A Tour of the Missions Part 6

Man is a theist, before he becomes a Christian. Theism is a universal intuition, ready to a.s.sert itself in practice wherever it is not prevented by an evil will from its normal manifestation. But, because man is in an abnormal condition, this normal action of his powers can be restored only by the Holy Spirit. "When he is come," says our Lord, "he will convince the world of sin, because they believe not on me," and "of righteousness, because I go unto the Father." Only when the prodigal repented, did he "come to himself," and begin to act normally. Under the influence of the Spirit, G.o.d's holiness reveals to man his sin, and G.o.d's love leads him to the feet of Jesus. This is the first step in Christian experience. To put my doctrine unmistakably and in a nutsh.e.l.l, deduction from the existence of G.o.d normally precedes and insures the acceptance of Christ. The sinner comes to have personal knowledge of One who has atoned, and therefore can forgive. But to him who has accepted Christ, his Lord is more than a historical Redeemer, he is a present Saviour from both the penalty and the power of sin. Without this personal knowledge of Christ, we might think of him as only one of many human examples or teachers, like Confucius or Buddha. Now, he is nothing less than G.o.d manifest in the flesh, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, whom having seen we have seen the Father.

But there is a second step in Christian experience, which I wish also to describe in a nutsh.e.l.l and to define as unmistakably as I described and defined the first. I claim that deduction from the existence of Christ normally precedes and insures the acceptance of Scripture. Our Lord himself has said, "My sheep hear my voice." The Christian recognizes in Scripture the voice of Christ. No change in his experience is more marked and wonderful than the change in his estimate of the Bible. A little time ago, Scripture was commonplace and unmeaning. Now it speaks to him with a living voice such words of instruction and comfort, of warning and promise, that his soul is filled alternately with sorrow and with joy. He wonders that he never saw these things before. He perceives for the first time that he has been in an abnormal condition of mind, and that condition has been due to his own perversity of will. But now the prodigal has "come to himself." Only the Holy Spirit could have made possible this new and normal exercise of his powers. The change is not in the Scripture, it is in himself. He has come in contact with a word of G.o.d that "liveth and abideth." He sees in it the divine workmanship.

He can no longer regard Scripture as merely the work of man; it is also the work of the same Spirit who has transformed him, namely, the eternal Christ. Christ is the author and inspirer of Scripture, even though imperfect human agents have been employed to communicate his revelation.

In spite of the rudeness and diversity of the instruments, there breathes through them all a certain divine melody and harmony. While the inductive and horizontal method would give us only finite and earthly truth, the deductive and vertical can give us truth that is infinite and eternal. The indispensable condition of success in the interpretation of Scripture is therefore a hearty belief that the Bible is Christ's revelation of G.o.d, and not merely a series of gropings after truth on the part of men. Deduction will give us truth from above, whereas induction will give us only scattered facts on the horizontal plane.

I am convinced that the so-called "historical method" of Scripture interpretation, as it is usually employed, fails to secure correct results, because it proceeds wholly by induction, leaving out of its account the knowledge of Christ which comes to the Christian in his personal experience. I do not regard such a "historical method" as really historical; I deny that it discovers the original meaning of the doc.u.ments; I claim that, when made the sole avenue of approach to truth, it leads to false views of doctrine. It a.s.sumes at the outset that what rules in the realm of physics rules also in the moral and religious realm. But the Christian has learned that Christ is the supreme source of truth. By a process of either conscious or unconscious deduction he recognizes in Scripture the utterance of Christ. He must begin his investigations with one of two a.s.sumptions: Is the Bible only man's word? or, Is it also Christ's word? Is it a mere product of human intelligence? or, Is it also the product of a divine intelligence, who indeed uses human and imperfect means of communication, but who nevertheless at sundry times and in divers manners has brought to the world the knowledge of salvation?

I claim that we should begin by a.s.suming that the Bible is a revelation of Christ. This a.s.sertion is justified, as I have already intimated, by our Christian experience. That experience has given us a knowledge of the heart, more valuable in religious things than any mere knowledge of the intellect. Doctor Tholuck, in an address to his students at his fiftieth anniversary, said that G.o.d's greatest gift to him had been the knowledge of sin. Without that conviction of sin which the Spirit of Christ can work in the human heart, there can be no proper understanding of Scripture, for Scripture is a revelation to sinners. The opening of the heart to receive Christ, and the new sense of his pardoning grace and power, give to the converted man the key to the interpretation of Scripture, for "the mystery of the gospel," the central secret of Christianity, is "Christ in you, the hope of glory." He whom the Holy Spirit has first led to the knowledge of sin, and has then led to the acceptance of Christ, is prepared to enter into the meaning of Scripture, and no other man can understand it.

