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 Christian point of view : three addresse 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029217084 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POINT 
 OF VIEW 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX 
 
 ARTHUR CUSHMAN McGIFFERT 
 
 FRANCIS BROWN 
 
 PROFESSORS IN UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 NEW YORK 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1902 
 
^ K.\\,\\oi.\j, 
 
 COPTRISHT, 1902, BT 
 
 CHAELES SCKIBNEE'S SONS 
 Published September, 1302 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 These Addresses were delivered at the 
 Union Theological Seminary, New York, 
 within one academic year. It appeared 
 that, without prearrangement, they were 
 closely related in theme and attitude. 
 With variety and even divergence as to 
 matters of detail, they agree in laying su- 
 preme emphasis on Jesus Christ as the 
 source, standard, guide, and authority in 
 Christian knowledge as in Christian life. 
 Jesus Christ is presented in them all as 
 affording the distinctively Christian point 
 of view. 
 
 They are now brought together and 
 published, in response to the request of 
 some who heard them. If they help any 
 persons to a better understanding of the 
 relation of Christ to Christianity, and 
 particularly to Christian thinking, and 
 thus lead to a widening of his dominion 
 over the heart and over the mind, the 
 authors will be very glad and grateful. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PACE 
 
 I. The Problem for the Church . i 
 
 II. Theological Reconstruction . 29 
 
 III. The Religious Value of the Old 
 
 Testament 49 
 
I 
 
 THE PROBLEM FOR THE 
 CHURCH 
 
 AN ADDRESS GIVEN AT THE OPENING SERVICE 
 OF THE SIXTY-SIXTH ACADEMIC YEAR OF UNION 
 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1901 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE 
 CHURCH 
 
 THE agitation for a change in the con- 
 fessional statements of the Presbyte- 
 rian Church is significant of a wide-spread 
 unrest. Even though formal discussion be 
 not elsewhere so prominent, yet through- 
 out the Church universal there is discon- 
 tent and a feeling that " the times are out 
 of joint." Painfully slow progress is made 
 in winning the world to our Lord, and the 
 question is raised whether Christianity so 
 much as holds its own. 
 
 Were this the result of some deter- 
 mined attack or because of some unusual 
 obstacle in the way, the Church would put 
 forth its strength with faith undaunted as to 
 the issue ; but never before was there so lit- 
 tle violent opposition, never before were 
 
4 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 there so many open doors, and never before 
 were such vast resources at the disposal 
 of the Church. Nor are we chiefly trou- 
 bled by denominational and party strifes, 
 for these are few and without unusual bit- 
 terness, but the difficulty is in fundamental 
 articles of the creed itself. Protestants, 
 advocates of the broadest education, cham- 
 pions of free thought, open to the in- 
 tellectual currents of the age, feel an 
 influence which makes them hesitate. 
 The widening separation between tradi- 
 tional theology and the scientific culture 
 of our times produces a semi-paralysis of 
 faith. 
 
 If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, 
 who shall prepare himself for battle, and 
 if the children of the Church doubt, who 
 shall hear their message ? 
 
 In certain quarters, it is true, there is a 
 renewal of confidence and a belief that 
 conflict is ended and a new period of 
 peace and progress begun ; but the peace 
 would seem to be only the quiet after 
 the battles of the half- century past, with 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 5 
 
 science victorious all along the line, and 
 the Church ready neither to renew the 
 conflict nor to consider seriously the 
 actual situation. There can be no well- 
 grounded hope as to the future, and no 
 helpful appeal to the present, until the 
 Church once more sees clearly the truth it 
 must teach, and is able to state with deep- 
 est conviction the message it has received. 
 Meanwhile discussion, and not misplaced 
 confidence and premature peace, is our 
 need, if we are to win triumphs in the time 
 to come. 
 
 The problem for the Church is not to 
 be found among the great questions of the 
 past, of Calvinism and Arminianism, of 
 sacraments and orders, of ritual and or- 
 ganization, of the Trinity and the atone- 
 ment; nor is it among the questions, so 
 sharply debated in recent years, of authen- 
 ticity and inerrancy, of inspiration and 
 revelation. All these, important and con- 
 nected not remotely with the essential 
 truths of our religion, are not central, and 
 their answer will not decide our issue. 
 
6 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 For we are concerned with the greatest 
 of problems debated through the ages. 
 Back from all outworks, back through all 
 interior lines of defence, we have been 
 forced, and the question of all questions is 
 once more raised within the confines of 
 the Church itself, What think we of God ? 
 
 The situation is not arbitrary. It is 
 not devised by any set of men. It is not 
 thrust upon us by atheists, nor planned by 
 wicked men who would cast aside Je- 
 hovah's bands from them, nor does it arise 
 from the restless curiosity of philosophers 
 intent on some new thing. Nor, on the 
 other hand, is it the outcome of the doubt, 
 or ignorance, or bigotry, or rationalism, 
 or traditionalism of the Church. It is 
 formed by the great intellectual movement 
 of our age and inseparable from it. It is 
 forced upon us because the Church is not 
 asleep in a cloister, but participates in the 
 interests of living men. Great historic 
 movements beyond man's control meet 
 together, and at the meeting-place we ask 
 ourselves again. What think we of God ? 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 7 
 
 The importance of the question needs 
 no discussion. Religion for any individ- 
 ual is communion with the God he knows. 
 The description of this God is his the- 
 ology, its adoration is his worship, and 
 obedience to its commands is his rule of 
 life. The central religious fact is com- 
 munion with God, or, in more technical 
 language, it is the realization in experi- 
 ence of the truth set forth in creed. 
 
 This inner reality finds expression in 
 acts of praise, worship, and obedience, 
 and its content is expressed in creed and 
 confession. Without experience, worship 
 is a vain form, but none the less the ex- 
 perience itself can be fully real only 
 through appropriate expression. So, too, 
 theology without the living experience is 
 the most formal and unsatisfying of phi- 
 losophies ; but, equally, experience sepa- 
 rated from the conceptions embodied in 
 confession and creed is empty, a thing 
 impossible, a feeling without contents. 
 The three, worship, theology, and ex- 
 perience, are indissolubly bound together 
 
8 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 in the unity of feeling, thought, and 
 will. 
 
 Thus it is that experience varies with 
 the various objects worshipped, and, 
 equally, the object worshipped varies with 
 our varying experience. Indeed, the two 
 are opposite sides of one realit)^ to be 
 wholly separated at our peril. As the old 
 saying teaches that the same thing done 
 by different men is not the same thing, so 
 may we say of ourselves. The same ex- 
 perience at different times and under dif- 
 fering circumstances is not the same ex- 
 perience. That which we call the same 
 varies with our varying consciousness. 
 So we have learned that there is no gen- 
 eral reason, everywhere and always the 
 same, but reason differing in method, con- 
 tents, and principles, a reason Occidental 
 and a reason Oriental, a reason differing 
 with race and age and nation, indeed in 
 some degree with every individual. So is 
 it emphatically with religion. Religion in 
 general is almost meaningless, a religion 
 reduced to the lowest terms and defecated 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 9 
 
 to a transparency. A religion according 
 to Confucius, or according to Buddha, or 
 according to the lowest savage tribes, we 
 know, but religion in general, this we 
 know only to discover that it is merely a 
 verbal classification, a starting-point for 
 real thought. For no general term can 
 give us the fulness of the most meagre 
 concrete reality, still less of God. He 
 cannot be known by generalizing the re- 
 sults of our studies of all the gods, nor can 
 our religion consist in the realization of so 
 artificial an abstraction in experience. No 
 lesson taught by the science of compara- 
 tive religion is plainer than this. 
 
 Each great religion has its object of su- 
 preme adoration and its own form of re- 
 ligious experience. In every great historic 
 religious community are men learned in 
 scriptures and philosophy, but finding plea- 
 sure solely in the intellectual pursuit ; in 
 all are many who are devoted in form 
 only, going with the multitude who keep 
 holy day ; but in all alike are some who 
 verify in experience that which is ex- 
 
10 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 pressed in the creed. In these men re- 
 ligion lives and moves and has its being. 
 From them only can we learn the true 
 meaning of the religious symbols, and 
 "they only are competent witnesses to the 
 faith. Thus it is not by comparing true 
 Christians with hypocrites and formalists 
 in other religions, but only by comparing 
 the best with the best, saints with saints, 
 that we can estimate aright the value of 
 the differing faiths. 
 
 Thus comparing, we cannot find that all 
 alike worship, under varying names, the 
 same Supreme Being, or that all alike seek 
 the same great end. Such a generaliza- 
 tion makes an abstract Infinite supreme 
 and finds worship truest as it is most emp- 
 tied of all positive content, and religious 
 experience at highest to be a vague, inde- 
 scribable state of feeling, best of all if so 
 vague that no positive term can be ap- 
 plied to it. But such theology, whose high- 
 est word is the Unknowable, and such 
 worship, mysticism in its purest form, is 
 not the actual religious experience dis- 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH ii 
 
 closed by the study of living representa- 
 tives of the ethnic faiths. Buddhist and 
 Confucianist neither worship the same be- 
 ing nor seek the same end, and the great 
 Chinese philosophers of the twelfth cen- 
 tury A.D. were right in breaking the al- 
 liance between the two religions which 
 had lasted for a thousand years. What 
 Confucius affirmed, Buddha denied, and 
 the highest virtue of the Buddhist appeared 
 the act of a madman to the followers of 
 the Sage. The solution of the religious 
 problem cannot be found in melting down 
 differences into an undifferentiated, color- 
 less, all-embracing unity. Such a process 
 in physics gives us chaos instead of cos- 
 mos, in psychology the first stirrings of 
 life in the infant, and in religion at best 
 only the raw material out of which the 
 mature religious life has come. Nor can 
 we combine more positively the elements 
 of the differing religions, for syncretism 
 is always weak, bearing within itself a 
 contradiction which ends in death. A re- 
 ligion of all religions either annexes all to 
 
12 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 one or saves all at the expense of losing 
 in each precisely that which is best worth 
 saving. 
 
