AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF 
 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 CHRIST AND THE CHURCH 
 
 ESSAYS CONCERNING THE CHURCH AND 
 THE UNIFICATION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE 
 
 REV. AMORY H. BRADFORD, D. D. 
 
 % 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Publishers of Evangelical Literature 
 
Copyright, 1895, 
 by 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company. 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 CHARLES F. DEEMS, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE STRANGERS, NEW YORK ; 
 
 FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CHRISTIAN 
 
 PHILOSOPHY ; A MAN WHO ILLUSTRATED IN HIS OWN 
 
 PERSON AND MINISTRY THE UNITY OF THE 
 
 CHURCH OF CHRIST, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The papers composing this volume were delivered as 
 lectures before the American Institute of Christian Philos- 
 ophy, at Chautauqua, July 5-12, 1894. The subjects were 
 selected because of the great and growing interest in the 
 unification of Christendom both in this country and in 
 England. In many ways this interest had found expres- 
 sion. The Disciples of Christ had issued a series of articles 
 which they proposed as the sufficient basis of a universal 
 church. They were : " The Primitive Faith," " The Prim- 
 itive Sacraments," " The Primitive Life." Somewhat later 
 the Chicago-Lambeth Articles appeared. They constitute 
 what is called "A Quadrilateral," and propose, briefly, 
 union on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, the Apostles' 
 and Nicene Creeds, the Sacraments of Baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper, and the Historic Episcopate. In Great 
 Britain the last of these propositions blocks the way to 
 their serious consideration ; in this country, however, there 
 is a greater willingness to begin the consideration of the 
 subject with the Chicago-Lambeth Declaration. In April, 
 1 894, the Congregational Association of New Jersey adopted 
 a minute concerning the subject which has attracted wide 
 attention. This has also been adopted by many other State 
 Associations, and will come before the National Council of 
 Congregational Churches in 1895. The New Jersey prop- 
 
 5 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ositions are as follows: (i) The Holy Scriptures . . . the 
 rule and ultimate standard of Christian Faith; (2) Jesus 
 Christ the divine Saviour and Teacher of the world ; (3) 
 The Church of Christ ordained by him to preach his Gospel ; 
 (4) Liberty of Conscience in interpreting the Scriptures and 
 administering the Church. 
 
 The doctrine of the church, which has heretofore been 
 regarded as of secondary importance, as the result of re- 
 cent interest in this subject has come to occupy a far larger 
 place in the thinking of American ministers and laymen. 
 Probably no single utterance has done so much to stimu- 
 late interest in the subject as the remarkable address 
 on "The Historic Episcopate," by the Rev. Charles A. 
 Shields, D.D., professor in Princeton University. The pub- 
 lication of this address was followed by a symposium in 
 the American edition of the Review of the Churches, to 
 which many eminent ministers of various denominations 
 contributed, and which is perhaps as valuable a collection 
 of utterances on this subject as has yet appeared. It was 
 issued in book form by the Christian Literature Company 
 under the title of " Many Voices Concerning the Historic 
 Episcopate." About the same time another symposium 
 appeared in the I?idepe?ident, to which most of the bishops 
 of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States 
 contributed, and in which most of them practically took the 
 ground that the question of unification otherwise than on 
 the basis of the Historic Episcopate and Apostolic Succes- 
 sion is not even to be entertained. 
 
 During this discussion, and while the subject of the unifi- 
 cation of Christendom was in the air, the course of lectures 
 in this volume was delivered. From the reception first ac- 
 corded them, as well as from the importance and timeli- 
 ness of the subjects considered, it is believed that they will 
 be recognized as an important contribution to this discus- 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 sion. The first lecture is somewhat introductory, and is 
 on the general theme, "The Church and the Kingdom." 
 Those which follow are divided into three groups : first," The 
 Incarnation;" second, "The Church," or the "Continu. 1 
 Incarnation ; " and third, "The Unification of Christendom." 
 There has been no attempt to make these chapters appear 
 other than a series of lectures. They were prepared without 
 consultation between the writers, and are published substan- 
 tially as originally delivered. That they may contribute 
 at least a little toward bringing together in one holy fel- 
 lowship all who are truly Christians, but many of whom 
 are now widely separated, and thus help to hasten the com- 
 ing of that kingdom of truth and love which the church 
 exists to promote, is the earnest prayer of those to whom 
 was committed the responsibility of planning this course of 
 lectures, and by whom it is now offered to the public. 
 