This was the way in which Paul came to understand Scripture. It was not by criticism of the doc.u.ments, but by receiving Christ, that "the light of the knowledge of the glory of G.o.d in the face of Jesus Christ"

entered into his soul. He knew himself to be the chief of sinners. He knew Christ as his manifested G.o.d and Saviour. He applied to Christ all that the Old Testament had revealed with regard to the dealings of G.o.d with his chosen people. The light that shone upon him on the way to Damascus was the Shekinah that led Israel in the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, that dwelt over the mercy-seat in the tabernacle and in the temple, and that thundered and lightened from Sinai in the giving of the Law. "The Rock that followed them" in the wilderness, and gave water to the thirsty, "that Rock was Christ." And so Paul came to know Jesus Christ as preexistent and omnipresent, as Redeemer of the whole world, Gentile as well as Jew; and Christ's Cross became the embodiment and symbol of G.o.d's amazing sorrow for human sin, and of his sacrifice for its cure. All Paul's later conclusions were developments and expressions of his initial knowledge of Christ. It was a deductive and not an inductive process, by which he arrived at his theology.

Lest any Christian should say that the deductive method is impracticable to him, for the reason that he has had no such revelation of Christ to start from as that which was given to Paul, Scripture reports to us the very different experience of another apostle. I refer to Peter. Peter shows us how, by this same deductive method, an experience which at its beginning is very small, may in the end become very great. Peter goes to the banks of Jordan, a sinner, seeking pardon for his sin. John the Baptist points him to Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of G.o.d, who taketh away the sin of the world." Peter knows nothing of Jesus' deity, nor of his atonement. But, by an instinct which is the best of logic, he is drawn to Jesus, as the one who can satisfy his needs. He becomes a Christian, that is, a follower of Jesus. His experience is a sort of caterpillar; it can creep, but it cannot soar. Yet all the elements of growth are in it. Peter begins to a.n.a.lyze it. What right has he to surrender himself, body and soul, to a man like himself? The answer is: Jesus is more than man. At Caesarea Philippi, Peter cries, "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living G.o.d." On the day of Pentecost, he preaches Christ as the Saviour exalted to G.o.d's right hand. And finally, in his Epistles, he declares the preexistence of Christ, and the fact of Christ's utterances through the prophets as far back in time as the days of Noah. If our higher critics only adopted Peter's method, a.n.a.lyzed their own experience, following on to know their Lord and meantime willing to do his will, they too, like Peter, in spite of small beginnings, would learn of Jesus' doctrine, would emerge from the caterpillar state, would be soaring instead of creeping, and would end by gladly confessing that he who met them on the way in their first experience was none other than the omnipresent Christ, whom Paul describes as G.o.d manifest in the flesh, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the G.o.dhead bodily. They would also learn, with Peter, that Scripture is the work and word of the preexistent Christ.

Because this experience of sin and of Christ is knowledge, it is material for science, for science is only unified knowledge. I do not deny that it is knowledge peculiar to the Christian. The princes of physics and literature and government have not known it. It is not the wisdom of this world, but it is better, even the very wisdom of G.o.d. I glory in Christian theology, as the science that will last, when all systems of merely physical science have pa.s.sed away. For the man who has been saved by Christ has knowledge of him who is Creator, Upholder, and Life of all. I do not hesitate to say that the only safe interpreter of physical nature is the true Christian, for it is Christ "in whom all things consist." The true Christian is the only safe interpreter of history, for it is Christ who "upholds all things by the word of his power." And so, the true Christian is the only safe interpreter of Scripture, for it is Christ whose Spirit in the prophets "testified beforehand of his sufferings, and of the glories that should follow them." In him who is the Lord of all "are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden." Only when one is joined to Christ, can he understand the evolutionary process through which Christ has led the human race, or understand the Bible which const.i.tutes the historical record of that process. With the Psalmist we may say, "In thy light shall we see light."

As Christ is the central object of knowledge in Christian experience, it follows that Christians recognize him as the primary author of Scripture. They find him speaking to them in the Bible, as in no other book. It becomes to them the word of G.o.d, given by divine inspiration, and able to make them wise unto salvation. From the deity and supremacy of Christ they proceed to faith in the unity, the sufficiency, and the authority of Scripture, and this determines their method of investigation. From the person of Christ to the word of Christ is a process often unconscious, but one better than any process of formal logic. Knowing their divine Saviour, they know the divinity of his word.

His presence in human history and in the hearts of the righteous has given _unity_ to his continuous revelation. The Scripture "cannot be broken," or interpreted as a promiscuous congeries of separate bits; for a divine intelligence and life throb through the whole collection. Like railway coupons, its texts are "not good if detached." We must interpret each text by its context, each part by the whole, the preparation of salvation by the fulfilment, and all the diverse contents by him who weaves all together, even Christ, the end of the law, to whom all the preliminaries point. This method gives room for the most thorough investigation of the times and ways of revelation, for recognizing the imperfection of beginnings and the variety of the product. The Bible is a gradually acc.u.mulated literature, Hebraic in form, but universal in spirit. The preexistent Christ has made all this literature one, by the influence in the sacred writers of his omnipresent Spirit. If the "historical method" would begin with this postulate of a unifying Christ, its method would be more safe and its results more sure.