 Not, then, by generalization nor by syn- 
 cretism, but by differentiation must we seek 
 the solution of our problem. And if we 
 still dream of some higher unity, it shall 
 be won as each is true to the truth as he 
 sees it, and as each religion and each in- 
 dividual clearly defines the object of his 
 adoration in his thought and realizes it in 
 his experience. We would, then, empha- 
 size the adjective and study the problem 
 of the Christian faith. 
 
 No doubt we are agreed in this, but if 
 we are thus to differentiate, if the way to 
 God is not by compromise with Buddha 
 or Confucius or the Hindu faith, we can- 
 not stop at this point, but must follow it to 
 the end. 
 
 What, then, does the Christian worship ? 
 The answer is not doubtful — God. He is 
 the centre of our theology; to know him is 
 the religious life, to praise him and pray 
 to him is worship, and to obey him is mo- 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 13 
 
 rality. How, then, is he fnade known ? 
 Dwell a moment on the question, for the 
 word God helps us not at all, since "all 
 men yearn after the gods." What does the 
 word God mean to us, to Christians ? 
 
 How do we learn of him ? Again the 
 answer is unquestioned — through Christ. 
 So the Church believes : " Light of light, 
 very God of very God." So the Scrip- 
 tures testify : " He that hath seen me hath 
 seen the Father ; how sayest thou then. 
 Show us the Father ? " To us, though 
 God spake to the fathers by the prophets 
 by divers portions and in divers manners, 
 yet is his message through his Son, who is 
 the effulgence of his glory and the very 
 image of his substance. As the Christian 
 sees this glory he exclaims, " My Lord 
 and my God ! " 
 
 But though the answer is so obvious, 
 writ so large upon the page we call the 
 Word of God, yet, as matter of fact, the- 
 ology has travelled by quite a different 
 road. In general, we may say, it has 
 sought to go up through nature to nature's 
 
14 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 God, to God as Creator of nature, his wis- 
 dom and power seen through nature, his 
 attributes described and analyzed by a 
 method learned in schools far other than 
 those of the apostles and prophets. Thus 
 it has been the God of reason and nature 
 first, with proofs from nature, at most sup- 
 plemented with Scripture texts. And the 
 revelation of God in Christ, if it appear at 
 all, has been given an inconspicuous place, 
 the lessons he teaches made an appendix 
 to a natural theology. 
 
 The present problem for the Church 
 follows as matter of course. For our 
 view of nature changes with every change 
 in science and philosophy, and with this 
 change of view must our notions of the 
 God of nature change. Thus natural the- 
 ology is the handmaid of natural science. 
 Given a certain physics, logic, and ontol- 
 ogy, and a corresponding view of God 
 emerges. Change those, and this, too, shall 
 change. For the two are one, nature the 
 living garment of the Almighty, and God 
 the inner reality of the outer world. With 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 15 
 
 this as basis, no wonder the Church is sore 
 perplexed. 
 
 For all nature is transformed. In phys- 
 ics, metaphysics, and anthropology the 
 revolution is complete. It is no longer 
 subject of debate. From kindergarten to 
 university the old has passed away. It is 
 not a change in mere details, but, behold, 
 all things are become new, and not only 
 in the outer world, for man himself has 
 changed. The old logic no longer con- 
 vinces him, the old philosophy no longer 
 controls his thought, the old problems no 
 longer interest. With a new reason and 
 a new soul, man looks out upon a new 
 heaven and a new earth. Our fathers 
 two generations back were nearer to the 
 men of Greece and Rome than to our- 
 selves. Their discussions are as unreal 
 to us, like the strife of puppets beating the 
 air. How, then, can our problem fail to 
 press for its solution ? The wonder is 
 that so many remain undisturbed, and that, 
 on the whole, faith still stands so firm. 
 But the question will not down. With 
 
i6 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 all nature transformed, is the Christian's 
 God still the same ? Can we worship him 
 our fathers worshipped and still call our- 
 selves by the same sacred name ? 
 
 To this question there are many an- 
 swers : 
 
 Some reply directly : No. Theology 
 falls with the old philosophy and science. 
 In the name of truth we renounce the 
 faith, though the universe lose its soul of 
 loveliness thereby. The answer is natural, 
 for the dilemma has been formed by the 
 Church itself, and if the dilemma hold, if 
 the way is up through nature to nature's 
 God, then it is inevitable. But the dilem- 
 ma is false. The Christian knows his God 
 not through nature, but through Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Just as unsound is the dilemma if we 
 take its other horn with many, and say: 
 We defy the new. We have certainty and 
 finality in our theology, and it shall not 
 change with changing times. But this is 
 a losing fight, half-hearted, with yieldings 
 here and there which really yield all. The 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 17 
 
 position is the very centre of the unrest of 
 the Church. To yield it wholly is the only 
 way to peace. Half- measures are of no 
 avail, though some still strive to patch the 
 old with the new, — notwithstanding our 
 Lord's words, — attempting the impossible. 
 
 Others turn from it all and busy them- 
 selves with cult and organization and pass- 
 ing activities. They refuse to think, and 
 fancy the problem solved because forgotten. 
 However possible this for the individual, 
 it is impossible for the Church, for thus it 
 forfeits its character as Protestant and re- 
 turns on the way to Rome. 
 
 Again, some from the same logical po- 
 sition would reconstruct. Through the 
 new nature they will pass to God. We 
 shall have a new theology formed on the 
 model seen in the doctrine of evolution 
 and in full accord with a science only a 
 few years out of date — a scheme possi- 
 ble, or more likely impossible, but in any 
 case giving us as the result not the Chris- 
 tian but a new nature God. 
 
 Or, interested chiefly in philosophy, we 
 
i8 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 shall flee from transcendence to imma- 
 nence, magnify, perhaps ignorantly, the 
 Greek theologians, or try to construct an 
 absolute out of knowledge, completing 
 Aristotle's thought. Illuminating, deeply 
 religious, we may succeed in transfiguring 
 the world and in making every place holy 
 ground. But even so, the result will be 
 one more profound and transcendental 
 philosophy, one more system to have its 
 day and cease to be. 
 
 Or, finally, we may turn to the Christian 
 experience and ask its guidance. But 
 though priceless, and though in theology 
 it must ever aid in defining and proving 
 truth, yet has it no deep well of its own 
 from which it can minister to our need. 
 Linked indissolubly to its object, it points 
 not to itself, but to him. 
 
 Let us, then, turn to him, that we may 
 ask our Lord. To whom else shall the 
 Christian turn, since he only has the words 
 of eternal life ? Let us go to Christ and 
 listen to him — not to the sonorous words 
 of the Westminster divines, not even to 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 19 
 
 the accents of Christian prayers and hymns, 
 not even to the inspired utterance of 
 prophets and apostles, but to himself 
 How vast the contrast his words present 
 to all formal theology ! Natural theology 
 leads us to a God perfect in wisdom and 
 power, omnipotent and omniscient, it says ; 
 philosophy leads us to a God all-perfect 
 in being, or to a God who is perfect 
 thought, or infinite, eternal will. The- 
 ology joins these together and adds the 
 holiness of the ancient prophets of Israel's 
 God and declares God is perfect ; then 
 God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and un- 
 changeable in his being, wisdom, power, 
 holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. As 
 the sonorous words echo in our ears, our 
 souls are filled with wonder, reverence, 
 and awe. God seems, in the mystery of 
 his being, past finding out. His perfect- 
 ness separates him from us and hides him 
 like a veil, and we perceive him dimly, far 
 away. It is only one more little step, and 
 our great words defining the infinite, the 
 undefinable, themselves disappear, and we 
 
20 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 are one with all who have ascended thus 
 to the presence of that which transcends 
 all thought. Only the feeling of wonder- 
 ing awe remains. We are like the nature- 
 priest before the shrine : 
 
 Not knowing what it is, grateful tears he weeps. 
 
 But turn to the Christ and ask our Lord : 
 " God is the perfect one, supreme, complete. 
 What is he like, what is the characteristic 
 of his perfectness ? " And now from his 
 lips comes no word of science or philoso- 
 phy, no word that must be translated when 
 uttered to the babes and sucklings in the 
 faith, but — take off thy shoes from off 
 thy feet, for the ground on which thou stand- 
 est is holy ground — "Be ye therefore 
 perfect, as your Father which is in heaven 
 is perfect." (We perfect, as he is perfect !) 
 " For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil 
 and on the good, and sendeth rain on the 
 just and on the unjust. For if ye love 
 them which love you, what reward have 
 ye ? do not even the publicans the same ? 
 And if ye salute your brethren only, what 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 21 
 
 do ye more than others ? do not even the 
 publicans so? But I say unto you, Love 
 your enemies, bless them that curse you, do 
 good to them that hate you, and pray for 
 them that despitefully use you, and perse- 
 cute you ; that ye may be the children of 
 your Father which is in heaven." Thus, 
 thus are we to be perfect, as our Father in 
 heaven is perfect. Does he thus deal with 
 those who curse him and despitefully use 
 him, and is he, who makes sun to shine 
 and rain to fall, thereby perfect? And 
 there rises before us the image of one 
 whose visage was marred, who was cursed, 
 hated, despitefully used and persecuted, 
 who, led like a lamb to the slaughter, 
 opened not his mouth, and on the cross 
 prayed for those who slew him. And we 
 understand in his light, saying: "We 
 have seen thee, we have seen the Father." 
 Who ever else in any land or time thus 
 described the perfectness of God? Who 
 else ever thus made such perfectness visible 
 before our eyes ? To him who thus sees 
 Christ full of grace and truth as of the 
 
22 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 only begotten Son of God, to him who 
 catches a gHmpse of that supreme glory, 
 all else is secondary. It sufficeth him. 
 He has found him of whom Moses and the 
 prophets did write, and he will not turn back 
 even to them who, after all, saw afar off 
 and through a veil, and without us were 
 not made perfect. 
 