 It remains for me to add that these lectures were delivered 
 during my term of service as President of the American 
 Institute of Christian Philosophy. Since that time I have 
 been compelled by other duties to resign that office, and 
 the Rev. Henry M. MacCracken, D.D., LL.D., Chancellor 
 of the University of the City of New York, has succeeded 
 to the presidency. 
 
 Amory H. Bradford. 
 First Congregational Church, 
 Montclair, N. J. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction. Rev. Amory H. Bradford, D.D 5 
 
 LECTURE 
 
 I. The Kingdom and the Church. Rev. Amory H. 
 Bradford, D.D., Pastor of the First Congregational 
 
 Church of ' Monte lair, N.J. 1 1 
 
 II. The Incarnation Philosophically Considered; 
 or, Available Living Evidence, as Distin- 
 guished from the Evidence of the Gospels 
 or the Evidence of Faith, for the Historic 
 and Divine Christ. Rev. Lewis Lampman, D.D., 
 Pastor of the High Street Presbyterian Church of 
 Newark, N.J. 33 
 
 III. The Incarnation Biblically Considered. Rev. 
 
 George T. Purves, D.D., Professor in Princeton Theo- 
 logical Seminary 5 * 
 
 IV. The Incarnation Historically Considered. Rev. 
 
 Chester D. Hartranft, D.D., President of Hartford 
 
 Theological Seminary 87 
 
 V. The Doctrine of the Church. Rev. George Dana 
 Boardman, D.D., LL.D., Honorary Pastor of the 
 
 First Baptist Church of Philadelphia 135 
 
 VI. The Church and the Problems of Science and 
 Philosophy. Rev. Henry M. MacCracken, D.D., 
 Chancellor of the University of the City of New York. 165 
 9 
 
io CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 VII. The Church and the City Problem. Rev. John B. 
 Devins, Pastor of Hope Chapel, New York, and Presi- 
 dent of the Federation of East Side Workers 187 
 
 VIII. The Reunion of Christendom as it Appears to an 
 
 Episcopalian. Rev. George Hodges, D.D., Dean of 
 
 the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass. . . 217 
 
 IX. The Reunion of Christendom as it Appears to a 
 
 Congregationalism Rev. William G. Ballantine, 
 
 D.D., President of Oberlin College 233 
 
 X. The Reunion of Christendom as it Appears to a 
 Presbyterian. Rev. Henry M. Booth, D.D., Presi- 
 dent of Auburn Theological Seminary 249 
 
 XL The Reunion of Christendom as it Appears to a 
 Disciple. Rev. Benjamin B. Tyler, D.D., Pastor 
 of the Church of the Disciples of Christ, of A^ew York . 267 
 XII. The Reunion of Christendom as it Appears to a 
 Foreign Missionary. Rev. Gilbert Reid, Mission- 
 ary to the Higher Classes of China 295 
 
I 
 
 THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 AMORY H. BRADFORD, D.D., 
 First Congregational Church, Montclair, N.J. 
 
THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 The most striking characteristic of the religious life of 
 our time is what, in the felicitous phrase of Principal Fair- 
 bairn, has been called " the return to Christ." There is 
 no more general agreement concerning the mystery of his 
 gracious person than formerly ; indeed, few thinkers are now 
 trying to give definite answer to the old inquiry as to the 
 divinity of our Lord. The importance of the subject is 
 not denied, but men are occupied with other, and to them 
 more vital, themes. The era of controversy over that sub- 
 ject has passed. Now and then its echoes are repeated, 
 but they are fast dying away. But while most thinkers are 
 not speculating much about the mystery of Christ's person, 
 they are, with a unanimity hitherto unknown, acknowledg- 
 ing the spell of his teaching, and gathering around him as 
 the only one who offers any light worth having on the 
 fundamental questions of man's origin, duty, and destiny. 
 Never before was Jesus so truly the great Teacher — all 
 men's Teacher, the world's Teacher. In the department of 
 theology the attempt to interpret the Godhead in the terms 
 of " the consciousness of Christ " is rapidly becoming uni- 
 versal. In other words, "the consciousness of Christ" is 
 recognized as the only place where the Godhead is clearly 
 revealed. If we turn to man's relations with his brethren, 
 we find that almost all the social ferment of the closing 
 years of the nineteenth century may be traced directly to 
 
 13 
 
14 THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 the influence of Jesus. In his recent book on "Social 
 Evolution," Mr. Benjamin Kidd has shown that the growth 
 of the altruistic sentiment which is swiftly transforming 
 society owes its existence to religion, and its supreme power 
 to Jesus Christ. Mr. Kidd represents the culture of the 
 time. There is another aspect of the same fact : the com- 
 mon people in many lands may be in rebellion against 
 the church as they know it, but they feel that all their hopes 
 someway are bound up with that Man of Nazareth, whose 
 person they do not understand, but whom their social in- 
 stincts proclaim to be their true leader. English "dockers" 
 and German Social Democrats alike recognize Jesus as 
 Master. This is one of the most striking features of mod- 
 ern religious progress. Thus many eyes turn toward the 
 Christ as the one from whom a solution of our social 
 problems may be expected. 
 
 Among the questions which are vexing modern thinkers, 
 few occupy a more conspicuous place, or are more vital 
 and far-reaching, than that which may be called the Rela- 
 tion of the Kingdom of God to the Church. In other 
 days the appeal was to councils, assemblies, conventions, 
 to the fathers; but most thinking men are now asking, 
 Why not go straight to Christ ? What did he mean by the 
 church and the kingdom? And so it has come to pass 
 that not only creeds, confessions, social ideals, laws and 
 customs, methods of work, and rules governing men in 
 their relations one with another, but also all ecclesiastical 
 systems, all assumptions of authority, all ministers, popes, 
 bishops, priests, and ecclesiastics of every name, are being 
 commanded to render an account to the Master himself. 
 
 What is the Christian interpretation of the phrases " king- 
 dom of God " and "kingdom of heaven," and what relation 
 have they to the "reunion of Christendom " ? In our dis- 
 cussions concerning the organic unity of the church, or the 
 
THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 15 
 
 reunion of Christendom, or the unification of Christendom, 
 we have reached a point where definitions are of the utmost 
 importance, and where great misunderstanding may result 
 without them. There can be no clear idea of unification 
 without also a clear idea of what is to be unified. Do we 
 mean the bringing into unity of individual Christians, or do 
 we mean that the various branches of the Christian church 
 are to be incorporated into one organization, so that they 
 may work under a common head toward a common end? 
 We mean the organic unity of the church, so that instead 
 of a divided church, composed of Romanists, Greeks, Prot- 
 estants ; instead of a hundred sects among both Romanists 
 and Protestants, there shall be unity and cooperation. But 
 why should there be such unity? Is it possible, and is it 
 desirable? These questions cannot be answered without a 
 definite understanding of what the church is. Is it an end 
 in itself, or is it a means or instrument for the accomplish- 
 ment of an end? If it is an end it has in it the elements 
 of universality and endurance ; if it is a means it will be 
 constantly changing, adapting itself to new conditions, and 
 manifesting itself under perhaps a thousand different forms. 
 When we ask what the church is, and whether it is synony- 
 mous with the kingdom of God, we are surprised by the 
 frequent answer that the church and the kingdom are the 
 same. That answer is possible only when there is a very 
 exalted definition of the church. Are we ready to say that 
 our distracted and warring Christendom, with its popes and 
 prelates, its pageantry and display, with its offices, its bishops 
 with great titles and munificent endowments, its splendid 
 cathedrals and magnificent sanctuaries, constitutes the real 
 kingdom of God on the earth, when our Master said, " Who- 
 soever would be first among you shall be servant of all" 
 (Mark x. 44), and when he asked that terribly searching 
 question, " How can ye believe, which receive honor one of 
 
