ici^mmaxi Life 
 
 A Study 
 
 JORDEN P. BO'^r^F 
 
BV 4501 .B72 1899 
 
 Bowne, Borden Parker, 1847 
 
 1910. 
 The Christian life 
 
 INO, 
 
The Christian Life 
 A Study 
 
 By ^ 
 
 BORDEN P. BOWNE 
 
 Cincinnati: Ctjrts & Jennings 
 
 New York: Eaton & Mains 
 
 1899 
 
COPYRIGHT 1 899, BY 
 THE WESTERN METHODIST BOOK. CONCERN 
 
Preface 
 
 This study aims to be a help to 
 sincerity and 7iat7iralness in religion 
 by cleari7ig up some of the confusioiis 
 of popular religious thought a7id 
 speech. We all feel that iii religion, 
 of all matters, we should be supremely 
 real and sincere ; a7id yet, owi7ig to 
 a7i a7nbiguous and misleading ter- 
 minology a7id the illusio7is the7ice re- 
 sulting, a7i uncomfortable air of arti- 
 ficiality aiid unreality ofte7i seems to 
 pervade the subject. This is not 
 commo7ily due to insincerity, but 
 rather to the ambiguity a7id uncer- 
 tai7ity of the conventional thought 
 a7id language in this field. This 
 co7iditio7i of things, however, is an 
 evil, and is one of the sources of re- 
 ligious weak7iess to-day. We grope 
 in the dark of U7iwarra7ited expecta- 
 3 
 
4 Preface 
 
 tions and misdirected effort. And 
 the only way out seems to be to clear 
 up our thought and speech, so that 
 we may knoip what we wish and what 
 we mean^ thus enabling the religious 
 life to grow unhindered and undis- 
 torted by illusion and misdirection. 
 BORDEN P. BO WNE. 
 
The Christian Life 
 A Study. 
 
 My purpose in writing, and the 
 scope of the discussion, will best 
 appear from some facts of expe- 
 rience : 
 
 Not long ago a most worthy 
 minister of my acquaintance, one 
 who had been preaching more 
 than fifty years and who was a 
 model of saintly living, came to 
 another minister, also a friend of 
 mine, to talk about the witness of 
 the Spirit. And his trouble was 
 that he could not feel sure that he 
 had ever had this witness. The 
 expectation awakened by the 
 phrase had never been satisfied. 
 And the good man^s heart was 
 disturbed, and he sought counsel 
 of his brother. 
 
 My professional life has largely 
 
The Christian Life 
 
 been spent in contact with thought- 
 ful young men and women ; and I 
 have frequently observed an un- 
 easy feeling on their part that the 
 traditional phrases of religious 
 speech do not set forth with un- 
 strained naturalness and transpar- 
 ent sincerity the facts of their 
 religious life. Often they have 
 formed a conception of what the 
 religious life should be by reflec- 
 tion on the customary and inher- 
 ited phrases ; and thus they have 
 been led to entertain unwarranted 
 expectations. Then the failure 
 to realize them has led to an un- 
 comfortable sense of artificiality 
 and unreality in all religious ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Some years ago one of our best 
 and wisest men told me that he had 
 felt the dangers in this direction 
 so keenly that, when his children 
 were growing toward the point 
 where the conscious religious life 
 
A Study 7 
 
 should begin, he had had himself 
 appointed class-leader to his own 
 family, in order to preserve them 
 from the confusion and danger 
 of popular religious speech until 
 they should have acquired suffi- 
 cient mental and spiritual matu- 
 rity to grasp the truth for them- 
 selves. 
 
 In addition, I may say that I 
 have been listening intelligently 
 to preaching for over thirty years. 
 Of course I have heard a great 
 many good sermons, but in all that 
 time I have heard very few ser- 
 mons on conversion and the be- 
 ginnings of the religious life, 
 whether in our own Church or 
 in others, which were not both 
 confused and confusing. Theo- 
 logical expositions have been 
 plentiful enough; vague verbal 
 exhortations have abounded ; but 
 there has been a grievous lack 
 of clear statement of what the 
 
The Christian Life 
 
 seeking soul is to expect, or of 
 what is expected from it. 
 
 Such facts suggest, what every 
 thoughtful and observant person 
 must recognize, that there is need 
 of revising popular religious 
 phraseology, and also of clarify- 
 ing popular conceptions concern- 
 ing the religious life itself, and 
 especially concerning its begin- 
 nings in conversion. This study 
 is intended as a contribution to 
 this desirable end. 
 
 The popular confusion on 
 this subject in our individualistic 
 Churches has several leading 
 sources, and our first work must be 
 to indicate them. The first is the 
 confounding the language of the- 
 ology with the languge of experi- 
 ence. The second is the mistak- 
 ing of the abstract classifications 
 of theological discussion for con- 
 crete classifications of living men. 
 
A Study 9 
 
 The third is an exaggerated indi- 
 vidualism. We consider them in 
 their order. 
 
 The Langfuagfc of Theology and 
 the Langfuag^e of Experience 
 
 On this point we must note 
 that a great many things may be 
 theologically true which are not 
 psychologically true. We may 
 express and explain the experi- 
 ence in terms of doctrine, and in 
 so doing we may have the truth ; 
 nevertheless, the doctrine is not a 
 fact of consciousness, but a the- 
 ory about the fact. 
 
 Thus, when some brother of 
 picturesque habit of speech says 
 in the social meeting, "The devil 
 told me not to come here to-night," 
 we are not to think that he has 
 had an infernal interview. The 
 fact of experience is, that he was 
 disinclined to come, and this dis- 
 inclination he attributes to the 
 
lO The Christian Life 
 
 devil. But however correct this 
 may be as a theory of the hidden 
 source of the temptation, it would 
 be highly infelicitous to suppose 
 that anything of the sort occurred 
 within the consciousness of the 
 individual himself. The experi- 
 ence as he states it is not the ex- 
 perience as lying within the range 
 of consciousness, but rather the 
 experience as theologized or, more 
 properly, diabolized by this in- 
 fernal reference. 
 
 A less distasteful illustration of 
 the difference between the lan- 
 guage of theology and that of 
 conscious experience may be 
 found in our speech concerning 
 the Divine providence in our 
 lives. We believe and teach that 
 our times are in God's hand ; but 
 this does not imply that we have 
 any perception of the Divine 
 presence, or even that we can 
 clearly trace the way in which 
 
A Study 1 1 
 
 God is working out his will con- 
 cerning us. 
 
 The life of experience is the 
 familiar life of question, uncer- 
 tainty, forethought, calculation, 
 and venture, in all of which, 
 moreover, we commonly seem 
 left, at our own risk, to find the 
 way ; and not infrequently we miss 
 it, and go astray. We still retain 
 the doctrine as an article of faith ; 
 but we see that we must work out 
 our own salvation nevertheless. 
 The doctrine expresses a theory 
 of life rather than a conscious ex- 
 perience ; and unless we bear this 
 distinction in mind, it is more 
 likely to be a source of doubt 
 than of comfort. 
 
 This is self-evident to every 
 thoughtful person; but what is 
 not so plain to every one is, that 
 there is a vast amount of language 
 concerning the inner life which is 
 of the same sort. It is not the 
 
12 The Christian Life 
 
 language of experience, but of 
 theological theory. A great many 
 things are said about the work of 
 the Lord in the soul ; the oper- 
 ations of the Spirit, his presence 
 with us, — and all this may be true 
 theologically, but it is not true 
 psychologically. Moreover, a per- 
 son who holds the theology in 
 question may very naturally use 
 it for expressing his experience; 
 yet even that does not make it a 
 fact of experience. It is an ob- 
 ject of belief, not a fact of con- 
 sciousness ; an accepted doctrine, 
 not a conscious datum. Never- 
 theless, this language of theory is 
 put forward as the language of 
 experience, and then confusion 
 arises. By consequence a great 
 many try to experience theology 
 instead of experiencing religion. 
 Two classes of persons escape 
 this confusion. The first class 
 consists of those persons, unskilled 
 
A Study 13 
 
 in reflection, whose language has 
 only an accidental connection 
 with their ideas. They hear and 
 inherit phrases, and they have a 
 measure of religious life. They 
 also use the phrases upon occa- 
 sion ; but no one could ever dis- 
 cover from a reflection on the 
 phrases, and the ordinary secular 
 use of language, what the corre- 
 sponding experience might be. 
 One must gather this from an ac- 
 quaintance with the subject mat- 
 ter, and with the peculiar forms 
 of speech in this field. Here, 
 again, we find illustration in the 
 brother who says the devil tells 
 him to do this or that. No exe- 
 gesis of the utterance, according 
 to the recognized usage of secular 
 speech, would ever reveal that this 
 means only that the person feels 
 an inclination to some evil deed, 
 and ascribes it to the devil as its 
 source. Persons in this stage of 
 
14 The Christian Life 
 
 development are not harmed by 
 speecli whicli would be mislead- 
 ing to one wbo sought to under- 
 stand it in the ordinary way. 
 They do not get any ideas from 
 language, but they express the 
 ideas they have in the phrases 
 which have become conventional 
 upon the subject. 
 
 The second class of persons 
 who suffer no harm from such 
 language consists of those who 
 have learned to take the language, 
 not for what it seems to say, but 
 for what they know it means. 
 They understand the picturesque 
 phrase, or discount the extrava- 
 gant metaphor, or penetrate to the 
 meaning behind some grotesque 
 or distasteful image, and thus es- 
 cape the illusion which might 
 otherwise arise. 
 
 But there is a third class less 
 fortunate. This consists of per- 
 sons who have attained to some 
 
A Study 15 
 
 measure of reflective conscious- 
 ness, but who have not learned to 
 distinguish the language of the- 
 ology from the language of ex- 
 perience. By consequence they 
 seek to tell what the religious fact 
 should be by reflecting on the 
 language they hear used to de- 
 scribe it. Only such or such an 
 experience would come up to the 
 demands of the language , and then 
 they seek to have the experience. 
 But somehow or other the appro- 
 priate experience does not come ; 
 and then comes either an attempt 
 to believe the actual experience 
 is the one desired or else a sus- 
 picion that the whole matter is 
 fictitious. Not a few good Chris- 
 tions have lived on uneasy terms 
 with their religious experience on 
 this account. They have taken 
 the language of theology for the 
 language of consciousness, and 
 thus have been led to form unwar- 
 
1 6 The Christian Life 
 
 ranted expectations. My friend, 
 who was troubled about the wit- 
 ness of the Spirit, had the root of 
 his difficulty right here. The 
 phrase had led him to expect some 
 sort of celestial manifestation, a 
 testimony from without, and 
 standing so clearly apart from 
 the ordinary laws of mental 
 movement as to be undeniably 
 produced by the manifest God. 
 In lack of any such experience, he 
 doubted whether he had had the 
 witness of the Spirit. This class 
 comprises the great mass of 
 thoughtful young persons in the 
 Churches. And for this class the 
 religious teacher needs to bear in 
 mind the distinction between the- 
 ology and consciousness, in order 
 to escape misleading and danger- 
 ous confusion. 
 
 The language of theology must 
 often be used, indeed, but it 
 should be used in such a way as 
 
A Study 17 
 
 not to mislead the inexperienced 
 hearer or reader into an attempt 
 to experience theology-. And, in 
 general, we must remember that 
 all language about the inner life 
 must be misleading to any one who 
 interprets it only by the diction- 
 ary. Commonly the language is 
 a metaphor, or it has a fixity 
 and definiteness which do not be- 
 long to the fact. Or it may ex- 
 press an ideal toward which we 
 strive, but which we never fully 
 attain. There is much religious 
 speech of this sort. It indicates 
 a direction or sets forth an ideal, 
 to which we can only approximate. 
 The fact itself, however, can be 
 learned only in life ; and the lan- 
 guage is only an imperfect instru- 
 ment for expressing the life. The 
 religious teacher can not be too 
 careful and discriminating at this 
 point. 
 
1 8 The Christian Life 
 
 ThcoIo§ficaI Abstractions and 
 Livingf Men 
 
 Tlie second great source of our 
 confusion is the mistaking of the 
 hard and fast lines and antitheses 
 of theological ethics for concrete 
 facts among living men. Ethics 
 in general tends to fall into this 
 error. We speak of the moral 
 agent and of responsibility, and 
 have fairly clear ideas as to our 
 meaning, so long as we remain in 
 the field of abstraction. But the 
 matter becomes indefinitely more 
 complex when we look at actual 
 human beings. Then we find 
 that we have to deal, not with 
 hypothetical and abstract moral 
 agents, but with beings in an or- 
 der of development where the in- 
 tellectual insight, the volitional 
 energy and self-control, and the 
 moral sensibility have to be de- 
 veloped, and where the develop- 
 
A Study 19 
 
 ment is never complete. This 
 complicates the matter indefi- 
 nitely; and while our abstract 
 ideas are still true as abstractions, 
 we see that they have to be greatly 
 modified in application. 
 
 The fact appears even more 
 prominently in theology. We 
 form such antithetical classes as 
 saints and sinners, the saved and 
 the unsaved; and we fancy that 
 living human beings admit of be- 
 ing classified in this hard and 
 fast way. Of course these abstrac- 
 tions are necessary in theoretical 
 discussion, and the opposed classes 
 are mutually exclusive and con- 
 tradictory; nevertheless, concrete 
 men, women, and children can 
 not be divided off so easily. This 
 is a world of growth from irre- 
 sponsible ignorance and weakness 
 toward responsible power and in- 
 sight; it is a world of develop- 
 ment from sub-moral and sub- 
 
20 The Christian Life 
 
 rational beginnings toward moral 
 and rational endings. And in 
 such a world we must view great 
 masses of men as neither saved 
 nor lost, but as developing to- 
 wards these conditions. They 
 are neither good nor bad, in a 
 strictly moral sense, but are be- 
 coming good or bad. An aca- 
 demic ethics and an artificial the- 
 ology find no place for them, yet 
 they form the bulk of the human 
 race. And we shall never reach 
 any theory which will satisfy the 
 developed moral judgment of men 
 until this fact has been recog- 
 nized. The human world is less a 
 world in which moral classes exist 
 than one in which moral classes 
 are forming. 
 
 But this is generally overlooked, 
 and we divide men into antithet- 
 ical classes, as the saved and the 
 unsaved. This has generally been 
 done from an abstract standpoint ; 
 
A Study 21 
 
 and abstract law and abstract jus- 
 tice and abstract holiness and ab- 
 stract sin have played their ab- 
 stract part. But after we have 
 adopted this division, it becomes 
 an important matter to fix the 
 standard of distinction. If one is 
 not saved, it is a matter of serious 
 concern to know the ground of the 
 exclusion, particularly as the tra- 
 ditional classification by no means 
 always runs parallel with our un- 
 sophisticated moral judgments. 
 In response to this need, theolo- 
 gians have given a great variety 
 of answers. Those who have lost 
 themselves in theological and rit- 
 ual mechanism, have found the 
 mark of being saved in the due 
 performance of some rite, or pro- 
 nunciation of some formula ; but 
 this removes the matter from the 
 moral and rational field altogether. 
 The Churches which insist on 
 personal piety, tend to fix atten- 
 
22 The Christian Life 
 
 tion on conversion, or a change of 
 heart, or the new birth, as the dis- 
 tinctive mark of the saved ; and, 
 because of the failure to grasp the 
 fact of development, this is com- 
 monly supposed to have a definite 
 date in time. And in order that 
 there be no mistake about a mat- 
 ter so important, these Churches 
 have sought for unmistakable 
 signs of grace which should leave 
 no question. This has led to cer- 
 tain conceptions of these things 
 to which experience must con- 
 form, on pain of being distrusted, 
 if not rejected, as spurious; and 
 this in turn has led to an indefi- 
 nite amount of distortion of ex- 
 perience in order to bring it up to 
 the assumed standard. 
 