 The solution is simple. It makes su- 
 preme what Christ made supreme. It 
 sees God perfect as Christ saw him per- 
 fect. It takes the place of honor from on- 
 tology and science, and gives it to ethics. 
 It turns our thought from the world with- 
 out to conscience within. It fills our souls 
 not with wonder and amaze, but with hu- 
 mility, faith, and love. It leads us not 
 along the road of dialectics to our God, 
 but by the great highway of service to 
 our fellow-men. The solution is simple. 
 It is the open secret of Jesus. It is the 
 truth which has ever been the hiding of 
 the Church's power, the truth of praise 
 and prayer, of help in the hour of need, 
 of salvation from sin. It is the truth 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 23 
 
 which makes men strong, which women 
 love and saints reveal. But thus simple 
 as life itself and true as our Christian 
 faith, let us not mistake — adopted with 
 full consciousness of its meaning in our 
 systems, it will revolutionize theology, and, 
 more, adopted with full power in our lives, 
 it will revolutionize the world. 
 
 Problems enough remain of high inter- 
 est, problems of criticism, of history, of 
 physical science, of philosophy. They are 
 of great importance, but their connection 
 with the Christian Church is at most only 
 indirect. No doubt we shall find profit 
 and pleasure and even religious exaltation 
 in their study. But so in many lands have 
 men who have never heard of Christ. 
 What is the relation of the infinite and the 
 finite, of the relative and the absolute, of 
 omnipotence and man's freedom; how man 
 has developed in his long history on earth; 
 how the world was formed and how it is 
 maintained — these and a thousand more 
 shall occupy men in the future as in the 
 past; but, change as our conceptions may, 
 
24 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 wax old and vanish as all our knowledge 
 will, the truth of Christ stands sure. He 
 has shown us the Father, and it sufficeth 
 us. 
 
 Faith doubtless unites the God of su- 
 preme grace and truth revealed by Christ 
 with the God of wisdom, power, and life. 
 Christ doubted not that his Father could 
 work his loving will. 
 
 Nor will faith doubt that truth. It can- 
 not rest in a dualism of power and love, 
 but certain as is this process of belief, he 
 who knows his Lord will not return to the 
 method of the past. By Christ he will go 
 to God, and not through nature's God to 
 Christ. Christ is first, and his truth re- 
 vealed immediately to the soul shines 
 clear. Religion shall not be the final step 
 in a logical process, but the light in which 
 the Christian soul sees all the rest. Phys- 
 ics and ontology and anthropology have 
 no authority in this domain. It is not 
 because of the mighty firmament, nor be- 
 cause of circling worlds, nor because of 
 some law of evolution, nor because of the 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 25 
 
 necessity for a first great cause, nor be- 
 cause we discern final causes, that we as 
 Christians believe in God, but because we 
 have seen him perfect and therefore must 
 believe. 
 
 But some doubter will say. Is there not 
 danger in making all to rest thus upon the 
 supreme grace in Jesus Christ, both the 
 proof of God and the definition of his per- 
 fectness ? Can we dare to stake the issue 
 on this, giving up our claims to under- 
 stand the universe with its powers as 
 introductory to our proof of God ? Doubt- 
 less it is dangerous if God be supremely 
 power or wisdom. For these we must 
 seek in the world of power and wisdom. 
 Then is his supreme revelation the natural 
 process of the world, and if we find him 
 not in this we find him not at all. But if 
 the Christian's God be he whom Christ 
 revealed, the one in whom grace and love 
 are supreme, then certain as the facts of 
 our deepest consciousness is the certainty 
 that he is and that he saves all those who 
 put their trust in him. But could the soul 
 
26 THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 
 
 doubt, could it believe that the supreme 
 moral virtue in Jesus Christ were not the 
 revelation of the God of power and wis- 
 dom, then it could not hesitate, for to die 
 with Christ would be far better than to 
 live in a world where mere power or wis- 
 dom rules supreme. 
 
 Nor can the Christian admit a danger 
 to the faith from this whole-hearted reli- 
 ance upon Christ. For our difficulty has 
 arisen, as I have pointed out, from the 
 other course. With philosophy and 
 through science we have looked upon the 
 world and argued the existence of a nature- 
 God. But the philosophy and the science 
 pass away, and the faith which rests 
 thereon disappears. We would not re- 
 peat the error. It is not true that men 
 do not respond to the highest truth, nor 
 can it be that the Church will hesitate to 
 make its appeal to the holiest element in 
 humanity. 
 
 To sum up : The Christian sees God in 
 Christ. The essential perfectness of God 
 is shown in forgiveness, love, and blessing. 
 
THE PROBLEM FOR THE CHURCH 27 
 
 His perfectness commands our conscience, 
 and in his light we see the highest glory 
 in lowliest service. But we see our sin- 
 fulness, for, alas ! far other motives have 
 controlled our conduct ; but the same 
 knowledge which condemns us heals, for it 
 is the revelation of forgiving love which at 
 once condemns and pardons. With this 
 experience in our souls, knowing imme- 
 diately that this only is to be worshipped 
 and adored, our lives, by the same neces- 
 sity, shall show our faith. This it is to 
 see the Christian's God, to realize his 
 presence in experience, and to embody his 
 law in our lives. To disentangle the wor- 
 ship of the Christian God from the nature- 
 worship which has usurped its place, and 
 to make Christian love supreme in the 
 world of men, this is to solve the problem 
 for the Church and for the world, for this 
 age and for all time. 
 
II 
 
 THEOLOGICAL 
 RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 AN ADDRESS GIVEN AT THE UNION THEOLOGI- 
 CAL SEMINARY ALUMNI BANQUET, MAY 12, I9°2 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR CUSHMAN McGIFFERT 
 
 WASHBURN PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY 
 
THEOLOGICAL 
 RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 THE present is a time of great theo- 
 logical unrest. Especially among 
 those who are wide awake and open- 
 minded, and who are in sympathy with 
 the modern world and feel its influence, 
 there is marked uncertainty and doubt. 
 Many Christian men and women are com- 
 plaining that they do not know what to 
 think or what to believe, and even some 
 ministers seem to be all at sea, and quite 
 without a positive and definite and clear- 
 cut message to bring to their people. 
 There can be no question that as a conse- 
 quence the progress of the gospel is seri- 
 ously impeded in many quarters. The 
 existing difficulties are due to various 
 causes, among others to the modern criti- 
 31 
 
^2 THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 cal philosophy which has made the old 
 Platonic and Neoplatonic view of God 
 and man, that prevailed for so many cen- 
 turies within the Church, impossible to 
 many leaders of theological thought ; still 
 more to modern science, which has changed 
 entirely traditional ideas of the world, not 
 among theologians simply, but among the 
 masses as well ; in part, also, to modern 
 missions, which have broken down forever 
 the old comfortable and selfish doctrines 
 of election and the old narrow interpreta- 
 tions of the gospel, and have set many to 
 wondering whether a knowledge of Christ 
 is really necessary to salvation, and whe- 
 ther Christianity is really God's only reve- 
 lation to men in these latter days ; and 
 finally, and just now most patently, to 
 modern historical criticism, which has de- 
 stroyed the old view of the Bible, and has 
 thrown multitudes into dire confusion as 
 to where to look for religious authority, 
 and as to what to believe on all sorts of 
 religious questions. No careful observer 
 of present conditions can fail to realize 
 
THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 33 
 
 that something is needed, though there 
 may be a wide difference of opinion as to 
 what it is. I venture to think, in com- 
 mon with many others, that one of the 
 most crying needs of the day is a genuine 
 and thoroughgoing reconstruction of our 
 traditional theology — a reconstruction 
 that shall bring out clearly and give the 
 proper emphasis to the great underlying 
 principles of Christianity, which have been 
 obscured by so much temporary and un- 
 essential matter, and about which there is 
 to-day so wide-spread an uncertainty and 
 doubt. 
 
 But reconstruction that is to be any- 
 thing more than an aimless and haphazard 
 revision can be accomplished only under 
 the control of some definite principle great 
 enough and far-reaching enough to form 
 the basis of the entire system. Have 
 we, then, any such principle ? Are we 
 already in possession of it, or are we only 
 groping for it ? I venture to believe that 
 we have such a principle, and that a the- 
 ological reconstruction, not merely of 
 
34 THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 temporary but of permanent significance, 
 has already begun, and under the hands 
 of many fellow- workers on both sides the 
 sea is going rapidly forward — a theologi- 
 cal reconstruction which will mean ulti- 
 mately a greater transformation than any 
 the Church has witnessed since the Prot- 
 estant Reformation. 
 
 There are many, it is true, who say it is 
 too soon to reconstruct ; that the modern 
 view of the world, the new conceptions in 
 philosophy, the new theories in science, 
 are not yet sufficiently tested, or their 
 bearing sufficiently understood. If a re- 
 construction of theology means the forma- 
 tion of a system upon the basis of modern 
 philosophy or modern science, I quite 
 agree with such objectors. We are not 
 yet ready for such a work, and when we 
 are our reconstruction will be already out 
 of date. 
 
 But I contend, and in my contention I 
 am happy to find myself in agreement 
 with the published views of two of my 
 honored and beloved colleagues, — Dr. 
 
THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 35 
 
 William Adams Brown in his inaugfural on 
 " Christ the Vitalizing Principle of Chris- 
 tian Theology," and Dr. Knox in his ad- 
 dress on " The Problem for the Church," 
 given at the opening of the present semi- 
 nary year, — I contend, I say, that the 
 proper basis for a Christian theology — 
 the only theology I am talking about — is 
 altogether different ; that it is the historic 
 figure Jesus Christ and the revelation 
 which he has brought. And I contend 
 that we are already in a position to recon- 
 struct our theology on that basis, in a bet- 
 ter position than ever before, because the 
 life and work of Jesus Christ are better 
 understood to-day than they have ever 
 been. The trouble with most of the his- 
 toric theologies is that they have not been 
 based upon the life and work of Jesus ; 
 that they have been, in fact, almost every- 
 thing else but genuinely Christian theolo- 
 gies. In the system of the Alexandrian 
 theologians the eternal Logos, not the 
 historic figure Jesus Christ, had the place 
 of prominence ; in the system of Angus- 
 
36 THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 tine the twofold conception of God as the 
 alone source of good and as absolute will 
 was dominant, and Jesus Christ was quite 
 unnecessary; to the mediseval theologians 
 only his relation to the sacramental sys- 
 tem and to the treasury of merits was im- 
 portant ; to Calvin the sovereign decree 
 of God was the constructive principle, and 
 the figure of Jesus occupied a subsidiary 
 place. And so in more recent days we 
 have had theological reconstructions based 
 upon the conception of the Church as the 
 perpetual incarnation, the mystical body of 
 the Son of God ; upon the doctrine of the 
 divine immanence ; upon the theory of 
 evolution ; and most recently of all upon 
 the principle of personality, which has 
 been especially emphasized in one of the 
 latest books upon theological reconstruc- 
 tion. We have had plenty of reconstruc- 
 tions upon all sorts of bases, but upon the 
 basis of Jesus Christ's revelation we have 
 had very few. 
 
 The great significance of the work of 
 Martin Luther was his recognition of the 
 
THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 37 
 
 central place of Jesus Christ in all Christian 
 living and thinking. But Luther was not 
 a systematic theologian, and to much of the 
 traditional theology he failed to apply his 
 controlling principle, and so handed on to 
 his successors a large part of that theol- 
 ogy quite unchanged, and they, instead of 
 completing his work, forgot altogether his 
 fundamental gospel, and put the Bible in 
 the place which he had given to Christ ; 
 and very soon the various systems of Prot- 
 estant dogmatics had become ostensibly, if 
 not in reality, biblical theologies, to the 
 almost complete obscuring of the Chris- 
 tian principle. As a striking illustration 
 of this it may be noticed how in some 
 Protestant systems, notably in the Re- 
 formed wing of the Church, the Old Tes- 
 tament has bulked even more largely than 
 the New. 
 
 Again, at the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century Schleiermacher returned 
 to the principle of Luther and recognized 
 the historic Christ as the real starting- 
 point in Christian theology. But Schleier- 
 
38 THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 macher gave so large a place to the re- 
 ligious experience of Christians, and made 
 so much of his theory of religion as the 
 consciousness of dependence upon the In- 
 finite, that he obscured the Christ princi- 
 ple, and led most of his followers off upon 
 a wrong path. Only in our own day, by 
 Albrecht Ritschl, has a really thorough- 
 going attempt been made to reconstruct 
 theology upon the Christian basis. But 
 even the sturdiest champion of Ritschl 
 must recognize that while his work sur- 
 passed in epoch-making importance the 
 work of any other theologian since the 
 Reformation, he nevertheless left much 
 undone, and the task of reconstruction 
 was only begun by him. The great sig- 
 nificance of Ritschl is that he followed 
 Luther in calling the Church back to the 
 historic Christ, and in emphasizing the 
 figure of Jesus as the controlling prin- 
 ciple in all Christian theology. Here we 
 must take our stand, and must demand 
 that Christian theology shall be truly 
 Christian and solely Christian. It is not 
 simply that we must demand that Christ 
 
THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 39 
 
 shall be appealed to in conjunction with 
 or even before speculative philosophy and 
 nature and human history, but that we 
 must demand that Christian theology shall 
 be based on Christ alone. The difficulty 
 with many of the best of our modern at- 
 tempts at theological reconstruction is that, 
 while they recognize the supreme impor- 
 tance of the Christian revelation, they as- 
 sociate other and foreign sources of knowl- 
 edge with it, and so more or less com- 
 pletely obscure the true meaning of the 
 gospel. Christian theology, I maintain, 
 should be nothing else than Christian the- 
 ology. It should be based, not chiefly 
 merely, but solely, upon Christ. And the 
 Bible, Old Testament and New, so far as 
 it is used theologically at all and not for 
 religious inspiration merely, should be 
 employed, not as an independent source 
 of Christian theology, but simply as an aid 
 to the better understanding of Christ. 
 And the same is true of the religious ex- 
 perience of ourselves and of others in this 
 and other ages. 
 
 But what do we mean when we say 
 
40 THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 that Jesus Christ is the only true basis of 
 Christian theology ? Do we mean the 
 person of Christ, the incarnate Son of God, 
 and so find our constructive principle in 
 the incarnation, as many have done ? Do 
 we mean the historic events of his career 
 — birth, death, resurrection, and ascen- 
 sion ? Do we mean more generally his 
 life and work ? Do we mean his ethical 
 and religious teaching, or his total revela- 
 tion of God and of divine truth ? To speak 
 of Christ as the basis of Christian the- 
 ology without more nearly defining what 
 we mean is to speak vaguely and to little 
 purpose. Let us look at the matter some- 
 what more closely. 
 
 Christian theology may be defined as 
 the formulation of the principles of the 
 Christian religion, or, to phrase it some- 
 what differently, the formulation of the 
 controlling principles of the true Christian 
 life, with their presuppositions and conse- 
 quents. Christian theology has frequently 
 claimed to be much more than this. It 
 has frequently claimed to include a phi- 
 
THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 41 
 
 losophy of God, of the universe, and of 
 man. But with philosophy as such Chris- 
 tian theology is not concerned. It is a 
 practical discipline, and with matters, how- 
 ever interesting and true, which do not in 
 any way affect life it has nothing to do. 
 Christian theology and speculative phi- 
 losophy have altogether different fields. 
 If it be said that it is merely a question 
 of names, and that it is a matter of indiffer- 
 ence whether we use the term "theology" 
 in the narrower or in the broader sense, 
 I reply that the failure to observe the 
 proper distinction at this point has been 
 largely responsible for the wide-spread con- 
 fusion between essentials and non-essen- 
 tials in religion and for the common ob- 
 scuration of the cardinal principles of the 
 gospel. It is time that every one recog- 
 nized the real significance of Christian 
 theology and distinguished it sharply from 
 the philosophy of religion in general, and 
 still more sharply from metaphysics and 
 cosmology. Christian theology, I repeat, 
 is a strictly practical discipline, dealing 
 
42 THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 with the principles of the Christian relig- 
 ion, or the principles that underlie and 
 govern the Christian life. 
 
 But when this is once recognized the 
 relation of Christ to Christian theology 
 becomes perfectly clear. Christian the- 
 ology must be primarily a formulation and 
 exposition of the principles which under- 
 lay and governed his life. The construc- 
 tive principle, then, in Christian theology 
 must be the life-purpose of Jesus Christ. 
 
 But a serious difficulty suggests itself 
 Has not modern biblical criticism thrown 
 such discredit upon our sources as to make 
 it impossible for us to stand with assur- 
 ance upon the picture of Christ contained 
 in the four gospels? And are we not 
 consequently building upon shifting sand 
 in making the historic figure Jesus the 
 sole basis, or, for that matter, even the 
 chief basis, of our theology ? If to build 
 our theology upon Christ means to make 
 it a reproduction of all his teaching upon 
 all the matters which he touched, we can 
 hardly do otherwise than answer this 
 
THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 43 
 
 question in the affirmative ; for of the 
 genuineness of many of his utterances re- 
 corded in one or another of our gospels 
 we cannot be altogether sure. But to 
 base Christian theology upon Christ means 
 nothing of this kind. It means, on the 
 contrary, to make the controlling purpose 
 of his life the controlling principle of our 
 theology. And that purpose we know 
 with all-sufficient clearness. Modern crit- 
 icism has served only to make plainer 
 than ever before Jesus' life-purpose, and 
 there need be no fear that criticism will 
 ever obscure it. It alone accounts for 
 Christianity, and Christianity is a fact 
 altogether too stubborn to be got rid of 
 Indeed, the more mercilessly the sources 
 are criticised the more clearly does the 
 essential Christian fact — the dominating 
 purpose of Christ's life — stand out. And 
 that purpose, what was it ? It was, in its 
 simplest terms, to impart to others or to 
 induce in others the life which he was liv- 
 ing, — the life of freedom from fear and 
 sin, the life of complete victory over the 
 
44 THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 world through faith in God his father and 
 through devotion to his will, — and so to 
 establish on earth the kingdom of God. 
 That is what it meant to Jesus to be the 
 Messiah : to impart to other men, his 
 brethren, the most precious possession of 
 his life, — the knowledge of and faith in his 
 father God, — and so to bring them salva- 
 tion. It is this controlling purpose of 
 Christ's life, and the revelation of God's pur- 
 pose and of our privilege and duty involved 
 in it, that are alone of consequence to us. 
 It is in the purpose itself, in the steadfast- 
 ness with which he gave himself to its 
 accomplishment, and in the knowledge of 
 God's will and character which is wrapped 
 up in it, that we recognize the divinity of 
 Christ and bow before him as our Master 
 and our Lord. For here is the summit 
 of divine purpose and of human attain- 
 ment. If God be not here, then there is 
 no God, and none is needed, for we have 
 all we need here. 
 
 Going back to this central fact of Chris- 
 tianity, — going back to Christ's life-pur- 
 
THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 45 
 
 pose, — we get from it one after another 
 of the great truths of the Christian sys- 
 tem. We get from it, for instance, the 
 Christian view of God, Christ's father and 
 ours : a God of love, whose purpose of 
 love for his children is realized in Christ's 
 life of service ; a God who is ever giving 
 himself for his children, even as Christ gave 
 himself for his brethren. We get also the 
 Christian view of the world : that it be- 
 longs to God, who is working in and through 
 it to establish his kingdom, and that for 
 the child of God it is a field for service, 
 for conflict, and for victory. We get also 
 the Christian view of men : children of 
 God and brethren one of another, whose 
 true life is not meat and drink, health and 
 wealth, but to do the will of God their 
 father in the service of their brethren. We 
 get also the Christian view of salvation : 
 victory over the world and sin and death, 
 and the conscious fulfilling of the purposes 
 of God. And we get also the Christian 
 view of Christ : the one who has given us 
 his faith in God his father, and so has 
 
46 THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 brought God to us and given us the vic- 
 tory over the world and sin and death 
 which was his. 
 
