis of miracle in any given case.But as a matter of fact, the question in this case doe. not concernthe resurrection of a man about whom we know nothing; it concernsthe resurrection of Jesus. And Jesus was certainly a very extraordinaryPerson. The uniqueness of the character of Jesus removes the hostilepresumption against miracle; it was extremely improbable thatany ordinary man should rise from the dead, but Jesus was likeno other man that ever lived.

But the evidence forthe miracles of the New Testament is supported in yet anotherway; it is supported by the existence of an adequate occasion.It has been observed above that a miracle is an event producedby the immediate power of God, and that God is a God of order.The evidence of a miracle is therefore enormously strengthenedwhen the purpose of the miracle can be detected. That does notmean that within a complex of miracles an exact reason must beassigned to every one; it does not mean that in the New Testamentwe should expect to see exactly

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why a miracle was wroughtin one case and not in another. But it does mean that acceptanceof a complex of miracles is made vastly easier when an adequatereason can be detected for the complex as a whole.

In the case of the NewTestament miracles, such an adequate reason is not difficult tofind. It is found in the conquest of sin. According to the Christianview, as set forth in the Bible, mankind is under the curse ofGod's holy law, and the dreadful penalty includes the corruptionof our whole nature. Actual transgressions proceed from the sinfulroot, and serve to deepen every man's guilt in the sight of God.On the basis of that view, so profound, so true to the observedfacts of life, it is obvious that nothing natural will meet ourneed. Nature transmits the dreadful taint; hope is to be soughtonly in a creative act of God.

And that creative actof God—so mysterious, so contrary to all expectation, yetso congruous with the character of the God who is revealed asthe God of love—is found in the redeeming work of Christ.No product of sinful humanity could have redeemed humanity fromthe dreadful guilt or lifted a sinful race from the slough ofsin. But a Savior has come from God. There lies the very rootof the Christian religion; there is the reason why the supernaturalis the very ground and substance of the Christian faith.

But the acceptance ofthe supernatural depends upon a conviction of the reality of sin.Without the conviction of sin there can be no appreciation ofthe uniqueness of Jesus; it is only when we contrast our sinfulnesswith His holiness that we appreciate the gulf which separatesHim from the rest of the children of men. And without the convictionof sin there can be no understanding of the occasion for the supernaturalact of God; without the

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conviction of sin, thegood news of redemption seems to be an idle tale. So fundamentalis the conviction of sin in the Christian faith that it will notdo to arrive at it merely by a process of reasoning; it will notdo to say merely: All men (as I have been told) are sinners; Iam a man; therefore I suppose I must be a sinner too. That isall the supposed conviction of sin amounts to sometimes. But thetrue conviction is far more immediate than that. It depends indeedupon information that comes from without; it depends upon therevelation of the law of God; it depends upon the awful veritiesset forth in the Bible as to the universal sinfulness of mankind.But it adds to the revelation that has come from without a convictionof the whole mind and heart, a profound understanding of one'sown lost condition, an illumination of the deadened consciencewhich causes a Copernican revolution in one's attitude towardthe world and toward God. When a man has passed through that experience,he wonders at his former blindness. And especially does he wonderat his former attitude toward the miracles of the New Testament,and toward the supernatural Person who is there revealed. Thetruly penitent man glories in the supernatural, for he knows thatnothing natural would meet his need; the world has been shakenonce in his downfall, and shaken again it must be if he is tobe saved.

Yet an acceptance ofthe presuppositions of miracle does not render unnecessary theplain testimony to the miracles that have actually occurred. Andthat testimony is exceedingly strong.1 The Jesus presented in theNew Testament was clearly an historical Person—so much isadmitted by all who have really come to grips with the historicalproblems at all. But just as clearly the Jesus presented in theNew Testament was a super

1. Compare "History and Faith, 1915, pp. 6-8.

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natural Person. Yetfor modern liberalism a supernatural person is never historical.A problem arises then for those who adopt the liberal point ofview—the Jesus of the New Testament is historical, He issupernatural, and yet what is supernatural, on the liberal hypothesis,can never be historical. The problem could be solved only by theseparation of the natural from the supernatural in the New Testamentaccount of Jesus, in order that what is supernatural might berejected and what is natural might be retained. But the processof separation has never been successfully carried out. Many havebeen the attempts—the modern liberal Church has put its veryheart and soul into the effort, so that there is scarcely anymore brilliant chapter in the history of the human spirit thanthis "quest of the historical Jesus"—but all theattempts have failed. The trouble is that the miracles are foundnot to be an excrescence in the New Testament account of Jesus,but belong to the very warp and woof. They are intimately connectedwith Jesus' lofty claims; they stand or fall with the undoubtedpurity of His character; they reveal the very nature of His missionin the world.

Yet miracles are rejectedby the modern liberal Church, and with the miracles the entiretyof the supernatural Person of our Lord. Not some miracles arerejected, but all. It is a matter of no importance whatever thatsome of the wonderful works of Jesus are accepted by the liberalChurch; it means absolutely nothing when some of the works ofhealing are regarded as historical. For those works are no longerregarded by modern liberalism as supernatural, but merely as faith-curesof an extraordinary kind. And it is the presence or absence ofthe true supernatural which is the really important thing. Suchconcessions as to faith-cures, moreover, carry us at

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best but a very shortway—disbelievers in the supernatural must simply reject aslegendary or mythical the great mass of the wonderful works.

The question, then,does not concern the historicity of this miracle or that; it concernsthe historicity of all miracles. That fact is often obscured,and the obscuration of it often introduces an element of somethinglike disingenuousness into the advocacy of the liberal cause.The liberal preacher singles out some one miracle and discussesthat as though it were the only point at issue. The miracle whichis usually singled out is the Virgin Birth. The liberal preacherinsists on the possibility of believing in Christ no matter whichview be adopted as to the manner of His entrance into the world.Is not the Person the same no matter how He was born? The impressionis thus produced upon the plain man that the preacher is acceptingthe main outlines of the New Testament account of Jesus, but merelyhas difficulties with this particular element in the account.But such an impression is radically false. It is true that somemen have denied the Virgin Birth and yet have accepted the NewTestament account of Jesus as a supernatural Person. But suchmen are exceedingly few and far between. It might be difficultto find a single one of any prominence living today, so profoundlyand so obviously congruous is the Virgin Birth with the wholeNew Testament presentation of Christ. The overwhelming majorityof those who reject the Virgin Birth reject also the whole supernaturalcontent of the New Testament, and make of the "resurrection"just what the word "resurrection" most emphaticallydid not mean—a permanence of the influence of Jesus or amere spiritual existence of Jesus beyond the grave. Old wordsmay here be used, but the thing that they designate is gone. Thedisciples believed in the continued

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personal existence ofJesus even during the three sad days after the crucifixion; theywere not Sadducees; they believed that Jesus lived and would riseat the last day. But what enabled them to begin the work of theChristian Church was that they believed the body of Jesus alreadyto have been raised from the tomb by the power of God. That beliefinvolves the acceptance of the supernatural; and the acceptanceof the supernatural is thus the very heart and soul of the religionthat we profess.

Whatever decision ismade, the issue should certainly not be obscured. The issue doesnot concern individual miracles, even so important a miracle asthe Virgin Birth. It really concerns all miracles. And the questionconcerning all miracles is simply the question of the acceptanceor rejection of the Savior that the New Testament presents. Rejectthe miracles and you have in Jesus the fairest flower of humanitywho made such an impression upon His followers that after Hisdeath they could not believe that He had perished but experiencedhallucinations in which they thought they saw Him risen from thedead; accept the miracles, and you have a Savior who came voluntarilyinto this world for our salvation, suffered for our sins uponthe Cross, rose again from the dead by the power of God, and everlives to make intercession for us. The difference between thosetwo views is the difference between two totally diverse religions.It is high time that this issue should be faced; it is high timethat the misleading use of traditional phrases should be abandonedand men should speak their full mind. Shall we accept the Jesusof the New Testament as our Savior, or shall we reject Him withthe liberal Church?

At this point an objectionmay be raised. The liberal preacher, it may be said, is oftenready to speak of the "deity' of Christ; he is often readyto say that "Jesus

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is God." The plainman is much impressed. The preacher, he says, believes in thedeity of our Lord; obviously then his unorthodoxy must concernonly details; and those who object to his presence in the Churchare narrow and uncharitable heresy-hunters.

But unfortunately languageis valuable only as the expression of thought. The English word"God" has no particular virtue in itself; it is notmore beautiful than other words. Its importance depends altogetherupon the meaning which is attached to it. When, therefore, theliberal preacher says that "Jesus is God," the significanceof the utterance depends altogether upon what is meant by "God."

And it has already beenobserved that when the liberal preacher uses the word "God,"he means something entirely different from that which the Christianmeans by the same word. God, at least according to the logicaltrend of modern liberalism, is not a person separate from theworld, but merely the unity that pervades the world. To say, therefore,that Jesus is God means merely that the life of God, which appearsin all men, appears with special clearness or richness in Jesus.Such an assertion is diametrically opposed to the Christian beliefin the deity of Christ.

Equally opposed to Christianbelief is another meaning that is sometimes attached to the assertionthat Jesus is God. The word "God" is sometimes usedto denote simply the supreme object of men's desires, the highestthing that men know. We have given up the notion, it is said,that there is a Maker and Ruler of the universe; such notionsbelong to "metaphysics," and are rejected by the modernman. But the word "God," though it can no longer denotethe Maker of the universe, is convenient as denoting the objectof men's emotions and desires. Of some

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men, it can be saidthat their God is mammon—mammon is that for which they labor,and to which their hearts are attached. In a somewhat similarway, the liberal preacher says that Jesus is God. He does notmean at all to say that Jesus is identical in nature with a Makerand Ruler of the universe, of whom an idea could be obtained apartfrom Jesus. In such a Being he no longer believes. All that hemeans is that the man Jesus—a man here in the midst of us,and of the same nature as ours—is the highest thing we know.It is obvious that such a way of thinking is far more widely removedfrom Christian belief than is Unitarianism, at least the earlierforms of Unitarianism. For the early Unitarianism no doubt atleast believed in God. The modern liberals, on the other hand,say that Jesus is God not because they think high of Jesus, butbecause they think desperately low of God.

In another way also,liberalism within the "evangelical" churches is inferiorto Unitarianism. It is inferior to Unitarianism in the matterof honesty. In order to maintain themselves in the evangelicalchurches and quiet the fears of their conservative associates,the liberals resort constantly to a double use of language. Ayoung man, for example, has received disquieting reports of theunorthodoxy of a prominent preacher. Interrogating the preacheras to his belief, he receives a reassuring reply. "You maytell everyone," says the liberal preacher in effect, "thatI believe that Jesus is God." The inquirer goes away muchimpressed.

It may well be doubted,however, whether the assertion, "I believe that Jesus isGod," or the like, on the lips of liberal preachers, is strictlytruthful. The liberal preacher attaches indeed a real meaningto the words, and that meaning is very dear to his heart. He reallydoes believe that "Jesus is God." But the trouble isthat he

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attaches to the wordsa different meaning from that which is attached to them by thesimple-minded person to whom he is speaking. He offends, therefore,against the fundamental principle of truthfulness in language.According to that fundamental principle, language is truthful,not when the meaning attached to the words by the speaker, butwhen the meaning intended to be produced in the mind of the particularperson addressed, is in accordance with the facts. Thus the truthfulnessof the assertion, "I believe that Jesus is God," dependsupon the audience that is addressed. If the audience is composedof theologically trained persons, who will attach the same meaningto the word "God" as that which the speaker attachesto it, then the language is truthful. But if the audience is composedof old-fashioned Christians, who have never attached anythingbut the old meaning to the word "God" (the meaning whichappears in the first verse of Genesis), then the language is untruthful.And in the latter case, not al] the pious motives in the worldwill make the utterance right. Christian ethics do not abrogatecommon honesty; no possible desire of edifying the Church andof avoiding offence can excuse a lie.

At any rate, the deityof our Lord, in any real sense of the word "deity,"is of course denied by modern liberalism. According to the modernliberal Church, Jesus differs from the rest of men only in degreeand not in kind; He can be divine only if all men are divine.But if the liberal conception of the deity of Christ thus becomesmeaningless, what is the Christian conception? What does the Christianman mean when he confesses that "Jesus is God"?

The answer has beengiven in what has already been said. It has already been observedthat the New Testament represents Jesus as a supernatural Person.But if

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Jesus is a supernaturalPerson He is either divine or else He is an intermediate Being,higher indeed than man, but lower than God. The latter view hasbeen abandoned for many centuries in the Christian Church, andthere is not much likelihood that it will be revived; Arianismcertainly is dead. The thought of Christ as a super-angelic Being,like God but not God, belongs evidently to pagan mythology, andnot to the Bible or to Christian faith. It will usually be admitted,if the theistic conception of the separateness between man andGod be held, that Christ is either God or else simply man; Heis certainly not a Being intermediate between God and man. If,then, He is not merely man, but a supernatural Person, the conclusionis that He is God.

In the second place,it has already been observed that in the New Testament and inall true Christianity, Jesus is no mere example for faith, butthe object of faith. And the faith of which Jesus is the objectis clearly religious faith; the Christian man reposes confidencein Jesus in a way that would be out of place in the case of anyother than God. It is no lesser thing that is committed to Jesus,but the eternal welfare of the soul. The entire Christian attitudetoward Jesus as it is found throughout the New Testament presupposesclearly, then, the deity of our Lord.

It is in the light ofthis central presupposition that the individual assertions oughtto be approached. The individual passages which attest the deityof Christ are not excrescences in the New Testament, but naturalfruits of a fundamental conception which is everywhere the same.Those individual passages are not confined to any one book orgroup of books. In the Pauline Epistles, of course, the passagesare particularly plain; the Christ of the Epistles appears againand again as associated only

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with the Father andwith His Spirit. In the Gospel of John, also, one does not haveto seek very long; the deity of Christ is almost the theme ofthe book. But the testimony of the Synoptic Gospels is not reallydifferent from that which appears everywhere else. The way inwhich Jesus speaks of my Father and the Son—for example,in the famous passage in Matt. xi. 27 (Lk. x. 22): "All thingshave been delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth theSon but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father save theSon and He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him"—thismanner of presenting Jesus' relation to the Father, absolutelyfundamental in the Synoptic Gospels, involves the assertion ofthe deity of our Lord. The Person who so speaks is representedas being in mysterious union with the eternal God.