 Exaggerated Individualism 
 
 In the imperfect conditions of 
 undeveloped men, every good 
 thing has its attendant evil, or at 
 
A Study 23 
 
 least a tendency to develop into 
 mistaken forms. A very general 
 tendency, even in the Christian 
 religion, has been to develop into 
 mechanical externalism, in which 
 the spirit is missed altogether. 
 Ancient Pharisaism is a monu- 
 mental example. The same thing 
 is seen in the medieval Church ; 
 and modern Church history is not 
 lacking in illustration. There is 
 a tendency to substitute a mechan- 
 ical performance of mechanical 
 rites for the love and loyalty of 
 the heart. Hence, religious re- 
 formers have commonly had to 
 protest against this tendency, and 
 to recall men to the worship of 
 the spirit. The Lord looketh at 
 the heart. They that worship 
 God must worship him in spirit 
 and in truth. The prophets of 
 the Old Testament had for one 
 of their chief burdens the worth- 
 lessness of rites and ceremonies, 
 
24 The Christian Life 
 
 and the necessity of the pure 
 heart, if we would secure the Di- 
 vine favor. God, who looketh at 
 the heart, can never compound 
 for spiritual obedience by accept- 
 ing anything less. And this has 
 been the tone of all succeeding re- 
 formers and reformations. Away 
 with all salvation by machinery, 
 by hearsay, by proxy, and let the 
 soul come face to face with God 
 in repentance and humility and 
 faith ! Only thus can it hope to 
 obtain the remission of sins. 
 
 This view certainly represents 
 the ideal of spiritual religion ; and 
 religious development must be 
 looked upon as imperfect, even 
 formally, until this stage has been 
 reached. And if we were dealing 
 with human beings ready-made 
 and finished from the start, we 
 might conceive that this is the 
 only conception to be allowed. 
 But the matter is complicated by 
 
A Study 25 
 
 the fact and form of human de- 
 velopment. This spiritual atti- 
 tude may be demanded of those 
 who have developed far enough 
 to understand it; but what of 
 those who have not? Are they 
 saved or unsaved? 
 
 This question has been the 
 source of some extraordinary no- 
 tions in theology. The question 
 itself arose from a failure to ob- 
 serve that development is the law 
 of human life; and the notions 
 held rested upon factitious ethical 
 difficulties, based upon consider- 
 ing the problem in an abstract 
 forensic way, instead of a concrete 
 and truly ethical manner. Some 
 theologians of rigor and vigor 
 taught the damnation of infants, 
 but humanity generally protested 
 at this ultra rigor. But how to 
 save them was a problem which 
 received no single solution. The 
 great body of Christians turned 
 
26 The Christian Life 
 
 baptism into a regenerating rite 
 which insured the safety of its 
 subjects. One can not make 
 much out of this on ethical and 
 rational grounds ; but it is inter- 
 esting as showing the well-nigh 
 universal conviction of the Chris- 
 tian world that some way nmst 
 be found of saving the children. 
 Those who did not accept this de- 
 vice, found or invented others; 
 and the same fact was true of 
 these — ^they testified to a good dis- 
 position and to the recognition of 
 a moral necessity ; but it was ex- 
 ceedingly hard to adjust them to 
 any ethical and rational scheme. 
 In general, here was a problem 
 which the religious reformer did 
 not always sufficiently consider. 
 In assuming responsibility for the 
 immature, the Church had made 
 some provision for comprehending 
 the race as a whole in the scheme 
 of salvation; but in so doing, it 
 
A Sttidy 27 
 
 had also exposed itself to a variety 
 of dangers. The Church easily 
 came to be looked iipou as having 
 complete power of attorney in the 
 case, so that the individual need 
 not appear at all. This readily 
 passed into a mechanical concep- 
 tion of religion, and a magical 
 conception of salvation, in which 
 all spirituality disappeared. The 
 individual had nothing to do but 
 to make arrangements with the 
 Church, and the Church would do 
 the rest. 
 
 Against such a conception the 
 religious reformer rightly revolted. 
 What does baptism amount to 
 without the spirit? What does 
 anything in religion amount to 
 without the pure heart? And 
 this can not be secured by proxy 
 or machinery of any kind. Away 
 then, once more, with all such 
 matters ! for salvation is a strictly 
 individual thing. State Churches 
 
28 The Christian Life 
 
 were abominations, as their fruits 
 clearly showed. The truly spirit- 
 ual were to come out from among 
 them, and be separate, and thus 
 build up a peculiar people, zealous 
 of good works. 
 
 All of this was well-meant, and 
 all of this had its historical reasons, 
 if not its justification. But none 
 the less was it one-sided. Of 
 course we must reject the mech- 
 anism of rite and ceremony as 
 anything in which to trust, or 
 which can dispense with the de- 
 votion of the heart; but we can 
 do this and still recognize that 
 this mechanism may be a valua- 
 ble instrument in forming the 
 thought and training the feeling 
 of developing men. Of course we 
 must reject the notion that the 
 Church can forgive sins ; but still 
 we may believe that it can declare 
 the forgiveness of sins which of it- 
 self it can not confer. We must 
 
A Study 29 
 
 remember that the mass of hu- 
 man beings must live by hear- 
 say, in religion as well as in most 
 other matters; and thus the au- 
 thoritative teaching of the Church 
 acquires profound significance for 
 the religious life of the individ- 
 iial. The religious reformer was 
 right, but the Churchman was 
 right too. The reformer empha- 
 sized individualism; and the 
 Churchman emphasized solidarity. 
 The reformer rightly held that 
 the individual must for himself 
 recognize and accept the Divine 
 will, and that all below this was 
 vain if this result was not reached ; 
 but the Churchman rightly held 
 that the preparatory steps, while 
 making nothing perfect, still had 
 their religious significance in the 
 development of the individual. 
 Both views are needed for the full 
 expression of the truth ; and if the 
 historic circumstances of the time 
 
30 The Christian Life 
 
 had permitted the reforms to go 
 on within the Church, the result 
 would have been better for all con- 
 cerned. And this is true alike 
 for the great Protestant Reforma- 
 tion and for minor reformations 
 before and since. That both views 
 are needed especially appears from 
 the struggles of the extreme in- 
 dividualists in fixing the begin- 
 ning of responsibility. One con- 
 siderable body, which would hear 
 of nothing but conscious choice 
 and self-initiative in religion, offi- 
 cially fixed the tender age of eight 
 years as the date when adult life 
 begins. 
 
 But in their determination to 
 have a holy Church, our Noncon- 
 formist ancestors decided to have 
 only the best ; and this made it 
 necessary to draw a sharp line be- 
 tween the Church and the world. 
 It was heresy to find this in bap- 
 tism or any such thing. They 
 
A Study 31 
 
 knew only too well that baptized 
 persons could hold full member- 
 ship in the synagogue of Satan. 
 And as spirituality was their aim, 
 they naturally fixed their atten- 
 tion on the religious life, and more 
 especially on its assumed begin- 
 ning in conversion. And, in or- 
 der that there might be no mistake 
 about the matter, a deal of atten- 
 tion was directed to the signs of 
 grace, whereby a sheep might in- 
 fallibly be known and separated 
 from common goats. This led, in 
 New England, under Edwards's 
 influence, to much fictitious psy- 
 chology and ethics, and to a gen- 
 eral browbeating of human nature. 
 Our Methodist ancestors tended to 
 test conversion by its emotional 
 attendants. Other things being 
 equal, these will vary with the 
 measure of the break between the 
 new life and the old. An out- 
 breaking sinner, who has been 
 
32 The Chfistian Life 
 
 living in violation of all the laws 
 of God and man, could not begin 
 tlie new life without a break with 
 about all there was in his old life. 
 In such a case the fountains of the 
 great deep would be broken up 
 within him, and there would be 
 an intensity of feeling and a man- 
 ifest new departure which would 
 be lacking, or less obvious, in the 
 case of a better man. And as 
 Methodism, in its original work, 
 dealt largely with persons of this 
 class, conversions were largely of 
 this type, and they came to be the 
 standard to which conversions 
 should conform. Such conver- 
 sions were said to be clear or pow- 
 erful ; while others, less marked, 
 though admitted, were still open 
 to the suspicion of being less thor- 
 ough. Every one familiar with 
 Methodist revival services knows 
 how much of this thing there has 
 been among us. 
 
A Study 33 
 
 Thus we have seen the origin 
 and justification of the ideal of 
 the individualistic Churches in 
 regard to personal religion; and 
 we have also seen how much con- 
 fusion and uncertainty exist in 
 popular thought respecting the 
 matter. And the only way out 
 of this confusion seems to be to 
 get back to our fundamental re- 
 ligious conceptions, and from 
 them seek to find our way to 
 some clearer views of the relig- 
 ious life. 
 
 The Essential Point of View 
 
 Religious truth can be ex- 
 pressed only by figures borrowed 
 from the relations of the life that 
 now is. All religious speech, 
 then, is based on metaphor, and 
 must be taken, not for what it 
 says, but for what it means. The 
 task of religious thought is to 
 3 
 
34 The Cliristian Life 
 
 find the meaning in the meta- 
 phor, and also to find the meta- 
 phor which shall best express the 
 meaning. There is a choice in 
 metaphors. 
 
 The traditional theological doc- 
 trine concerning sin and salvation 
 has been largely built on meta- 
 phors, taken partly from the rites 
 of the ancient temple service and 
 partly from governmental, legal, 
 and criminal relations. God^s re- 
 lation to men was generally con- 
 ceived, in the obsolescent theology 
 of the past, as that of an irrespon- 
 sible governor. Men were by na- 
 ture criminals, and the theory of 
 the mutual relations of God and 
 men was based mainly on this 
 conception. The notion of the 
 governor and his rights was de- 
 termined largely by the political 
 absolutism of the time, and the 
 standing of men was determined 
 by the forms of criminal law and 
 
A Study 35 
 
 criminal procedure. The two to- 
 gether produced a most incongru- 
 ous compound. The theology was 
 bad, and the ethics was worse. 
 God, like the king, could do no 
 wrong ; and the clay was forbid- 
 den to protest at anything the 
 potter might do. The infinite ill- 
 desert of a sin against an infinite 
 being was a favorite contention. 
 Guilt was artificial, justice was 
 artificial, penalty was artificial, 
 salvation was artificial, perdition 
 was artificial. There was very 
 little in the doctrine concerning 
 any of these things that spoke 
 clearly and convincingly to the 
 reason and conscience of men. 
 This general view resulted in con- 
 ceiving men as rebels, apostates, 
 traitors, and as all deserving im- 
 mediate perdition at the hands of 
 God. They were by nature chil- 
 dren of wrath, and of course un- 
 saved. A great many texts, in- 
 
36 The Christian Life 
 
 terpreted according to the fashion 
 of that time, readily lent them- 
 selves to such notions. 
 
 But the entire Church has 
 grown away from this view, ex- 
 cept as a very imperfect and in- 
 adequate representation of the 
 truth. God may be represented 
 as governor, but never with the 
 limitations of a human governor, 
 and still less with the irresponsi- 
 bility of an Oriental ruler. The 
 crude devices of criminal law, 
 also, which are mainly make- 
 shifts for doing as little injustice 
 as possible, are never to be ap- 
 pealed to as models of divine pro- 
 cedure. We are fast displacing 
 the entire conception of God as 
 governor by the conception of 
 God as father; and the concep- 
 tion of the divine government 
 is giving place to the concep- 
 tion of the divine family. The 
 deepest thought of God is not 
 
A Study 37 
 
 that of ruler, but of father; 
 and the deepest thought of men 
 is not that of subjects, but of 
 children. And the deepest 
 thought concerning God's pur- 
 pose in our life is not salvation 
 from threatening danger, but the 
 training and development of souls 
 as the children of God. Salva- 
 tion or redemption is but an in- 
 cident or implication of this 
 deeper purpose, and must be in- 
 terpreted accordingly. The en- 
 tire subject must be studied as a 
 relation of living moral persons 
 rather than of ethical and juristic 
 abstractions. 
 
 This new conception of the fa- 
 therhood and the family contains 
 all that was true in the old concep- 
 tion of governor and subject ; but 
 it is deeper and more comprehen- 
 sive, and hence truer, than the 
 old. And in so far as the older 
 view conflicts with this, it must 
 
38 The Christian Life 
 
 be modified or set aside. It may 
 be retained as a partial view, or 
 as one aspect of the subject, but 
 it must always be interpreted in 
 accordance with the larger view. 
 But, on the other hand, the new 
 conception is not to be viewed as 
 a sentimental one, or as involving 
 a relaxation of the rigor of moral 
 demands. 
 
 The training and development 
 of souls as the children of God, 
 then, is God's essential purpose in 
 the creation of men; and we 
 must understand our human life 
 from this point of view. And we 
 must also bear in mind that it is 
 an order of development. That 
 was not first which was spiritual, 
 but that which was natural, and 
 afterward that which was spirit- 
 ual. The development has a nat- 
 ural root as well as a spiritual 
 goal. The development also in- 
 volves the unfolding of the con- 
 
A Sttidy 39 
 
 stitutional powers of man as well 
 as his abstract spiritual capaci- 
 ties. For a long time the devel- 
 opment remains on the plane of the 
 natural without attaining to the 
 consciously spiritual ; but all the 
 while it is the development of 
 man in a divinely ordered scheme ; 
 and all the phases and factors of 
 this scheme have their place and 
 function in the divine plan for 
 men. 
 
 Of course in such a scheme our 
 traditional categories of the saved 
 and the unsaved can not be ap- 
 plied in any hard and fast man- 
 ner, but must be limited to a rel- 
 ative significance. They have a 
 value in abstract theory, and they 
 may express a limit toward which 
 men are tending, but they can 
 not be rigorously applied to the 
 rank and file of the race. As 
 said before, men are not so much 
 saved as they are becoming 
 
40 The Christian Life 
 
 saved ; and men are not so mucli 
 lost as they are becoming lost. 
 The process is going on; the 
 classes are forming; but we are 
 totally unable to form any fixed 
 classification of these living men 
 and women about us. The vari- 
 ous traditional tests are grotesque 
 in their inadequacy, when they 
 are not purely mechanical and 
 non-moral. 
 
 Human beings are carried on 
 in the beginnings of their exist- 
 ence as unconsciously as nature 
 itself. They are borne along like 
 the rocks and the trees, the earth 
 and the stars, without any sense 
 of the will and the purpose which 
 underlie their motion. But it is 
 God's thought for men that they 
 shall not always be borne along 
 thus unconsciously, but shall be- 
 come aware of God's presence and 
 purpose in their lives, and shall 
 reverently recognize the presence, 
 
A Study 41 
 
 and filially accept and co-operate 
 with the purpose. They are to 
 pass from the unconsciousness of 
 nature and the ignorance of child- 
 hood to the conscious recognition 
 and acceptance of the Divine will ; 
 and then they are to go on with 
 God in deepening sympathy and 
 growing fellowship forever. 
 