 All this our Christ principle gives us 
 and much more. But much also which 
 has found a place in our historic theolo- 
 gies it does not give us. But whatever it 
 does not has no rightful place in Christian 
 theology, however true it may be. The 
 creation of the world, the origin of man, 
 the historicity of Adam, the fall, the del- 
 uge, Jonah, the nature and the attributes 
 of the Absolute — with all these matters 
 Christianity has absolutely nothing to do, 
 any more than with astronomy or geology 
 or mathematics. 
 
 To make earnest with the life-purpose 
 of Christ ; to make it absolutely control- 
 ling in Christian theology, and upon it as 
 a basis to reconstruct our traditional sys- 
 tems from the bottom to the top ; upon it 
 as a basis to formulate a genuine Chris- 
 tian theology, not for this age alone but 
 for ages to come — that is the task of 
 Christian theologians, of Christian thinkers 
 
THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 47 
 
 in general, whatever their place or calling. 
 It is a task for no one man alone, but for 
 many working together with the one com- 
 mon purpose and the one common spirit. 
 For Christian theology, if it is genuinely 
 Christian, cannot be a dividing, it must be 
 a uniting force. 
 
 Let us, then, brethren, have a theology 
 — a Christian theology for the twentieth 
 and for all the coming centuries. Let 
 us have a Christian theology on which 
 we can unite ; which we can under- 
 stand, and make others, even plain men, 
 understand ; which we can preach ; which 
 we can live and die for; which we can 
 conquer the world with. Let us know 
 what it is that has made us victors and 
 free men, and let us tell it free and full 
 and clear. Let us put it, if we will, into 
 creeds, not as tests of orthodoxy or of 
 heresy, but as manifestoes, as declara- 
 tions of the Christian purpose. I believe, 
 and you believe, and our brethren all 
 about us believe, and therefore we live 
 and work not alone but together for the 
 
48 THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 redemption of the world. I believe — yes, 
 I am sure I can say we believe, all of us — 
 whatever else and more — at least in our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, in his victory for him- 
 self and for us over the world and sin and 
 death; and we believe in God, his father 
 and ours, through faith in whom and 
 through devotion to whose will he won 
 his victory, as we too, following him, may 
 win ours ; and we believe in the kingdom 
 of God, the ever-growing realization of 
 God's purpose in the ever-enlarging com- 
 munity of those who through faith in him 
 are overcoming the world and sin and 
 death ; and we believe in the Church of 
 Christ, the association and cooperation 
 of all that believe in Jesus Christ and in 
 his father God, for the serving and the 
 saving of their brethren, far and near, 
 that they too may have that faith in God 
 and that devotion to his will which shall 
 make them also victors over the world and 
 sin and death. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATING CLASS 
 OF UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, GIVEN 
 MAY 13, I9OZ 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS BROWN 
 
 DAVENPORT PROFESSOR OF HEBREW AND THE COGNATE LANGUAGES 
 
THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 I ASK you to consider some aspects of 
 this theme. No question on the sub- 
 ject arose in New Testament times. The 
 familiar verse, " And that from a babe thou 
 hast known the sacred writings which are 
 able to make thee wise unto salvation 
 through faith which is in Christ Jesus " 
 (2 Tim. iii. 15), is sufficient proof of this. 
 It is noteworthy that in the full freshness 
 of early Christianity, under the first im- 
 pression of the unique personality of Jesus, 
 such worth and weight should have been 
 ascribed to the Old Testament. The old 
 Jewish Scriptures were not incongruous 
 with Christ. There was no break in the 
 line. 
 
 The case is somewhat different to-day. 
 5« 
 
52 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 Everything is now questioned, and with 
 Christ made at home in the world, and his 
 place in Christianity emphasized, it is im- 
 possible that critical inquiry should not be 
 directed toward the phenomenon that the 
 early Christian writings are bound in a 
 volume more than three quarters of which 
 was written centuries before Christ ap- 
 peared. 
 
 It is inevitable that the question should 
 be asked, Are the Old Testament books 
 really Christian Scriptures ? 
 
 The question has found two extreme 
 answers. One party denies that they are. 
 The Old Testament antedates Christianity 
 and is on a lower plane. The spirit of 
 Christianity is lacking. The Old Testa- 
 ment may represent a stage of the human 
 journey on the way to Christ, but it is a 
 stage to which we do not revert when we 
 have reached Christ himself Christ gives 
 a new revelation of God, so original, so 
 profound, so penetrating, that it is practi- 
 cally a new God whom he reveals. In 
 any case, the Old Testament is so elemen- 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 53 
 
 tary, by comparison, and looks at religion 
 so constantly from a wrong angle, that 
 for religious purposes we can safely neg- 
 lect it. 
 
 Another party, diminishing, but still 
 large, goes to the opposite extreme, and 
 affirms not only that the Old Testament 
 books are Christian Scriptures, but also 
 that they are fully on a par, for the Chris- 
 tian religion, with the books of the New 
 Testament. This proposition is defended 
 historically on the ground of needful prep- 
 aration for Christ, which belongs to the 
 Christian system, and it is illustrated prac- 
 tically by the uncritical use of selected parts 
 of the Old Testament to maintain doc- 
 trines and enforce precepts and unfold 
 experiences belonging to Christianity. In 
 this view the Old Testament is treated 
 as a flat surface, without perspective or 
 shading, and the New Testament as a 
 mere continuation of the Old Testament 
 on the same plane, accidentally separated 
 from it by book-divisions. Most of those 
 who hold this view are good people, Bible- 
 
54 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 loving and sincere. There are also some 
 scoffers, who identify both Testaments, 
 and gleefully discredit the New Testament 
 from what they find to object to in the 
 Old Testament. 
 
 It is probable that the Old Testament, 
 and religion generally, suffer more from 
 the latter view than from the former. It 
 is much more wide-spread. The facts are 
 plainly against it. It makes a claim for 
 the Old Testament which is untenable, 
 and against which the moral sense is sure 
 at length to revolt. Many — not scoffers 
 — have rejected Christianity because of 
 what seems the dead weight of the Old 
 Testament attached to Christianity. 
 Treated thus mechanically, the Old Testa- 
 ment has grown to seem to many thought- 
 ful people not a support for Christianity, 
 but a handicap. Christianity without any 
 Old Testament at all is simpler and clearer 
 and more effective than Christianity with 
 an Old Testament exaggerated to this 
 degree. 
 
 We should all say, of course, that if we 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 55 
 
 had to choose between the New Testament 
 and the Old Testament, the Old Testament 
 would be left lying. We are assured that 
 it is Jesus Christ who has transformed the 
 world. We know whom we have believed, 
 and it is he. He is our Friend, our Ex- 
 ample, our Redeemer, our Lord. The 
 God whom he shows is the God whom 
 we adore and love, the kingdom he has 
 set up is the kingdom to which our en- 
 thusiasms belong. Whatever intimations 
 of him the Old Testament may contain, 
 they are shadowy, whatever truth about 
 God it teaches, it is incomplete, whatever 
 announcements for man it makes, they are 
 elementary, in comparison with the rich 
 abundance of spiritual knowledge and 
 power which crowds the New Testament 
 and makes it the gospel of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. We are not going to retreat from 
 the glory of noonday to live in the twilight 
 of the cave. If we could have only one 
 Testament, we should not hesitate which 
 to choose. 
 
 But is there no middle ground between 
 
S6 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 the two extremes ? Must we either aban- 
 don our Old Testament, and lose three 
 fourths of our Bible, or exalt our Old Tes- 
 tament to a place beyond its right, in 
 defiance of truth ? We have to ask, with 
 discrimination, What religious value has 
 the Old Testament for Christians ? 
 
 The question is not as to its historical 
 value. Only fools deny that. It has 
 value for national history — very great. 
 It is our main source for Hebrew history, 
 and our chief secondary source for the his- 
 tory of the surrounding peoples. These 
 documents have, of course, unique value 
 for religious history, for the Hebrew re- 
 ligion, and for the religion of Christians, 
 which sprang from Judaism and has its 
 roots in it. They have, of course, also, 
 importance for theology, which, if studied 
 soundly, must be studied historically ; the 
 Biblical theology of the Old Testament is 
 one historical basis. But religious value 
 is different. 
 
 There are those, I know, who deny this 
 difference, who confuse historical value 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 57 
 
 with religious value. These persons usu- 
 ally mean, by historical value, literal accu- 
 racy ; they turn the Old Testament narra- 
 tive into a phonographic record from divine 
 lips, destroy its real historical character, 
 and, with the best intentions, destroy also 
 its permanent religious value. A religion 
 that is bound up with the literalness of the 
 story about man and woman and fruit-tree 
 and serpent and flaming sword is a religion 
 that is every moment in peril, and for large 
 numbers already lost. 
 
 Religious value may have historical con- 
 nections, and in this case it does have them; 
 but it lies, essentially, in religious ideas and 
 religious power. Thus taken, has the Old 
 Testament any contribution to make to 
 the present religious life of Christians ? 
 
 It is certain that religious use has been 
 made of it in the Christian Church from 
 the beginning. Prophecy and psalm, 
 law-books and histories, have been taken 
 into the service of Christian meditation, 
 devotion, and conduct. 
 
 But we cannot answer our question on 
 
S8 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 any basis of custom and tradition. Some 
 of the traditional use of the Old Testa- 
 ment is certainly wrong. Is any of it 
 right and profitable? We must apply 
 ourselves independently to a fresh inquiry 
 as to the religious authority and worth of 
 the Old Testament. 
 