Faith in an eternal and omnipresent Christ guarantees also the _sufficiency_ of Scripture. Here, however, there is an obvious limitation. Scripture is not sufficient for all the kinds and purposes of human science. It will not tell us the configuration of the hinder side of the moon, nor reveal the future uses of electricity. It is not with such things that Scripture deals. But in religious matters, such as our relation to G.o.d and salvation, it is sufficient as a rule of faith and practice. We may find in it all needful models and helps in the divine life, as well as all needful directions about the way to begin it. The church of Christ has always found in the Bible a safe guide for her polity and conduct, and civil government has prospered when the principles of Scripture were followed by the powers that ruled the State. Because the Christian believes the Bible to be the product of men inspired by Christ, he can send it out by the million copies as equal to the moral and spiritual needs of the world.

And because Christ is, through his imperfect agents, the real author of Scripture, we believe in its absolute _authority_. When rightly interpreted, however. It will never do to treat poetry as if it were prose, or drama as if it were history, or allegory as if it were fact.

Christ can use, and he has used, all the common methods of literary composition, and he expects us to use common sense in dealing with them.

But out of the whole can be evolved a consistent doctrine and an authoritative law. The one and only way of salvation is plainly that of faith in G.o.d's provision of pardon and life in Christ. In spite of many divergences, the great body of Christians throughout the ages have agreed in their recognition of the personality and the deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; of the incarnation and the atonement of Christ; of his resurrection and his lordship; of his omnipresence with his people even to the end of the world. They have expressed this agreement in the Apostles' Creed and in the hymnology of the church. But the great body of instructed Christians also believe in Christ as the Revealer of G.o.d in nature and in history; as "the Light that lighteth every man" in conscience and tradition; and as the righteous Judge who accepts in every nation those who fear G.o.d and work righteousness, casting themselves as sinners upon the divine mercy even though they do not yet know that this divine mercy is only another name for Christ. The Bible, as a whole and when rightly interpreted, is absolute authority, because it is the word of Christ; and Christ holds each of us, as individuals, to the duty and the privilege of interpreting the Bible for himself.

It seems to me plain that this method of interpreting Scripture in the light of the Christian's experience of Christ, is not "the historical method," as it is usually employed. This latter method seems to ignore the relation of Scripture to Christ, and to proceed in its investigations as if there were no preexistent Christ to furnish its principle. It insists upon treating Scripture as it would treat any unreligious or heathen literature, and with no relation to its divine authorship. It sees in Scripture only a promiscuous collection of disjointed doc.u.ments, with no living tie to bind them together, and no significance beyond that of the time in which they were written. It would treat the Bible as a man-made book, or rather, as a man-made series of books, regardless of the fact that the plural "biblia," which once represented the thought of the church, has, under the influence of the divine Spirit, become "biblion" or Bible, a singular, and a proof that Christian consciousness has not been satisfied with rationalistic explanations, but has followed its natural impulses by attributing unity to the word of Christ its Saviour. The separate "words" have been felt to const.i.tute the one "word of G.o.d," an organic whole, which fitly represents the eternal "Word," of whom it is the voice and expression.

Scripture is not a congeries of earth-born fragments, but an organism, pulsating with divine life. The "historical method" of which I speak can never find that life, because it works only on the physical and horizontal plane, ignoring the light which comes deductively from above, and also the darkening and blinding influences which often operate unconsciously from below.

XVI

SCRIPTURE AND MISSIONS

The "historical method" of Scripture interpretation, as it is often employed, ends without Christ, because it begins without him. One of its fundamental principles is that each pa.s.sage of Scripture is to be interpreted solely in the light of the knowledge and intent of the person who wrote it. The One Hundred and Tenth Psalm, for example, can have no reference to Christ, because the writer knew no other than the Jewish king whose accession and whose power he antic.i.p.ates. The Psalm reads, "Jehovah said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." The so-called historical critics would make any interpretation of this pa.s.sage as a designed prophecy of Christ to be an unwarranted accommodation of it to a meaning which it did not originally bear, and the conclusion is that we are wrong in citing these words as an Old Testament a.s.sertion of Christ's deity. But, unfortunately for this method of interpretation, we have, in the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark, our Lord's own reference of this pa.s.sage, not simply to some Jewish ruler of olden time, but to the coming Messiah, and since he was himself the Messiah, he refers it by implication to himself. He does not deny, but rather grants, a primary reference of the psalm to a son of David, for David was a king, and his son would be a king. But he also sees in the psalm a prophecy that this son of David would be a king whom David would call Lord. His searching examination propounds to the unbelieving Jews the question, "What think ye of the Christ? whose son is he?" And they say, "The Son of David." He answers them by asking, "How then doth David, in the Spirit, call him Lord?" In other words, inspiration declares Messiah to be a King of kings, and a Lord of lords. Since the whole discussion is one with regard to the nature and claims of the Messiah, and since the Messiah is not a mere man like David, but is seated on the throne with Jehovah and is David's Lord, Christ's answer is an a.s.sertion of his own deity. His answer antedates, even if it did not suggest, Paul's later description of Christ, as "declared to be the Son of G.o.d with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." But the higher critics differ in opinion from the Lord Jesus. They extricate themselves from their difficulty by suggesting that Jesus, like other men, was subject to the errors of his time. And so, not only Christ's knowledge of Scripture and his authority as its interpreter are denied, but also his knowledge of his own nature and place in the universe. If his knowledge of things so essential be denied, what trust can we place in any other of his utterances? To those who reason in this way, Christ cannot possibly be divine--he is only a fallible man, self-deceived, and so, deceiving others. The fault of the critics lies in their presupposition. They have begun wrongly, by leaving out the primary fact in the subject they investigate, namely, that the preincarnate Christ was the author and inspirer of the Scripture which he afterward interpreted. He used human agents, with their natural language and surroundings, as his instruments, but he could, on the way to Emmaus, "beginning from Moses and all the prophets," interpret to those humble believers "in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself."