Yet the New Testamentwith equal clearness presents Jesus as a man. The Gospel of John,which contains at the beginning the stupendous utterance, "TheWord was God," and dwells constantly upon the deity of theLord, also represents Jesus as weary at the well and as thirst,in the hour of agony on the Cross. Scarcely in the Synoptic Gospelscan one discover such drastic touches attesting the humanity ofour Savior as those which appear again and again in the Gospelof John. With regard to the Synoptic Gospels, of course therecan be no debate; the Synoptists clearly present a Person wholived a genuine human life and was Himself true man.

The truth is, the witnessof the New Testament is everywhere the same; the New Testamenteverywhere presents One who was both God and man. And it is interestingto observe how unsuccessful have been all the efforts to rejectone part of this witness and retain the rest. The Apollinariansrejected the full humanity of the Lord, but in doing so they obtaineda Person who was very different

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from the Jesus of the New Testament. The Jesus of the New Testament was clearly, in the full sense, a man. Others seem to have supposed that the divine and the human were so blended in Jesus that there was produced 8 nature neither purely divine nor purely human, but a tertium quid. But nothing could be more remote from the New Testament teaching than that. According to the New Testament the divine and human natures were clearly distinct; the divine nature was pure divinity, and the human nature was pure humanity; Jesus was God and man in two distinct natures. The Nestorians, on the other hand, 80 emphasized the distinctness of divine and human in Jesus as to suppose that there were in Jesus two separate persons. But such a Gnosticizing view is plainly contrary to the record; the New Testament plainly teaches the unity of the Person of our Lord.

By elimination of these errors the Church arrived at the New Testament doctrine of two natures in one Person; the Jesus of the New Testament is "God and man, in two distinct natures, and one Person forever." That doctrine is sometimes regarded as speculative. But nothing could be further from the fact. Whether the doctrine of the two natures is true or false, it was certainly produced not by speculation, but by an attempt to summarize, succinctly and exactly, the Scriptural teaching.

This doctrine is of course rejected by modern liberalism. And it is rejected in a very simple way—by the elimination of the whole higher nature of our Lord. But such radicalism is not a bit more successful than the heresies of the past. The Jesus who is supposed to be left after the elimination of the supernatural element is at best a very shadowy figure; for the elimination of the supernatural logically involves the elimination of much that remains, and the historian constantly approaches the

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absurd view which effaces Jesus altogether from the pages of history. But even after such dangers have been avoided, even after the historian, by setting arbitrary limits to his process of elimination, has succeeded in reconstructing a purely human Jesus, the Jesus thus constructed is found to be entirely unreal. He has a moral contradiction at the very center of His being—a contradiction due to His Messianic consciousness. He was pure and humble and strong and sane, yet He supposed, without basis in fact, that He was to be the final Judge of all the earth! The liberal Jesus, despite all the efforts of modern psychological reconstruction to galvanize Him into life, remains a manufactured figure of the stage. Very different is the Jesus of the New Testament and of the great Scriptural creeds. That Jesus is indeed mysterious. Who can fathom the mystery of His Person? But the mystery is a mystery in which a man can rest. The Jesus of the New Testament has at least one advantage over the Jesus of modern reconstruction—He is real. He is not a manufactured figure suitable as a point of support for ethical maxims, but a genuine Person whom a man can love. Men have loved Him through all the Christian centuries. And the strange thing is that despite all the efforts to remove Him from the pages of history, there are those who love Him still.

PROCEED to Chapter Six: Salvation

÷CHRISTIANITY & LIBERALISM,page 117

Chapter 6:"Salvation"

It has been observed thus far that liberalismdiffers from Christianity with regard to the presuppositions ofthe gospel (the view of God and the view of man), with regardto the Book in which the gospel is contained, and with regardto the Person whose work the gospel sets forth. It is not surprisingthen that it differs from Christianity in its account of the gospelitself; it is not surprising that it presents an entirely differentaccount of the way of salvation. Liberalism finds salvation (sofar as it is willing to speak at all of "salvation")in man; Christianity finds it in an act of God.

The difference withregard to the way of salvation concerns, in the first place, thebasis of salvation in the redeeming work of Christ. Accordingto Christian belief, Jesus is our Savior, not by virtue of whatHe said, not even by virtue of what He was, but by what He did.He is our Savior, not because He has inspired us to live the samekind of life that He lived, but because He took upon Himself thedreadful guilt of our sins and bore it instead of us on the cross.Such is the Christian conception of the Cross of Christ. It isridiculed as being a "subtle theory of the atonement."In reality, it is the plain teaching of the word of God; we knowabsolutely nothing about an atonement that is not a vicariousatonement, for that is the only atonement of which the New Testamentspeaks. And this Bible doctrine is not intricate or subtle.

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On the contrary, thoughit involves mysteries, it is itself so simple that a child canunderstand it. "We deserved eternal death, but the Lord Jesus,because He loved us, died instead of us on the cross"—surelythere is nothing so very intricate about that. It is not the Bibledoctrine of the atonement which is difficult to understand—whatare really incomprehensible are the elaborate modern efforts toget rid of the Bible doctrine in the interests of human pride.1

Modern liberal preachersdo indeed sometimes speak of the "atonement." But theyspeak of it just as seldom as they possibly can, and one can seeplainly that their hearts are elsewhere than at the foot of theCross. Indeed, at this point, as at many others, one has the feelingthat traditional language is being strained to become the expressionof totally alien ideas. And when the traditional phraseology hasbeen stripped away, the essence of the modern conception of thedeath of Christ, though that conception appears in many forms,is fairly plain. The essence of it is that the death of Christhad an effect not upon God but only upon man. Sometimes the effectupon man is conceived of in a very simple way, Christ's deathbeing regarded merely as an example of self-sacrifice for us toemulate. The uniqueness of this particular example, then, canbe found only in the fact that Christian sentiment, gatheringaround it, has made it a convenient symbol for all self-sacrifice;it puts in concrete form what would otherwise have to be expressedin colder general terms. Sometimes, again, the effect of Christ'sdeath upon us is conceived of in subtler ways; the death of Christ,it is said, shows how much God hates sin—since sin broughteven the Holy One to the dreadful Cross—and

1. See "The SecondDeclaration of the Council on Organic Union," The Presbyterian,for March 17, 1921, p. 8.

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we too, therefore, oughtto hate sin, as God hates it, and repent. Sometimes, still again,the death of Christ is thought of as displaying the love of God;it exhibits God's own Son as given up for us all. These modern"theories of the atonement" are not all to be placedupon the same plane; the last of them, in particular, may be joinedwith a high view of Jesus' Person. But they err in that they ignorethe dreadful reality of guilt, and make a mere persuasion of thehuman will all that is needed for salvation. They do indeed allcontain an element of truth: it is true that the death of Christis an example of self-sacrifice which may inspire self-sacrificein others; it is true that the death of Christ shows how muchGod hates sin; it is true that the death of Christ displays thelove of God. All of these truths are found plainly in the NewTestament. But they are swallowed up in a far greater truth—thatChrist died instead of us to present us faultless before the throneof God. Without that central truth, all the rest is devoid ofreal meaning: an example of self-sacrifice is useless to thosewho are under both the guilt and thralldom of sin; the knowledgeof God's hatred of sin can in itself bring only despair; an exhibitionof the love of God is a mere display unless there was some underlyingreason for the sacrifice. If the Cross is to be restored to itsrightful place in Christian life, we shall have to penetrate farbeneath the modern theories to Him who loved us and gave Himselffor us.

Upon the Christian doctrineof the Cross, modern liberals are never weary of pouring out thevials of their hatred and their scorn. Even at this point, itis true, the hope of avoiding offence is not always abandoned;the words "vicarious atonement" and the like—ofcourse in a sense totally at variance from their Christian meaning—arestill sometimes used. But despite such occasional

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employment of traditionallanguage the liberal preachers reveal only too clearly what isin their minds. They speak with disgust of those who believe "thatthe blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death, placatesan alienated Deity and makes possible welcome for the returningsinner."1 Against the doctrine of theCross they use every weapon of caricature and vilification. Thusthey pour out their scorn upon a thing so holy and so preciousthat in the presence of it the Christian heart melts in gratitudetoo deep for words. It never seems to occur to modern liberalsthat in deriding the Christian doctrine of the Cross, they aretrampling upon human hearts. But the modern liberal attacks uponthe Christian doctrine of the Cross may at least serve the purposeof showing what that doctrine is, and from this point of viewthey may be examined briefly now.

In the first place,then, the Christian way of salvation through the Cross of Christis criticized because it is dependent upon history. This criticismis sometimes evaded; it is sometimes said that as Christians wemay attend to what Christ does now for every Christian ratherthan to what He did long ago in Palestine. But the evasion involvesa total abandonment of the Christian faith. If the saving workof Christ were confined to what He does now for every Christian,there would be no such thing as a Christian gospel—an accountof an event which put a new face on life. What we should haveleft would be simply mysticism, and mysticism is quite differentfrom Christianity. It is the connection of the present experienceof the believer with an actual historic appearance of Jesus inthe world which prevents our religion from being mysticism andcauses it to be Christianity.

1. Fosdick, Shall theFundamentalists, Win?, stenographically reported by Margaret Renton,1922, p. 5.

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It must certainly beadmitted, then, that Christianity does depend upon something thathappened; our religion must be abandoned altogether unless ata definite point in history Jesus died as a propitiation for thesins of men. Christianity is certainly dependent upon history.

But if so, the objectionlies very near. Must we really depend for the welfare of our soulsupon what happened long ago? Must we really wait until historianshave finished disputing about the value of sources and the likebefore we can have peace with God? Would it not be better to havea salvation which is with us here and now, and which depends onlyupon what we can see or feel?

With regard to thisobjection it should be observed that if religion be made independentof history there is no such thing as a gospel. For "gospel"means "good news," tidings, information about somethingthat has happened. A gospel independent of history is a contradictionin terms. The Christian gospel means, not a presentation of whatalways has been true, but a report of something new—somethingthat imparts a totally different aspect to the situation of mankind.The situation of mankind was desperate because of sin; but Godhas changed the situation by the atoning death of Christ—thatis no mere reflection upon the old, but an account of somethingnew. We are shut up in this world as in a beleaguered camp. Tomaintain our courage, the liberal preacher offers us exhortation.Make the best of the situation, he says, look on the bright sideof life. But unfortunately, such exhortation cannot change thefacts. In particular it cannot remove the dreadful fact of sin.Very different is the message of the Christian evangelist. Heoffers not reflection on the old but tidings of something new,not exhortation but a gospel.1

1. Compare History andFaith 1915, pp. 1-3.

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It is true that theChristian gospel is an account, not of something that happenedyesterday, but of something that happened long ago; but the importantthing is that it really happened. If it really happened, thenit makes little difference when it happened. No matter when ithappened, whether yesterday or in the first century, it remainsa real gospel, a real piece of news.

The happening of longago, moreover, is in this case confirmed by present experience.The Christian man receives first the account which the New Testamentgives of the atoning death of Christ. That account is history.But if true it has effects in the present, and it can be testedby its effects. The Christian man makes trial of the Christianmessage, and making trial of it he finds it to be true. Experiencedoes not provide a substitute for the documentary evidence, butit does confirm that evidence. The word of the Cross no longerseems to the Christian to be merely a far-off thing, merely amatter to be disputed about by trained theologians. On the contrary,it is received into the Christian's inmost soul, and every dayand hour of the Christian's life brings new confirmation of itstruth.

In the second place,the Christian doctrine of salvation through the death of Christis criticized on the ground that it is narrow. It binds salvationto the name of Jesus, and there are many men in the world whohave never in any effective way heard of the name of Jesus. Whatis really needed, we are told, is a salvation which will saveall men everywhere, whether they have heard of Jesus or not, andwhatever may be the type of life to which they have been reared.Not a new creed, it is said, will meet; the universal need ofthe world, but some means of making effective in right livingwhatever creed men may chance to have.

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This second objection,as well as the first, is sometimes evaded. It is sometimes saidthat although one way of salvation is by means of acceptance ofthe gospel there may be other ways. But this method of meetingthe objection relinquishes one of the things that are most obviouslycharacteristic of the Christian message—namely, its exclusiveness.What struck the early observers of Christianity most forciblywas not merely that salvation was offered by means of the Christiangospel, but that all other means were resolutely rejected. Theearly Christian missionaries demanded an absolutely exclusivedevotion to Christ. Such exclusiveness ran directly counter tothe prevailing syncretism of the Hellenistic age. In that day,many saviors were offered by many religions to the attention ofmen, but the various pagan religions could live together in perfectharmony; when a man became a devotee of one god, he did not haveto give up the others. But Christianity would have nothing todo with these "courtly polygamies of the soul";1 it demanded an absolutely exclusive devotion;all other Saviors, it insisted, must be deserted for the one Lord.Salvation, in other words, was not merely through Christ, butit was only through Christ. In that little word "only"lay all the offence. Without that word there would have been nopersecutions; the cultured men of the day would probably havebeen willing to give Jesus a place, and an honorable place, amongthe saviors of mankind. Without its exclusiveness, the Christianmessage would have seemed perfectly inoffensive to the men ofthat day. So modern liberalism, placing Jesus alongside otherbenefactors of mankind, is perfectly inoffensive in the modernworld. All men speak well of it. It is entirely inoffensive. But

1. Phillimore, in theintroduction to his translation of Philostratus, In Honour ofApollonius of Tyana, 1912, vol. i, p. iii.

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it is also entirelyfutile. The offence of the Cross is done away, but so is the gloryand the power.