 It would, I suppose, be found true that 
 the severities of the Old Testament, both 
 in the history of extermination and other 
 violence, and in the lyrics of exultation 
 over foes, have fostered the austere grim- 
 ness of some phases of Christianity, as 
 well as the easy human tendency to iden- 
 tify one's own enemies with those of God. 
 All competent students would agree that 
 the fanciful interpretations, by which alone 
 large parts of the Old Testament could 
 be made spiritually fruitful, have corrupted 
 the simplicity of the gospel. Now we are 
 learning to understand things more natu- 
 rally; we refuse to allegorize, because that 
 is impertinent, since it means reading our 
 own notions into the Bible, instead of 
 seeking in it the ideas of God and his ser- 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 59 
 
 vants ; we see that the prophets were 
 preachers, whose predictions of the future 
 were born of moral earnestness and spirit- 
 ual insight, and were conditioned, in the 
 form of them, by the environment of those 
 who uttered them. We are learning- to 
 apply a truer ethical standard to the Old 
 Testament men, and not to think cruelty 
 right because God's people displayed it, 
 or imprecation Christian because pious 
 singers uttered it. And all this at least 
 restricts the religious use which, with our 
 present light, we can make of the Old 
 Testament. 
 
 There is yet another difficulty arising 
 from obscurities of interpretation. There 
 are passages of the Old Testament whose 
 meaning we do not know. The attempts 
 made to elucidate them in our current 
 translations are guesswork, due to the 
 supposed necessity of contriving some 
 English equivalent for each Hebrew word 
 and phrase, or else to ignorance of the 
 real difficulty. A large part of these 
 difficulties spring from corruptions of the 
 
6o THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 text to be translated. The Old Testa- 
 ment languages are not complicated, but 
 the writings have had a rough experience. 
 Most of them are made by compilation or 
 accretion, — older documents worked to- 
 gether or added to one another, — most 
 have passed through the hands of editors 
 who have sometimes become commenta- 
 tors. Their additions can sometimes be 
 detected, sometimes only suspected. Mere 
 copyists have done their work imperfectly, 
 and the mistake of one has been made 
 worse by another, so that here and there 
 the uncertainty grows hopeless. 
 
 This doubt as to the basis for interpre- 
 tation tends to make it difficult for those 
 who feel it to use the Old Testament for 
 religious purposes, and leads some, in de- 
 spair, to confine themselves to the surface 
 of it, and to treat the Authorized Version 
 — or, if they are particularly conscientious, 
 the Revised Version — as the inspired 
 text for them — which is really the stulti- 
 fying of knowledge. 
 
 Now, in view of these facts, I desire 
 briefly to present considerations in behalf 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 6i 
 
 of the permanent religious value of the 
 Old Testament, and, if I can, partly to 
 define that value. 
 
 In regard to the defective form of the 
 Old Testament it is enough for the pres- 
 ent purpose to say that while these de- 
 fects leave uncertainties of detail, they do 
 not disturb the teaching as a whole, nor 
 damage the Old Testament as a channel 
 of worship. Some defects can be removed, 
 and when they are we can use the text 
 with renewed confidence at such points. 
 But even those defects which cannot now 
 be removed, and probably never will be, as 
 long as we need books at all, do not so 
 affect the worth of the Old Testament 
 books as to prevent their intelligent use 
 for the highest religious purposes. The 
 text as it is will serve its heavenly ends. 
 
 What, then, of the contents? Here 
 the question at once arises as to the point 
 of view from which we are to consider 
 them. From what point of view has the 
 judgment already expressed been formed ? 
 What point of view is in fact the true one? 
 
 What is the test of the Old Testament 
 
62 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 as a religious authority? It can surely 
 be no other than the universal Christian 
 test, of which many of us have lately been 
 emphatically reminded.* If Jesus Christ is 
 the supreme revelation of God, so that all 
 doctrines, opinions, rules, and practices 
 which claim to be of God must conform to 
 his teachings, life, and spirit in order to es- 
 tablish the claim, then the teachings, life, 
 and spirit of Jesus Christ are the only 
 touchstone by which we can recognize the 
 religious value of the Old Testament, 
 among the rest. Whatever accords with 
 the teachings, purpose, and spirit of Jesus 
 Christ has religious value for us. What- 
 ever does not accord with these lacks re- 
 ligious value for us, whether it stands in 
 the Old Testament or in day before yes- 
 terday's sermon. 
 
 It must be remembered that to say that 
 a thing has no religious value for us is not 
 the same with saying that it never had 
 religious value at all. Many forms of 
 religion have real value now for those 
 
 * See Address II. 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 63 
 
 who adhere to them, while to us they have 
 none. If we should find, therefore, that 
 there are elements in the Old Testament 
 religion which are of no present religious 
 value to us, it would not follow that they 
 had no importance in the time of them, 
 and were not of divine origin. Partial 
 truth, involving error by its very partiality, 
 may have been the best possible in the 
 times of ignorance. Human failure to 
 apprehend the truth that was offered may 
 reflect itself in the record, while along 
 with this the religious life may have been 
 strong and sound. 
 
 It is very important, also, to remember 
 the breadth of Christ's spirit. Christ is 
 not narrow or exclusive, but comprehen- 
 sive. No small Christ can be the standard 
 by which the Old Testament's yield in re- 
 ligion shall be judged. There is a popu- 
 lar criticism of the Old Testament which 
 assumes that amiability is the sole mark 
 of Christ, and that the note of sternness 
 heard in the Old Testament is discordant 
 with the Christian spirit. This criticism 
 
64 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 forgets the dark realities of sin with which 
 Jesus wrestled, and the awful unsparing- 
 ness of rejected love. We must, in some 
 degree, get the measure of Jesus before we 
 can use Jesus as a measure of the Old 
 Testament and its religion. Failure here 
 leads to one of two extremes : to the re- 
 jection of strong Old Testament teaching, 
 because Jesus is made so narrow as to 
 leave no room for it, or to the imposing 
 of a mystic sense upon passages whose 
 natural sense does not accord with the in- 
 terpreter's small conception of Jesus. The 
 God of the Old Testament was severe 
 toward sin, but he was not therefore un- 
 Christlike, for Christ could be severe. Or, 
 to take a widely different illustration, if 
 the Song of Songs is to be saved to the 
 canon of Scripture — if, that is to say, it is 
 to appear conformable to the standard of 
 Jesus Christ — it will be, not by revamping 
 the traditional view which finds in it an 
 allegory of Christ and the Church, but by 
 expanding the thought of Christ till it con- 
 secrates all love, human as well as divine. 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 65 
 
 The question might seem a simple one, 
 where our standard is deposited — how we 
 may learn the teachings and spirit of Jesus 
 Christ, so as to apply them to the Old 
 Testament. Our primary source of knowl- 
 edge about Christ is, of course, the New 
 Testament. There his words are re- 
 corded ; there his life is sketched by his 
 friends ; there his deeds are described, 
 and the impression made by him reflected ; 
 there his disciples have set down his in- 
 struction, and the development and out- 
 come of that instruction, under the forms 
 in which they were able to conceive them. 
 Christ's influence must in any case have 
 been powerful and far-reaching; but the 
 record has done much to conserve it. No 
 one here will pretend that the modern 
 Church reflects the spirit of Christ per- 
 fectly, yet if no New Testament had been 
 written, his image would surely have been 
 distorted far more than it actually has 
 been, even if it had not already be- 
 come shadowy. Surely, then, it is in 
 the New Testament that we must find the 
 
66 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 Standard by which we are to judge the 
 Old. 
 
 But there are difficulties. It is evident 
 that Jesus and his disciples had no detailed 
 purpose of instructing men how they 
 should view the Old Testament — that this 
 did not dominate their minds. For what 
 they say about it is fragmentary and in- 
 complete. We get only hints and illus- 
 trations of their attitude toward it. There 
 are books from which they do not cite, 
 ranges of the Old Testament which do not 
 seem to have been before their minds. 
 
 Nor is their attitude uniform toward 
 those parts of it with which they deal. 
 All are treated with respect, and most 
 with reverence, but some with present ap- 
 proval and acquiescence, while others are 
 regarded as temporary and inferior. We 
 need only be reminded of the law of divorce, 
 of the oath, and of retaliation, in the 
 Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. 31-42). 
 If they had covered the whole field, how 
 far would such criticisms have extended? 
 The New Testament gives us no answer 
 to this inquiry. 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 67 
 
 Nor, finally, are we sure of the accuracy 
 of all the record we have. 
 
 We must take another factor into the 
 account, and, to this end, gain another 
 point of view. Why should we expect 
 the New Testament to give us full instruc- 
 tion about the Old ? Is the New Testa- 
 ment then a new law-book ? Is that the 
 essence of the gospel, that we have a new 
 book of rules — one code substituted for 
 another? The value of the New Testa- 
 ment lies in the power of a new life which 
 it brings to us. It introduces us to Jesus 
 Christ, in whom the new life has its per- 
 ennial seat, and when the contact is made, 
 the new life streams into us from him, and 
 there is no book between. The book and 
 its teachings remain the living portrait of 
 him and the illustration of the life he de- 
 sires for us ; we are not strong enough to do 
 without it, but we must apply its princi- 
 ples in solving for ourselves the problems 
 of truth and duty. The new life dwelling 
 in us is the spirit of Christ, and it is under 
 the control of that spirit that we must, 
 in the last resort, take up our own posi- 
 
68 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 tion with reference to the reHgious value 
 of the Old Testament. We must do it in 
 humility, of course. We must do it with 
 the guidance of the concrete examples 
 which Jesus left behind. We must do it 
 with consideration for the views of others. 
 We must do it with due regard for God's 
 voice in the souls of all our brotherhood. 
 But do it we must if we are to have it 
 done at all. The test of the Old Testa- 
 ment, for purposes of religion, must be 
 the teachings, life, and spirit of Jesus 
 Christ in the New Testament, and also, 
 and essentially, in the minds and hearts of 
 those who believe in him. 
 