1 6 THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 another?" Is there not a radical antagonism between the 
 prevalent ideals of the church and the ideals of the kingdom 
 as they are set forth in the New Testament? Are we ready 
 to acknowledge that societies of the rich and well-to-do, in 
 which pews are sold to the highest bidder, in which social 
 distinctions and forms of etiquette are carefully observed, 
 in which there is no place for the poor man with soiled rai- 
 ment or black skin, but ample place for the rich man with 
 the soiled character and gold ring, truly represent the king- 
 dom of God? Are we ready to say that those who bear 
 the title of " Lord Bishop," move about in splendid state, 
 and dwell in ceiled houses, are the real successors of those 
 apostles who followed closely after Him who had not where 
 to lay his head, and who found his life by losing it ? Are 
 we ready to say that our systems of theology, our creeds 
 carefully formulated and welded into propositions which 
 require philosophers to understand, our preaching — mod- 
 eled as it is after the rhetorical schools of Greece and 
 Rome, rather than after the brave directness of the Hebrew 
 prophets, and often more in the form of heathen orations 
 than of personal appeals to dying men — that these truly rep- 
 resent Him whose greatest utterance, perhaps, was, " I came 
 that they may have life, and may have it abundantly?" 
 (John x. 10.) No, not any denomination, not any form of the 
 church as it now exists, and not all forms combined consti- 
 tute the kingdom of God. The unity which we desire is some- 
 thing different from the agglomeration of such antagonistic 
 elements. In the ideal church — that which exists within all 
 the denominations, and yet is independent of all — there are 
 the signs of the kingdom, but they are few in our so-called 
 churches, which are all equally sects, however little some 
 may like to acknowledge it. The community of elect souls 
 who have the life of the Lord Jesus Christ form the ideal 
 church, and they constitute the kingdom of God. Well, 
 
THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 17 
 
 then, what is it that we are seeking to realize : the unity of 
 elect spirits who are in Christ, and who day by day are 
 showing forth his life, or the unity of those organizations 
 which often misrepresent him ? Are we appealing for the 
 unity of Christians, or are we appealing for the unity of 
 societies which only by courtesy can be said to continue 
 the incarnation of Jesus Christ ? We all believe in the 
 real church — the church of the elect, the church of the Good 
 Samaritan, of the Golden Rule, of the law of love, the 
 church of Galilee and Calvary — and there can be no ques- 
 tion whatever but what there is already more than a formal 
 unity in that. But many Christians are not willing to identify 
 that with the sects which are known by various names, and 
 which most who advocate unification really have in mind. 
 Is the unity of the church, as it is, possible ? Is there any 
 basis on which Roman and Greek, Protestant, Anglican, 
 Quaker, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist, 
 can all be brought into one great army, under the com- 
 mand of one who shall truly represent the Master on the 
 earth ? We confess that as things now are we do not 
 think such unity is possible or desirable ; and yet we do 
 most firmly believe in the Holy Catholic Church, and pray 
 for its prosperity ; but we want something other than the 
 welding together of sects. There must first be a return to 
 Christ. The company of the elect must be enlarged until 
 the ideal church and the actual church are identical ; then 
 there will be little need of efforts toward unity, because it 
 will already be realized. The divisions — ?iote I do not say 
 diversity — are all external. They are in most cases the re- 
 sult of disloyalty to Christ rather than of loyalty to him. 
 They are the remnants of barbarism in the society that bears 
 the name of Christ ; they are the results of the paganism 
 which conquered the church when it was supposed to have 
 conquered Rome. These facts will be clearer when we 
 