Thus it must fairlybe admitted that Christianity does bind salvation to the nameof Christ. The question need not here be discussed whether thebenefits of Christ's death are ever applied to those who, thoughthey have come to years of discretion, have not heard or acceptedthe gospel message. Certainly the New Testament holds out with"yard to this matter no clear hope. At the very basis ofthe work of the apostolic Church is the consciousness of a terribleresponsibility. The sole message of life and salvation had beencommitted to men; that message was at all hazards to be proclaimedwhile yet there was time. The objection as to the exclusivenessof the Christian way of salvation, therefore, cannot be evaded,but must be met.

In answer to the objection,it may be said simply that the Christian way of salvation is narrowonly so long as the Church chooses to let it remain narrow. Thename of Jesus is discovered to be strangely adapted to men ofevery race and of every kind of previous education. And the Churchhas ample means, with promise of God's Spirit, to bring the nameof Jesus to all. If, therefore, this way of salvation is not offeredto all, it is not the fault of the way of salvation itself, butthe fault of those who fail to use the means that God has placedin their hands.

But, it may be said,is that not a stupendous responsibility to be placed in the handsof weak and sinful men; is it not more natural that God shouldoffer salvation to all without requiring them to accept a newmessage and thus to be dependent upon the faithfulness of themessengers? The answer to this objection is plain. It is certainlytrue that the Christian way of salvation places a stupendous responsibilityupon men. But that responsibility

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is like the responsibilitywhich, as ordinary observation shows, God does, as a matter offact, commit to men. It is like the responsibility, for example,of the parent for the child. The parent has full power to marthe soul as well as the body of the child. The responsibilityis terrible; but it is a responsibility which unquestionably exists.Similar is the responsibility of the Church for making the nameof Jesus known to all mankind. It is a terrible responsibility;but it exists, and it is just like the other known dealings ofGod.

But modern liberalismhas still more specific objections to the Christian doctrine ofthe Cross. How can one person, it is asked, suffer for the sinsof another? The thing, we are told, is absurd. Guilt, it is said,is personal; if I allow another man to suffer for my fault, myguilt is not thereby one whit diminished.

An answer to this objectionis sometimes found in the plain instances in ordinary human lifewhere one person does suffer for another person's sin. In thewar, for example, many men died freely for the welfare of others.Here, it is "aid, we have something analogous to the sacrificeof Christ.

It must be confessed,however, that the analogy is very faint; for it does not touchthe specific point at issue. The death of a volunteer soldierin the war was like the death of Christ in that it was a supremeexample of self-sacrifice. But the thing to be accomplished bythe self-sacrifice was entirely, different from the thing whichwas accomplished on Calvary. The death of those who sacrificedthemselves in the war brought peace and protection to the lovedones at home, but it could never avail to wipe out the guilt ofsin.

The real answer to theobjection is to be found not in the similarity between the deathof Christ and other

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examples of self-sacrifice,but in the profound difference.1 Why is it that men are no longerwilling to trust for their own salvation and for the hope of theworld to one act that was done by one Man of long ago? Why isit that they prefer to trust to millions of acts of self-sacrificewrought by millions of men all through the centuries and in ourown day? The answer is plain. It is because men have lost sightof the majesty of Jesus' Person. They think of Him as a man likethemselves; and if He was a man like themselves, His death becomessimply an example of self-sacrifice. But there have been millionsof examples of self-sacrifice. Why then should we pay such exclusiveattention to this one Palestinian example of long ago? Men usedto say with reference to Jesus, "There was no other goodenough to pay the price of sin." They say so now no longer.On the contrary, every man is now regarded as plenty good enoughto pay the price of sin if, whether in peace or in war, he willonly go bravely over the top in some noble cause.

It is perfectly truethat no mere man can pay the penalty of another man's sin. Butit does not follow that Jesus could not do it; for Jesus was nomere man but the eternal Son of God. Jesus is master of the innermostsecrets of the moral world. He has done what none other couldpossibly do; He has borne our sin.

The Christian doctrineof the atonement, therefore, is altogether rooted in the Christiandoctrine of the deity of Christ. The reality of an atonement forsin depends altogether upon the New Testament presentation ofthe Person of Christ. And even the hymns dealing with the Crosswhich we sing in Church can be placed in an ascending

1. For what follows,compare "The Church in the War," in The Presbyterian,for May 29 1919, pp. 10f.

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scale according as theyare based upon a lower or a higher view of Jesus' Person. At thevery bottom of the scale is that familiar hymn:

Nearer, my God, to thee,

Nearer to thee!

E'en though it be a cross

That raiseth me.

That is a perfectlygood hymn. It means that our trials may be a discipline to bringus nearer to God. The thought is not opposed to Christianity;it is found in the New Testament. But many persons have the impression,because the word "cross" is found in the hymn, thatthere is something specifically Christian about it, and that ithas something to do with the gospel. This impression is entirelyfalse. In reality, the cross that is spoken of is not the Crossof Christ, but our own cross; the verse simply means that ourown crosses or trials may be a means to bring us nearer to God.It is a perfectly good thought, but certainly it is not the gospel.One can only be sorry that the people on the Titanic could notfind a better hymn to use in the last solemn hour of their lives.But there is another hymn in the hymn-book:

In the cross of Christ I glory,

Towering o'er the wrecks of time;

All the light of sacred story

Gathers round its head sublime.

That is certainly better.It is here not our own crosses but the Cross of Christ, the actualevent that took place on Calvary, that is spoken of, and thatevent is celebrated as the center of all history. Certainly theChristian man can sing that hymn. But one misses even there thefull Christian sense of the meaning of the Cross; the Cross iscelebrated, but it is not understood.

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It is well, therefore,that there is another hymn in our hymn-book:

When I survey the wondrous cross

On which the Prince of glory died

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

There at length areheard the accents of true Christian feeling—"the wondrouscross on which the Prince of glory died." When we come tosee that it was no mere man who suffered on Calvary but the Lordof Glory, then we shall be willing to say that one drop of theprecious blood of Jesus is of more value, for our own salvationand for the hope of society, than all the rivers of blood thathave flowed upon the battlefields of history.

Thus the objection tothe vicarious sacrifice of Christ disappears altogether beforethe tremendous Christian sense of the majesty of Jesus' Person.It is perfectly true that the Christ of modern naturalistic reconstructionnever could have suffered for the sins of others; but it is verydifferent in the case of the Lord of Glory. And if the notionof vicarious atonement be so absurd as modern opposition wouldlead us to believe, what shall be said of the Christian experiencethat has been based upon it? The modern liberal Church is fondof appealing to experience. But where shall true Christian experiencebe found if not in the blessed peace which comes from Calvary?That peace comes only when a man recognizes that all his strivingto be right with God, all his feverish endeavor to keep the Lawbefore he can be saved, is unnecessary, and that the Lord Jesushas wiped out the handwriting that was against him by dying insteadof him on the Cross. Who can measure the depth of the peace andjoy that comes from this blessed knowledge? Is it a "theoryof

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the atonement,"a delusion of man's fancy? Or is it the very truth of God?

But still another objectionremains against the Christian doctrine of the Cross. The objectionconcerns the character of God. What a degraded view of God itis, the modern liberal exclaims, when God is represented as being"alienated" from man, and as waiting coldly until aprice be paid before He grants salvation! In reality, we are told,God is more willing to forgive sin than we are willing to be forgiven;reconciliation, therefore, can have to do only with man; it alldepends upon us; God will receive us any time we choose.

The objection dependsof course upon the liberal view of sin. If sin is so triflinga matter as the liberal Church supposes, then indeed the curseof God's law can be taken very lightly, and God can easily letby-gones be by-gones.

This business of lettingby-gones be by-gones has a pleasant sound. But in reality it isthe most heartless thing in the world. It will not do at all evenin the case of sins committed against our fellow-men. To say nothingof sin against God, what shall be done about the harm that wehave wrought to our neighbor? Sometimes, no doubt, the harm canbe repaired. If we have defrauded our neighbor of a sum of money,we can pay the sum back with interest. But in the case of themore serious wrongs such repayment is usually quite impossible.The more serious wrongs are those that are done, not to the bodies,but to the souls of men. And who can think with complacency ofwrongs of that kind which he has committed? Who can bear to think,for example, of the harm that he has done to those younger thanhimself by a bad example? And what of those sad words, spokento those we love, that have left scars never to be obliteratedby the hand of time? In the presence of such memories, we aretold by

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the modern preachersimply to repent and to let by-gones be by-gones. But what a heartlessthing is such repentance! We escape into some higher, happier,respectable life. But what of those whom we by our example andby our words have helped to drag down to the brink of hell? Weforget them and let by-gones be by-gones!

Such repentance willnever wipe out the guilt of sin—not even sin committed againstour fellow-men, to say nothing of sin against our God. The trulypenitent man longs to wipe out the effects of sin, not merelyto forget sin. But who can wipe out the effects of sin? Othersare suffering because of our past sins; and we can attain no realpeace until we suffer in their stead. We long to go back intothe tangle of our life, and make right the things that are wrong—atleast to suffer where we have caused others to suffer. And somethinglike that Christ did for us when He died instead of us on thecross; He atoned for all our sins.

The sorrow for sinscommitted against one's fellowmen does indeed remain in the Christian'sheart. And he will seek by every means that is within his powerto repair the damage that he has done. But atonement at leasthas been made—made as truly as if the sinner himself hadsuffered with and for those whom he has wronged. And the sinnerhimself, by a mystery of grace, becomes right with God. All sinat bottom is a sin against God. "Against thee, thee onlyhave I sinned" is the cry of a true penitent. How terribleis the sin against God! Who can recall the wasted moments andyears ? Gone they are, never to return; gone the little allottedspan of life; gone the little day in which a man must work. Whocan measure the irrevocable guilt of a wasted life? Yet even forsuch guilt God has provided a fountain of cleansing in the preciousblood of Christ. God has clothed us with Christ's

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righteousness as witha garment; in Christ we stand spotless before the judgment throne.

Thus to deny the necessityof atonement is to deny the existence of a real moral order. Andit is strange how those who venture upon such denial can regardthemselves as disciples of Jesus; for if one thing is clear inthe record of Jesus' life it is that Jesus recognized the justiceas distinguished from the love, of God. God is love, accordingto Jesus, but He is not only love; Jesus spoke, in terrible words,of the sin that shall never be forgiven either in this world orin that which is to come. Clearly Jesus recognized the existenceof retributive justice; Jesus was far from accepting the lightmodern view of sin.

But what, then, it willbe objected, becomes of God's love? Even if it be admitted thatjustice demands punishment for sin, the modern liberal theologianwill say, what becomes of the Christian doctrine that justiceis swallowed up by grace? If God is represented as waiting fora price to be paid before sin shall be forgiven, perhaps His justicemay be rescued, but what becomes of His love?

Modern liberal teachersare never tired of ringing the changes upon this objection. Theyspeak with horror of the doctrine of an "alienated"or an "angry" God. In answer, of course it would beeasy to point to the New Testament. The New Testament clearlyspeaks of the wrath of God and the wrath of Jesus Himself; andall the teaching of Jesus presupposes a divine indignation againstsin. With what possible right, then, can those who reject thisvital element in Jesus' teaching and example regard themselvesas true disciples of His? The truth is that the modern rejectionof the doctrine of God's wrath proceeds from a light view of sinwhich is totally at variance with the teaching of the whole NewTestament and of Jesus Himself. If a man has once come under a

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true conviction of sin,he will have little difficulty with the doctrine of the Cross.

But as a matter of factthe modern objection to the doctrine of the atonement on the groundthat that doctrine is contrary to the love of God, is based uponthe most abysmal misunderstanding of the doctrine itself. Themodern liberal teachers persist in speaking of the sacrifice ofChrist as though it were a sacrifice made by some one other thanGod. They speak of it as though it meant that God waits coldlyuntil a price is paid to Him before He forgives sin. As a matterof fact, it means nothing of the kind; the objection ignores thatwhich is absolutely fundamental in the Christian doctrine of theCross. The fundamental thing is that God Himself, and not another,makes the sacrifice for sin—God Himself in the person ofthe Son who assumed our nature and died for us, God Himself inthe Person of the Father who spared not His own Son but offeredHim up for us all. Salvation is as free for us as the air we breathe;God's the dreadful cost, ours the gain. "God so loved theworld that He gave His only begotten Son." Such love is verydifferent from the complacency found in the God of modern preaching;this love is love that did not count the cost; it is love thatis love indeed.

This love and this lovealone brings true joy to men. Joy is indeed being sought by themodern liberal Church. But it is being sought in ways that arefalse. How may communion with God be made joyful? Obviously, weare told, by emphasizing the comforting attributes of God—Hislong-suffering, His love. Let us, it is urged, regard Him notas a moody Despot, not as a sternly righteous Judge, but simplyas a loving Father. Away with the horrors of the old theology!Let us worship a God in whom we can rejoice.

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Two questions arisewith regard to this method of making religion joyful—in thefirst place, Does it work? and in the second place, Is it true?

Does it work? It certainlyought to work. How can anyone be unhappy when the ruler of theuniverse is declared to be the loving Father of all men who willnever permanently inflict pain upon His children ? Where is thesting of remorse if all sin will necessarily be forgiven? Yetmen are strangely ungrateful. After the modern preacher has donehis part with all diligence—after everything unpleasant hascarefully been eliminated from the conception of God, after Hisunlimited love has been celebrated with the eloquence that itdeserves—the congregation somehow persistently refuses toburst into the old ecstasies of joy. The truth is, the God ofmodern preaching, though He may perhaps be very good, is ratheruninteresting. Nothing is so insipid as indiscriminate good humor.Is that really love that costs so little? If God will necessarilyforgive, no matter what we do, why trouble ourselves about Himat all? Such a God may deliver us from the fear of hell. But Hisheaven, if He has any, is full of sin.