 It thus becomes immaterial whether or 
 not the New Testament answers explicitly 
 all our questions about the religious value 
 of the Old. As far as we possess the 
 spirit of Christ, revealed in the New Tes- 
 tament and regnant in our souls, so far we 
 are qualified to estimate that religious 
 value for ourselves. We possess the 
 spirit of Christ imperfectly, no doubt. 
 Therefore we may err in our judgment of 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 69 
 
 that of which the spirit of Christ is the 
 test. This is our present hmitation. But 
 in no other way can we go so far toward 
 the full truth. Nothing can be substi- 
 tuted for our best apprehension of the 
 spirit of Christ in deciding what religious 
 treasure the Old Testament has for us. 
 
 In the field of doctrine we may illustrate 
 the matter by the character of God as 
 shown in the Old Testament. When we 
 sum up the impressions and teachings 
 about the God of the ancient Hebrews, the 
 general result is very definite. We find a 
 personal Being, of great majesty, dignity, 
 and power, the Creator and Ruler of men ; 
 a Being of hoHness and transcendence ; 
 a Being of righteousness, who promotes 
 righteousness in others and punishes every 
 breach of it, whose government is a moral 
 government, and from whose decisions 
 there is no appeal ; a Being of kindness, 
 tenderness, and helpfulness, with gracious 
 care for those who confide in him, whose 
 plans are at length to be worked out and 
 his desires realized in the unity of men 
 
70 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 under his benevolent sway, amid the ex- 
 hibition of the divine glories of righteous- 
 ness and universal peace. With each 
 stroke of this drawing the New Testa- 
 ment picture is in accord. To this extent 
 the spirit and teaching of Jesus Christ in- 
 dorse the older revelation. 
 
 But when we study certain portions of 
 the Old Testament by themselves, the im- 
 pression is somewhat different. We find 
 that, over a large area of the history, God 
 appears to care for one small people alone. 
 The region of his power is simply the re- 
 gion of that people's communal and na- 
 tional life. Elsewhere other gods are 
 ruling. Moreover, for a time, the function 
 of Yahweh is not so much to secure his 
 people's righteousness as to give them 
 success in war and prosperity in times of 
 peace. Both the universal and the ethi- 
 cal are long in the background. Further, 
 the beginnings of his worship in Israel, as 
 far as they are not obscure, are very rudi- 
 mentary. Polytheism lies back of mono- 
 theism. From our standpoint we feel the 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 71 
 
 imperfection of the Old Testament views. 
 We explain them by the principle of de- 
 velopment; the Old Testament view of 
 God is passing from the lower to the 
 higher — from the conceptions common to 
 men to the unique conception of the inimi- 
 table King of kings. This means that 
 when we apply our test at certain separate 
 points the Old Testament doctrine of God 
 is found wanting. 
 
 This appears more positively in such a 
 story as that of the sacrifice of Isaac. It 
 is a fine story — the supreme test of obe- 
 dience. But what conception of God 
 must those have held who could believe 
 that he exacted of his most faithful servant 
 an act of obedience like this? The defect 
 appears also in the utterances of vengeance, 
 unrelieved and exultant, in which some 
 phrases in the Psalms seem to express 
 what was felt to be the mind of Jehovah 
 toward the foes of his people. They do 
 not set forth the God In whom we have 
 learned to believe. Our God can be stern, 
 and often must be stern, but he is not vin- 
 
72- THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 dictive. The Old Testament thought of 
 God has not fully emerged from darkness 
 into the light. 
 
 The study of the old Hebrew God is 
 not made worthless by these facts. It 
 becomes more and more a matter of in- 
 tense interest. For it is a development 
 not of God with which that study is con- 
 cerned, but of the thought of God, the 
 knowledge of God. The Christian God 
 is the eternal God. The God of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, whom we learn to know in 
 him, was not a new God when Jesus 
 came. The Old Testament men saw him, 
 but they saw him dimly. The history of 
 all true religion has been a history of the 
 attempts of men to lay hold of the Chris- 
 tian God. 
 
 To exhibit the subject fully one should 
 set forth the Christian God according to 
 our present apprehension of him — in its 
 turn doubtless very imperfect. This is 
 now impossible, and it is the less needful 
 because it has been done in this place, 
 with great competence and eloquence, 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 73 
 
 but a few months ago.* Yet this may be 
 said, just now, that the total impression 
 conveyed by the Old Testament doctrine 
 of God, accurate as its many features must 
 be recognized to be, is a very different 
 thing from the God whose name we learn 
 when we go to school to Christ. The 
 proportions are different. The dominant 
 force is not clearly the same. To find the 
 Father who reveals himself in compelling 
 love, through Jesus Christ, for the redemp- 
 tion of the whole world, we must come out 
 of the Old Testament, and learn the les- 
 son, still novel and strange to many, of 
 living unreservedly in the New. 
 
 A few words on the authority of the Old 
 Testament precepts for us. An old dis- 
 tinction was drawn between the ceremo- 
 nial and the moral law. This has con- 
 venience still. It is essentially imperfect 
 because the two are so interwoven that it 
 is hard for us to distinguish them, and be- 
 cause the entire priestly conception of duty 
 in the Old Testament erases the dis- 
 
 * See Address I. 
 
74 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 tinction altogether. But when it is said 
 that the ceremonial law is not of authority 
 for us, we understand it fairly well, and it 
 blots out the element of command from 
 large sections of Ezekiel and the later 
 prophets, the Pentateuch, Chronicles, and 
 Ezra. With the moral law the case is felt 
 to be different. The moral law is grounded 
 in the character of God, and has therefore 
 an element of permanence. This position 
 is unquestionable ; but it does not follow 
 that all the Old Testament precepts in the 
 domain of morals have authority for us. 
 Some of them are adapted to men at a 
 low stage. Some are distinctly corrected 
 or repudiated in the New, such as the law 
 of divorce and the law of the oath. Some 
 are enlarged and transformed, such as the 
 law against murder. And in regard to 
 them all, as far as they are felt to have 
 present force, an analysis would probably 
 show that the force they have is the force 
 of inward moral conviction, with which 
 they are in accord, rather than the force 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 75 
 
 of a Statute imposed by external authority, 
 however august. 
 
 This leads to another point. That the 
 law was not a mere matter of precept for 
 outward observance was understood by 
 the best Hebrews before the prophets 
 had finished their work. " I will put my 
 law in their inward parts, and in their 
 heart will I write it," was the word 
 through Jeremiah (xxxi. 33), and the 
 psalmist prayed, " Create in me a clean 
 heart, O God ; and renew a right spirit 
 within me " (Ps. li. 10). The right life had 
 its roots within. The whole long conflict 
 between the prophets and the ceremonial- 
 ists, in which the prophets showed their 
 abhorrence of a sacrificial system that 
 tolerated wicked hearts and lives, points 
 to the same conviction. 
 
 But the great, moulding personalities 
 of the New Testament, Jesus, Paul, and 
 John, lay such stress upon this as to 
 give it a new aspect. With them the 
 authority that controls moral life is not 
 
76 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 at all the authority of a statute ; it is 
 solely the authority of an inward principle, 
 a principle of loyalty and a principle of 
 love. The normal Christian life, as they 
 represent it, is not lived by precept, but 
 by the working out of an enlightenment 
 of the soul, energized by the Holy Spirit. 
 The New Testament, we must repeat, is 
 not the second edition of a law-book. The 
 more experienced and advanced may, of 
 course, instruct the more ignorant, and 
 we find many directions what to do in the 
 New Testament, and very precious they 
 are, especially those that came from Jesus 
 himself But there is no force in precepts 
 to get themselves obeyed. These were 
 not the things that Jesus depended on for 
 the transformation of life and the renewal 
 of the world. He said it was better that he 
 should go away, that the Comforter — the 
 indwelling and controlling Spirit — might 
 come. The normal Christian experience 
 is not after the law of a carnal command- 
 ment, but after the power of an endless 
 life. 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 77 
 
 If the average life of Christian men 
 were normal, one need say no more. In 
 fact, we cannot dismiss precepts quite 
 so summarily. True, the New Testament 
 religion, fundamentally and normally, is 
 not a religion of precepts. It is a religion 
 of spiritual life. The region of spiritual 
 life, which shows itself, spontaneously, in 
 the loving service of God and man, is far 
 above all systems that aim at righteousness 
 by precept. But the best men do not always 
 live in this higher region, and there are 
 many men who have never breathed its 
 air at all. Therefore the precept is not 
 yet superfluous. Commands were given 
 to the Hebrews long ago, when their re- 
 ligious development was imperfect. Some 
 people now are in a stage of development 
 no whit further advanced. It is something 
 to hold men by a command, if that is the 
 only way in which they can be held. Love 
 is better than grudging obedience ; but 
 obedience, however grudging, is better 
 than wild license. Good men sometimes 
 lose the inward glow and fire, and have to 
 
78 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 fall back on the steady support of what 
 they ought to do. 
 
 So Wordsworth testifies, in the " Ode to 
 Duty " : 
 
 There are who ask not if thine eye 
 Be on them ; who, in love and truth. 
 Where no misgiving is, rely 
 Upon the genial sense of youth. 
 Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot. 
 Who do thy work, and know it not ; 
 Long may the kindly impulse last. 
 But thou, if they should totter, teach 
 them to stand fast ! 
 
 Serene will be our days and bright. 
 And happy will our nature be, 
 When love is an unerring light. 
 And joy its own security. 
 And they a blissful course may hold. 
 Even now, who, not unwisely bold. 
 Live in the spirit of this creed ; 
 Yet find that other strength, according 
 to their need. 
 
 We are called to liberty, but if we ever 
 are tempted to misuse our liberty, it is 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 79 
 
 good to feel beneath us the rock of the 
 eternal righteousness. 
 
 But the Christian ideal is that of life in 
 the Spirit. " If ye died with Christ from 
 the rudiments of the world, why, as 
 though living in the world, do ye subject 
 yourselves to ordinances, Handle not, 
 nor taste, nor touch ? . . . For ye died, 
 and your life is hid with Christ in God " 
 (Col. ii. 20, 21 ; iii. 3). 
 