Scripture can have, and it does have, two authors, man and G.o.d, the writer and Christ; and to ignore Christ in the evolution of the Bible is to miss its chief meaning, to teach falsehood instead of truth, and, consciously or unconsciously, to deny Christ's deity.

Cannot a doc.u.ment have more than one author? What are the facts in other realms of art? In painting, did not Landseer get Millais to paint the human figure into the picture of his dogs? In literature, is there any more acknowledged fact than that Erckmann-Chatrian's battle-stories were the work of two writers, and not of one? The work of a single author may have two separate meanings, for Dante declares that his Divine Comedy has one meaning that is personal, and another meaning that is universal.

Our extreme critics are as poor students of literature as they are of life. Their narrowness of interpretation is due to a narrowness of experience. If they knew Christ better, they would find in the Twenty-third Psalm alone enough proof to upset their theory. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," is an utterance inexplicable by merely human authorship. To suppose that even a king of Israel who had been a shepherd-boy could have written this psalm without divine inspiration, in a day when all lands but little Palestine were wrapt in a pall of heathen darkness, is to suppose that religion can exist and flourish without a G.o.d.

"The testimony of Jesus," says the book of Revelation, "is the spirit of prophecy." It was the recognition of constant references to Christ in the Old Testament, that enabled the apostles to convince and convert the unbelieving Jews. The absence of this recognition is the secret of all the minimizing of Christ's attributes which is so rife in our day. Do men believe in Christ's deity who ignore his promise to be with them to the end of the world, and who refuse to address him in prayer? Could one of these modern interpreters have taken the place of Philip, when he met the Ethiopian eunuch? That dignitary had been reading the prophecy of Isaiah, "He was led as a lamb to the slaughter." "Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other?" "And Philip opened his mouth, and preached unto him _Jesus._" Our modern critics call this an unwarranted interpretation, because Isaiah had no knowledge of Christ.

And yet, John tells us that "Isaiah saw his glory, and spake of him."

The critics contradict John again, when they say that we must put no meaning into Isaiah's words but that of his own time. His great prophecy of a suffering Messiah, they say, had reference only to Jehoiachin, the captive king of Judah, or to the whole Jewish nation as the afflicted people of G.o.d. Philip and the critics are evidently at variance. If we accept their method, we shall lose all reference in the Old Testament to the atonement of Christ, and all proof that the sacrifice on Calvary was that of "the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world."

Reverse the process, and we can still say,

The Holy, meek, unspotted Lamb, Who from the Father's bosom came For me and for my sins to atone, Him for my Lord and G.o.d I own.

It is needless to multiply instances of this failure to interpret the Old Testament aright. Let me call attention to the effect of this method upon the interpretation of the New Testament, for the authority of the New Testament is also undermined. The system of typical interpretation, which sees in Christ the reality prefigured in Old Testament shadows, is discredited as unscientific. The whole Epistle to the Hebrews is thrown out, as a poetical clothing of "the man of Nazareth" with the fading glories of an outworn worship. The idea that the high priest of old who entered the Holy of Holies once a year not without blood, and the whole Jewish system of which this formed the central feature, were a divinely ordered prefiguration of Christ's atoning sacrifice for the sins of men--this idea is called a mere human addition to historical truth.

Christ is no longer our great High Priest. His priesthood is mere metaphor, without divine warrant or authority. He is not our Prophet, nor our King, for his prophecies are not fulfilled, and his kingdom is only that of a moral teacher and example. And all this, in spite of the fact that the Epistle to the Hebrews bears upon its front the declaration that "G.o.d, who in past times spoke to the fathers through the prophets, has in these last days spoken through his Son," whom this same Epistle then proceeds to describe as the effulgence of G.o.d's glory and the very image of his substance, the Creator, Upholder, and Redeemer of the world, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

I do not undervalue the historical method, when it is kept free from this agnostic presupposition that only man is the author of Scripture.