The other objectionto the modern encouraging idea of God is that it is not true.How do you know that God is all love and kindness? Surely notthrough nature, for it is full of horrors. Human suffering maybe unpleasant, but it is real, and God must have something todo with it. Just as surely not through the Bible. For it was fromthe Bible that the old theologians derived that conception ofGod which you would reject as gloomy. "The Lord thy God,"the Bible says, "is a consuming fire." Or is Jesus aloneyour authority? You are no better off. For it was Jesus who spokeof the outer darkness and the everlasting fire, of the sin thatshall not be forgiven either in

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this age or in thatwhich is to come. Or do you appeal, for your comforting idea ofGod, to a twentieth-century revelation granted immediately toyou? It is to be feared that you will convince no one but yourself.

Religion cannot be madejoyful simply by looking on the bright side of God. For a one-sidedGod is not a real God, and it is the real God alone who can satisfythe longing of our soul. God is love, but is He only love? Godis love, but is love God? Seek joy alone, then, seek joy at anycost, and you will not find it. How then may it be attained?

The search for joy inreligion seems to have ended in disaster. God is found to be envelopedin impenetrable mystery, and in awful righteousness; man is confinedin the prison of the world, trying to make the best of his condition,beautifying the prison with tinsel, yet secretly dissatisfiedwith his bondage, dissatisfied with a merely relative goodnesswhich is no goodness at all, dissatisfied with the companionshipof his sinful fellows, unable to forget his heavenly destiny andhis heavenly duty, longing for communion with the Holy One. Thereseems to be no hope; God is separate from sinners; there is noroom for joy, but only a certain fearful looking for of judgmentand fiery indignation.

Yet such a God has atleast one advantage over the comforting God of modern preaching—Heis alive, He is sovereign, He is not bound by His creation orby His creatures, He can perform wonders. Could He even save usif He would? He has saved us—in that message the gospel consists.It could not have been foretold; still less could the manner ofit have been foretold. That Birth, that Life, that Death—whywas it done just thus and then and there? It all seems so verylocal, so very particular, so very unphilosophical, so very unlikewhat might

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have been expected.Are not our own methods of salvation, men say, better than that?"Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better thanall the waters of Israel?" Yet what if it were true? "So,the All-Great were the All-Loving too"—God's own Sondelivered up for us all, freedom from the world, sought by philosophersof all the ages, offered now freely to every simple soul, thingshidden from the wise and prudent revealed unto babes, the longstriving over, the impossible accomplished, sin conquered by mysteriousgrace, communion at length with the holy God, our Father whichart in heaven!

Surely this and thisalone is joy. But it is a joy that is akin to fear. It is a fearfulthing to fall into the hands of the living God. Were we not saferwith a God of our own devising—love and only love, a Fatherand nothing else, one before whom we could stand in our own meritwithout fear? He who will may be satisfied with such a God. Butwe, God help us—sinful as we are, we would see Jehovah. Despairing,hoping, trembling, half-doubting and half-believing, trustingall to Jesus, we venture into the presence of the very God. Andin His presence we live.

The atoning death ofChrist, and that alone, has presented sinners as righteous inGod's sight; the Lord Jesus has paid the full penalty of theirsins, and clothed them with His perfect righteousness before thejudgment seat of God. But Christ has done for Christians evenfar more than that. He has given to them not only a new and rightrelation to God, but a new life in God's presence for evermore.He has saved them from the power as well as from the guilt ofsin. The New Testament does not end with the death of Christ;it does not end with the triumphant words of Jesus on the Cross,"It is finished." The death was followed by the resurrection,and the resurrection

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like the death was forour sakes. Jesus rose from the dead into a new life of glory andpower, and into that life He brings those for whom He died. TheChristian, on the basis of Christ's redeeming work, not only hasdied unto sin, but also lives unto God.

Thus was completed theredeeming work of Christ—the work for which He entered intothe world. The account of that work is the "gospel,"the "good news." It never could have been predicted,for sin deserves naught but eternal death. But God triumphed oversin through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But how is the redeemingwork of Christ applied to the individual Christian man? The answerof the New Testament is plain. According to the New Testamentthe work of Christ is applied to the individual Christian manby the Holy Spirit. And this work of the Holy Spirit is part ofthe creative work of God. It is not accomplished by the ordinaryuse of means; it is not accomplished merely by using the goodthat is already in man. On the contrary, it is something new.It is not an influence upon the life, but the beginning of a newlife; it is not development of what we had already, but a newbirth. At the very center of Christianity are the words, "Yemust be born again."

These words are despisedtoday. They involve supernaturalism, and the modern man is opposedto supernaturalism in the experience of the individual as muchas in the realm of history. A cardinal doctrine of modern liberalismis that the world's evil may be overcome by the world's good;no help is thought to be needed from outside the world.

This doctrine is propagatedin various ways. It runs all through the popular literature ofour time. It dominates religious literature, and it appears evenupon the stage. Some years ago great popularity was attained by

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a play which taughtthe doctrine in powerful fashion. The play began with a scenein a London boarding-house. And it was a very discouraging scene.The persons in that boarding-house were not by any means desperatecriminals, but one could almost have wished that they had been—theywould have been so much more interesting. As it was, they weresimply sordid, selfish persons, snapping and snarling about thingsto eat and about creature comforts—the sort of persons aboutwhom one is tempted to say that they have no souls. The scenewas a powerful picture of the hideousness of the commonplace.But presently the mysterious stranger of "the third floorback" entered upon the scene, and all was changed. He hadno creed to offer, and no religion. But he simply engaged in conversationwith everyone in that boardinghouse, and discovered the one goodpoint in every individual life. Somewhere in every life therewas some one good thing—some one true human affection, someone noble ambition. It had long been hidden by a thick coatingof sordidness and selfishness; its very existence had been forgotten.But it was there, and when it was brought to the light the wholelife was transformed. Thus the evil that was in man was overcomeby the good that was already there.

The same thing is taughtin more immediately practical ways. For example, there are thosewho would apply it to the prisoners in our jails. The inmatesof jails and penitentiaries constitute no doubt unpromising material.But it is a great mistake, it is said, to tell them that theyare bad, to discourage them by insisting upon their sin. On thecontrary, we are told, what ought to be done is to find the goodthat is already in them and build upon that; we ought to appealto some latent sense of honor which shows that even criminalspossess the remnants of our

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common human nature.Thus again the evil that is in man is to be overcome not by aforeign good but by a good which man himself possesses.

Certainly there is alarge element of truth in this modern principle. That elementof truth is found in the Bible. The Bible does certainly teachthat the good that is already in man ought to be fostered in orderto check the evil. Whatsoever things are true and pure and ofgood report—we ought to think on those things. Certainlythe principle of overcoming the world's evil by the good alreadyin the world is a great principle. The old theologians recognizedit to the full in their doctrine of "common grace."There is something in the world even apart from Christianity whichrestrains the worst manifestations of evil. And that somethingought to be used. Without the use of it, this world could notbe lived in for a day. The use of it is certainly a great principle;it will certainly accomplish many, useful things.

But there is one thingwhich it will not accomplish. It will not remove the disease ofsin. It will indeed palliate the symptoms of the disease; it willchange the form of the disease. Sometimes the disease is hidden,and there are those who think that it is cured. But then it burstsforth in some new way, as in 1914, and startles the world. Whatis really needed is not a salve to palliate the symptoms of sin,but a remedy that attacks the root of the disease.

In reality, however,the figure of disease is misleading. The only true figure—ifindeed it can be called merely a figure—is the one whichis used in the Bible. Man is not merely ill, but he is dead, intrespasses and sins, and what is really needed is a new life.That life is given by the Holy Spirit in "regeneration"or the new birth.

Many are the passagesand many are the ways in which the central doctrine of the newbirth is taught in the Word

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of God. One of the moststupendous passages is Gal. ii. 20: "I have been crucifiedwith Christ; and it is no longer I that live but Christ livethin me." That passage was called by Bengel the marrow of Christianity.And it was rightly so called. It refers to the objective basisof Christianity in the redeeming work of Christ, and it containsalso the supernaturalism of Christian experience. "It isno longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me"—theseare extraordinary words. "If you look upon Christians,"Paul says in effect, "you see so many manifestations of thelife of Christ." Undoubtedly if the words of Gal. ii. 20stood alone they might be taken in a mystical or pantheistic sense;they might be taken to involve the merging of the personalityof the Christian in the personality of Christ. But Paul had noreason to fear such a misinterpretation, for he had fortifiedhimself against it by the whole of his teaching. The new relationof the Christian to Christ, according to Paul, involves no lossof the separate personality of the Christian; on the contrary,it is everywhere intensely personal; it is not a merely mysticalrelationship to the All or the Absolute, but a relationship oflove existing between one person and another. Just because Paulhad fortified himself against misunderstanding, he was not afraidof an extreme boldness of language. "It is no longer I thatlive, but Christ liveth in me"—these words involve atremendous conception of the break that comes in a man's lifewhen he becomes a Christian. It is almost as though he becamea new person—so stupendous is the change. These words werenot written by a man who believed that Christianity means merelythe entrance of a new motive into the life; Paul believed withall his mind and heart in the doctrine of the new creation orthe new birth.

That doctrine representsone aspect of the salvation

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which was wrought byChrist and is applied by His Spirit. But there is another aspectof the same salvation. Regeneration means a new life; but thereis also a new relation in which the believer stands toward God.That new relation is instituted by "justification"—theact of God by which a sinner is pronounced righteous in His sightbecause of the atoning death of Christ. It is not necessary toask whether justification comes before regeneration or vice versa;in reality they are two aspects of one salvation. And they bothstand at the very beginning of the Christian life. The Christianhas not merely the promise of a new life, but he has already anew life. And he has not merely the promise of being pronouncedrighteous in God's sight (though the blessed pronouncement willbe confirmed on the judgment day), but he is already pronouncedrighteous here and now. At the beginning of every Christian lifethere stands, not a process, but a definite act of God.

That does not mean thatevery Christian can tell exactly at what moment he was justifiedand born again. Some Christians, indeed, are really able to giveday and hour of their conversion. It is a grievous sin to ridiculethe experience of such men. Sometimes, indeed, they are inclinedto ignore the steps in the providence of God which prepared forthe great change. But they are right on the main point. They knowthat when on such and such a day they kneeled in prayer they werestill in their sins, and when they rose from their knees theywere children of God never to be separated from Him. Such experienceis a very holy thing. But on the other hand it is a mistake todemand that it should be universal. There are Christians who cangive day and hour of their conversion, but the great majoritydo not know exactly at what moment they were saved. The effectsof the act are plain, but the act

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itself was done in thequietness of God. Such, very often, is the experience of childrenbrought up by Christian parents. It is not necessary that allshould pass through agonies of soul before being saved; thereare those to whom faith comes peacefully and easily through thenurture of Christian homes.

But however it be manifested,the beginning of the Christian life is an act of God. It is anact of God and not an act of man.

That does not mean,however, that in the beginning of the Christian life God dealswith us as with sticks or stones, unable to understand what isbeing done. On the contrary He deals with us as with persons;salvation has a place in the conscious life of man; God uses inour salvation a conscious act of the human soul—an act whichthough it is itself the work of God's Spirit, is at the same timean act of man. That act of man which God produces and employsin salvation is faith. At the center of Christianity is the doctrineof "justification by faith."

In exalting faith, weare not immediately putting ourselves in contradiction to modernthought. Indeed faith is being exalted very high by men of themost modern type. But what kind of faith? There emerges the differenceof opinion.

Faith is being exaltedso high today that men are being satisfied with any kind of faith,just so it is faith. It makes no difference what is believed,we are told, just so the blessed attitude of faith is there. Theundogmatic faith, it is said, is better than the dogmatic, becauseit is purer faith—faith less weakened by the alloy of knowledge.

Now it is perfectlyclear that such employment of faith merely as a beneficent stateof the soul is bringing some results. Faith in the most absurdthings sometimes

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produces the most beneficentand far-reaching results. But the disturbing thing is that allfaith has an object. The scientific observer may not think thatit is the object that does the work; from his vantage point hemay see clearly that it is really the faith, considered simplyas a psychological phenomenon, that is the important thing, andthat any other object would have answered as well. But the onewho does the believing is always convinced just exactly that itis not the faith, but the object of the faith, which is helpinghim. The moment he becomes convinced that it is merely the faiththat is helping him, the faith disappears; for faith always involvesa conviction of the objective truth or trustworthiness of theobject. If the object is not really trustworthy then the faithis a false faith. It is perfectly true that such a false faithwill often help a man. Things that are false will accomplish agreat many useful things in the world. If I take a counterfeitcoin and buy a dinner with it, the dinner is every bit as goodas if the coin were a product of the mint. And what a very usefulthing a dinner is! But just as I am on my way downtown to buya dinner for a poor man, an expert tells me that my coin is acounterfeit. The miserable, heartless theorizer! While he is goinginto uninteresting, learned details about the primitive historyof that coin, a poor man is dying for want of bread. So it iswith faith. Faith is so very useful, they tell us, that we mustnot scrutinize its basis in truth. But, the great trouble is,such an avoidance of scrutiny itself involves the destructionof faith. For faith is essentially dogmatic. Despite all you cando, you cannot remove the element of intellectual assent fromit. Faith is the opinion that some person will do something foryou. If that person really will do that thing for you, then thefaith is true. If he will not do it, then the faith is false.In the latter case, not all

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the benefits in theworld will make the faith true. Though it has transformed theworld from darkness to light, though it has produced thousandsof glorious healthy lives, it remains a pathological phenomenon.It is false, and sooner or later it is sure to be found out.

Such counterfeits shouldbe removed, not out of a love of destruction, but in order toleave room for the pure gold, the existence of which is impliedin the presence of the counterfeits. Faith is often based uponerror, but there would be no faith at all unless it were sometimesbased upon truth. But if Christian faith is based upon truth,then it is not the faith which saves the Christian but the objectof the faith. And the object of the faith is Christ. Faith, then,according to the Christian view means simply receiving a gift.To have faith in Christ means to cease trying to win God's favorby one's own character; the man who believes in Christ simplyaccepts the sacrifice which Christ offered on Calvary. The resultof such faith is a new life and all good works; but the salvationitself is an absolutely free gift of God.