 This is God's eternal thought 
 for men, and it is not modified in 
 any way in its essential nature by 
 the fact of sin. Of course, a deal 
 of what we call sin is error and 
 mistake, arising from the igno- 
 rance of men who have to feel 
 their way. And sin itself, as we 
 find it among men, is largely the 
 willfulness of freedom which has 
 not learned self-control, rather 
 than any deliberate choice of evil. 
 Ignorance and untrained willful- 
 ness abound, and both alike must 
 be removed, or they will increase 
 and lead to disaster. Ignorance 
 
42 The Christian Life 
 
 must be enlightened if men are 
 ever to find the way. The un- 
 chastened will must learn self- 
 restraint if it is to run at large. 
 But during the process we must 
 not indulge in extravagant con- 
 demnation by bringing in the 
 categories of abstract theological 
 ethics. These have as little ap- 
 plication to the case as they would 
 have to the judgment of the fam- 
 ily life. 
 
 This reference to the family 
 gives us a hint of how developing 
 beings are to be judged. The 
 father's desire is, that the chil- 
 dren shall come to recognize his 
 love and filially to accept his com- 
 mands. He desires that they shall 
 develop into sympathy and fellow- 
 ship with himself ; and not until 
 this stage is reached is the devel- 
 opment complete. But in the 
 meantime the children belong to 
 the family, and have immeasur- 
 
A Study 43 
 
 able value for the father's heart. 
 They know little or nothing of 
 the love that is lavished upon 
 them; but it is there, neverthe- 
 less, and by it they are upborne 
 and carried along. The parents 
 have patience with the ignorance, 
 the irresponsiveness, the willful- 
 ness, knowing that time and dis- 
 cipline and some experience of life 
 are necessary to bring the children 
 to any proper knowledge of them- 
 selves and of their duties. Mean- 
 while the wise parent is not unduly 
 distressed at childish imperfection. 
 He knows it is to be expected and 
 must be borne with. He knows, 
 too, that it is nothing very serious 
 in itself — it is serious only in its 
 tendencies ; and he avails himself 
 of all the means of discipline, of 
 instruction, of correction, to pre- 
 vent the evil tendencies from be- 
 ing realized. But he would re- 
 gard it as in the highest degree 
 
44 The Christian Life 
 
 false and abominable if one should 
 claim that the little rebellions of 
 childhood forfeit membership in 
 the family. Children can not re- 
 bel to this extent. Their igno- 
 rance and general lack of insight 
 make it impossible. What might 
 be possible with angels, we can 
 not tell. What doom should fol- 
 low rebellion committed in the 
 full light of knowledge and with 
 full insight into its evil nature, 
 might be hard to say. But hu- 
 man life is not of this sort, and 
 can not be treated in this way. 
 Such discussion must be limited 
 to treatises on the sin of the devil 
 and his angels ; it has no applica- 
 tion to human conditions. 
 
 But we are sinners. Yes, but 
 not outcasts. But we are rebels. 
 No, we are prodigal sons. And 
 God*s grace is such that his es- 
 sential will for us remains un- 
 changed, that we should become 
 
A Study 45 
 
 aware of his loving purpose for 
 us, and should accept it in filial 
 submission, and work together 
 with him in building up his king- 
 dom among men. And this, too, 
 we understand from the side of 
 the family again. The supreme de- 
 sireof the prodigal's father was that 
 the prodigal should come home to 
 him, the father ; and the supreme 
 duty of the prodigal was to go 
 home in the spirit of penitence, 
 and devote himself to doing his 
 father's will. And we, as prod- 
 igal sons of our Heavenly Father, 
 have the same all-inclusive duty. 
 How the forgiveness of sin is 
 made possible has been the sub- 
 ject of much theory, largely ab- 
 stract and often unedifying. In 
 fact, there is no completely satis- 
 factory theory on the subject, sup- 
 posing any theory is needed. We 
 find various conceptions given in 
 the Scriptures, which are mutu- 
 
46 The Christian Life 
 
 ally inconsistent when taken in 
 strict literalness, and some of 
 which would be immoral. This 
 shows that they are not to be 
 taken literally, but must be viewed 
 as adumbrations of the truth ; not 
 the truth itself, but ways of put- 
 ting it. And these views are to be 
 understood psychologically rather 
 than logically ; as expressions of 
 life rather than as statutory enact- 
 ments. Taken in the former way, 
 they are full of significance and 
 truth; taken in the latter way, 
 they become mechanical, irra- 
 tional, and pernicious. But in 
 any case, this question belongs to 
 theology, and not to religious ex- 
 perience. However it may be 
 brought about, or whatever hid- 
 den mystery there may lie in the 
 Divine nature, the one thing we 
 have to proclaim is the grace of 
 God, the forgiveness of sins, the 
 Divine help for all those who truly 
 
A Study 47 
 
 seek it. The revelation of God in 
 Christ is essentially a revelation 
 of his grace and his gracious dis- 
 position toward us. He has sent 
 his Son to proclaim this, and to 
 put it beyond all doubt forever. 
 The Father's heart yearns after 
 the prodigal children ; and all that 
 we have to do is to come home in 
 penitence and humility, trusting 
 in his mercy and seeking to do 
 his will. Whatever is more than 
 this belongs to theology, and may 
 possibly be important in that field. 
 But the prodigal's duty is to go 
 home; and for this he needs no 
 theory of the atonement, no doc- 
 trine of substitution, or of imputed 
 righteousness, or of ransom paid 
 to the devil, or of governmental 
 exigencies happily provided for; 
 but solely the desire to find the 
 Father's help and favor and for- 
 giveness. And this conception of 
 God, as full of grace and compas- 
 
48 The Christian Life 
 
 sion, as ready to forgive the peni- 
 tent soul, and to give it power to 
 become the child of God in the 
 spirit, is the central idea of the 
 gospel. 
 
 If these things are so, then the 
 essential matter of Christian teach- 
 ing is simplified. God's aim is to 
 bring men to the recognition of 
 his presence and purpose in their 
 lives and to a filial acceptance of 
 that purpose in all their conduct. 
 If men are ignorant of that pur- 
 pose, we must teach them. If 
 they ignore it, or turn away from 
 it, we must warn them. If they 
 seek after God, we must declare 
 his infinite nearness and his gra- 
 cious condescension. If they 
 turn from their evil ways, we 
 must proclaim the forgiveness of 
 sins. The whole matter will be 
 clear if we bear in mind what 
 God's purpose is for men. And 
 the duty of the inquirer is equally 
 
A Study 49 
 
 plain. Let him at once begin to do 
 the will of God so far as he knows 
 it, trusting in the Divine mercy for 
 the forgiveness of sin and for all 
 needed help. Let the wicked for- 
 sake his way and the unrighteous 
 man his thoughts; and let him 
 return unto the Lord, and he will 
 have mercy upon him ; and to our 
 God, for he will abundantly par- 
 don. But, on the other hand, if 
 I regard iniquity in my heart, the 
 Lord will not hear me; and he 
 ought not to hear me. 
 
 What, then, does God require 
 of us ? Various answers are given, 
 all of which come to the same 
 thing. An old prophet found the 
 requirement in doing justly, lov- 
 ing mercy, and walking humbly 
 with God. Loving submission 
 and active obedience to the will of 
 God, is another formula. Seek 
 to live so as to please God in all 
 things, is still another. Believe 
 4 
 
50 The Chj^stian Life 
 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ — that is, 
 become his disciple and follower — 
 is another. But they all mean 
 the same thing. We are not re- 
 quired to have affecting views of 
 our sins, or a sense of our deep un- 
 worthiness, or an insight into the- 
 ology of any sort, but we are re- 
 quired to surrender ourselves to 
 God to do his will. 
 
 But we are not yet converted, 
 or bom again, or saved. What 
 has been said thus far smacks of 
 legality and good works, and seems 
 to make nothing of faith and the 
 new birth and the witness of the 
 Spirit ; and these things are the 
 very gist of spiritual religion. 
 
 In this objection we have an al- 
 most complete list of the confu- 
 sion and misunderstandings which 
 have darkened the discussion of 
 this subject. We must consider 
 them singly. 
 
A Study 51 
 
 Underlying this objection there 
 is a secret reference to the theol- 
 ogy of abstraction. Abstract law 
 and abstract justice are supposed 
 to have claims upon us which 
 must be met before we can be- 
 come children of God ; and surely 
 our thought of conversion must 
 largely concern itself with these. 
 But here we must again remind 
 ourselves that these questions be- 
 long to speculative theology and 
 not to experience. If we were 
 giving a philosophy of Christian 
 doctrine, these questions might 
 come up; but they are out of 
 place when we are preaching the 
 gospel. And we must further re- 
 mind ourselves that the claims, 
 whatever they may be, have been 
 met; and the difficulties, what- 
 ever they may be, have been re- 
 moved ; so that we have to con- 
 sider only the practical aspects of 
 Christian doctrine. We turn over 
 
52 The Christian Life 
 
 the speculative and philosophical 
 questions to the theologian, and 
 continue to occupy ourselves with 
 the practical life. 
 
 Workings Definitions 
 
 There are many important the- 
 ological terms and phrases which, 
 from long use and thoughtlessness, 
 have worn so smooth as to have 
 lost most of their meaning ; and the 
 only way to restore them to signifi- 
 cance seems to be to look directly 
 at the facts from which the terms 
 arise. Proceeding in this way, we 
 discover that there is a vast deal 
 of wrong thinking in the world, 
 not merely erroneous thinking as 
 in speculative matters, but wrong 
 practical thinking. Men see 
 things out of their right relations. 
 They misjudge values and invert 
 their relative importance. They 
 have their minds full of these 
 misconceptions, and practical con- 
 
A Study 53 
 
 fusion and misdirection result. 
 Hence the first condition of a new 
 and better life is to repent ; that 
 is, men must change their minds 
 or their ways of thinking about 
 things. This is the Christian, or 
 New Testament, idea of repent- 
 ance ; and this is the first condition 
 for entering into the kingdom of 
 God. It is not a question of get- 
 ting to heaven, but of entering into 
 that kingdom which is righteous- 
 ness and peace and joy in the Holy 
 Ghost ; and, of course, no one can 
 enter this kingdom except by at- 
 taining to the spirit, the temper, 
 the way of thinking, in which 
 the kingdom consists. 
 
 Again, men are traveling the 
 wrong road or in the wrong di- 
 rection. They are moving away 
 from life and from the highest 
 things. They are on the down- 
 ward grade. Hence they must 
 be converted; that is, must turn 
 
54 The Christian Life 
 
 around, if they would enter into 
 life. This is the New Testament 
 idea of conversion ; and this is not 
 to be understood in a metaphysical 
 sense, as implying some change in 
 the substance of the soul ; nor in 
 a theological sense, as implying 
 some difficult forensic adjustment 
 in the court of heaven whereby 
 the antithesis of justice and mercy 
 is happily mediated. It is to be 
 understood solely as implying the 
 opposition between the contents 
 and direction of the new life and 
 those of the old. 
 
 In the same way the new birth 
 is to be understood. If we con- 
 sider the contents of the earthly 
 life, its low aims and maxims — 
 and hence its opposition to the 
 life of the Spirit — we see that the 
 change required for passing into 
 the spiritual life is very strikingly 
 called a new birth, or a birth 
 from above. St. Paul called it a 
 
A Study 55 
 
 resurrection from the dead. Both 
 expressions mean the same thing, 
 and both are equally metaphor- 
 ical. They are to be understood 
 from the side of life, and not from 
 the side of theology. When thus 
 understood, they are striking and 
 expressive; but when they are 
 taken for a hidden metaphysical 
 process, they lose all intelligible 
 meaning, and become an opaque 
 theological wonder. Without 
 doubt the Holy Spirit must as- 
 sist us in our efforts. The weak 
 will must be strengthened, the 
 dull conscience must be enlight- 
 ened, the wayward affections must 
 be fixed ; and in all this we need 
 the co-working of God. But we 
 always need this. And whatever 
 mystery may attach thereto, its 
 effect for us, and the only intelli- 
 gible meaning we can ascribe to 
 it, must consist in the turning of 
 heart and will toward God, in the 
 
56 The Christian Life 
 
 set purpose to please and to serve 
 him. 
 
 The same thing must be said 
 of salvation or being saved. This 
 also is to be ethically understood. 
 What may be possible in the way 
 of a forensic understanding, we 
 leave to theologians to decide; 
 but in any case, salvation must 
 be ethically understood, or we are 
 landed in artificial hocus-pocus, if 
 not in downright immorality. To 
 be sure, St. Paul used the terms 
 of the Roman lav/ very freely to 
 set forth the great salvation, and 
 in this has generally been fol- 
 lowed by Protestant theologians. 
 But it has long been apparent 
 that these terms are not to be 
 taken in a rigid literal sense. 
 They must be seen as metaphors 
 or ways of putting, and must be 
 interpreted from the side of the 
 moral life, and not by the dic- 
 tionary alone. To love God and 
 
A Sttidy 57 
 
 to seek to serve and please him 
 is the sum of human duty, and it 
 is forever incredible that God 
 should demand any more or be 
 satisfied with any less. The Di- 
 vine aim is to bring men into 
 the loving recognition and accept- 
 ance of the Divine will. For- 
 giveness by the Heavenly Father 
 is no more difficult than forgive- 
 ness by an earthly father, and in 
 both cases what is desired is the 
 establishment of the filial spirit 
 in the heart and will of the way- 
 ward child. And this is salva- 
 tion in the ethical sense, and the 
 only salvation with which we 
 have any practical concern. Sal- 
 vation conceived as something 
 possessed by one and not pos- 
 sessed by another of similar spirit 
 and life, or conceived as depend- 
 ing on some device of celestial 
 bookkeeping, or as depending on 
 the performance of some rite or 
 
58 The Christian Life 
 
 the utterance of some formula, 
 has no moral contents at all, but 
 sinks to the level of magical in- 
 cantations. 
 
 This matter of salvation and 
 forgiveness has often been con- 
 fused, even by the theologians, 
 from failure to view it as a rela- 
 tion of moral persons. In their 
 desire to save justice, they have 
 sometimes become so confused as 
 to represent justice as demanding 
 a certain quantum of penalty, but 
 quite indifferent as to who fur- 
 nished or endured it. This is a 
 most striking illustration of the 
 confusion which may be wrought 
 by a devotion to abstraction^. 
 When it is a question only of 
 things, one person may take an- 
 other's place, as when one pays 
 another's debt; but when it is a 
 question of moral persons and 
 moral relations, such substitution 
 is morally impossible in any lit- 
 
A Study 59 
 
 eral sense. Imagine an ungrate- 
 ful son who should demand that 
 his father should receive him into 
 all the privileges and affection of 
 the family because some one else 
 had performed the duties which 
 the son had neglected or rejected. 
 The father who could tolerate so 
 odious a demand must himself be 
 hopelessly confused mentally, or 
 else indifferent to moral distinc- 
 tions and proprieties. Plainly, 
 the only salvation the moral na- 
 ture can recognize is one which 
 results in the re-establishment of 
 the filial spirit and the filial life. 
 The truth in the traditional doc- 
 trine on this subject is, that not 
 even love can arbitrarily forgive 
 or cancel consequences. This 
 would make forgiveness itself im- 
 moral. The curse can be removed 
 only by changing the heart, and 
 setting healing and restorative 
 agencies at work, by which the 
 
6o The Christian Life 
 
 evil consequences may be elim- 
 inated, as health overcomes dis- 
 ease. But this, which is the es- 
 sential truth of the atonement, is 
 often hidden behind abstractions 
 which caricature or deny it. 
 