This method has given us some information as to the authorship of the sacred books, and it has in some degree helped in their interpretation.

I am free to acknowledge my own obligation to it. I grant the composite doc.u.mentary view of the Pentateuch and of its age-long days of creation, while I still hold to its substantially Mosaic authorship. I say this, however, with deference, for a university president of note, when asked about the stories of Cain and Abel, replied that no such persons in all probability ever lived, but that the account was still valuable, since it taught the great moral lesson that it is highly improper for a man to murder his brother! I grant that there may be more than one Isaiah, while yet I see in the later Isaiah a continuance of the divine revelation given through the earlier. Any honest Christian, I would say, has the right to interpret Jonah and Daniel as allegories, rather than as histories. I can look upon the book of Job as a drama, while I still a.s.sert that Job was a historical character. I can see in the Song of Solomon the celebration of a pure human love, while at the same time I claim that the Song had divinely injected into it the meaning that union with Christ is the goal and climax of all human pa.s.sion. In short, I take the historical method as my servant and not my master; as partially but not wholly revealing the truth; as showing me, not how man made the Scripture for himself, but how G.o.d made the Scripture through the imperfect agency of man. So I find _unity_ in the Scriptures, because they are the work of the omnipresent and omniscient Christ: I find _sufficiency_ in the Scriptures, because they satisfy every religious need of the individual and of the church; I find _authority_ in the Scriptures, because, though coming through man, they are, when taken together and rightly interpreted, the veritable word of G.o.d. I denounce the historical method, only when it claims to be the solely valid method of reaching truth, and so, leaves out the primary agency and determining influence of Christ.

What sort of systematic theology is left us, when the perverted historical method is made the only clue to the labyrinth of Scripture?

There is but one answer: No such thing as systematic theology is possible. Science is knowledge, and to have a system you must have unified knowledge. The historical method so called can see no unity in Scripture, because it does not carry with it the primary knowledge of Christ. It simply applies in its investigations the principles of physical science. Physical science begins with the outward and visible, not with the inward and spiritual, with matter and not with mind.

Laplace swept the heavens with his telescope, but he said that he nowhere found a G.o.d. He might just as well have swept his kitchen with a broom, and then complained that he could not find G.o.d there. G.o.d is not stars, nor dust. G.o.d is spirit, and he is not to be apprehended by the senses. Laplace should have taken man's conscience and will for his starting-point. And just as physical science can find no G.o.d in the universe by the use of the forceps and the microscope, so this historical method can find no Christ in the Scriptures, because it looks there for only human agency. The result is that it finds only a collection of seemingly contradictory fragments, with no divine Spirit to harmonize them and bind them together. Its method is purely inductive, whereas its induction should always be guided by a knowledge of Christ, gained before investigation begins, and furnishing the basis for a deductive process as well. Differentiation and not harmonization is its rule, and this makes its criticism destructive rather than constructive. Many a pa.s.sage is set aside, because it will not fit in with a skeptical interpretation. Christ's own words with regard to his being "a ransom for many," and with regard to his having "all power committed to him in heaven and in earth," are held to be later words attributed to him by his followers. The whole New Testament story comes to be regarded as a mythical growth, like that which gradually placed haloes about the heads of the apostles. The Gospel of John is not accepted as historical, but is said to be a work of the second century.

Jesus, it is said, never himself claimed to be the Messiah, since it is only John who reports his saying to the woman of Samaria, "I that speak unto thee am he." Paul is set aside, as being the author of a rabbinical theology which has no claim upon us; and that, in spite of Christ's own declaration that there were many things which he could not teach while he was here in the flesh, but which he would teach, by his Spirit, after his resurrection, and ascension.

Prof. Kirsopp Lake, in a recent address before the Harvard Divinity School, deprecated the use of the term "theology." "Theology," he said, "presupposes divine revelation, which we do not accept." He proposed the term "philosophy," as expressive of the aim of the Unitarian school.

This is honest and plain. What shall we say of those who speak of the "new emphasis" needed in modern theology, when they really mean that the preaching of the old doctrines of sin and salvation must give place to "another gospel" of cooperative Christian work? From their neglect to put any further emphasis upon "the faith once for all delivered to the saints," we can only infer that, for their structure of doctrine, no other foundation than philosophy is needed, and that they, like the Unitarians, no longer accept the fact of a divine revelation. "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ," and to lay greater emphasis upon the fruits of Christianity than upon its roots, is to insult Christ, and ultimately to make Christianity itself only one of many earth-born religions, powerless like them either to save the individual soul or to redeem society.

Professor Lake is quite right: If there is no divine revelation, there can be, not only no systematic theology, but no theology at all.

What is the effect of this method upon our theological seminaries? It is to deprive the gospel message of all definiteness, and to make professors and students disseminators of doubts. Many a professor has found teaching preferable to preaching, because he lacked the initial Christian experience which gives to preaching its certainty and power.