Very different is theconception of faith which prevails in the liberal Church. Accordingto modern liberalism, faith is essentially the same as "makingChrist Master" in one's life; at least it is by making ChristMaster in the life that the welfare of men is sought. But thatsimply means that salvation is thought to be obtained by our ownobedience to the commands of Christ. Such teaching is just a sublimatedform of legalism. Not the sacrifice of Christ, on this view, butour own obedience to God's law, is the ground of hope.

In this way the wholeachievement of the Reformation has been given up, and there hasbeen a return to the religion of the Middle Ages. At the beginningof the sixteenth century, God raised up a man who began to read

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the Epistle to the Galatianswith his own eyes. The result was the rediscovery of the doctrineof justification by faith. Upon that rediscovery has been basedthe whole of our evangelical freedom. As expounded by Luther andCalvin the Epistle to the Galatians became the "Magna Chartaof Christian liberty." But modern liberalism has returnedto the old interpretation of Galatians which was urged againstthe Reformers. Thus Professor Burton's elaborate commentary onthe Epistle, despite all its extremely valuable modern scholarship,is in one respect a medieval book; it has returned to an anti-Reformationexegesis, by which Paul is thought to be attacking in the Epistleonly the piecemeal morality of the Pharisees. In reality, of course,the object of Paul's attack is the thought that in any way mancan earn his acceptance with God. What Paul is primarily interestedin is not spiritual religion over against ceremonialism, but thefree grace of God over against human merit.

The grace of God isrejected by modern liberalism. And the result is slavery—theslavery of the law, the wretched bondage by which man undertakesthe impossible task of establishing his own righteousness as aground of acceptance with God. It may seem strange at first sightthat "liberalism," of which the very name means freedom,should in reality be wretched slavery. But the phenomenon is notreally so strange. Emancipation from the blessed will of God alwaysinvolves bondage to some worse taskmaster.

Thus it may be saidof the modern liberal Church, as of the Jerusalem of Paul's day,that "she is in bondage with her children." God grantthat she may turn again to the liberty of the gospel of Christ!

The liberty of the gospeldepends upon the gift of God by which the Christian life is begun—agift which involves

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justification, or theremoval of the guilt of sin and the establishment of a right relationbetween the believer and God, and regeneration or the new birth,which makes of the Christian man a new creature.

But there is one obviousobjection to this high doctrine, and the objection leads on toa fuller account of the Christian way of salvation. The obviousobjection to the doctrine of the new creation is that it doesnot seem to be in accord with the observed fact. Are Christiansreally new creatures? It certainly does not seem so. They aresubject to the same old conditions of life to which they weresubject before; if you look upon them you cannot notice any veryobvious change. They have the same weaknesses, and, unfortunately,they have sometimes the same sins. The new creation, if it bereally new, does not seem to be very perfect; God can hardly lookupon it and say, as of the first creation, that it is all verygood.

This is a very realobjection. But Paul meets it gloriously in the very same verse,already considered, in which the doctrine of the new creationis so boldly proclaimed. "It is no longer I that live, butChrist liveth in me"—that is the doctrine of the newcreation. But immediately the objection is taken up; "Thelife which I now live in the flesh," Paul continues, "Ilive by the faith which is in the Son of God who loved me andgave Himself for me." "The life which I now live inthe flesh"—there is the admission. Paul admits thatthe Christian does live a life in the flesh, subject to the sameold earthly conditions and with a continued battle against sin."But," says Paul (and here the objection is answered),"the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faithwhich is in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me."The Christian life is lived by faith and not by sight; the greatchange has not yet come to full fruition; sin has not yet

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been fully conquered;the beginning of the Christian life is a new birth, not an immediatecreation of the full grown man. But although the new life hasnot yet come to full fruition, the Christian knows that the fruitionwill not fail; he is confident that the God who has begun a goodwork in him will complete it unto the day of Christ; he knowsthat the Christ who has loved him and given Himself for him willnot fail him now, but through the Holy Spirit will build him upunto the perfect man. That is what Paul means by living the Christianlife by faith.

Thus the Christian life,though it begins by a momentary act of God, is continued by aprocess. In other words—to use theological language—justificationand regeneration are followed by sanctification. In principlethe Christian is already free from the present evil world, butin practice freedom must still be attained. Thus the Christianlife is not a life of idleness, but a battle.

That is what Paul meanswhen he speaks of faith working through love (Gal. v. 6). Thefaith that he makes the means of salvation is not an idle faith,like the faith which is condemned in the Epistle of James, buta faith that works. The work that it performs is love, and whatlove is Paul explains in the last section of the Epistle to theGalatians. Love, in the Christian sense, is not a mere emotion,but a very practical and a very comprehensive thing. It involvesnothing less than the keeping of the whole law of God. "Thewhole law is fulfilled in one word, I even in this: Thou shaltlove thy neighbor as thyself." Yet the practical resultsof faith do not mean that faith l itself is a work. It is a significantthing that in that last "practical" section of GalatiansPaul does not say that l faith produces the life of love; he saysthat the Spirit of God produces it. The Spirit, then, in thatsection is represented as doing exactly what in the pregnant words,

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"faith workingthrough love," is attributed to faith. The apparent contradictionsimply leads to the true conception of faith. True faith doesnot do anything. When it is said to do something (for example,when we say that it can remove mountains), that is only by a verynatural shortness of expression. Faith is the exact opposite ofworks; faith does not give, it receives. So when Paul says thatwe do something by faith, that is just another way of saying thatof ourselves we do nothing; when it is said that faith works throughlove that means that through faith the necessary basis of allChristian work has been obtained in the removal of guilt and thebirth of the new man, and that the Spirit of God has been received—theSpirit who works with and through the Christian man for holy living.The force which enters the Christian life through faith and worksitself out through love is the power of the Spirit of God.

But the Christian lifeis lived not only by faith; it is also lived in hope. The Christianis in the midst of a sore battle. And as for the condition ofthe world at large—nothing but the coldest heartlessnesscould be satisfied with that. It is certainly true that the wholecreation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. Evenin the Christian life there are things that we should like tosee removed; there are fears within as well as fightings without;even within the Christian life there are sad evidences of sin.But according to the hope which Christ has given us, there willbe final victory, and the struggle of this world will be followedby the glories of heaven. That hope runs all through the Christianlife; Christianity is not engrossed by this transitory world,but measures all things by the thought of eternity.

But at this point anobjection is frequently raised. The "otherworldliness"of Christianity is objected to as

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a form of selfishness.The Christian, it is said, does what is right because of the hopeof heaven, hut how much nobler is the man who because of dutywalks boldly into the darkness of annihilation!

The objection wouldhave some weight if heaven according to Christian belief weremere enjoyment. But as a matter of fact heaven is communion withGod and with His Christ. It can be said reverently that the Christianlongs for heaven not only for his own sake, but also for the sakeof God. Our present love is so cold, our present service so weak;and we would one day love and serve Him as His love deserves.It is perfectly true that the Christian is dissatisfied with thepresent world, but it is a holy dissatisfaction; it is that hungerand thirst after righteousness which our Savior blessed. We areseparated from the Savior now by the veil of sense and by theeffects of sin, and it is not selfish to long to see Him faceto face. To relinquish such longing is not unselfishness, butis like the cold heartlessness of a man who could part from fatheror mother or wife or child without a pang. It is not selfish tolong for the One whom not having seen we love.

Such is the Christianlife—it is a life of conflict but it is also a life of hope.It views this world under the aspect of eternity; the fashionof this world passeth away, and all must stand before the judgmentseat of Christ.

Very different is the"program" of the modern liberal Church. In that program,heaven has little place, and this world is really all in all.The rejection of the Christian hope is not always definite orconscious; sometimes the liberal preacher tries to maintain abelief in the immortality of the soul. But the real basis of thebelief in immortality has been given up by the rejection of theNew Testament account of the resurrection of Christ.

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Chapter7:"The Church"

It has just been observed that Christianity,as well as liberalism, is interested in social institutions. Butthe most important institution has not yet been mentioned—itis the institution of the Church. When, according to Christianbelief, lost souls are saved, the saved ones become united inthe Christian Church. It is only by a baseless caricature thatChristian missionaries are represented as though they had no interestin education or in the maintenance of a social life in this world;it is not true that they are interested only in saving individualsouls and when the souls are saved leave them to their own devices.On the contrary true Christians must everywhere be united in thebrotherhood of the Christian Church.

Very different is thisChristian conception of brotherhood from the liberal doctrineof the "brotherhood of man." The modern liberal doctrineis that all men everywhere, no matter what their race or creed,are brothers. There is a sense in which this doctrine can be acceptedby the Christian. The relation in which all men stand to one anotheris analogous in some important respects to the relation of brotherhood.All men have the same Creator and the same nature. The Christianman can accept all that the modern liberal means by the brotherhoodof man. But the Christian knows also of a relationship far moreintimate than that general relationship of man to man.

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and it is for this moreintimate relationship that he reserves the term "brother."The true brotherhood, according to Christian teaching, is thebrotherhood of the redeemed.

There is nothing narrowabout such teaching; for the Christian brotherhood is open withoutdistinction to all; and the Christian man seeks to bring all menin. Christian service, it is true, is not limited to the householdof faith; all men, whether Christians or not, are our neighborsif they be in need. But if we really love our fellow-men we shallnever be content with binding up their wounds or pouring on oiland wine or rendering them any such lesser service. We shall indeeddo such things for them. But the main business of our lives willbe to bring them to the Savior of their souls.

It is upon this brotherhoodof twice-born sinners, this brotherhood of the redeemed, thatthe Christian founds the hope of society. He finds no solid hopein the improvement of earthly conditions, or the molding of humaninstitutions under the influence of the Golden Rule. These thingsindeed are to be welcomed. They may so palliate the symptoms ofsin that there may be time to apply the true remedy; they mayserve to produce conditions upon the earth favorable to the propagationof the gospel message; they are even valuable for their own sake.But in themselves their value, to the Christian, is certainlysmall. A solid building cannot be constructed when all the materialsare faulty; a blessed society cannot be formed out of men whoare still under the curse of sin. Human institutions are reallyto be molded, not by Christian principles accepted by the unsaved,but by Christian men; the true transformation of society willcome by the influence of those who have themselves been redeemed.

Thus Christianity differsfrom liberalism in the way in

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which the transformationof society is conceived. But according to Christian belief, aswell as according to liberalism, there is really to be a transformationof society; it is not true that the Christian evangelist is interestedin the salvation of individuals without being interested in thesalvation of the race. And even before the salvation of all societyhas been achieved, there is already a society of those who havebeen saved. That society is the Church. The Church is the highestChristian answer to the social needs of man.

And the Church invisible,the true company of the redeemed, finds expression in the companiesof Christians who constitute the visible Church to-day. But whatis the trouble with the visible Church? What is the reason forits obvious weakness? There are perhaps many causes of weakness.But one cause is perfectly plain—the Church of today hasbeen unfaithful to her Lord by admitting great companies of non-Christianpersons, not only into her membership, but into her teaching agencies.It is indeed inevitable that some persons who are not truly Christianshall find their way into the visible Church; fallible men cannotdiscern the heart, and many a profession of faith which seemsto be genuine may really be false. But it is not this kind oferror to which we now refer. What is now meant is not the admissionof individuals whose confessions of faith may not be sincere,but the admission of great companies of persons who have nevermade any really adequate confession of faith at all and whoseentire attitude toward the gospel is the very reverse of the Christianattitude. Such persons, moreover, have been admitted not merelyto the membership, but to the ministry of the Church, and to anincreasing extent have been allowed to dominate its councils anddetermine its teaching. The greatest menace to the Christian Church

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today comes not fromthe enemies outside, but from the enemies within; it comes fromthe presence within the Church of a type of faith and practicethat is anti-Christian to the core.

We are not dealing herewith delicate personal questions; we are not presuming to saywhether such and such an individual man is a Christian or not.God only can decide such questions; no man can say with assurancewhether the attitude of certain individual "liberals"toward Christ is saving faith or not. But one thing is perfectlyplain—whether or not liberals are Christians, it is at anyrate perfectly clear that liberalism is not Christianity. Andthat being the case, it is highly undesirable that liberalismand Christianity should continue to be propagated within the boundsof the same organization. A separation between the two partiesin the Church is the crying need of the hour.

Many indeed are seekingto avoid the separation. Why, they say, may not brethren dwelltogether in unity? The Church, we are told, has room both forliberals and for conservatives. The conservatives may be allowedto remain if they will keep trifling matters in the backgroundand attend chiefly to "the weightier matters of the law."And among the things thus designated as "trifling" isfound the Cross of Christ, as a really vicarious atonement forsin.

Such obscuration ofthe issue attests a really astonishing narrowness on the partof the liberal preacher. Narrowness does not consist in definitedevotion to certain convictions or in definite rejection of others.But the narrow man is the man who rejects the other man's convictionswithout first endeavoring to understand them, the man who makesno effort to look at things from the other man's point of view.For example, it is not narrow to

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reject the Roman Catholicdoctrine that there is no salvation outside the Church. It isnot narrow to try to convince Roman Catholics that that doctrineis wrong. But it would be very narrow to say to a Roman Catholic:"You may go on holding your doctrine about the Church andI shall hold mine, but let us unite in our Christian work, sincedespite such trifling differences we are agreed about the mattersthat concern the welfare of the soul." For of course suchan utterance would simply beg the question; the Roman Catholiccould not possibly both hold his doctrine of the Church and atthe same time reject it, as would be required by the program ofChurch unity just suggested. A Protestant who would speak in thatway would be narrow, because quite independent of the questionwhether he or the Roman Catholic is right about the Church hewould show plainly that he had not made the slightest effort tounderstand the Roman Catholic point of view.