 But what of the supernatural 
 in the religious life? We have 
 spoken of men changing their 
 minds and converting themselves, 
 whereas they supremely need the 
 aid of the Holy Spirit in this 
 work. These reflections will nat- 
 urally occur to those who fail to 
 distinguish between the theolog- 
 ical standpoint and that of con- 
 scious experience. But what we 
 have said involves no denial of 
 the supernatural. Without doubt 
 men need help from above in ef- 
 fecting these changes, but no more 
 than they need it in the spiritual 
 life in general. But however 
 much supernatural assistance may 
 be needed, the thing to be reached 
 
A Study 6 1 
 
 is the changed mind and heart, 
 or the change of thought and feel- 
 ing and direction of life. And 
 the supernatural reveals itself in 
 this power to become the children 
 of God, and not at all in any 
 scenic or hippodromic manifesta- 
 tions. In the former sense we 
 affirm the supernatural with all 
 conviction. And the religious 
 teacher must not allow ignorant 
 and excitable persons to mistake 
 neurological disturbances, without 
 any ethical contents, for manifes- 
 tations of the Spirit. Untrained 
 persons, of wonder-loving mental 
 habit, easily fall into this mis- 
 take, and they must be guarded 
 against it. 
 
 And from this concrete ethical 
 standpoint, again, the meaning of 
 sin and the sinful life is equally 
 clear. The gist of the sinful life 
 consists in the willingness to do 
 wrong and the unwillingness to do 
 
62 The Christian Life 
 
 right. Some dealers in abstrac- 
 tions have thought to find some- 
 thing deeper than this, and they 
 have proclaimed that sin is a na- 
 ture, and that its nature is guilt. 
 With such notions, nothing but a 
 web of abstract fictions can be 
 woven. And others, who have 
 rejected this view, have often been 
 so occupied with denying the ex- 
 istence of any abstract sin that 
 they have overlooked the undeni- 
 able fact that there is a good deal 
 of concrete wrong-doing among 
 men, and that this wrong-doing 
 must be done away with if men 
 are to enter into life. It would 
 tend to real progress if religious 
 teachers would postpone the study 
 of sin in the abstract until we 
 have overcome this willingness to 
 do wrong and this unwillingness 
 to do right, from which both so- 
 ciety and the individual so griev- 
 
A Study 63 
 
 ously suffer. If this state of mind 
 could be replaced by the love 
 and practice of righteousness, we 
 should have no practical concern 
 about abstract sin. 
 
 Faith and works have been re- 
 ferred to, and salvation by faith 
 has been mentioned as all-impor- 
 tant. But here, too, confusion 
 has reigned. This antithesis of 
 faith and works owes its exist- 
 ence to a very low and crude 
 moral conception. When works 
 are mechanically conceived, as in 
 ancient or modern Pharisaism, it 
 is plain that they remain external 
 to the spirit and count for noth- 
 ing. No amount of them could 
 have any significance for the spir- 
 itual development of soul. But 
 when it is seen that good works, 
 in any ethical sense of the phrase, 
 involve as their supreme condi- 
 tion the inner loyalty and devo- 
 
64 The Qifistian Life 
 
 tion of heart and will, we see 
 tliat there is no reason to be 
 afraid of them. 
 
 Again, when the moral ideal 
 is at al] developed, there is no 
 satisfaction in any actual attain- 
 ment of our own ; for the ideal 
 is ever in advance and rebukes 
 us. Hence no one of any spir- 
 itual attainment can ever reach 
 peace through any good works of 
 his own, but only by trusting in 
 the infinite grace above him. 
 We are perfectly clear that our 
 salvation is of grace, not of debt ; 
 it is not of works, lest any man 
 should boast; it is not of our- 
 selves, it is the gift of God. As 
 the child has its standing in the 
 family, not by the value of its 
 services, but rather in and through 
 the parental love which gives 
 value to all the child does, so we 
 have our standing in the divine 
 family, not through the value of 
 
A Study 65 
 
 our services, but rather and only 
 through the infinite grace which 
 gives all the value our poor best 
 service may possess. This is that 
 salvation by grace which is the 
 glory of the gospel. And our 
 trust in this grace, our yield- 
 ing ourselves up to it in obedience 
 and submission, is our faith. 
 And that we can be truly saved — 
 that is, lifted Godward — only in 
 this way, is manifest. No me- 
 chanical round can lift us. No me- 
 chanical round has merit. We 
 must trust in the grace above us, 
 and we must struggle toward the 
 ideal it holds out. Only thus can 
 we rise. However we stumble or 
 fall, we must not abandon our 
 trust in, and devotion to, the 
 grace revealed from on high. 
 Understood in this way, salvation 
 by faith is one of the deepest 
 truths in religion. But when 
 faith is conceived as a bare as- 
 5 
 
66 The Qiristian Life 
 
 sent to any theological dogma 
 whatever, it becomes unfruitful 
 and mechanical, and sometimes 
 immoral and pernicious. 
 
 We have made this excursion 
 into theology because the phrases 
 examined constantly recur in the 
 language of experience, and give 
 it a peculiar form. Our convic- 
 tion is, that these phrases are 
 largely misunderstood from tak- 
 ing the implied metaphor for a 
 literal fact, or from interpreting 
 them by the dictionary instead of 
 by life. But however this may 
 be, it is clear that the theological 
 doctrine concerning these matters 
 must not be confused with the 
 data of conscious experience. 
 Whatever mysterious God-ward 
 relations these doctrines may 
 have is no practical concern of 
 ours, and will doubtless be ar- 
 ranged for without our aid. For 
 the consciousness of the disciple. 
 
A Study 67 
 
 nothing is to be demanded or ex- 
 pected beyond the surrender, the 
 devotion, the obedience, of the 
 filial spirit. Theology is good, 
 important, and even necessary in 
 its place; but we do not bring 
 men to God by means of theology. 
 Nor should we confuse the mind 
 of any seeker after God by trying 
 to cast his thought and experi- 
 ence in any dogmatic mold ; as if 
 one could not find God without 
 setting forth a scheme of evan- 
 gelical theology, duly recognizing 
 the several persons of the Trinity 
 and their respective offices, speci- 
 fying the provisions of the atone- 
 ment, and going in order through 
 the program of repentance, faith, 
 justification, regeneration, adop- 
 tion, and sanctification. What- 
 ever value such a program may 
 have is theological, not psycho- 
 logical ; it represents abstractions 
 of theory rather than facts of con- 
 
68 The Christian Life 
 
 sciousness. The two points of 
 view should never be confounded. 
 The life of trust and obedience 
 is not to be secured by an exam- 
 ination in the catechism ; and for 
 bringing sinners into the king- 
 dom of God, we need no more 
 theology than is contained in the 
 Parable of the Prodigal Son. 
 
 The Witness of the Spirit 
 
 In our previous study we have 
 distinguished the language of ex- 
 perience from that of theology, 
 and have warned against con- 
 founding them. But now we 
 come to the witness of the Spirit ; 
 and this is said to be a fact of 
 experience, and not merely a doc- 
 trine of theology. And it is fur- 
 ther said by many that no one 
 may count himself a true disciple, 
 or member of the divine house- 
 hold, until he has received this 
 
A Study 69 
 
 witness. And many good persons 
 — some of the best indeed — have 
 been greatly troubled thereby. 
 The phrase seems to call for 
 a miraculous manifestation, in 
 which some external power stands 
 manifestly apart from ourselves, 
 and testifies that we are received 
 into the Divine favor. And many 
 persons, like the minister before 
 mentioned, have watched and 
 waited for some such manifesta- 
 tion, and as nothing has ever hap- 
 pened to them which contained 
 any such psychological break, or 
 which revealed any such appari- 
 tion of another personality within 
 the field of consciousness, they 
 are left to doubt whether they 
 ever had the witness of the Spirit. 
 And as this witness is supposed 
 to be a necessary mark of disci- 
 pleship, they are left in doubt 
 whether they are members of the 
 divine family at all. There is 
 
70 The Christian Life 
 
 Special need of clearing up our 
 thought on this subject. 
 
 Two considerations must be 
 premised: One is, that the doc- 
 trine, whatever it may be, must 
 not be held in such a way as to 
 make void the gospel. The other 
 is, that the experience, whatever 
 it may be, can not be confined to 
 any single religious body. 
 
 The first point is by no means 
 always regarded. That one should 
 commit himself in faith and obe- 
 dience to the keeping and service 
 of the Lord Jesus, is not thought 
 to be enough. That one should 
 enter upon the life of disciple- 
 ship, trusting in the promises of 
 the gospel and seeking to do God's 
 will, would not suffice. One might 
 do all this, and still have no right 
 to assume the place of a son in 
 the Father's house. For this he 
 must wait until he receives the 
 witness; and the result often is. 
 
A Study 71 
 
 that the object of faith and trust 
 is not Christ and the Father whom 
 he revealed, but rather and only 
 certain feelings in the disciple. 
 If these are present, he has confi- 
 dence ; if absent, he has not found 
 the Lord, or the Lord has hidden 
 his face. Thus the gospel itself 
 is made void by thrusting some 
 subjective test between the soul 
 and its Savior, the only object of 
 faith and trust. 
 
 And that this is no fictitious 
 danger appears from the follow- 
 ing utterance of a distinguished 
 Methodist ecclesiastic the past 
 summer: "John Wesley was sent 
 out to preach a knowable relig- 
 ion — that a man might know that 
 his sins are forgiven. There is 
 only one way for him to learn 
 that. Pardon is a change in the 
 Divine mind concerning the sin- 
 ner; whereas God regarded him 
 as a guilty sinner, he now regards 
 
72 The Christian Life 
 
 him as a pardoned sinner. No one 
 but God knows this change till 
 he tells it. This is the old doc- 
 trine of the witness of the Spirit. 
 When we get a man down before 
 the altar, we do not tell him his 
 sins are forgiven. We do not 
 know. We simply hold him to 
 it till God tells him; then the 
 sinner knows it." 
 
 According to this master in 
 Israel, then, it would seem that 
 we may not venture on or rest in 
 the promises of God without this 
 special experience. We may in- 
 deed commit ourselves to his serv- 
 ice in faith and obedience, trust- 
 ing in his mercy; but we may 
 not have any confidence that our 
 Heavenly Father accepts us even 
 then, because we can not tell 
 what takes place in the Divine 
 mind. This is a heresy from 
 every standpoint. Scriptural and 
 Methodistic alike. Wesley him- 
 
A Study 73 
 
 self expressly rejected this inter- 
 pretation of the doctrine. 
 
 Since I began writing, I have 
 had a concrete illustration of the 
 mischief of such indiscriminating 
 teaching. A ministerial corre- 
 spondent tells me of a woman of 
 more than ordinary intelligence 
 in his congregation, who for nine- 
 teen years wandered in a horror 
 of great darkness because of such 
 erroneous teaching. She had been 
 told: '*Do n't take anybody's word. 
 When you are forgiven, you will 
 know it. God will tell you." Al- 
 most the exact language, it will 
 be observ^ed, of the dignitary be- 
 fore mentioned. 
 
 And the second point men- 
 tioned must also be borne in 
 mind. The witness of the Spirit 
 as an experience of the Christian 
 can not be limited to any relig- 
 ious body. Conceived as a doc- 
 trine, it might well be held by a 
 
74 The Christian Life 
 
 single body; but conceived as an 
 experience, it must be the com- 
 mon property of all saints, so far 
 as it is necessary to saintship. 
 It would be grotesque to the last 
 degree to suppose that God does 
 something for Methodist saints 
 which he does not do for Baptist, 
 or Congregational, or Presbyte- 
 rian saints ; and it would be an 
 impossible lack of charity to hold 
 that only Methodists are saints. 
 Most religious bodies have a few 
 disciples of rigor and vigor who 
 work out a sort of high-church- 
 ism for their own people, and 
 question the discipleship of other 
 bodies; but no sane Methodist 
 would venture to construct his 
 high-churchism on this line of 
 the witness. And this fact shows 
 either that the doctrine must be 
 a theological one and not a datum 
 of experience, or else that the ex- 
 perience itself, whatever it may 
 
A Study 75 
 
 be, is not so definite as to exclude 
 varying interpretations. 
 
 Returning now to the doctrine, 
 we find theologians very uncer- 
 tain about it. There is general 
 agreement that it is most impor- 
 tant, but there is little agreement 
 as to what it means. That the 
 phrase itself is not to be taken 
 in strict literalness is manifest. 
 No outside being appears within 
 the disciple's consciousness and 
 literally testifies to a celestial fact 
 concerning his standing in the 
 court of heaven. This is what 
 our traditional language would 
 lead us to expect, but there is no 
 warrant for such expectation. The 
 phrase itself as used by Paul in 
 the classical passage — Romans 
 viil, 1 6 — seems to grow out of the 
 ancient custom of adoption. Paul 
 is trying to make his readers 
 know the grace and wonder of 
 the great salvation, and avails 
 
76 The Christian Life 
 
 himself of all tlie aids which fa- 
 miliar customs of society furnish. 
 Among others he hits upon the 
 custom of adoption familiar to 
 the ancient world, and says : We 
 are not aliens and strangers, but 
 we are adopted into the divine 
 family. God has sent forth into 
 our hearts the Spirit of adop- 
 tion whereby the filial spirit is 
 wrought in us and we are en- 
 abled to look up to God as our Fa- 
 ther. And having taken up this 
 striking and suggestive figure, his 
 thought runs on to complete it. 
 For this act of adoption was not 
 done in a corner and out of sight, 
 but in public and before witnesses, 
 that there might be no question 
 about it forever after. And with 
 this thought he adds: And the 
 Spirit itself, that same Spirit of 
 adoption, is a fellow-witness with 
 our spirits, not to our spirits, but 
 a fellow-witness of the fact that 
 
A Study 77 
 
 we are children of God. If Paul 
 had not been familiar with Ro- 
 man law, there would have been 
 no doctrine of adoption and no 
 doctrine of the witness. 
 
 It is not now a question of what 
 the work of the Spirit within or 
 upon the soul may be, or what 
 the function of the Spirit may be 
 in the regeneration and sanctifi- 
 cation of men. It may be the 
 Spirit which works in us the filial 
 mind and heart, which is the es- 
 sential meaning of adoption. But 
 these are theological questions, 
 with which we have no present 
 concern. We inquire only what 
 the witness of the Spirit may 
 mean as an event in the conscious 
 experience of believers. And it 
 is plain that this can be decided 
 only by experience, and not by 
 lexicons and dictionaries. No ety- 
 mological analysis of a metaphor 
 will reveal its meaning. 
 