He chooses the line of least resistance, and becomes in the theological seminary a blind leader of the blind. Having no system of truth to teach, he becomes a mere lecturer on the history of doctrine. Having no key in Christ to the unity of Scripture, he becomes a critic of what he is pleased to call its fragments, that is, the dissector of a cadaver.

Ask him if he believes in the preexistence, deity, virgin birth, miracles, atoning death, physical resurrection, omnipresence, and omnipotence of Christ, and he denies your right to require of him any statement of his own beliefs. He does not conceive it to be his duty to furnish his students with any fixed conclusions as to doctrine but only to aid them in coming to conclusions for themselves. The apostle Paul was not so reticent. He was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, but rather gloried in it. He even p.r.o.nounced his anathema upon any who taught other doctrine. It is no wonder that our modern critics cry, "Back to Christ," for this means, "Away from Paul." The result of such teaching in our seminaries is that the student, unless he has had a Pauline experience before he came, has all his early conceptions of Scripture and of Christian doctrine weakened, has no longer any positive message to deliver, loses the ardor of his love for Christ, and at his graduation leaves the seminary, not to become preacher or pastor as he had once hoped, but to sow his doubts broadcast, as teacher in some college, as editor of some religious journal, as secretary of some Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, or as agent of some mutual life insurance company. This method of interpretation switches off upon some side-track of social service many a young man who otherwise would be a heroic preacher of the everlasting gospel. The theological seminaries of almost all our denominations are becoming so infected with this grievous error, that they are not so much organs of Christ, as they are organs of Antichrist. This accounts for the rise, all over the land, of Bible schools, to take the place of the seminaries. The evil is coming in like a flood, and the Spirit of the Lord will surely raise up a standard against it. But oh the pity! that money given by G.o.dly men to provide preachers of the gospel should be devoted to undermining the Christian cause!

What is the effect of this method of interpretation upon the churches of our denomination? It is to cut the tap-root of their strength, and to imperil their very existence. Baptist churches are founded upon Scripture. Their doctrine of regenerate church-membership, and of church ordinances as belonging only to believers, presupposes an authoritative rule of faith and practice in the New Testament. In controversy with other denominations we have always appealed "to the law and to the testimony," and we have declared that, if other faiths "speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them." We have held that the authority of Scripture is not an arbitrary authority, but that the ordinances have so much of meaning that to change their form is to destroy them altogether. We stand for immersion as the only real baptism, not because much water is better than little water, but because baptism is the symbol of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, and the symbol also of our spiritual death, burial, and resurrection with him. When we are "buried with him in baptism," we show forth his death, just as we show forth his death in the Lord's Supper. To change the form of the Lord's Supper so as to leave out all reference to the breaking of Christ's body and the shedding of his blood, would be to break down one great visible monument and testimony to Christ's atoning death, and to destroy the Lord's Supper itself. And to change the form of baptism so as to leave out its symbolism of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, is to break down another great visible monument and testimony to Christ's essential work, and to destroy the ordinance of baptism. Only the surrender of belief in the authority of Scripture, and a consequent ignoring of the meaning of baptism can explain the proposal to give us our requisition of immersion. The weakness of our denomination in such cities as New York results from the acceptance of the method of Scripture interpretation which I have been criticizing. We are losing our faith in the Bible, and our determination to stand for its teachings. We are introducing into our ministry men who either never knew the Lord, or who have lost their faith in him and their love for him. The unbelief in our seminary teaching is like a blinding mist which is slowly settling down upon our churches, and is gradually abolishing, not only all definite views of Christian doctrine, but also all conviction of duty to "contend earnestly for the faith" of our fathers.

So we are giving up our polity, to please and to join other denominations. If this were only a lapse in denominationalism, we might call it a mere change in our ways of expressing faith. But it is a far more radical evil. It is apostasy from Christ and revolt against his government. It is refusal to rally to Christ's colors in the great conflict with error and sin. We are ceasing to be evangelistic as well as evangelical, and if this downward progress continues, we shall in due time cease to exist. This is the fate of Unitarianism to-day. We Baptists must reform, or die.

What is the effect of this method of interpretation upon missions? I have just come from an extensive tour in mission fields. I have visited missionaries of several denominations. I have found those missions most successful which have held to the old gospel and to the polity of the New Testament. But I have found a growing tendency to depend upon education, rather than upon evangelism. What would Peter have said on the day of Pentecost, if you had advised him not to incur the wrath of the Jews by his preaching, but to establish schools, and to trust to the gradual enlightenment of the Jewish nation by means of literature? He might have replied that our Lord made it his first duty to "make disciples," and only afterwards to "teach them to observe all things which he had commanded." Christian schools and Christian teaching are necessary in their place, but they are second, not first. Our lack at home of the right interpretation of Scripture, and our fading knowledge in experience of the presence and power of Christ, have gone from us round the world. Some boards are sending out as missionaries young men who lack definite views of doctrine. These young men, having nothing positive to preach, choose rather to teach in the English language, in schools where English is spoken, rather than preach in the native language which requires a lifetime of study. When they teach, they cannot help revealing their mental poverty, and disturbing the simple faith of their pupils. Having no certainty themselves, they can inspire no certainty in others, for "if the trumpet gives no certain sound, who will arm himself for the battle?" These unprepared and inefficient teachers may become themselves converted through their very sense of weakness in presence of the towering systems of idolatry and superst.i.tion around them. But if they are not so converted, they will handicap the mission and paralyze its influence. Some of our best missionaries have said to me, "The Lord deliver us from such helpers!"