The case is similarwith the liberal program for unity in the Church. It could neverbe advocated by anyone who had made the slightest effort to understandthe point of view of his opponent in the controversy. The liberalpreacher says to the conservative party in the Church: "Letus unite in the same congregation, since of course doctrinal differencesare trifles." But it is the very essence of "conservatism"in the Church to regard doctrinal differences as no trifles butas the matters of supreme moment. A man cannot possibly be an"evangelical" or a "conservative" (or, ashe himself would say, simply a Christian) and regard the Crossof Christ as a trifle. To suppose that he can is the extreme ofnarrowness. It is not necessarily "narrow" to rejectthe vicarious sacrifice of our Lord as the sole means of salvation.It may be very wrong (and we believe that it is), but it is

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not necessarily narrow.But to suppose that a man can hold to the vicarious sacrificeof Christ and at the same time belittle that doctrine, to supposethat a man can believe that the eternal Son of God really borethe guilt of men's sins on the Cross and at the same time regardthat belief as a "trifle" without bearing upon the welfareof men's souls—that is very narrow and very absurd. We shallreally get nowhere in this controversy unless we make a sincereeffort to understand the other man's point of view.

But for another reasonalso the effort to sink doctrinal differences and unite the Churchon a program of Christian service is unsatisfactory. It is unsatisfactorybecause, in its usual contemporary form, it is dishonest. Whatevermay be thought of Christian doctrine, it can hardly be deniedthat honesty is one of the "weightier matters of the law."Yet honesty is being relinquished in wholesale fashion by theliberal party in many ecclesiastical bodies today.

To recognize that factone does not need to take sides at all with regard to the doctrinalor historical questions. Suppose it be true that devotion to acreed is a sign of narrowness or intolerance, suppose the Churchought to be founded upon devotion to the ideal of Jesus or uponthe desire to put His spirit into operation in the world, andnot at all upon a confession of faith with regard to His redeemingwork. Even if all this were true, even if a creedal Church werean undesirable thing, it would still remain true that as a matterof fact many (indeed in spirit really all) evangelical churchesare creedal churches, and that if a man does not accept theircreed he has no right to a place in their teaching ministry. Thecreedal character of the churches is differently expressed inthe different evangelical bodies, but the example of the Presbyterian

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Church in the UnitedStates of America may perhaps serve to illustrate what is meant.It is required of all officers in the Presbyterian Church, includingthe ministers, that at their ordination they make answer "plainly"to a series of questions which begins with the two following:

"Do you believethe Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word ofGod, the only infallible rule of faith and practice?"

"Do you sincerelyreceive and adopt the Confession of Faith of this Church, as containingthe system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures?"

If these "constitutionalquestions" do not fix clearly the creedal basis of the PresbyterianChurch, it is difficult to see how any human language could possiblydo so. Yet immediately after making such a solemn declaration,immediately after declaring that the Westminster Confession containsthe system of doctrine taught in infallible Scriptures, many ministersof the Presbyterian Church will proceed to decry that same Confessionand that doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture to which theyhave just solemnly subscribed!

We are not now speakingof the membership of the Church, but of the ministry, and we arenot speaking of the man who is troubled by grave doubts and wonderswhether with his doubts he can honestly continue his membershipin the Church. For great hosts of such troubled souls the Churchoffers bountifully its fellowship and its aid; it would be a crimeto cast them out. There are many men of little faith in our troubloustimes. It is not of them that we speak. God grant that they mayobtain comfort and help through the ministrations of the Church!

But we are speakingof men very different from these

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men of little faith—fromthese men who are troubled by doubts and are seeking earnestlyfor the truth. The men whom we mean are seeking not membershipin the Church, but a place in the ministry, and they desire notto learn but to teach. They are not men who say, "I believe,help mine unbelief," but men who are proud in the possessionof the knowledge of this world, and seek a place in the ministrythat they may teach what is directly contrary to the Confessionof Faith to which they subscribe. For that course of action variousexcuses are made—the growth of custom by which the constitutionalquestions are supposed to have become a dead letter, various mentalreservations, various "interpretations" of the declaration( which of course mean a complete reversal of the meaning). Butno such excuses can change the essential fact. Whether it be desirableor not, the ordination declaration is part of the constitutionof the Church. If a man can stand on that platform he may be anofficer in the Presbyterian Church; if he cannot stand on it hehas no right to be an officer in the Presbyterian Church. Andthe case is no doubt essentially similar in other evangelicalChurches. Whether we like it or not, these Churches are foundedupon a creed; they are organized for the propagation of a message.If a man desires to combat that message instead of propagatingit, he has no right, no matter how false the message may be, togain a vantage ground for combating it by making a declarationof his faith which—be it plainly spoken—is not true.

But if such a courseof action is wrong, another course of action is perfectly opento the man who desires to propagate "liberal Christianity."Finding the existing "evangelical" churches to be boundup to a creed which he does not accept, he may either unite himselfwith some other existing body or else found a new body to suithim

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self. There are of coursecertain obvious disadvantages in such a course—the abandonmentof church buildings to which one is attached, the break in familytraditions, the injury to sentiment of various kinds. But thereis one supreme advantage which far overbalances all such disadvantages.It is the advantage of honesty. The path of honesty in such mattersmay be rough and thorny, but it can be trod. And it has alreadybeen trod—for example, by the Unitarian Church. The UnitarianChurch is frankly and honestly just the kind of church that theliberal preacher desires—namely, a church without an authoritativeBible, without doctrinal requirements, and without a creed.

Honesty, despite allthat can be said and done, is not a trifle, but one of the weightiermatters of the law. Certainly it has a value of its own, a valuequite independent of consequences. But the consequences of honestywould in the case now under discussion not be unsatisfactory;here as elsewhere honesty would probably prove to be the bestpolicy. By withdrawing from the confessional churches—thosechurches that are founded upon a creed derived from Scripture—theliberal preacher would indeed sacrifice the opportunity, almostwithin his grasp, of so obtaining control of those confessionalchurches as to change their fundamental character. The sacrificeof that opportunity would mean that the hope of turning the resourcesof the evangelical churches into the propagation of liberalismwould be gone. But liberalism would certainly not suffer in theend. There would at least be no more need of using equivocal language,no more need of avoiding offence. The liberal preacher would obtainthe full personal respect even of his opponents, and the wholediscussion would be placed on higher ground. All would, be perfectlystraightforward and above-board. And if

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liberalism is true,the mere lose of physical resources would not prevent it frommaking its way.

At this point a questionmay arise. If there ought to be a separation between the liberalsand the conservatives in the Church, why should not the conservativesbe the ones to withdraw ? Certainly it may come to that. If theliberal party really obtains full control of the councils of theChurch, then no evangelical Christian can continue to supportthe Church's work. If a man believes that salvation from sin comesonly through the atoning death of Jesus, then he cannot honestlysupport by his gifts and by his presence a propaganda which isintended to produce an exactly opposite impression. To do so wouldmean the most terrible blood-guiltiness which it is possible toconceive. If the liberal party, therefore, really obtains controlof the Church, evangelical Christians must be prepared to withdrawno matter what it costs. Our Lord has died for us, and surelywe must not deny Him for favor of men. But up to the present timesuch a situation has not yet appeared; the creedal basis stillstands firm in the constitutions of evangelical churches. Andthere is a very real reason why it is not the "conservatives"who ought to withdraw. The reason is found in the trust whichthe churches hold. That trust includes trust funds of the mostdefinite kind. And contrary to what seems to be the prevailingopinion, we venture to regard a trust as a sacred thing. The fundsof the evangelical churches are held under a very definite trust;they are committed to the various bodies for the propagation ofthe gospel as set forth in the Bible and in the confessions offaith. To devote them to any other purpose, even though that otherpurpose should be in itself far more desirable, would be aviolation of trust.

It must be admittedthat the present situation is anomalous.

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Funds dedicated to thepropagation of the gospel by godly men and women of previous generationsor given by thoroughly evangelical congregations today are innearly all the churches being used partly in the propagation ofwhat is diametrically opposed to the evangelical faith. Certainlythat situation ought not to continue; it is an offence to everythoughtfully honest man whether he be Christian or not. But inremaining in the existing churches the conservatives are in afundamentally different position from the liberals; for the conservativesare in agreement with the plain constitutions of the churches,while the liberal party can maintain itself only by an equivocalsubscription to declarations which it does not really believe.

But how shall so anomalousa situation be brought to an end? The best way would undoubtedlybe the voluntary withdrawal of the liberal ministers from thoseconfessional churches whose confessions they do not, in the plainhistorical sense, accept. And we have not altogether abandonedhope of such a solution. Our differences with the liberal partyin the Church are indeed profound, but with regard to the obligationof simple honesty of speech, some agreement might surely be attained.Certainly the withdrawal of liberal ministers from the creedalchurches would be enormously in the interests of harmony and co-operation.Nothing engenders strife so much as a forced unity, within thesame organization, of those who disagree fundamentally in aim.

But is not advocacyof such separation a flagrant instance of intolerance? The objectionis often raised. But it ignores altogether the difference betweeninvoluntary and voluntary organizations. Involuntary organizationsought to be tolerant, but voluntary organizations, so far as thefundamental purpose of their existence is

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concerned, must be intolerantor else cease to exist. The state is an involuntary organization;a man is forced to be a member of it whether he will or no. Itis therefore an interference with liberty for the state to prescribeany one type of opinion or any one type of education for its citizens.But within the state, individual citizens who desire to unitefor some special purpose should be permitted to do so. Especiallyin the sphere of religion, such permission of individuals to uniteis one of the rights which lie at the very foundation of our civiland religious liberty. The state does not scrutinize the rightnessor wrongness of the religious purpose for which such voluntaryreligious associations are formed—if it did undertake suchscrutiny all religious liberty would be gone—but it merelyprotects the right of individuals to unite for any religious purposewhich they may choose.

Among such voluntaryassociations are to be found the evangelical churches. An evangelicalchurch is composed of a number of persons who have come to agreementin a certain message about Christ and who desire to unite in thepropagation of that message, as it is set forth in their creedon the basis of the Bible. No one is forced to unite himself withthe body thus formed; and because of this total absence of compulsionthere can be no interference with liberty in the maintenance ofany specific purpose—for example, the propagation of a message—asa fundamental purpose of the association. If other persons desireto form a religious association with some purpose other than thepropagation of a message—for example, the purpose of promotingin the world, simply by exhortation and by the inspiration ofthe example of Jesus, a certain type of life—they are atperfect liberty to do so. But for an organization which is foundedwith the fundamental purpose of propagating a message to commitits

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resources and its nameto those who are engaged in combating the message is not tolerancebut simple dishonesty. Yet it is exactly this course of actionthat is advocated by those who would allow non-doctrinal religionto be taught in the name of doctrinal churches—churches thatare plainly doctrinal both in their constitutions and in the declarationswhich they require of every candidate for ordination.

The matter may be madeplain by an illustration from secular life. Suppose in a politicalcampaign in America there be formed a Democratic club for thepurpose of furthering the cause of the Democratic party. Supposethere are certain other citizens who are opposed to the tenetsof the Democratic club and in opposition desire to support theRepublican party. What is the honest way for them to accomplishtheir purpose? Plainly it is simply the formation of a Republicanclub which shall carry on a propaganda in favor of Republicanprinciples. But suppose, instead of pursuing this simple courseof action, the advocates of Republican principles should conceivethe notion of making a declaration of conformity to Democraticprinciples, thus gaining an entrance into the Democratic cluband finally turning its resources into an anti-Democratic propaganda.That plan might be ingenious. But would it be honest? Yet it isjust exactly such a plan which is adopted by advocates of a non-doctrinalreligion who by subscription to a creed gain an entrance intothe teaching ministry of doctrinal or evangelical churches. Letno one be offended by the illustration taken from ordinary life.We are not for a moment suggesting that the Church is no morethan a political club. But the fact that the Church is more thana political club does not mean that in ecclesiastical affairsthere is any abrogation of the homely principles of honesty.

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The Church may possiblybe more honest, but certainly it ought not to be less honest,than a political club.

Certainly the essentiallycreedal character of evangelical churches is firmly fixed. A manmay disagree with the Westminster Confession, for example, buthe can hardly fail to see what it means; at least he can hardlyfail to understand the "system of doctrine" which istaught in it. The Confession, whatever its faults may be, is certainlynot lacking in definiteness. And certainly a man who solemnlyaccepts that system of doctrine as his own cannot at the sametime be an advocate of a nondoctrinal religion which regards asa trifling thing that which is the very sum and substance of theConfession and the very center and core of the Bible upon whichit is based. Similar is the case in other evangelical churchesThe Protestant Episcopal Church, some of whose members, it istrue, might resent the distinctive title of "evangelical,"is clearly founded upon a creed, and that creed, including theexultant supernaturalism of the New Testament and the redemptionoffered by Christ, is plainly involved in the Book of Common Prayerwhich every priest in his own name and in the name of the congregationmust read.

The separation of naturalisticliberalism from the evangelical churches would no doubt greatlydiminish the size of the churches. But Gideon's three hundredwere more powerful than the thirty-two thousand with which themarch against the Midianites began.

Certainly the presentsituation is fraught with deadly weakness. Christian men havebeen redeemed from sin, without merit of their own, by the sacrificeof Christ. But every man who has been truly redeemed from sinlongs to carry to others the same blessed gospel through whichhe himself has been saved. The propagation of the gospel

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is clearly the joy aswell as the duty of every Christian man. But how shall the gospelbe propagated? The natural answer is that it shall be propagatedthrough the agencies of the Church—boards of missions andthe like. An obvious duty, therefore, rests upon the Christianman of contributing to the agencies of the Church. But at thispoint the perplexity arises. The Christian man discovers to hisconsternation that the agencies of the Church are propagatingnot only the gospel as found in the Bible and in the historiccreeds, but also a type of religious teaching which is at everyconceivable point the diametrical opposite of the gospel. Thequestion naturally arises whether there is any reason for contributingto such agencies at all. Of every dollar contributed to them,perhaps half goes to the support of true missionaries of the Cross,while the other half goes to the support of those who are persuadingmen that the message of the Cross is unnecessary or wrong. Ifpart of our gifts is to be used to neutralize the other part,is not contribution to mission boards altogether absurd? The questionmay at least very naturally be raised. It should not indeed beanswered hastily in a way hostile to contribution to mission boards.Perhaps it is better that the gospel should be both preached andcombated by the same agencies than that it should not be preachedat all. At any rate, the true missionaries of the Cross, eventhough the mission boards which support them should turn out tobe very bad, must not be allowed to be in want. But the situation,from the point of view of the evangelical Christian, is unsatisfactoryin the extreme. Many Christians seek to relieve the situationby "designating" their gifts, instead of allowing themto be distributed by the mission agencies. But at this point oneencounters the centralization of power which is going on in themodern Church. On

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account of that centralizationthe designation of gifts is often found to be illusory. If giftsare devoted by the donors to one mission known to be evangelical,that does not always really increase the resources of that mission;for the mission boards can simply cut down the proportion assignedto that mission from the undesignated funds, and the final resultis exactly the same as if there had been no designation of thegift at all.