78 The Christian Life 
 
 The uncertainty of theological 
 thought on this subject is largely 
 due to the perennial confusion of 
 the standpoints of theology and 
 consciousness; and the aberra- 
 tions are due to the attempt to 
 construct the doctrine as a matter 
 of experience by analyzing the 
 metaphor. The distinction be- 
 tween the direct and the indirect 
 witness illustrates the uncertainty. 
 The latter is an inference from 
 the discerned presence of the 
 fruits of the Spirit; but this is 
 not thought to exhaust the doc- 
 trine. According to Wesley, the 
 direct witness of the Spirit is 
 "an inward impression upon the 
 souls of believers whereby the 
 Spirit of God directly testifies to 
 their spirits that they are children 
 of God.*^ This seems to be clear, 
 but it is not. If the ** inward im- 
 pression " is produced by God, yet 
 so that God himself does not ap- 
 
A Study 79 
 
 pear in any supernatural mani- 
 festation, then we have a theolog- 
 ical doctrine concerning the source 
 of the impression ; but the witness 
 is indirect. We have no super- 
 nal manifestation, but the heart 
 is " strangely warmed." But Mr. 
 Wesley does not seem to have 
 been willing to affirm any miracu- 
 lous appearance, but only the con- 
 viction wrought in us by the Spirit 
 that we are the children of God ; 
 and this leaves us, so far as the 
 Spirit is concerned, with a theo- 
 logical doctrine rather than a fact 
 of consciousness. An experience 
 wrought in us by the Spirit is 
 one thing. An experience in 
 which the Spirit is a factor of 
 our consciousness may be quite 
 another. 
 
 Wesley's uncertainty on this 
 point comes out clearly in the se- 
 ries of letters to ]\Ir. John Smith 
 where this question is discussed. 
 
8o The Christian Life 
 
 The person who writes under the 
 name of John Smith presses for 
 a definition of the doctrine, and 
 especially seeks to know whether 
 the experience involves any su- 
 pernatural or miraculous mani- 
 festation. Wesley is embarrassed 
 by the insistence, and finally falls 
 back on the statement that he holds 
 the doctrine because it is revealed 
 in the Scriptures — a fact which 
 shows that he had not clearly dis- 
 tinguished between the doctrine 
 as a truth of theology and as a 
 fact of consciousness. There is 
 no need to fall back on the Scrip- 
 tures for proof of anything which 
 we immediately experience. He 
 also admits elsewhere that he has 
 known a few good persons who 
 do not seem to have had the wit- 
 ness. Nevertheless, it is a doc- 
 trine of Scripture, and must be 
 maintained on that ground. But 
 by this time we have a phrase 
 
A Study 8l 
 
 which we feel bound to use rather 
 than a doctrine which we under- 
 stand. At all events, it is not an 
 experience which can be made a 
 test of discipleship ; for good per- 
 sons exist who have not had it. 
 Returning now to life, the 
 Christian fact is this: The sin- 
 cere and continued attempt to be 
 disciples of Christ results in the 
 conviction that we are in the 
 right way, that we are on the 
 Lord's side and he is on our side : 
 and this conviction grows from 
 more to more as the life broadens 
 and deepens. The new life takes 
 firmer hold and strikes deeper 
 root ; and as the soul grows in 
 grace and the knowledge of the 
 truth, this life becomes more and 
 more rooted in the conviction of 
 its divine origin. Under the in- 
 fluence of Christian teaching, the 
 believer will adjust his experi- 
 ence to the forms of Christian 
 6 
 
82 The Omstian Life 
 
 thought and doctrine ; and as we 
 view the Spirit as the immediate 
 agent in the purification, sancti- 
 fication, and upbuilding of the 
 soul, we naturally come to re- 
 gard our graces, or strength, or 
 joy, our peace, our rest in God, 
 as wrought in us by the Spirit, as 
 the marks of his presence, as the 
 witness he perpetually bears in 
 us to our being children of God. 
 And this is all the witness of the 
 Spirit means in general. What 
 peculiar manifestations it may 
 please God to make in certain 
 crises of life or moments of spir- 
 itual exaltation, or what revela- 
 tions he may make to particular 
 persons, we may not decide ; but 
 such things are not to be de- 
 manded of any one as conditions 
 or marks of sonship. For the 
 great body of believers the fact 
 of experience will be what we have 
 described. If any claim that they 
 
A Study 83 
 
 have had more abundant manifes- 
 tations, we do not deny that it 
 may be so. At the same time we 
 reserve the right to apply to all 
 such claims the supreme test : By 
 their fruits ye shall know them. 
 If, as often happens, these alleged 
 manifestations are accompanied 
 by no increase of moral and relig- 
 ious effectiveness, they will have 
 no practical significance ; and if, 
 as is sometimes the case, the re- 
 ceivers of the alleged manifesta- 
 tions are not remarkable for men- 
 tal force and moral character, 
 there will be good ground for 
 thinking that thev have misheard 
 the voices. 
 
 If it be said that the witness as 
 thus described is no witness but 
 only an inference, the answer is, 
 that the meaning of a doctrine 
 can not be fixed by analyzing a 
 metaphor, and that this is the 
 only witness which it pleases God 
 
84 The Christian Life 
 
 to give to most of his children. 
 But when the doctrine is so under- 
 stood as to subordinate even our 
 faith in Christ and his gospel to 
 some form of emotional experi- 
 ence, it becomes a pestilent her- 
 esy. We are not called to have 
 experiences, or witnesses, or man- 
 ifestations of any sort, but to be 
 followers of Jesus. Whatever ex- 
 periences of joy or peace or aspi- 
 ration may come in this life of 
 discipleship are to be welcomed, 
 but they are never to be erected 
 into tests of salvation. 
 
 In fact, this doctrine of the wit- 
 ness of the Spirit in our Church 
 is to be historically rather than 
 exegetically or psychologically 
 understood. We gather its his- 
 torical meaning from the errors 
 against which the founders of 
 Methodism aimed their protest. 
 These were twofold. On the one 
 hand, the State Church had largely 
 
A Study 85 
 
 fallen a prey to sacerdotalism and 
 religious mechanism. What with 
 baptismal regeneration and sacra- 
 mentarianism, the masses of its 
 adherents had fallen into the no- 
 tion that the Church would look 
 after their salvation; and thus 
 they failed to attain to any per- 
 sonal piety. In opposition to all 
 this, the Methodist fathers sum- 
 moned men to heart religion, set- 
 ting forth the worthlessness of 
 forms, rites, proxies, and insisting 
 that every one should for himself 
 experience the grace of God in 
 the soul. To the hearsay and 
 magic of baptismal regeneration, 
 and the mechanism of rites and 
 institutions, they opposed the self- 
 evidencing life of the Spirit. 
 
 Again, at that time both the 
 State and the Nonconforming 
 Churches were largely under the 
 influence of Calvinistic doctrine, 
 and also of the notion that relig- 
 
86 The Christian Life 
 
 ion is pre-eminently a matter of 
 orthodox belief. The Calvinistic 
 teaching concerning the persever- 
 ance of the saints made it morally 
 unsafe to teach a doctrine of as- 
 surance ; and the heresy of ortho- 
 doxy tended to reduce religion to 
 a barren intellectual assent to no- 
 tional dogmas. In addition, God's 
 goodness was so limited in any 
 case, and the outlook for man was 
 so grim, that there was little room 
 or reason for joy in religion. 
 
 Against all these errors our 
 fathers protested. For them, re- 
 ligion must be more than a ma- 
 chinery of rites and sacraments, 
 and more than correctness of be- 
 lief. It was no hearsay matter, 
 but a conscious life, which found 
 its great witness in itself. They 
 also denied with all vehemence 
 the Calvinistic conception of God 
 and his government, and thus 
 made love and joy possible once 
 
A Study 87 
 
 more. And to express this con- 
 viction of life at first hand, and 
 this joy in the Lord, they very 
 naturally fell back on the witness 
 of the Spirit. In the circum- 
 stances of the time it was prac- 
 tically a new doctrine, or a redis- 
 covery of an old one. But the 
 essential thing in it was the denial 
 of the Calvinistic nightmare, the 
 emphasis on personal religion, and 
 the spiritual assurance which 
 arises in the life of faith and 
 obedience. This was historically 
 the essential meaning and strength 
 of the doctrine, and this it was 
 that kept it sane and sweet. It 
 was mainly a practical doctrine, 
 and it was only under polemical 
 stress that it ran off into doubt- 
 ful exegesis and into theological 
 and metaphysical interpretations. 
 Thus the doctrine became promi- 
 nent in our Church, and while 
 thus practically held, it was true 
 
88 The Christian Life 
 
 and fundamental. The attempt 
 to give it a theoretical standing 
 was rather confusing than other- 
 wise. The multitudinous experi- 
 ences of joy, and even of emo- 
 tional excitement, were gathered 
 up into the doctrine; and all 
 these were accepted as the witness 
 of the Spirit, because that was 
 the way in which we regarded the 
 matter. Nowadays more discrim- 
 ination is needed ; but the essen- 
 tial contention of the fathers must 
 never be lost sight of, that per- 
 sonal religion is the ideal of re- 
 ligious training and development, 
 and that this personal life must 
 justify itself as true and divine 
 within the consciousness of the 
 disciple himself. At the same 
 time we must bear in mind that 
 this consciousness will never be 
 found by looking for it, or by any 
 painful inspection of our spiritual 
 states, but only by building our- 
 
A Study 89 
 
 selves up in loving trust and act- 
 ive obedience on our most holy 
 faith of the gospel of Christ. 
 
 Practical Misconceptions 
 
 The training and development 
 of souls as the children of God is 
 God's essential purpose in the cre- 
 ation of men. Our human life is 
 to be dealt with from this point 
 of view ; and the religious teacher 
 must fashion his instruction and 
 direct his effort in accordance with 
 this fundamental truth. His aim 
 must be to help men to a con- 
 sciousness of the Divine purpose, 
 and to bring them into obedience 
 to it. This recognition of the 
 Divine will, this filial trust and 
 obedience, are the heart of relig- 
 ion and the central meaning of 
 salvation. But the attainment of 
 this end is often hindered, and 
 even thwarted, by misconceptions 
 
90 The Christian Life 
 
 against which we must be on our 
 guard. 
 
 The emphasis which our Church 
 has placed upon the emotional as- 
 pects of religion has not infre- 
 quently led to grave distortions of 
 the truth. Emotion is good ; and 
 an emotionless religion would be 
 a very questionable affair. Never- 
 theless it is easy to invert the true 
 order, and this has often been 
 done. Attention has been with- 
 drawn from the solemn surrender 
 of the will and life to God in order 
 to engage in a barren hunt after 
 emotions. This is inverted in 
 every way, both religiously and 
 psychologically. We must make 
 clear to the inquirer that he is to 
 consider himself as no longer his 
 own, but as being in all things 
 the disciple of the Lord Jesus and 
 the servant of God, The exceed- 
 ing breadth and depth and height 
 of the commandment must be 
 
A Study 91 
 
 made plain, so that he may see 
 how all-inclusive is the service of 
 God. And, on the other hand, 
 emotions are never to be aimed 
 at as things by themselves at all. 
 In order to be wholesome and ra- 
 tional, emotions must spring from 
 ideas ; and religious emotions must 
 spring from religious ideas. When 
 sought by themselves and for them- 
 selves, they have neither rational 
 nor moral significance, but are 
 purely neurological or patholog- 
 ical. Religious emotions of this 
 sort differ in nothing from the 
 excitement of the howling or 
 whirling dervdshes. This is the 
 source of the marked ethical 
 weakness of popular revival serv- 
 ices, and of the lack of moral fiber 
 in so many alleged conversions. 
 
 It follows from this that relig- 
 ious emotions are not to be di- 
 rectly sought. They are to come 
 as the unforced attendants of our 
 
92 The Christian Life 
 
 religious faith and devotion and 
 obedience. When thus coming, 
 they are wholesome, helpful, and 
 natural. In every other case they 
 are unwholesome, harmful, and 
 unnatural. Indeed, emotions, as 
 an ajffection of the sensibility, 
 have so complex a root, and are 
 so complicated with physical con- 
 ditions, that they are generally 
 worthless as a test of will and 
 character. Even those relations 
 in daily life which are founded on 
 affection, as the relations of the 
 family, admit of no test of the 
 emotional sort. Devotion shows 
 itself chiefly in service ; and it is 
 only at special times, in some cri- 
 sis perhaps, that the emotional 
 sensibility is deeply stirred. Love 
 itself abides in the will rather 
 than in the feeling, and its dis- 
 tinguishing mark consists in the 
 set purpose to please and to serve. 
 And this is true of our love for 
 
A Study 93 
 
 God. It is to be found in the 
 consecration of the life and the 
 devotion of the will ; not in ebul- 
 litions of the sensibilities, but in 
 the fixed purpose to please and 
 to serve. If, along with this, 
 the heart should be "strangely 
 warmed," there is no objection ; 
 but, after all, the root of the mat- 
 ter must be found in the life of 
 devotion and service. "If ye 
 love me, keep my command- 
 ments.*' "Not every one that 
 saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven, 
 but he that doeth the will of my 
 Father which is in heaven." 
 "And hereby do we know that 
 we know him, if we keep his 
 commandments. He that saith, 
 I know him, and keepeth not his 
 commandments, is a liar, and the 
 truth is not in him." "Ye are 
 my friends if ye do whatsoever I 
 command you." Such passages 
 
94 The Christian Life 
 
 as these show that the essential 
 test of discipleship is ethical and 
 volitional, not emotional; and 
 their frequent occurrence shows a 
 purpose to ward off the very error 
 in question. 
 
 A frequent consequence of this 
 error concerning emotion is, that 
 the attention of the inquirer is 
 diverted from the central and es- 
 sential thing, the surrender of the 
 will and life to God, and fixed 
 upon having an experience. This 
 experience is crudely conceived 
 as a striking emotional event 
 which must be of an extraordi- 
 nary character in order to meet the 
 expectation. Thus the volitional 
 and ethical element, which is es- 
 sential, is subordinated to a pas- 
 sive and emotional element, which 
 in any case is only a non-essential 
 attendant of religious consecra- 
 tion, and which, in many cases, 
 is purely pathological. That it 
 
A Study 95 
 
 is such in a great many cases, ap- 
 pears from the fearful dispropor- 
 tion between the number of pro- 
 bationers and the number of those 
 received into full membership. 
 Who can believe that such dis- 
 proportion would exist, if the in- 
 quirer had been rightly instructed, 
 and had solemnly, intelligently, 
 ethically devoted and consecrated 
 himself to do the will of God ? 
 Emotional effervescence may sub- 
 side in this way, but intelligent 
 and moral self-consecration does 
 not. There is so much confu- 
 sion among us on this point that 
 the majority of inquirers are aim- 
 ing to have an experience rather 
 than to surrender themselves to 
 God in faith and obedience. And 
 with this false aim they fail to 
 "get through," or to "come out 
 into the light." This mistaken 
 aim at an experience has so af- 
 fected our conception of conver- 
 
96 The Christian Life 
 
 sion that intercollegiate Christian 
 workers have noticed it as a pe- 
 culiarity of Methodist students 
 that they seem to be seeking after 
 some sign, instead of fixing their 
 thought on the surrender of them- 
 selves in faith to the Lord Jesus to 
 be his disciples. Often enough the 
 sign is not given them, and then 
 comes the familiar sense of un- 
 certainty and artificiality in re- 
 ligion. 
 