No man has a right to go, and no board has a right to send, as a missionary, one who has not had such a personal experience of Christ as will enable him to stand against this unscientific and unchristian method of Scripture interpretation.

This so-called "historical method" has effects on the missionary cause at home, as well as in the lands far away. "How shall they preach, except they be sent?" The sending of missionaries is dependent upon the zeal and liberality of the churches in our land. But how can one who is not sure that Jesus ever uttered the words of the Great Commission urge the churches to fulfil that command of Christ? How can one who has never felt his own need of an atonement adjure his brethren, by Christ's death for their sins, not to let the heathen perish? How can one who has had no experience of Christ as a present and divine Saviour, have power to stand against the rationalism and apathy of the church? This method of Scripture interpretation makes evangelism an enterprise of fanatics not sufficiently educated to know that Buddha and Confucius were teachers of truth long before the time of Christ. Can we more surely dry up the sources of missionary contributions, than by yielding to the pernicious influence of this way of treating Scripture? We have gone far already in the wrong direction. Our churches are honeycombed with doubt and with indifference. The preaching of the old gospel of sin and salvation seems almost a thing of the past. People have itching ears that will not endure sound doctrine. The dynamic of missions is love for Christ, who died to save us from the guilt and power of sin. Modern criticism has to a large extent nullified this dynamic, and if the authority of Scripture is yet further weakened, we may look for complete collapse in our supplies both of men and of money. In fact, the faith and the gifts of many converts from among the heathen already so far exceed the average faith and gifts of our churches at home, that the time may come when Burma and the Congo may have to send missionaries to us, as we are now sending missionaries to the land where the seven churches of Asia once flourished.

Whence has come this so-called "historical method" of interpreting Scripture? I answer: It was "made in Germany." German scholarship for a century past has been working almost exclusively on the horizontal plane, and has been ignoring the light that comes from above. The theology of Great Britain and of America has been profoundly affected by the application of its evolutionary and skeptical principles. In Germany itself the honesty of every Scripture writer has been questioned, and every sacred doc.u.ment has been torn into bits. When the all-pervading presence and influence of Christ in the Bible is lost sight of, and its separate fragments are examined to discover their meaning, there is no guide but the theory of evolution; and evolution, instead of being the ordinary method of a personal G.o.d, is itself personified and made the only power in the universe. The regularities of nature, it is thought, leave no room for miracle. There is no divine Will that can work down upon nature in unique acts, such as incarnation and resurrection. A pantheistic Force is the only ruler, and whatever is, is right. Goethe led the way in this pagan philosophy, and German universities have been full of it ever since. It is painful to see how German theologians and ministers have been won over to the ethics of brute force and the practical, deification of mere might in human affairs. The New Testament has been interpreted as justifying implicit obedience to "the powers that be," even when they turn the Kaiser into a military despot and his people into unresisting and deluded slaves. An exaggerated nationalism has taken the place of human solidarity, and a selfish domination of the world has become the goal of national ambition. All the atrocities of this war might have been spared us, if the nations of which Germany is the most conspicuous offender had derived their ethics and their practice from the divine love which rules above, rather than from the seeming necessity of competing with the nations around them. A new interpretation of Scripture is needed to set the world right. But as Germany will never be convinced that the worship of Force is vain, until she sees herself plunged in defeat and ruin, so the advocates of this so-called historical method will never make deduction a primary part of their procedure, and will never take the eternal Christ as their key to Scripture interpretation, until Christ himself shall by a second spiritual advent enter into their hearts and dissipate their doubts, as he did when he showed himself to Paul on the way to Damascus.