The existence and thenecessity of mission boards and the like prevents, in general,one obvious solution of the present difficulty in the Church—thesolution offered by local autonomy of the congregation. It mightbe suggested that each congregation should determine its own confessionof faith or its own program of work. Then each congregation mightseem to be responsible only for itself, and might seem to be relievedfrom the odious task of judging others. But the suggestion isimpracticable. Aside from the question whether a purely congregationalsystem of church government is desirable in itself, it is impossiblewhere mission agencies are concerned. In the support of such agencies,many congregations obviously must unite; and the question ariseswhether evangelical congregations can honestly support agencieswhich are opposed to the evangelical faith.

At any rate, the situationcannot be helped by ignoring facts. The plain fact is that liberalism,whether it be true or false, is no mere "heresy"—nomere divergence at isolated points from Christian teaching. Onthe contrary it proceeds from a totally different root, and itconstitutes, in essentials, a unitary system of its own. Thatdoes not mean that all liberals hold all parts of the system,or that Christians who have been affected by liberal teachingat one point have been affected at all points. There is sometimesa salutary lack of logic which prevents

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the whole of a man'sfaith being destroyed when he has given up a part. But the trueway in which to examine a spiritual movement is in its logicalrelations; logic is the great dynamic, and the logical implicationsof any way of thinking are sooner or later certain to be workedout. And taken as a whole, even as it actually exists today, naturalisticliberalism is a fairly unitary phenomenon; it is tending moreand more to eliminate from itself illogical remnants of Christianbelief. It differs from Christianity in its view of God, of man,of the seat of authority and of the way of salvation. And it differsfrom Christianity not only in theology but in the whole of life.It is indeed sometimes said that there can be communion in feelingwhere communion in thinking is gone, a communion of the heartas distinguished from a communion of the head. But with respectto the present controversy, such a distinction certainly doesnot apply. On the contrary, in reading the books and listeningto the sermons of recent liberal teachers—so untroubled bythe problem of sin, so devoid of all sympathy for guilty humanity,so prone to abuse and ridicule the things dearest to the heartof every Christian man—one can only confess that if liberalismis to return into the Christian communion there must be a changeof heart fully as much as a change of mind. God grant that sucha change of heart may come! But meanwhile the present situationmust not be ignored but faced. Christianity is being attackedfrom within by a movement which is anti-Christian to the core.

What is the duty ofChristian men at such at time? What is the duty, in particular,of Christian officers in the Church?

In the first place,they should encourage those who are engaging in the intellectualand spiritual struggle. They should not say, in the sense in whichsome laymen say it,

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that more time shouldbe devoted to the propagation of Christianity, and less to thedefense of Christianity. Certainly there should be propagationof Christianity. Believers should certainly not content themselveswith warding off attacks, but should also unfold in an orderlyand positive way the full riches of the gospel. But far more isusually meant by those who call for less defense and more propagation.What they really intend is the discouragement of the whole intellectualdefense of the faith. And their words come as a blow in the faceof those who are fighting the great battle. As a matter of fact,not less time, but more time, should be devoted to the defenseof the gospel. Indeed, truth cannot be stated clearly at all withoutbeing set over against error. Thus a large part of the New Testamentis polemic; the enunciation of evangelical truth was occasionedby the errors which had arisen in the churches. So it will alwaysbe, on account of the fundamental laws of the human mind. Moreover,the present crisis must be taken into account. There may havebeen a day when there could be propagation of Christianity withoutdefense. But such a day at any rate is past. At the present time,when the opponents of the gospel are almost in control of ourchurches, the slightest avoidance of the defense of the gospelis just sheer unfaithfulness to the Lord. There have been previousgreat crises in the history of the Church, crises almost comparableto this. One appeared in the second century, when the very lifeof Christendom was threatened by the Gnostics. Another came inthe Middle Ages when the gospel of God's grace seemed forgotten.In such times of crisis, God has always saved the Church. ButHe has always saved it not by theological pacifists, but by sturdycontenders for the truth.

In the second place,Christian officers in the Church

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should perform theirduty in deciding upon the qualifications of candidates for theministry. The question "For Christ or against him?"constantly arises in the examination of candidates for ordination.Attempts are often made to obscure the issue. It is often said:"The candidate will no doubt move in the direction of thetruth; let him now be sent out to learn as well as to preach."And so another opponent of the gospel enters the councils of theChurch, and another false prophet goes forth to encourage sinnersto come before the judgment seat of God clad in the miserablerags of their own righteousness. Such action is not really "kind"to the candidate himself. It is never kind to encourage a manto enter into a life of dishonesty. The fact often seems to beforgotten that the evangelical Churches are purely voluntary organizations;no one is required to enter into their service. If a man cannotaccept the belief of such churches, there are other ecclesiasticalbodies in which he can find a place. The belief of the PresbyterianChurch, for example, is plainly set forth in the Confession ofFaith, and the Church will never afford any warmth of communionor engage with any real vigor in her work until her ministersare in whole-hearted agreement with that belief. It is strangehow in the interests of an utterly false kindness to men, Christiansare sometimes willing to relinquish their loyalty to the crucifiedLord.

In the third place,Christian officers in the Church should show their loyalty toChrist in their capacity as members of the individual congregations.The issue often arises in connection with the choice of a pastor.Such and such a man, it is said, is a brilliant preacher. Butwhat is the content of his preaching? Is his preaching full ofthe gospel of Christ? The answer is often evasive. The preacherin question, it is said, is of good standing in the

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Church, and he has neverdenied the doctrines or grace. Therefore, it is urged, he shouldbe called to the pastorate. But shall we be satisfied with suchnegative assurances? Shall we be satisfied with preachers whomerely "do not deny" the Cross of Christ? God grantthat such satisfaction may be broken down! The people are perishingunder the ministrations of those who "do not deny" theCross of Christ. Surely something more than that is needed. Godsend us ministers who, instead of merely avoiding denial of theCross shall be on fire with the Cross, whose whole life shallbe one burning sacrifice of gratitude to the blessed Savior wholoved them and gave Himself for them!

In the fourth place—themost important thing of all—there must be a renewal of Christianeducation. The rejection of Christianity is due to various causes.But a very potent cause is simple ignorance. In countless cases,Christianity is rejected simply because men have not the slightestnotion of what Christianity is. An outstanding fact of recentChurch history is the appalling growth of ignorance in the Church.Various causes, no doubt, can be assigned for this lamentabledevelopment. The development is due partly to the general declineof education—at least so far as literature and history areconcerned. The schools of the present day are being ruined bythe absurd notion that education should follow the line of leastresistance, and that something can be "drawn out" ofthe mind before anything is put in. They are also being ruinedby an exaggerated emphasis on methodology at the expense of contentand on what is materially useful at the expense of the high spiritualheritage of mankind. These lamentable tendencies, moreover, arein danger of being made permanent through the sinister extensionof state control. But something more

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than the general declinein education is needed to account for the special growth of ignorancein the Church. The growth of ignorance in the Church is the logicaland inevitable result of the false notion that Christianity isa life and not also a doctrine; if Christianity is not a doctrinethen of course teaching is not necessary to Christianity. Butwhatever be the causes for the growth of ignorance in the Church,the evil must be remedied. It must be remedied primarily by therenewal of Christian education in the family, but also by theuse of whatever other educational agencies the Church can find.Christian education is the chief business of the hour for everyearnest Christian man. Christianity cannot subsist unless menknow what Christianity is; and the fair and logical thing is tolearn what Christianity is, not from its opponents, but from thosewho themselves are Christians. That method of procedure wouldbe the only fair method in the case of any movement. But it isstill more in place in the case of a movement such as Christianitywhich has laid the foundation of all that we hold most dear. Menhave abundant opportunity today to learn what can be said againstChristianity, and it is only fair that they should also learnsomething about the thing that is being attacked.

Such measures are neededtoday. The present is a time not for ease or pleasure, but forearnest and prayerful work. A terrible crisis unquestionably hasarisen in the Church. In the ministry of evangelical churchesare to be found hosts of those who reject the gospel of Christ.By the equivocal use of traditional phrases, by the representationof differences of opinion as though they were only differencesabout the interpretation of the Bible, entrance into the Churchwas secured for those who are hostile to the very foundationsof the faith.

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And now there are someindications that the fiction of conformity to the past is to bethrown off, and the real meaning of what has been taking placeis to be allowed to appear. The Church, it is now apparently supposed,has almost been educated up to the point where the shackles ofthe Bible can openly be cast away and the doctrine of the Crossof Christ can be relegated to the limbo of discarded subtleties.

Yet there is in theChristian life no room for despair. Only, our hopefulness shouldnot be founded on the sand. It should be founded, not upon a blindignorance of the danger, but solely upon the precious promisesof God. Laymen, as well as ministers, should return, in thesetrying days, with new earnestness, to the study of the Word ofGod.

If the Word of God beheeded, the Christian battle will be fought both with love andwith faithfulness. Party passions and personal animosities willbe put away, but on the other hand, even angels from heaven willbe rejected if they preach a gospel different from the blessedgospel of the Cross. Every man must decide upon which side hewill stand. God grant that we may decide aright!

What the immediate futuremay bring we cannot presume to say. The final result indeed isclear. God has not deserted His Church; He has brought her througheven darker hours than those which try our courage now, yet thedarkest hour has always come before the dawn. We have today theentrance of paganism into the Church in the name of Christianity.But in the second century a similar battle was fought and won.From another point of view, modern liberalism is like the legalismof the middle ages, with its dependence upon the merit of man.And another Reformation in God's good time will come.

But meanwhile our soulsare tried. We can only try to

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do our duty in humilityand in sole reliance upon the Savior who bought us with His blood.The future is in God's hand, and we do not know the means thatHe will use in the accomplishment of His will. It may be thatthe present evangelical churches will face the facts, and regaintheir integrity while yet there is time. If that solution is tobe adopted there is no time to lose, since the forces opposedto the gospel are now almost in control. It is possible that theexisting churches may be given over altogether to naturalism,that men may then see that the fundamental needs of the soul areto be satisfied not inside but outside of the existing churches,and that thus new Christian groups may be formed.

But whatever solutionthere may be, one thing is clear. There must be somewhere groupsof redeemed men and women who can gather together humbly in thename of Christ, to give thanks to Him for His unspeakable giftand to worship the Father through Him. Such groups alone can satisfythe needs of the soul. At the present time, there is one longingof the human heart which is often forgotten—it is the deep,pathetic longing of the Christian for fellowship with his brethren.One hears much, it is true, about Christian union and harmonyand co-operation. But the union that is meant is often a unionwith the world against the Lord, or at best a forced union ofmachinery and tyrannical committees. How different is the trueunity of the Spirit in the bond of peace! Sometimes, it is true,the longing for Christian fellowship is satisfied. There are congregations,even in the present age of conflict, that are really gatheredaround the table of the crucified Lord; there are pastors thatare pastors indeed. But such congregations, in many cities, aredifficult to find. Weary with the conflicts of the world, onegoes into the Church to seek refreshment for the soul.

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And what does one find?Alas, too often, one finds only the turmoil of the world. Thepreacher comes forward, not out of a secret place of meditationand power, not with the authority of God's Word permeating hismessage, not with human wisdom pushed far into the backgroundby the glory of the Cross, but with human opinions about the socialproblems of the hour or easy solutions of the vast problem ofsin. Such is the sermon. And then perhaps the service is closedby one of those hymns breathing out the angry passions of 1861,which are to be found in the back part of the hymnals. Thus thewarfare of the world has entered even into the house of God, Andsad indeed is the heart of the man who has come seeking peace.

Is there no refuge fromstrife? Is there no place of refreshing where a man can preparefor the battle of life? Is there no place where two or three cangather in Jesus' name, to forget for the moment all those thingsthat divide nation from nation and race from race, to forget humanpride, to forget the passions of war, to forget the puzzling problemsof industrial strife, and to unite in overflowing gratitude atthe foot of the Cross? If there be such a place, then that isthe house of God and that the gate of heaven. And from under thethreshold of that house will go forth a river that will revivethe weary world.

This article was made available on theinternet via REFORMATIONINK (www.markers.com/ink).Refer any correspondence to Shane Rosenthal: SocietyCP@aol.com.

÷Christianity & Liberalism

by J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)

Originally published in 1923 (NY: Macmillan), this book is now in the public domain (original pagination and footnotes have been kept intact for purposes of reference). The electronic edition of this book was scanned and edited by Shane Rosenthal for Reformation Ink. It may be copied and distributed without restriction. In a few cases the spelling has been modernized.

Table of Contents

1. Chapter One: Introduction

2. Chapter Two: Doctrine

3. Chapter Three: God and Man

4. Chapter Four: The Bible

5. Chapter Five: Christ

6. Chapter Six: Salvation

7. Chapter Seven: The Church

What This Book Is About (in Machen's own words). "In my little book, Christianity and Liberalism, 1923, I tried to show that the issue in the Church of the present day is not between two varieties of the same religion, but, at bottom, between two essentially different types of thought and life. There is much interlocking of the branches, but the two tendencies, Modernism and supernaturalism, or (otherwise designated) non-doctrinal religion and historic Christianity, spring from different roots. In particular, I tried to show that Christianity is not a "life," as distinguished from a doctrine, and not a life that has doctrine as its changing symbolic expression, but that—exactly the other way around—it is a life founded on a doctrine." (From "Christianity in Conflict," an autobiographical essay on Machen's life and works). To order a hard copy of this book for yourself or a friend, click here.