 In opposition to this error, our 
 attention should always be di- 
 rected to securing filial submis- 
 sion to the will of God. The in- 
 quirer must be instructed, if need 
 be, in Christian truth. His 
 thought must be made familiar 
 with the grace of God and the 
 gracious provisions of the gospel. 
 Peace and joy will naturally arise 
 in the penitent soul as it contem- 
 plates this grace and yields itself 
 to it in trust and obedience. But 
 
A Study 97 
 
 their form and measure will vary 
 very greatly with different persons 
 according to education, temper- 
 ament, and many other circum- 
 stances. But the disciple must 
 not concern himself about them. 
 Loving submission and active 
 obedience to the will of God in 
 accordance with the promises of 
 Christ are the supreme and only 
 mark of Christian discipleship. 
 We are not called upon to have ex- 
 periences, or emotional upheavals, 
 or witnesses of the Spirit ; but 
 we are called upon to surrender 
 ourselves in faith and humility to 
 do the will of God. Cease to do 
 evil, learn to do well, is the only 
 infallible test of conversion. 
 
 The attitude of the will, then, 
 is the central thing in the Chris- 
 tian life. But in applying this 
 truth we must guard against an 
 extravagancy, often amounting to 
 positive error, which may arise 
 7 
 
98 The Christian Life 
 
 at tliis point. We are often told 
 that we must be willing to do 
 whatsoever God may require, to 
 give up all for Christ, etc. ; and 
 this admits of easy exaggeration. 
 Formally, the statement is cor- 
 rect ; but the concrete meaning is 
 not always plain. Negatively, 
 the meaning is simple. We must 
 cease to do evil; any recognized 
 iniquity, impiety, unrighteous- 
 ness, wickedness, must be put 
 away unhesitatingly, irrevocably, 
 forever. That one should call 
 himself the child of God while 
 working the works of the devil, 
 is not to be thought of for a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 But the positive contents of 
 the idea are very crudely con- 
 ceived. We often fall a prey to 
 mere abstraction's of theory with- 
 out duly regarding the realities of 
 life. Error here may take a 
 double direction. We may fall 
 
A Study 99 
 
 into an abstract conception of re- 
 nunciation, and we may miscon- 
 ceive the relation of God's will 
 to the great every-day life of 
 work and social relations. The 
 former error is illustrated by the 
 fancy of some of the older New 
 England theologians, that no one 
 could be saved who was not will- 
 to be damned for the glory of 
 God. Of course, a good closet 
 argument could be made for this 
 abomination. One might say 
 that, so long as anything was pre- 
 ferred to the Divine glory, one had 
 not fully submitted to the will of 
 God ; was keeping back a part of 
 the price therefor, like Ananias; 
 or, like Achan, had a wedge of 
 gold and a Babylonish garment 
 concealed in one's tent. Thor- 
 ough work, then, could be made 
 only by insisting upon willing- 
 ness to be damned for the Divine 
 glory. This was the only sure 
 
lOO The Christian Life 
 
 test of selfishness. The purely 
 fictitious and inhuman character 
 of this demand is apparent. The 
 only good thing that ever came 
 out of it is the reported reply of 
 an applicant to the examining 
 committee which pressed the 
 question, that he was willing the 
 committee should be damned if 
 need be. 
 
 We have escaped such excesses ; 
 but a great deal of unwisdom is 
 still current on this point. Vague 
 general remarks abound about 
 taking up the cross, the surrender 
 of this and that, the willingness 
 to do a variety of disagreeable 
 things ; and these are often made 
 the test of disci pi eship. Relig- 
 ious exhortation is full of matter of 
 this sort ; and inquirers are left to 
 torment themselves with the fancy 
 that anything which revolts their 
 taste or sensibility, or some purely 
 imaginary thing, as a willingness 
 
A Study lOI 
 
 to go as a missionary to Van Die- 
 men^s Land, or to address some 
 stranger on the street concerning 
 his soul, is a part of the cross which 
 must be taken up, if one would 
 enter into life. They are also led 
 to think that an unwillingness to 
 speak in public when they have 
 nothing to say is to be ashamed 
 of Jesus, or to do despite to the 
 Spirit of grace. And, on the 
 other hand, an unbecoming and 
 unedifying volubility is often en- 
 couraged from the idea that thus 
 the power of grace is triumphantly 
 displayed. The following quota- 
 tion from a religious paper of re- 
 cent publication illustrates the 
 former error : 
 
 Then the Lord God said to me: 
 "David, are you willing to consecrate 
 yourself?" *' Yes, Lord. Everything, 
 everything." And he brought one 
 thing after another in this way: "Are 
 you willing to leave your situation if 
 I ask you?" I was quite willing. 
 
I02 The Christian Life 
 
 "Would you go to Africa to be eaten 
 by cannibals?" I was willing to do 
 even that. Then the I,ord said: 
 "Would you leave your wife at home 
 and go anywhere?" O, I wasn't will- 
 ing! It was very hard to leave my 
 dear wife behind and go anywhere. 
 Then a fight went on in my heart. I 
 didn't want to yield that; but the 
 Lord brought Christ very prominently 
 before me, and he said that he must be 
 first and my wife in the second place. 
 Then he brought before me the re- 
 sponsibility of heathen souls, Moham- 
 medans, Buddhists, and others. " Da- 
 vid, are you willing to leave all to win 
 souls?" Then it came to me: "What 
 am I to do? The Lord will take care 
 of my wife ;" and I said, " O Lord, I 
 am willing to leave my wife behind 
 and go anywhere." Then the strug- 
 gle ceased. "Would you like to be- 
 come as the dust of Colombo for my 
 sake?" Yes, I was willing. The Lord 
 searched me through and through. 
 
 All this is purely fictitious. 
 The Lord said none of these 
 things; they were suggested 
 
A Study 103 
 
 solely by the author's own mis- 
 guided mind. The Lord often 
 calls us to sacrifice and renuncia- 
 tion, but never in any such arti- 
 ficial fashion as this. The per- 
 son simply had in his mind the 
 abstract notion of complete sur- 
 render to God, and then proceeded 
 to determine the concrete con- 
 tents of the duty by calling up a 
 miscellaneous collection of things 
 to which he might be disinclined. 
 Meanwhile reason and good sense 
 were in complete abeyance, be- 
 cause of the fancy that all of these 
 things were directly suggested by 
 God as tests of the person's sin- 
 cerity. The reference to leaving 
 his wife is paralleled only by the 
 testimony of a brother in class- 
 meeting who reported that his 
 wife had died, and that he had 
 been so wonderfully supported by 
 Divine grace that he had not 
 missed her at all or felt any sorrow. 
 
I04 The Christian Life 
 
 The leader had the grace and good 
 sense to tell him never to repeat 
 that story again, as it revealed in- 
 human insensibility rather than 
 Divine support. 
 
 But with the uninstructed and 
 sensitive conscience, misconcep- 
 tions of this sort are likely to 
 arise when one is testing his will- 
 ingness to do the will of God. 
 And it is not to be wondered at 
 that many good Christians have 
 been unwilling to have their chil- 
 dren exposed to such crude and 
 undiscriminating teaching. Of 
 course the intellectually and mor- 
 ally pachydermatous are un- 
 harmed, but with the sensitive 
 and uninstructed conscience the 
 danger is great. And the danger 
 is double. On the one hand there 
 is danger of falling into fictitious 
 sacrifices and mortifications ; and, 
 on the other, there is danger of a 
 permanent revolt against religion 
 
A Study 105 
 
 when at last the fiction is seen 
 through. I have had ample ex- 
 perience of both results. 
 
 There is great need at this point 
 for the wise Christian teacher, in 
 order to save the untaught or in- 
 experienced from these dangers. 
 He must distinguish between the 
 positive and negative aspects of 
 this surrender to the Divine will. 
 Its negative meaning, we have 
 said, is clear ; it involves the ut- 
 ter and final abandonment or 
 avoidance of all unrighteousness 
 and iniquity. On the positive 
 side we must emphasize the cen- 
 tral and primal duties about which 
 there is no question. We must 
 teach the inquirer to relate his 
 life, internal and external, to 
 the Divine will, and especially to 
 comprehend the daily round of 
 routine life and of social relations, 
 the round of work and rest, of 
 neighborly intercourse and civic 
 
Io6 The Christian Life 
 
 duties, within the Divine thought 
 and purpose, and thus within the 
 scope of religion. But we must 
 resolutely defend the inquirer 
 from all this unwholesome casu- 
 istry concerning crossbearing, and 
 testifying, and fictitious self-cru- 
 cifixions, and imaginary duties and 
 trumped-up sacrifices. Ignorant 
 conscientiousness can settle none 
 of these questions. We must fall 
 back on good sense, that general 
 sense of reality and soundness 
 without which the moral life be- 
 comes a series of snares and loses 
 itself in silliness or fanaticism. 
 We must point out that the es- 
 sence of religion lies in the filial 
 spirit, in the desire to serve and 
 please God; and then we must 
 point out that our all-inclusive re- 
 ligious duty is to offer up the 
 daily life, pervaded and sanctified 
 by the filial spirit, as our spirit- 
 ual service and worship of God. 
 
A Study 107 
 
 But how shall we know when 
 we have done enough? This is 
 a question which roots partly in 
 the unwholesome casuistry re- 
 ferred to, and partly in a desire 
 to get off as cheaply as possible. 
 In the latter case it shows that 
 we have neither part nor lot in 
 the matter. We are trying to 
 conceive a spiritual relation me- 
 chanically, and we miss the spir- 
 itual element altogether. By 
 consequence we asssume that sal- 
 vation may be something exter- 
 nal, and we desire to get it at the 
 best bargain. Such notions arise 
 from our non-ethical conceptions 
 of the subject, and disappear for- 
 ever when we see that salvation 
 must consist in establishing or re- 
 storing the filial spirit in the 
 heart. 
 
 The question, as rooted in cas- 
 uistry, overlooks the essential 
 truth of the gospel. The ques- 
 
lo8 The Christian Life 
 
 tion for the Christian to raise is 
 not whether he has done enough, 
 but whether he is seeking to live 
 in the filial spirit. The latter 
 question no one can answer for 
 him, and he needs no one to an- 
 swer it for him. As to doing 
 enough, no one does enough. 
 There is no satisfaction in doing. 
 We are at best unprofitable serv- 
 ants. We can always wonder 
 whether we might not have done 
 more, strained a little harder, 
 reached a greater intensity of ef- 
 fort. This way madness lies. 
 On such a view one^s salvation is 
 a sort of Rupert's drop, and likely 
 to fly into flinders at any moment. 
 To all such questions we reply 
 by falling back on the gospel it- 
 self. We are not members of the 
 Divine family because we are prof- 
 itable servants, but because God 
 has declared us to be his children. 
 We stand not in the value of our 
 
A Study 109 
 
 services, but in the Divine love. 
 And that love bears with our im- 
 perfect, halting service, and takes 
 the will for the deed. This is the 
 gist and glory of the gospel. It 
 can not be understood in forensic 
 and mechanical terms, but it is 
 perfectly intelligible through the 
 life of the family or the gratitude 
 of a penitent heart. No child has 
 its place in the family because of 
 the value and merit of its serv- 
 ices, but because it is a child. It 
 is saved by grace, not by works. 
 But being a child, it can show 
 forth the filial spirit in word and 
 deed, and parental love does all 
 the rest. Membership in the di- 
 vine family is similarly condi- 
 tioned. 
 
 We must, then, declare the for- 
 giveness of sins to all those who 
 do truly and earnestly repent of 
 their sins and intend to lead a new 
 life, following the commandments 
 
no The Christian Life 
 
 of God, and walking hencefortli 
 in his holy ways. And this we 
 do in the name and on the author- 
 ity of the Lord Jesus, who has 
 revealed the Father. And we 
 must allow nothing to interfere 
 with the simplicity of this reve- 
 lation. Mechanical conditions of 
 mechanical works, and subjective 
 conditions framed from emotional 
 states, are alike and equally de- 
 partures from the truth of the 
 gospel. 
 
 Religflous Beg:2nnin§;s ' 
 
 The religious life in its idea is 
 altogether independent of the ex- 
 istence of sin. We are not, then, 
 to think of it as a device for over- 
 coming sin or for saving sinners. 
 This work, indeed, has to be done ; 
 but it is only incidental to the 
 deeper, more inclusive aim of re- 
 ligion. Religion has to do with 
 the relation of man to God, and 
 
A Sttsdy III 
 
 would exist if there were no sin 
 in the world or in the heart. In- 
 deed, it is only in the sinless life 
 that the ideal of religion can be 
 perfectly realized ; for only there 
 can we find the filial spirit per- 
 fectly realized and perfectly ex- 
 pressed. 
 
 In what we have now to say, 
 some readers of theological tend- 
 encies will miss a good deal of 
 traditional matter concerning the 
 relation of the sinner to God's 
 law, etc. ; but we have once more 
 to remind them that this, in its 
 best estate, is matter of theology 
 and not of experience. Whatever 
 mysteries there may be in that di- 
 rection, we have no practical con- 
 cern with them. We have only 
 to accept our place as children 
 in our Father's house; and we 
 must not confuse this simple truth 
 of the gospel with matter drawn 
 from theology. 
 
112 The Clmstian Life 
 
 If human development were 
 normal, there would be no need 
 of conversion — that is, of a turn- 
 ing around, or a turning to- 
 ward God; for we should never 
 have turned away from him. We 
 should simply pass from the un- 
 consciousness and passivity of 
 dawning life to the distinct con- 
 sciousness and volitional attitude 
 of mature life. And this transi- 
 tion would be made slowly, and 
 without break or jar, something 
 as the dawn comes up. As in the 
 family life no one can tell, in the 
 child's unfolding, when love and 
 obedience begin, so in the normal 
 development of the religious life, 
 no one could tell when it begins. 
 The inner life has none of the 
 sharp divisions of our speech ; and 
 consciousness fades away from 
 clear apprehension and distinct 
 volition into incipiencies, and un- 
 certain dawnings, and shadowy 
 
A Study 113 
 
 beginnings, where directions may 
 possibly be discerned, but no fixed 
 lines can be drawn. In such nor- 
 mal unfolding there might be great 
 individual differences of experi- 
 ence, owing to differences of tem- 
 perament and mental habit. With 
 the more reflective the recognition 
 and acceptance of the Divine will 
 might be a matter of more definite 
 date, but they would be no more 
 real on that account than they 
 would be in a life of less sharply- 
 marked transitions. And with such 
 reflective person such a date might 
 well be a time forever to be re- 
 membered unto the Lord ; but it 
 would not mark a conversion, but 
 only a conscious affirmation and 
 ratification of what had already 
 been unconsciously done. 
 
 In actual life the nearest ap- 
 proximation to such normal re- 
 ligious development is found in 
 the Christian family. Here, too, 
 8 
 
114 '^^* Christian Life 
 
 the aim should be, not conver- 
 sion, but to bring the children up 
 in the nurture and admonition of 
 the Lord; and the necessity of 
 conversion, or a turning from sin 
 to God and righteousness, hints 
 strongly at parental failure either 
 to grasp the truth of the gospel 
 or to realize it in the family life. 
 The ideal form of the Christian 
 life is that which never experi- 
 enced conversion, and which can 
 not date its beginning. And if 
 one says. But there must be a 
 time of distinct choice between 
 God and the world, etc., the an- 
 swer would be that at best this 
 only fixes the beginning of self- 
 consciousness in religion and not 
 the beginning of religion itself. 
 And indeed self-consciousness can 
 rarely be thus accurately dated; 
 but religion in the properly-trained 
 Christian child has complex and 
 untraceable beginnings in the 
 
A Study 115 
 
 Spirit and atmosphere of the home, 
 in childhood's prayers, in participa- 
 tion in religious rites and customs, 
 in imitation of those about him, 
 in wise parental instruction and 
 discipline, and in the hidden in- 
 fluence of the Holy Spirit. These 
 things can not be dated. The 
 date of self-consciousness in choice 
 and consecration might conceiva- 
 ably be fixed in the case of the 
 Christian child ; but even this is 
 rarely possible and it is unimpor- 
 tant in any case. When does filial 
 affection begin in the growing 
 child, or patriotism in the devel- 
 oping youth ? The important 
 thing is not to know when the 
 day begins, but to have the day 
 actually here. 
 