I have tried to point out the inherent error of the method to which I have been objecting, and to show its ill effects upon systematic theology, upon our theological seminaries, upon our Baptist churches, and upon our missionary work abroad and at home. I have intimated that the influence of this perverse treatment of Holy Writ may be seen even in the present internecine conflict in which the professedly Christian nations are engaged. I shall very naturally be asked what remedy I propose for so deep-seated and widespread an evil. I can only answer that I see no permanent cure but the second coming of Christ. But do not misunderstand me. I am no premillennarian of the ordinary sort. Indeed, I am as much a post-millennialist, as I am a premillennialist. I believe that both interpretations of prophecy have their rights, and, believing also as I do that Scripture is a unity and that its seeming contradictions can be harmonized, I hold that Christ's spiritual coming precedes the millennium, but that his visible and literal coming follows the millennium. I therefore look for such a spiritual coming into the hearts of his people, as shall renew their faith, fulfil their joy, and answer to the prediction of "the rapture of the saints." In other words, I look for a mighty revival of religion, which will set the churches on their old foundation, and endow them with power to subdue the world. This war seems to me G.o.d's second great demonstration of man's inability to save himself, and his need of divine power to save him. As the ancient world and its history were G.o.d's demonstration of human sin, and of man's need of Christ's first advent, so this war is G.o.d's proof that science and philosophy, literature and commerce, are not sufficient for man's needs, and that Christ must again come, if our modern world is ever to be saved. "In the fulness of time" Christ's first advent occurred. "In the fulness of time" Christ's second advent will occur. But not until humanity, weary of its load, cries out for its redemption. "How long, O Lord, how long?" "It is not for us to know the times which the Father has set within his own authority." But it is ours to believe in Christ's promise, and to pray for its speedy fulfilment.

And so, I beg you to join with me in the one prayer with which our book of Scripture closes, namely, "Lord Jesus, come quickly!"

XVII

THE THEOLOGY OF MISSIONS

"The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." Yes, a candle, but a candle not yet lighted, a candle which will never be light nor give light, till it is touched by a divine flame. So said Doctor Parkhurst.

Was his interpretation of Scripture correct? He drew from the proverb the conclusion that man has a religious nature, not in the sense that he is actually religious, but only in the sense that he has a capacity for religion. Doctor Parkhurst would say that man is actually religious only when he knows the true G.o.d and worships him in spirit and in truth. To that G.o.d he is by nature and by sinful habit blind. He can be light and give light, only after G.o.d has enlightened him by special revelation. His nature is a candle unlighted, until G.o.d touches it with his divine flame.

What is the truth in this matter? The months I have spent in these heathen lands have made deep impression upon me, and the problem of heathenism has loomed up before me as never before. When one sees thousands prostrating themselves in a Mohammedan mosque and chanting in unison their ascription of greatness to G.o.d, or when one sees a Hindu devotee so absorbed in his prayer to a senseless idol that he is unconscious of the kicks and shouts of the pa.s.sers-by, one comes to realize that man must have a G.o.d. The religious instinct is a part of his nature. It is more than a mere capacity for religion. It is active as well as pa.s.sive. In some sort the candle is already burning. It burns at certain times and places with a fierce and demonic glow. When I saw in Calcutta, so recently the capital of India, a priestess of the temple of Kali, cutting into bits the flesh and entrails of sheep in order that the poorest worshiper might have for his farthing some b.l.o.o.d.y fragment to offer at the shrine of that hideous and l.u.s.tful and cruel G.o.ddess, I felt sure that, though the candle is burning, it is not always because it has been touched by a divine flame. There are other powers than G.o.d's at work in this universe. Doctor Parkhurst's explanation of the Scripture text is not sufficient. He acknowledges only a part of the truth. The candle is giving already a dim and lurid light. Man is blindly worshiping, groping in the dark, bowing to imaginary deities, the products of his own imagination, the work of his own hands.

We must go even farther than this, and concede that here and there among these crowds of worshipers there may be one who is a sincere seeker after G.o.d and, according to the light that he has, is trying honestly to serve him. I do not mean a selfish service of ignorant and earthly pa.s.sion, but a service prompted by some elementary knowledge of the true G.o.d, gained by contemplation of his works in nature or from the needs of his own soul revealed in conscience. Surely there was truth and sincerity in the worship of Socrates, of Epictetus, of Marcus Aurelius.

The patriarchs had knowledge of G.o.d and walked with G.o.d, long before Christ came. And Scripture itself declares that in every nation he that fears G.o.d and works righteousness is accepted by him. David Brainerd found among the American Indians a man who for years had separated himself from the wickedness of his people, and had devoted himself to doing them good. Now and then our missionaries find a heathen whose strivings after G.o.d have been prompted by a sense of sin, and whose worship must have been accepted by the G.o.d of love. Though there is "none other name given among men whereby we may be saved," we cannot doubt that every man who feels himself to be a sinner, and casts himself upon G.o.d's mercy for salvation, does really though unconsciously cast himself upon Christ, the Lamb of G.o.d who takes away the sin of the world, and so joins himself to Christ by the teaching and power of Christ's Spirit, as to be saved in some measure from the dominion of sin here and from the penalty of sin hereafter.

I am a believer in the unity, the sufficiency, and the authority of Scripture--in its unity, when the parts are put together in their historical connections and with the key to their meaning furnished us in Christ; in its sufficiency, as a rule of religious faith and practice; and in its authority, when rightly interpreted with the aid of the Holy Spirit. So I am prepared to find in the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans the true philosophy of heathenism, and the reconciliation of the otherwise seemingly conflicting utterances of Scripture with regard to the religious nature of man. I learn that G.o.d made man upright, and endowed him with at least a childlike knowledge of himself.