÷CHRISTIANITY & LIBERALISM, page 51

God help me, Amen." Indifferentism about doctrine makes no heroes of the faith.

Still another difference of opinion concerns the nature and prerogatives of the Christian ministry. According to Anglican doctrine, the bishops are in possession of an authority which has been handed down to them, by successive ordination, from the apostles of the Lord, and without such ordination there is no valid priesthood. Other churches deny this doctrine of "apostolic succession," and hold a different view of the ministry. Here again, the difference is no trifle, and we have little sympathy with those who in the mere interests of Church efficiency try to induce Anglicans to let down the barrier which their principles have led them to erect. But despite the importance of this difference, it does not descend to the very roots. Even to the conscientious Anglican himself, though he regards the members of other bodies as in schism, Christian fellowship with individuals in those other bodies is still possible; and certainly those who reject the Anglican view of the ministry can regard the Anglican Church as a genuine and very noble member in the body of Christ.

Another difference of opinion is that between the Calvinistic or Reformed theology and the Arminianism which appears in the Methodist Church. It is difficult to see how any one who has really studied the question can regard that difference as an unimportant matter. On the contrary' it touches very closely some of the profoundest things of the Christian faith. A Calvinist is constrained to regard the Arminian theology as a serious impoverishment of the Scripture doctrine of divine grace, and equally serious is the view which the Arminian must hold as to the doctrine of the Reformed Churches. Yet here again, true evangelical fellowship is possible between those

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who hold, with regard to some exceedingly important matters, sharply opposing views.

Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today! We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all.

That does not mean that conservatives and liberals must live in personal animosity. It does not involve any lack of sympathy on our part for those who have felt obliged by the current of the times to relinquish their confidence in the strange message of the Cross. Many ties—ties of blood, of citizenship, of ethical aims, of humanitarian endeavor—unite us to those who have abandoned the gospel. We trust that those ties may never be weakened, and that ultimately they may serve some purpose in the propagation of the Christian faith. But Christian service consists primarily in the propagation of a message, and specifically Christian fellowship exists only between those to whom the message has become the very basis of all life.

The character of Christianity as founded upon a message is summed up in the words of the eighth verse of the first chapter of Acts—"Ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." It is entirely unnecessary,

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for the present purpose, to argue about the historical value of the Book of Acts or to discuss the question whether Jesus really spoke the words just quoted. In any case the verse must be recognized as an adequate summary of what is known about primitive Christianity. From the beginning Christianity was a campaign of witnessing. And the witnessing did not concern merely what Jesus was doing within the recesses of the individual life. To take the words of Acts in that way is to do violence to the context and to all the evidence. On the contrary, the Epistles of Paul and all the sources make it abundantly plain that the testimony was primarily not to inner spiritual facts but to what Jesus had done once for all in His death and resurrection.

Christianity is based, then, upon an account of something that happened, and the Christian worker is primarily a witness. But if so, it is rather important that the Christian worker should tell the truth. When a man takes his seat upon the witness stand, it makes little difference what the cut of his coat is, or whether his sentences are nicely turned. The important thing is that he tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If we are to be truly Christians, then, it does make a vast difference what our teachings are, and it is by no means aside from the point to set forth the teachings of Christianity in contrast with the teachings of the chief modern rival of Christianity.

The chief modern rival of Christianity is "liberalism." An examination of the teachings of liberalism in comparison with those of Christianity will show that at every point the two movements are in direct opposition. That examination will now be undertaken, though merely in a summary and cursory way.

PROCEED to Chapter Three: God and Man

÷CHRISTIANITY & LIBERALISM, page 149

And, practically, the liberal preacher has very little to say about the other world. This world is really the center of all his thoughts; religion itself, and even God, are made merely a means for the betterment of conditions upon this earth.

Thus religion has become a mere function of the community or of the state. So it is looked upon by the men of the present day. Even hard-headed business men and politicians have become convinced that religion is needed. But it is thought to be needed merely as a means to an end. We have tried to get along without religion, it is said, but the experiment was a failure, and now religion must be called in to help.

For example, there is the problem of the immigrants; great populations have found a place in our country; they do not speak our language or know our customs; and we do not know what to do with them. We have attacked them by oppressive legislation or proposals of legislation, but such measures have not been altogether effective. Somehow these people display a perverse attachment to the language that they learned at their mother's knee. It may be strange that a man should love the language that he learned at his mother's knee, but these people do love it, and we are perplexed in our efforts to produce a unified American people. So religion is called in to help; we are inclined to proceed against the immigrants now with a Bible in one hand and a club in the other offering them the blessings of liberty. That is what is sometimes meant by "Christian Americanization."

Another puzzling problem is the problem of industrial relations. Self-interest has here been appealed to; employers and employees have had pointed out to them the plain commercial advantages of conciliation. But all to no purpose. Class clashes still against class in the

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destructiveness of industrial warfare. And sometimes false doctrine provides a basis for false practice; the danger of Bolshevism is ever in the air. Here again repressive measures have been tried without avail; the freedom of speech and of the press has been radically curtailed. But repressive legislation seems unable to check the march of ideas. Perhaps, therefore, in these matters also, religion must be invoked.

Still another problem faces the modern world—the problem of international peace. This problem also seemed at one time nearly solved; self-interest seemed likely to be sufficient; there were many who supposed that the bankers would prevent another European war. But all such hopes were cruelly shattered in 1914, and there is not a whit of evidence that they are better founded now than they were then. Here again, therefore, self-interest is insufficient; and religion must be called in to help.

Such considerations have led to a renewed public interest in the subject of religion; religion is discovered after all to be a useful thing. But the trouble is that in being utilized religion is also being degraded and destroyed. Religion is being regarded more and more as a mere means to a higher end.1 The change can be detected with especial clearness in the way in which missionaries commend their cause. Fifty years ago, missionaries made their appeal in the light of eternity. "Millions of men," they were accustomed to say, "are going down to eternal destruction; Jesus is a Savior sufficient for all; send us out therefore with the message of salvation while yet there is

1. For a penetrating criticism of this tendency, especially as It would result in the control of religious education by the community, and for an eloquent advocacy of the opposite view, which makes Christianity an end in itself, see Harold McA. Robinson, "Democracy and Christianity," in The Christian Educator Vol. No. 1, for October, 1920, pp. 3-5.

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time." Some missionaries, thank God, still speak in that way. But very many missionaries make quite a different appeal. "We are missionaries to India," they say. "Now India is in ferment; Bolshevism is creeping in; send us out to India that the menace may be checked." Or else they say: "We are missionaries to Japan; Japan will be dominated by militarism unless the principles of Jesus have sway; send us out therefore to prevent the calamity of war."

The same great change appears in community life. A new community, let us say, has been formed. It possesses many things that naturally belong to a well-ordered community; it has a drug-store, and a country club, and school. "But there is one thing," its inhabitants say to themselves, "that is still lacking; we have no church. But a church is a recognized and necessary part of every healthy community. We must therefore have a church." And so an expert in community church-building is summoned to take the necessary steps. The persons who speak in this way usually have little interest in religion for its own sake; it has never occurred to them to enter into the secret place of communion with the holy God. But religion is thought to be necessary for a healthy community; and therefore for the sake of the community they are willing to have a church.

Whatever may be thought of this attitude toward religion, it is perfectly plain that the Christian religion cannot be treated in any such way. The moment it is so treated it ceases to be Christian. For if one thing is plain it is that Christianity refuses to be regarded as a mere means to a higher end. Our Lord made that perfectly clear when He said: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother . . . he cannot be my disciple" (Luke xiv. 26). Whatever else those stupendous words may

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mean, they certainly mean that the relationship to Christ takes precedence of all other relationships, even the holiest of relationships like those that exist between husband and wife and parent and child. Those other relationships exist for the sake of Christianity and not Christianity for the sake of them. Christianity will indeed accomplish many useful things in this world, but if it is accepted in order to accomplish those useful things it is not Christianity. Christianity will combat Bolshevism; but if it is accepted in order to combat Bolshevism, it is not Christianity: Christianity will produce a unified nation, in a slow but satisfactory way; but if it is accepted in order to produce a unified nation, it is not Christianity: Christianity will produce a healthy community; but if it is accepted in order to produce a healthy community, it is not Christianity: Christianity will promote international peace; but if it is accepted in order to promote international peace, it is not Christianity. Our Lord said: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." But if you seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness in order that all those other things may be added unto you, you will miss both those other things and the Kingdom of God as well.

But if Christianity be directed toward another world; if it be a way by which individuals can escape from the present evil age to some better country, what becomes of "the social gospel"? At this point is detected one of the most obvious lines of cleavage between Christianity and the liberal Church. The older evangelism, says the modern liberal preacher, sought to rescue individuals, while the newer evangelism seeks to transform the whole organism of society: the older evangelism was individual; the newer evangelism is social.

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This formulation of the issue is not entirely correct, but it contains an element of truth. It is true that historic Christianity is in conflict at many points with the collectivism of the present day; it does emphasize, against the claims of society, the worth of the individual soul. It provides for the individual a refuge from all the fluctuating currents of human opinion, a secret place of meditation where a man can come alone into the presence of God. It does give a man courage to stand, if need be, against the world; it resolutely refuses to make of the individual a mere means to an end, a mere element in the composition of society. It rejects altogether any means of salvation which deals with men in a mass; it brings the individual face to face with his God. In that sense, it is true that Christianity is individualistic and not social.

But though Christianity is individualistic, it is not only individualistic. It provides fully for the social needs of man.

In the first place, even the communion of the individual man with God is not really individualistic, but social. A man is not isolated when he is in communion with God; he can be regarded as isolated only by one who has forgotten the real existence of the supreme Person. Here again, as at many other places, the line of cleavage between liberalism and Christianity really reduces to a profound difference in the conception of God. Christianity is earnestly theistic; liberalism is at best but half-heartedly so. If a man once comes to believe in a personal God, then the wow ship of Him will not be regarded as selfish isolation, but as the chief end of man. That does not mean that on the Christian view the worship of God is ever to be carried on to the neglect of service rendered to one's fellow-men—"he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, is not able to love God whom he hath not seen"—but it does mean

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that the worship of God has a value of its own. Very different is the prevailing doctrine of modern liberalism. According to Christian belief, man exists for the sake of God; according to the liberal Church, in practice if not in theory, God exists for the sake of man.

But the social element in Christianity is found not only in communion between man and God, but also in communion between man and man. Such communion appears even in institutions which are not specifically Christian.

The most important of such institutions, according to Christian teaching, is the family. And that institution is being pushed more and more into the background. It is being pushed into the background by undue encroachments of the community and of the state. Modern life is tending more and more toward the contraction of the sphere of parental control and parental influence. The choice of schools is being placed under the power of the state; the "community" is seizing hold of recreation and of social activities. It may be a question how far these community activities are responsible for the modern breakdown of the home; very possibly they are only trying to fill a void which even apart from them had already appeared. But the result at any rate is plain—the lives of children are no longer surrounded by the loving atmosphere of the Christian home, but by the utilitarianism of the state. A revival of the Christian religion would unquestionably bring a reversal of the process; the family, as over against all other social institutions, would come to its rights again.

But the state, even when reduced to its proper limits, has a large place in human life, and in the possession of that place it is supported by Christianity. The support, moreover, is independent of the Christian or non-Christian character of the state; it was in the Roman Empire under

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Nero that Paul said, "The powers that be are ordained of God." Christianity assumes no negative attitude, therefore, toward the state, but recognizes, under existing conditions, the necessity of government.

The case is similar with respect to those broad aspects of human life which are associated with industrialism The "otherworldliness" of Christianity involves no withdrawal from the battle of this world; our Lord Himself, with His stupendous mission, lived in the midst of life's throng and press. Plainly, then, the Christian man may not simplify his problem by withdrawing from the business of the world, but must learn to apply the principles of Jesus even to the complex problems of modern industrial life. At this point Christian teaching is in full accord with the modern liberal Church; the evangelical Christian is not true to his profession if he leaves his Christianity behind him on Monday morning. On the contrary, the whole of life, including business and all of social relations, must be made obedient to the law of love. The Christian man certainly should display no lack of interest in "applied Christianity."

Only—and here emerges the enormous difference of opinion—the Christian man believes that there can be no applied Christianity unless there be "a Christianity to apply."1 That is where the Christian man differs from the modern liberal. The liberal believes that applied Christianity is all there is of Christianity, Christianity being merely a way of life; the Christian man believes that applied Christianity is the result of an initial act of God. Thus there is an enormous difference between the modern liberal and the Christian man with reference to

1. Francis Shunk Downs, "Christianity and Today," in Princeton Theological Review, xx, 1922 p. 287. See also the whole article, ibid.,

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human institutions like the community and the state, and with reference to human efforts at applying tile Golden Rule in industrial relationships. The modern liberal is optimistic with reference to these institutions; the Christian man is pessimistic unless the institutions be manned by Christian men. The modern liberal believes that human nature as at present constituted can be molded by the principles of Jesus; the Christian man believes that evil can only be held in check and not destroyed by human institutions, and that there must be a transformation of the human materials before any new building can be produced. This difference is not a mere difference in theory, but makes itself felt everywhere in the practical realm. It is particularly evident on the mission field. The missionary of liberalism seeks to spread the blessings of Christian civilization (whatever that may be), and is not particularly interested in leading individuals to relinquish their pagan beliefs. The Christian missionary, on the other hand, regards satisfaction with a mere influence of Christian civilization as a hindrance rather than a help; his chief business, he believes, is the saving of souls, and souls are saved not by the mere ethical principles of Jesus but by His redemptive work. The Christian missionary, in other words, and the Christian worker at home as well as abroad, unlike the apostle of liberalism, says to all men everywhere: "Human goodness will avail nothing for lost souls; ye must be born again."

PROCEED to Chapter Seven: The Church

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