 Divine grace and help are al- 
 ways needed and by all alike ; but 
 conversion as an event in conscious 
 experience is needed only for those 
 who, from evil training or from 
 
Il6 The Christian Life 
 
 willful transgression, have turned 
 away from God. All such per- 
 sons must convert themselves; 
 that is, must turn around and turn 
 towards God and righteousness. 
 But in all cases the thing aimed 
 at is the same— the establishment 
 of the filial spirit as the ruling 
 principle of life and action. 
 Where the filial spirit is con- 
 sciously present we have the chil- 
 dren of the kingdom. Where it 
 is consciously absent we have the 
 children of disobedience. Where 
 there is no consciousness as yet 
 of the higher goods and relations 
 of life we have simply the sub- 
 religious state in which so many 
 human beings exist, and out of 
 which they are to develop through 
 the multiform discipline and ex- 
 perience of life. Meanwhile they 
 are the objects of the Divine 
 grace and are comprised in an 
 order divinely appointed for their 
 
A Study 117 
 
 development and unfolding into 
 deeper and higher life. Hard and 
 fast divisions and classifications 
 are impossible in such an order; 
 and forensic distinctions are as 
 grotesquely impossible as they 
 would be in the life of the fam- 
 ily. Meanwhile it is the task of 
 the Christian teacher and of the 
 mature disciple to co-operate with 
 the Divine love by setting forth 
 and revealing the higher life by 
 precept and example both person- 
 ally and through the organized 
 institutions of the Christian 
 family and the Church. 
 
 And in doing this work it is 
 important to remember that the 
 religious life, except in its central 
 factor of the filial and obedient 
 spirit, is no simple and single 
 thing which is present always and 
 all at once and to all alike. On 
 the contrary, the contents of re- 
 ligious experience vary with the 
 
Il8 The Christian Life 
 
 disciple's age, temperament, men- 
 tal type and nature of his previ- 
 ous life. The Christian life is 
 one in principle, but in form and 
 contents it is as varied as human- 
 ity itself. 
 
 This truth has not been duly 
 regarded by the Churches which 
 emphasize conversion and per- 
 sonal experience. The tendency 
 has been to construct a pattern 
 to which all should conform ; and 
 this pattern has largely been built 
 out of subjective emotional states 
 and various marks of grace which 
 only, it was thought, clearly dis- 
 tinguish the work of the Spirit 
 from spurious imitations. This 
 was generally harmless when 
 we were dealing with hardened 
 sinners, but it became mischie- 
 vous when applied to the religion 
 of childhood, and to the religious 
 life that should develop under the 
 influence of a Christian home and 
 
A Study 119 
 
 in a Christian community. Ow- 
 ing to the confusion of theology 
 with experience, or to the undue 
 estimate of emotional factors, the 
 popular ideal of the religious life 
 in our individualistic Churches 
 has little application to the larger 
 part of the community. 
 
 Types of Religious Experience 
 In order to escape the confu- 
 sion and inadequacy of traditional 
 thought on this general subject, 
 we must observe that the relig- 
 ious life is manifold in content 
 and manifestation according to 
 the age, the mental type, and 
 one's experience of life. 
 
 Apart from the variations de- 
 pendent upon age, temperament, 
 and the vicissitudes of the indi- 
 vidual lot, there are distinct types 
 of religious thought and feeling, 
 all of which are equally founded 
 in human nature, and no one of 
 
I20 The Christian Life 
 
 which may set itself up as the 
 norm or ideal by which the others 
 may be tested. 
 
 The first type is the ethical. 
 Religion consists in righteousness ; 
 but it is more than abstract ethics, 
 because the moral law, from being 
 an impersonal principle, is elevated 
 into the expression of a supreme 
 and holy will. The regard for im- 
 personal abstractions is replaced by 
 enthusiasm for the kingdom of 
 God. Christianity summons us 
 to be members of this kingdom 
 and co-workers with God in its es- 
 tablishment. Under the lead of 
 the Captain of our salvation, and 
 relying on his word and promises, 
 we become conscious subjects of 
 the kingdom. In quiet times, and 
 with persons of wholesome train- 
 ing and habits, or with persons of 
 unemotional type, and especially 
 with children, this is the prevail- 
 ing type of Christian experience. 
 
A Study 121 
 
 It is not markedly emotional. It 
 is not given to fervors, whether 
 of joy or remorse. It has no deep 
 distress over the depravity of our 
 nature, and no flaming raptures 
 over our deliverance. But it is 
 founded in conscience; and a 
 very large part of the work of the 
 Church is done by the Christians 
 of this type. This is the Chris- 
 tianity of the Synoptic Gospels, 
 and of the epistles of James and 
 Peter. 
 
 But this is not the only type. 
 It is fundamental indeed ; and any 
 type which does not include it is 
 false. But it does not include the 
 whole of Christian experience. 
 There are souls which can be sat- 
 isfied with their obedience to 
 God's law. They hear the com- 
 mandment, and they obey ; and the 
 joy of a good conscience is theirs. 
 But there are other souls which 
 can never find peace in this way. 
 
122 Tfae ChHstian life 
 
 For them the commandment is 
 exceedingly broado It is not a 
 matter of detached duties, but 
 takes account of the heart. They 
 hold their lives up against the 
 keen, still splendor of the Divine 
 perfection, and they are over- 
 whelmed by the revelation. For 
 such persons there is no peace in 
 doing. The more they do the 
 worse they feel. For the ideal 
 grows with obedience and thus 
 condemns them more and more. 
 For this state of mind there is 
 only one prescription. They 
 must be taken out of themselves 
 and away from the contemplation 
 of their own efforts, and must be 
 taught that we are saved by grace, 
 not works. Then their distress is 
 removed by the vision of that con- 
 descending grace from above 
 which saves us through itself. 
 This is the Pauline type of Chris- 
 tian experience. It is not more 
 
A Study 123 
 
 truly Christian than the purely 
 ethical type, but it is different. It 
 is more intense, and touches the 
 moral life at deeper depths. With 
 persons of a mechanical type it 
 may pass over into Antinomian- 
 ism, and thus, in revolting from 
 bondage to rules, become the ex- 
 treme of immorality. But when 
 rightly understood, when inter- 
 preted vitally and ethically, it in- 
 cludes the obedience of the eth- 
 ical type, but transcends it by a 
 higher moral ideal and insight. 
 
 Another type of Christian ex- 
 perience arises from the desire for 
 direct personal communion with 
 God. If God indeed dwell within 
 us, there must be some other way 
 of reaching him than by hearsay, 
 whether of the Bible or of the- 
 ology, or of the Church. And 
 if we are his children, there must 
 be some way of direct commun- 
 ion with our Father. Besides, 
 
124 The Christian Life 
 
 the life of work is only part of ex- 
 perience. There is also the life of 
 contemplation, of secret aspira- 
 tion, of adoration and worship. 
 And this certainly can not all be 
 on one side, as if we prayed into 
 the empty air with no answer 
 but the echo of our own voices. 
 Here the mystical element of re- 
 ligion reveals itself. And this, 
 too, is a real aspect of the relig- 
 ious life ; not equally recognized 
 by all, and scarcely realized at all 
 by many, but important neverthe- 
 less. It is represented by the 
 writings of St. John in the New 
 Testament, by the various bodies 
 of mystics in Church history, and 
 by multitudes of individual saints. 
 As said, it belongs to the contem- 
 plative rather than the active side 
 of religion; but it is important, 
 even for practice, by furnishing 
 the living water, without which 
 life loses its deepest spring. 
 
A Study 125 
 
 The perfect Christian life would 
 involve all of these forms of ex- 
 perience; but in our one-sided 
 life, one form or another predom- 
 inates, and then we have to be on 
 our guard against the shortcom- 
 ings of that form. For each form 
 has tendencies to error which will 
 surely develop unless proper pre- 
 caution be taken. The ethical 
 form by itself may easily issue in 
 Pharisaism and spiritual pride. 
 When the spiritual nature is not 
 deep, duty is exhausted in com- 
 mandments ; and if anything more 
 be suspected, it is simply another 
 commandment. The young man 
 who had kept the law from his 
 youth up, or the Pharisee who 
 recited his good deeds in his 
 prayers, furnishes a fair specimen 
 of the tendency and the danger. 
 And this can be averted only by 
 enlarging the moral insight, and 
 replacing a code of isolated good 
 
126 The Christian Life 
 
 works by the law of perfect purity 
 and perfect love. This only can 
 cause the self-satisfied Pharisee to 
 exchange his vainglorious prayers 
 for the cry of the publican, "God 
 be merciful to me a sinner !" The 
 ethical type, also, from its pre- 
 eminent attention to conduct and 
 action, tends to become dry and 
 thin, and to lose itself in inef- 
 fectual bustle, while the spiritual 
 life withers. This, too, can be 
 avoided, only by the deepening 
 and enriching influences of prayer 
 and meditation, and of spiritual 
 communion with the Father of 
 our spirits. Thus the ethical type 
 of religious life always needs to 
 be combined with the other types 
 in order to save it from its own 
 shortcomings. 
 
 But they equally need to be 
 combined with the ethical type to 
 save them from their own short- 
 comings. When one has sought 
 
A Study 127 
 
 in vain for peace through me- 
 chanical good works or strenuous 
 conscientiousness, there is no more 
 glorious truth than this, that we 
 are saved by grace through faith ; 
 but this becomes a pernicious and 
 immoral doctrine unless it be eth- 
 ically apprehended and applied. 
 How often this danger has been 
 realized is familiar to every stu- 
 dent of Church history. The 
 contemplative life also easily loses 
 itseh in quietistic indifference to 
 the work of the world, or in a 
 barren cultivation of emotions, 
 in which all moral quality and 
 moral strenuousness disappear al- 
 together. Now, while the ethical 
 view needs to be deepened by the 
 others, they, in turn, need the eth- 
 ical view to give them fiber and 
 substance, and to furnish the act- 
 ive nature of man a worthy task. 
 And this can be found only in re- 
 calling the mind from painful in- 
 
128 The Christian Life 
 
 spection of its own states, and 
 from quietistic dreaming and con- 
 templation, and setting it upon 
 the positive task of realizing the 
 kingdom of God in the world. 
 The ethical view is fundamental 
 and central ; and however far we 
 may go in religious fervor and as- 
 piration, we must never lose sight 
 of the ethical aim. All truly re- 
 ligious growth and insight must 
 be based on this. And one of the 
 promising features of the present 
 religious outlook is the tendency 
 to pay less attention to subjective 
 states, and more to the objective 
 aim of building up the kingdom 
 of God, which is the kingdom of 
 righteousness and good will. 
 
 These various types of religious 
 experience appear among the apos- 
 tles themselves. Jesus is the only 
 man who has perfectly united 
 them, and perfectly realized the 
 perfect life. The types reappear 
 
A Study 129 
 
 in Church history ; and it would 
 not be difficult to group existing 
 religious bodies by this standard. 
 And when to these fundamental 
 differences we add those arising 
 from difference of temperament, 
 circumstances, experience of life, 
 we see how impossible it is to 
 fashion individual experience ac- 
 cording to a single pattern. The 
 attempt to do so implies a species 
 of religious prox-incialism which 
 is in sad need of enlightenment 
 These facts must be borne in 
 mind by the Christian teacher ; 
 and he must carefully refrain 
 from applying any other test of 
 religion than the filial spirit, or 
 the desire and purpose to serve 
 and please God by keeping his 
 commandments. The grace of 
 God does all the rest. And on 
 this most holy faith of the gos- 
 pel we are to build ourselves up 
 into all obedience and spiritual 
 9 
 
130 The Christian Life 
 
 growth through the assisting 
 grace of the Holy Spirit. In this 
 way the Christian life will unfold 
 naturally and in accordance with 
 the experience and peculiar type 
 of the individual. Nothing being 
 demanded but the filial spirit, 
 that spirit can manifest itself in va- 
 rious ways arid be the same spirit 
 in them all. Thus we secure 
 in the Christian life something 
 of the artistic effect of free spon- 
 taneity and of varied individual- 
 ity instead of a mechanical monot- 
 ony. By fixing our thought on 
 the filial spirit, we shall run little 
 risk of confusing ourselves with 
 theological and metaphysical sub- 
 tleties on the one hand, or with 
 artificial and impossible experi- 
 ences on the other. Christian 
 truth is manifold and meets the 
 needs of all ; but every phase of this 
 truth does not appeal equally to all, 
 nor even to the same at all times. 
 
A Study 131 
 
 Religfion of Childhood 
 
 The teaching and practice of 
 the individualistic Churches con- 
 cerning the religion of childhood 
 have generally oscillated between 
 two extremes of error ; either 
 children have been viewed as in- 
 capable of religion, or forms of 
 experience have been demanded 
 from them which are possible only 
 to mature life, and often only to 
 abandoned sinners. In this mat- 
 ter our Methodist practice has 
 been far worse than our theor}\ 
 Theoretically we have held the 
 right view of Christian childhood 
 and its relation to the Church. 
 We regard all children who have 
 been baptized as placed in visible 
 covenant relation to God, and un- 
 der the special care and super- 
 vision of the Church. The pastor 
 is required to organize the bap- 
 tized children, not excluding the 
 
132 The Christian Life 
 
 unbaptized, into classes for relig- 
 ious instruction ; and whenever 
 the baptized children shall under- 
 stand the obligations of religion 
 and give evidence of piety, they 
 may be admitted into full mem- 
 bership in the Church. But prac- 
 tically these wise provisions, 
 though in the direct line of our 
 theology, have been generally ig- 
 nored. We have "leaned too 
 much to Calvinism " in practice ; 
 and a particular conception of 
 conversion has further confused 
 matters by demanding from the 
 children experiences which belong 
 only to mature life. Here is one 
 root of our relative ill-success in 
 this field, and of our frequent fail- 
 ure to hold our more thoughtful 
 families beyond one or two gen- 
 erations. And this ill-success and 
 failure will continue and increase 
 until we* put our own doctrines 
 on this subject into rational prac- 
 
A Study 133 
 
 tice. We iinist no longer allow a 
 mechanical devotion to inherited 
 and often mechanical methods to 
 drive us into the gross pedagog- 
 ical and psychological error of ex- 
 pecting from childhood the relig- 
 ious manifestations of maturity. 
 