 I turn to consider briefly the Old Tes- 
 tament as a book of religious experience. 
 Whatever may be the limitations of the 
 Old Testament, there is no doubt that the 
 men out of whose life it sprang had found 
 God and held communion with him. The 
 Being whom they reached in their way was 
 the same that we reach in our way, though 
 they could not know him so well as we 
 are privileged to do. Their apprehension 
 of him was so vivid, their trust in him was 
 so complete, their gifts of expression were 
 so unusual, their wealth of illustration so 
 inexhaustible, that they produced a litera- 
 ture of spiritual aspiration and worship 
 
8o THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 without a parallel. It is a heritage into 
 which we have entered. Many of these 
 religious lyrics are local and temporary in 
 their coloring. Some are marred by sen- 
 timents ill according with the Christian 
 principle of love. But these things have 
 not checked, and are not likely to check, 
 the Christian Church in its use of the 
 Psalms and all the worshipful parts of the 
 Old Testament as a means of devotion. 
 Enveloping all defects, swallowing them 
 up and putting them out of sight, is the 
 great sweep of religious fervor, the inten- 
 sity of spiritual longing and joy, which is 
 borne onward in them to all the genera- 
 tions. I take it that what holds the Old 
 Testament to the New, more than any- 
 thing else, is the sense of oneness in re- 
 ligious experience by which men trained 
 in Christ's school respond to the Hebrew 
 utterances of faith, and, with no feeling of 
 a gulf to be bridged, or the need of a glass 
 to set right the vision, adopt these utter- 
 ances as their own. When they do, no 
 doubt, they cannot forget that they are 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 8i 
 
 Christians. When they go back to the Old 
 Testament for the speech of their devo- 
 tion they do not leave Christ behind them. 
 That would be preposterous. The God 
 whom we worship in the Psalms and the 
 other Hebrew literature of religious ex- 
 perience is the God revealed in Jesus 
 Christ. We worship the God we know, 
 and not the God Asaph or Heman knew. 
 For religious fervor speaks the same 
 language always. 
 
 When we interpret their words to our 
 minds we must do it from their position. 
 The New Testament was not before their 
 eyes, nor Jesus Christ before their 
 thought. But when we adopt their lan- 
 guage in our devotion, we expand it to 
 the fulness of our richer knowledge. 
 What does not befit our knowledge we 
 can no longer use. The further ranges of 
 our knowledge demand other expression. 
 But within its own wide limits the Old 
 Testament service of Christian devotion 
 remains and will remain. 
 
 We worship in the Psalms, we adore 
 
82 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 with the prophets. Those men knew God 
 indeed. They clung to him with their 
 souls. We may put more of knowledge 
 into our worship, but not more of reality. 
 As we worship we feel ourselves most akin 
 to them, we draw near to God with them, 
 we rejoice in the inheritance we have from 
 them, and we rejoice, in their behalf as 
 well as ours, in that larger inheritance, the 
 fulfilment of their noblest hopes, into which, 
 by the grace of God, they have entered 
 long ago, and for which we still hope and 
 pray. 
 
 These remarks illustrate the Christian 
 view of the Old Testament as a book of 
 religion. If much space has been given 
 to the need of a discriminating use of it, it 
 is because this need is real, and often 
 overlooked by the zealous, and because to 
 overlook it sets hindrances in the way of 
 honest faith in God. If emphasis has 
 been laid upon the rule which the dis- 
 criminating judgment must apply, it is be- 
 cause only those who perceive in Jesus 
 the standard of all religion are delivered 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 83 
 
 from the dangers of shallowness and the 
 isolation of subjective mistakes ; and only 
 they have entered with clear mind into 
 the secret of Christianity. 
 
 The religious value of the Old Testa- 
 ment to Christian people may be summed 
 up, then, in a few sentences. Christianity 
 presupposes the Old Testament. Jesus 
 found spiritual life in it. He led his fol- 
 lowers, from the outset, into a richer use 
 of it, so that those who walked the way 
 after him were conscious of the long vista 
 behind — the straight track by which re- 
 ligious truth and power had come. He 
 points us backward, too, into the same 
 great country of God's ancient revelation. 
 There is true religion there, with the value 
 of originality, the value of large setting in 
 the history of men, the value of abundant 
 detail, the value of mighty experiences, 
 the value of divine knowledge embodied 
 in literature, the value of strong impera- 
 tives, the value of the penitent's confes- 
 sion, the value of the seer's vision. 
 
 With this mighty background Jesus 
 
84 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 truly harmonizes, but from it, also, he stands 
 out distinct and commanding. The back- 
 ground sets him off, but itself is incom- 
 plete without him. Those human hands 
 to which God intrusted the painting of 
 it had not the central, perfect figure before 
 them, that they might bring every detail 
 into full accord with him. God was grad- 
 ually working out his design — not forc- 
 ing it upon men, but letting it dawn upon 
 them by degrees. Of course, then, there 
 were imperfections. There were great 
 facts but partly seen, great obligations but 
 partly understood, the life of precept rec- 
 ognized, and the life of free obedience in 
 love feebly grasped. We have to supple- 
 ment the defects of the Old Revelation by 
 the abundance of the Newer, and it is 
 most of all in the spirit of contrition, of 
 submission, of adoration, that with Jesus as 
 our companion we enter freely into the 
 life of the ancient worshipper. 
 
 I have said almost nothing about proph- 
 ecy — too great a subject for a paragraph. 
 Here, too, there is enduring value, — to be 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 85 
 
 recognized with discrimination, — a value 
 which resides not so much in the detailed 
 fulfilment of specific predictions as in the 
 everlasting power of the divine principles 
 of life which prophecy reiterates, and by 
 which alone the kingdom of God can 
 come. 
 
 The Old Testament, then, is not the 
 primary source of the Christian religion. 
 But it is the embodiment of a genuine re- 
 ligion, which, as far as its elements have 
 permanent vitality, Christianity has taken 
 up into itself. The promise of universality 
 made to the Old Testament religion proves 
 to be conditioned on its merging into 
 that which was destined to spring from it, 
 to supersede it, to envelop it, to discard 
 the perishable in it, and to give new 
 glory to that in it which could endure. The 
 revelation in Jesus Christ, and that alone, 
 determines what is perishable and what 
 endures. That which can endure in the 
 presence of Jesus Christ is full of instruc- 
 tion and stimulus and spiritual devotion 
 through all the ages, until every partial 
 
86 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 revelation Is swallowed up in the abundant 
 light of the glory of God, in Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : I 
 have dared to lead your thoughts this 
 way to-night, — your last night with us, — 
 because in this Book is our message, and 
 because the New Testament fills only a 
 quarter of it, and it is of practical conse- 
 quence to know what attitude we ought to 
 take and teach others to take toward the 
 earlier and larger part. I have not de- 
 sired to raise suspicions about it, but to 
 allay them, if you have any. I have not 
 sought to limit your use of it, but to help 
 you to revel in it with free minds and 
 clear minds, that your souls may be more 
 and more enriched by it, and your minis- 
 try clothed with power. And may the 
 Spirit of Christ reveal to you, increas- 
 ingly, its hidden beauties, and enable 
 you to drink abundantly of its perennial 
 springs. 
 
 For the rest, a few sentences cannot 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 87 
 
 utter the feelings of this moment. You 
 regret, as I do, that the last word of cheer 
 and farewell cannot be spoken to you by 
 one in whom you have been accustomed 
 to confide through all your course here, 
 and whose bodily presence is not with us, 
 though his thoughts certainly have been 
 about us to-day. But this I can say, for 
 myself and for my colleagues : We are 
 very sorry to have you go ; but we should 
 be more sorry still if you were not going. 
 For you are going out to service, and ser- 
 vice is the greatest thing on earth — service 
 inspired by love and dominated by loy- 
 alty. This is the lesson of the New Tes- 
 tament ; this is the lesson of the Old 
 Testament also. This finds its response in 
 the heart of the Christian man who knows 
 that he is not his own, for he is bought 
 with a price. This makes it worth while 
 to live. Under the benediction of this 
 privilege you have been studying here. 
 It will rest still upon the few of you who 
 mean to take further opportunities of 
 study. For the end of all preparation is 
 
88 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE 
 
 fitness, efficiency, better service, and the 
 star at the end shines along the whole 
 path that leads to it. Service is our goal. 
 Most of you within the next few weeks, 
 all of you at no distant time, if God will, 
 are to take position for service. We con- 
 gratulate you with all our hearts. What 
 gives us courage and a sense of worthi- 
 ness in our lives is that you, like others 
 whom we have tried to teach, will trans- 
 mute any fit teaching received here into 
 active ministry for men. 
 
 None of us forgets one of your number 
 who ran the race with you, and ran it 
 bravely, not without hardship and sacrifice, 
 and has fallen just as the goal was within 
 touch of his hand.* It will never be a 
 matter of indifference to you that, on the 
 day when you were set free from tutelage 
 for your life-work, he was set "free from 
 the bonds of this mortal body, and entered 
 upon the untrammelled service of the life 
 on high. By the mercy of his Redeemer 
 he has won home. May the Lord receive 
 
 * Vincent Noll, died May 13, 1902. 
 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 89 
 
 US all there, with him, in the good time 
 which he knows. 
 
 Brothers, you will soon be scattered 
 widely, with oceans between you. We 
 cannot expect ever again to see you all 
 here together. But you will not drop out 
 of our minds, nor out of our prayers. No 
 joy that you can give us will be so great 
 as the knowledge that, wherever you are, 
 you are fighting the good fight of the faith. 
 
 The promise to Israel, fulfilled after- 
 ward in Christ, is valid for every servant 
 of Christ: "I Yahweh have called thee 
 in righteousness, and will hold thy hand, 
 and will keep thee, and give thee for a 
 covenant of the people, for a light of the 
 Gentiles ; to open the blind eyes, to bring 
 out the prisoners from the dungeon, and 
 them that sit in darkness out of the prison 
 house " (Isa. xlii. 6, 7). With this out- 
 look, we "commend you to God, and to 
 the word of his grace, which is able to 
 build you up, and to give you the inheri- 
 tance among all them that are sanctified " 
 (Acts XX. 32).