 All the Churches which em- 
 phasize personal religion have 
 been more or less guilty of this 
 fault; and they need to bring 
 forth fruits meet for repentance. 
 There is a large body of feelings, 
 much affected by the artificially 
 spiritual, which are not religious 
 at all, but are simply expressions 
 of advancing age. Such are the 
 sense of the brevity of life and of 
 the unsatisfying nature of all 
 earthly things. Feelings of this 
 sort are unnatural to the young ; 
 and language of this sort from 
 them can only be an echo, or an 
 expression of artificial sentiment. 
 There are many other feelings of 
 
134 The Christian Life 
 
 a religious nature which are also 
 impossible to the young. Such 
 are a deep sense of sinfulness, of 
 human weakness, of the deprav- 
 ity of human nature, of the im- 
 perfection of our righteousness, 
 and of the constant need of Divine 
 grace and forbearance and forgive- 
 ness. Such insight is impossible 
 to childhood, for it is bom only 
 of the deeper experiences of ma- 
 ture life and of the sterner con- 
 flicts of faith. Yet we have not 
 scrupled to gather up these feel- 
 ings and con\'ictions as pre-emi- 
 nently marks of grace, and to 
 look for them in the life of child- 
 hood. And sometimes the child 
 repeats the phrases, to our great 
 delight and edification. Or we 
 see that the meaning is really be- 
 yond the child, and then we con- 
 clude that children are incapable 
 of religion. 
 
 Both of these errors are to be 
 
A Study 135 
 
 avoided. The religion of matu- 
 rity is impossible to childhood, 
 but the religion of childhood is 
 religion nevertheless. It is largely 
 of the simple ethical type, not 
 without its naive misconceptions 
 and innocent misunderstandings; 
 but it may be very loyal for all 
 that. We often misjudge the re- 
 ligion of childhood by misinter- 
 preting the transparency of child- 
 hood. When we find petulance, 
 inconstancy, inconsistency, indif- 
 ference in children, we conclude 
 that there is no religious princi- 
 ple. But the poorer show that 
 childhood makes in these re- 
 spects in comparison with the 
 more mature is commonly due to 
 its transparent simplicity. It has 
 not learned self-control and dissim- 
 ulation. It finds the Sabbath 
 irksome, and says so. It finds the 
 religious exercise distasteful, and 
 the fact is revealed. The man 
 
136 The Christian Life 
 
 has the same experience, but keeps 
 it to himself. His thoughts may 
 be all abroad during the prayer 
 or the sermon, but nobody knows 
 it. Due consideration of this fact 
 would lead to a juster estimate of 
 the religion of childhood. 
 
 Christian truth, we have already 
 said, is manifold, and meets the 
 needs of all ; but the needs vary 
 with age, experience, tempera- 
 ment, mental type, etc., and the 
 religious life will vary to corre- 
 spond. This must be borne in 
 mind in dealing with the religion 
 of the young. It is one of God's 
 great mercies that those who have 
 the earthly life before them are 
 generally pleased with it. Hence, 
 to the young, it is a glad thing to 
 live, and we ought not to wish it 
 otherwise. Without this naive 
 optimism of youth, life would 
 hardly be possible ; and nothing 
 could well be more false to Chris- ■ 
 
A Study 137 
 
 tian truth and the Christian spirit 
 than interference therewith in the 
 supposed interests of piety. We 
 must not, then, call upon the 
 young to have mournful and de- 
 spondent feelings about the life 
 that now is, and a desire to depart 
 and be with Christ, in the fancy 
 that thereby they become more 
 truly religious. We must rather 
 remind them that this earth also 
 is one of the many mansions in 
 the Father's house, and seek to 
 help them to relate this life to 
 God's will. The child's optimism 
 is really nearer the truth than tbe 
 old man's pessimism ; for it is 
 God's world after all, and it is 
 right that we should rejoice in it 
 and be glad; and instead of re- 
 buking the children for their sim- 
 ple joy in life, we should rather 
 rebuke the pessimism of maturity 
 as rooting in a lack of faith. 
 Let, then, the children take 
 
138 The Christian Life 
 
 their vows with a glad heart ; and 
 when life wears on, and experi- 
 ence deepens, and the overturn- 
 ings come, they will learn of them- 
 selves that this earth is not our 
 rest, and will appreciate the life 
 and immortality brought to light 
 in the gospel. They will also 
 learn the blessedness of the cor- 
 responding fact that we are saved 
 by grace. Any true appreciation 
 of these things comes only through 
 life. The formulas may be learned 
 from a catechism, but their mean- 
 ing comes from experience ; and, 
 coming in this way, it is unforced 
 and natural. It is not a sign of 
 grace, which is anxiously to be 
 sought for in all Christians, but 
 an insight which is developed only 
 in the maturer Christian life. And 
 the lacking insight, or the lesser 
 measure of insight, points only to 
 a less advanced religious develop- 
 ment, and not to being an alien 
 
A Study 139 
 
 or stranger in the household of 
 faith. 
 
 And now we must have a final 
 word with the traditionalist, who 
 confuses theology with experience. 
 He will certainly miss, in the pre- 
 vious exposition, a deal to which 
 he has been accustomed. He is 
 not content to find in conversion 
 simply a turning to God in trust 
 and obedience according to the 
 commands and promises of Christ, 
 but discerns in it mysterious fo- 
 rensic relations to the Divine jus- 
 tice, and also deep metaphysical 
 changes in the soul itself. The 
 former element is necessary in 
 order to meet the supposed de- 
 mands of justice; and the latter 
 element is peculiarly necessary for 
 distinguishing the work of grace 
 from mere natural goodness. Such 
 goodness, not being of faith, is of 
 course of sin ; and there is needed 
 
140 The Christian Life 
 
 some sure standard whereby these 
 counterfeits of grace may be de- 
 tected. Such a standard is at least 
 formally furnished b)^ the view in 
 question. Judged by character 
 and conduct, it is not easy to mark 
 off men into two sharply distinct 
 classes; but if we may suppose 
 some hidden forensic or metaphys- 
 ical change or event, then the 
 distinction is easy. The converted 
 are those in whom this change 
 has taken place. All others are 
 unconverted, and their righteous- 
 ness, however fair in seeming, is 
 filthy rags. But as thus conceived, 
 the operation is as mechanical as 
 baptismal regeneration itself. It 
 is taken entirely out of the intel- 
 ligible ethical realm, and is with 
 difficulty saved from vanishing 
 into abstract hocus-pocus. 
 
 We escape this confusion by 
 again reminding ourselves that 
 salvation on the human side must 
 
A Study 141 
 
 essentially consist in the produc- 
 tion of the filial spirit, and that 
 forensic difficulties, if not fictions 
 of abstract theology, are something 
 with which we have no practical 
 concern. Whatever hidden diffi- 
 culties in the Divine nature or 
 government there may be respect- 
 ing the forgiveness of sins, our 
 Methodist faith is that they have 
 all been met, so that our sole 
 duty is to proclaim the forgive- 
 ness of sins, to call the prodigals 
 home to the Father's house, and 
 to bring up the children to be the 
 sons and daughters of the Lord 
 Almighty. All beyond this is 
 theology, and is of no practical 
 moment. The great danger to 
 which men are exposed consists 
 in unlikeness to God in sympathy 
 and purpose. If this unlikeness 
 can be removed, everything else 
 will take care of itself. Remem- 
 bering the form of human devel- 
 
142 The Christian- Life 
 
 opment and the universality of 
 the provisions of the gospel, we 
 must say that every one is in the 
 Divine family who does not insist 
 on taking himself out. And our 
 effort must be directed to bring- 
 ing men to recognize their duties, 
 relations, and privileges as mem- 
 bers of the family. 
 
 But the person who thinks me- 
 chanically will continue to ask, 
 Who, then, are the saved? This 
 question is best answered by ask- 
 ing another. Who are the un- 
 saved ? To this we can give an an- 
 swer. The unsaved are all those 
 who are living in unrighteousness 
 and unfilial rejection of the law 
 and grace of God. These are the 
 prodigal sons who must return to 
 their Father or reap the fruit of 
 their doings. All others are saved 
 in this sense, that they are compre- 
 hended in an order of Divine 
 grace which is working toward 
 
A Study 143 
 
 their development into the con- 
 sciousness and acceptance of their 
 place in God's family. But the 
 development is nowhere complete. 
 It stretches all the way from the 
 unconsciousness of childhood to 
 the still imperfect apprehension 
 and devotion of the mature saint. 
 But all alike stand in the Divine 
 grace; and the Divine love is 
 bearing them on. And our task 
 consists in co-working with this 
 love, that the will of God may be 
 seen and done by us, and on the 
 earth, as it is seen and done in 
 heaven. Beyond this, judgment 
 is not ours. Our sole hope is in 
 the mercy and goodness of God. 
 
 Conclusfon 
 
 It is no quick and easy pro- 
 cess, this building of men into 
 the realization of their Divine 
 sonship. The theory may be 
 
144 The Christian Life 
 
 simple but the practice is diffi- 
 cult. We can all see what is to 
 be done; but how to do it, de- 
 mands all our wisdom and all 
 our patience. The work pro- 
 ceeds slowly within ourselves; 
 and this should moderate our im- 
 patience at its slowness in others. 
 God has patience with us, and 
 we in our measure must have pa- 
 tience also. I am far from think- 
 ing, then, that any short cuts 
 have been revealed as the result 
 of our study. My only thought 
 has been to reach a clearer con- 
 ception of the Divine aim and 
 method in human life which will 
 save us from misdirected effort 
 and misleading expectations in our 
 attempts to realize the kingdom 
 of God. Several points may be 
 mentioned as significant for the 
 better prosecution of our work. 
 I. Personal religion is the ideal 
 of religious development, and the 
 
A Study 145 
 
 development may never be viewed 
 as complete until this ideal has 
 been reached. No rites or for- 
 mulas or institutions or officials 
 can take its place ; and they must 
 never be allowed to thrust them- 
 selves between the soul and God 
 as necessary media of the Divine 
 favor or manifestation. The only 
 value we can attribute to them is 
 of an instrumental, pedagogical, 
 and temporary character. On this 
 point we can not be too peremp- 
 tory. It marks the difference 
 between a mechanical and a spir- 
 itual religion. 
 
 2. In realizing this ideal we 
 must carefully distinguish the 
 language of theology from that 
 of experience. Without this dis- 
 tinction the untrained disciple is 
 inevitably confused, and seeks, as 
 we have said, to experience the- 
 ology rather than religion. 
 
 3. We must remember the im- 
 
146 Tfce Chriiitian Life 
 
 perfection of language itself as an 
 instrument for expressing the in- 
 ner life. We must guard against its 
 over-definiteness, and also against 
 mistaking its metaphors for facts. 
 This can be done only by using 
 language critically, by passing 
 behind the word to the fact and 
 by inquiring whether the language 
 describes an experience or sets 
 forth an ideal. Much language 
 is of the latter sort, as often in 
 prayer; it represents nothing we 
 have ever experienced, but rather 
 an ideal aspiration. The religious 
 teacher must exercise great care 
 at this point to save inexperi- 
 enced hearers from dangerous ver- 
 bal snares. 
 
 4. We must distinguish be- 
 tween the theological theory 
 which may be necessary for a 
 philosophy of Christianity and 
 the simple truth of God's grace 
 and gracious condescension which 
 
A Study 147 
 
 is the practical gist of the gospel. 
 Along with this we must see that 
 the production of the filial spirit 
 in men is the essential practical 
 meaning of salvation. If we can 
 secure this, we may be sure that 
 all else will be provided for. 
 
 5. We must put supreme empha- 
 sis on the ethical and volitional ele- 
 ment in conversion, and make it 
 forever impossible for our hear- 
 ers to mistake anything for re- 
 ligion which does not include as 
 its essential factor absolute loy- 
 alty to the will of God. This 
 does not imply that emotion is to 
 be rejected, or that it is not good ; 
 but only that it is always to 
 spring from Christian ideas, and 
 is to be subordinated to moral 
 ends. Only thus can it be kept 
 sane and pure ; and only thus can 
 the popular revival service be 
 saved from degenerating into 
 pathological excesses, scandalous 
 
148 The Chfistian Life 
 
 alike to good taste, to good sense, 
 and to good morals. But when 
 emotion springs from Christian 
 truth, and is subordinated to 
 moral ends, we can not have too 
 much of it. 
 
 6. We must remember that re- 
 ligious experience is no simple and 
 single thing alike in all, but is as 
 complex and multiform as life 
 itself. We must, then, beware of 
 forming a single standard or pat- 
 tern of thought and feeling to 
 which all should conform, beyond 
 the one central factor of submis- 
 sion to the will of God. A recog- 
 nition and artistic development of 
 individuality are needed in this 
 field. 
 
 7. We must deal more ration- 
 ally with the religion of child- 
 hood, neither allowing the chil- 
 dren to run wild, nor expecting of 
 them the religious manifestations 
 of maturity. For this work wise 
 
A Study 149 
 
 pastoral oversight will be needed, 
 and also, and more especially, a 
 wise and sympathetic home re- 
 ligion. 
 
 8. More attention should be 
 given to Christian training and 
 edification. Whatever may be 
 the case with other Churches, the 
 Methodist Church, as a body, needs 
 to give more attention to the edifi- 
 cation of the saints and to the 
 building of character. Conver- 
 sion, in any sense, is only intro- 
 ductory — the crude beginning, 
 and not the end. 
 
 9. We must expand our con- 
 ception of religion until it be- 
 comes the principle of all living, 
 and includes all life within its 
 scope. We must take all the 
 great normal interests of human- 
 ity — the social, the industrial, the 
 educational, the political — into 
 the field of religion. These fur- 
 nish the field ^n and through 
 
I50 The Christian Life 
 
 which the Christian spirit is to 
 realize itself. The Church, as a 
 whole, has been sadly lacking in 
 this matter. The tendency has 
 been to count only the formally 
 religious activity — the activity of 
 prayer and meditation and wor- 
 ship — as being truly religious; 
 and the religious value of the 
 great secular life, with all its 
 manifold interests, has been 
 largely ignored. One great con- 
 dition of religious progress in the 
 future must lie in removing this 
 false and unchristian antithesis of 
 the secular and the religious. 
 
 lo. The spirit, the life, is the 
 essential thing ; methods are only 
 instrumental, and are valuable 
 solely for what they help us to. 
 All religious teachers should bear 
 this fact in mind, lest they fall a 
 prey to a mechanical devotion to 
 mechanical methods, and thus 
 miss the end for which all meth- 
 
A Study 151 
 
 ods exist. There can be no doubt 
 that this danger has often been 
 realized in our Churches. The 
 growth of intelligence, the spread 
 of good taste, a more independent 
 and critical way of thinking, have 
 made many traditional methods 
 distasteful or inefFective. This is 
 especially the case with revival 
 methods, many of which, more- 
 over, rest upon an outgrown the- 
 ology, and all of which need to 
 be revised in the interest of both 
 good sense and religion. The in- 
 dications are that hereafter the 
 Churches will have to rely mainly 
 on religious training for children 
 and "hand-picking" for the ma- 
 ture. In any case, we must re- 
 member that there is nothing sa- 
 cred in methods; that the pres- 
 ent value of a method depends 
 on its adaptation to present cir- 
 cumstances; and that the most 
 effective method is the best 
 
152 The Christian Life 
 
 There is a general reaction in the 
 pedagogical world against rigid 
 mechanical methods, and a de- 
 mand for individual and sympa- 
 thetic treatment of pupils. This 
 reaction should extend to relig- 
 ious pedagogy. Mechanism has 
 been overdone here, and there is 
 great need for some independence, 
 originality, flexibility, and living 
 sympathy on the part of the re- 
 ligious teacher. Meanwhile, crit- 
 ical friends must administer ''faith- 
 ful wounds." 
 
 None of these things, nor all 
 of them together, can give life; 
 but a due regard of them will re- 
 move obstructions which hinder 
 life's best development. Because of 
 needless misunderstandings, many 
 wander in the desert, unable to 
 enter the promised land. 
 
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