1 8 THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 have studied the biblical teaching concerning the kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 It is noticeable that our Master seldom used the term 
 " church " — twice only, in his reported words — but "king- 
 dom," with substantially the same significance, was often 
 on his lips. It is used in the Gospels one hundred and 
 twelve times to denote his society. Plainly with him the 
 idea in the word " kingdom " was more important than that 
 in the word " church," for we cannot think he ever used 
 language carelessly. If he chose "kingdom" rather than 
 " church " it was because of a preference. The two cannot 
 be identical, or he would have identified them. At the be- 
 ginning of our study of the kingdom we are met by- the 
 text, "Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of 
 God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of 
 God is at hand." * Here is a reference to something which 
 was familiar to his hearers. Where did that ideal come 
 from ? It was foreshadowed in the kingdom of God in 
 Israel. There we have what has been called the national 
 type of the kingdom of God — "the kingdom of Jehovah, 
 including all Israel and many other nations, centered in 
 Jerusalem, and ruled by a King of the house of David, 
 who is Jehovah's Anointed, or the Lord's Christ." t 
 
 In the earliest time the ideal of the kingdom as held by 
 the Hebrews was that of a nation directly responsible to 
 Jehovah, who was their tribal Deity, and who, it was be- 
 lieved, sooner or later would conquer all the gods of the 
 surrounding people. The prophetic ideal is an advance 
 upon the ancient Davidic ideal. According to the latter, 
 Jehovah ruled for the sake of his own people, while through 
 all the prophets there runs the greater note that Jehovah 
 would in and through his people realize his "royal rule" 
 
 * Mark i. 14, 15. 
 
 t " The Kingdom of God," F. Herbert Stead, p. 20. 
 
THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 19 
 
 on the earth. The kingdom when realized, according to 
 the prophetic teaching, would have the following features : 
 " Peace : war unknown ; the wealth once wasted in war now 
 used to increase wealth. Plenty: starvation and poverty- 
 abolished ; exceeding fruitfulness of soil ; abundance of corn 
 and wine and oil and flocks and herds and of all rural 
 growths. To these were added later : Great material mag- 
 nificence: a profusion of the most highly prized products 
 of civilization. Health : long life ; life beyond death ; an- 
 nihilation of death. Populousness : extraordinary multipli- 
 cation of life ; countless hosts of human beings. Liberty : 
 intelligence. Eternal security and stability. Righteous- 
 ness universal : public justice, private rectitude, faithfulness. 
 Kindness, gentleness, helpfulness. Joy exultant, musical, 
 festal. Worship of God, public, regular, universal, led by 
 an unceasing line of priests. Knowledge of God : loving 
 personal intimacy between him and every soul in his king- 
 dom. Glory : an overspreading, pervading splendor ; a 
 brilliance above that of sun or moon ; an irradiation of the 
 divine life and glory. God everywhere glorified."* 
 
 Gradually the teaching concerning the kingdom in the 
 Old Testament expanded. From being the rare possession 
 of a few select spirits it became the heritage of the mul- 
 titude. Amos emphasized its universality and eternity. 
 Its transcendent character, its accomplishment by means 
 of a sudden interposition from above, through a single, 
 supernaturally endowed, superhuman preexistent Man, be- 
 comes very clear after the apocalypse of Daniel. It has 
 permanent and temporary elements. All the sacerdotalism 
 and the legalism, all the priestly codes and the sacrificial 
 systems, were temporary. Its universal elements were its 
 teaching concerning righteousness and the divine law. All 
 that was thus predicted by the prophets, the Master an- 
 
 * " The Kingdom of God," F. Herbert Stead, pp. 51, 52. 
 
20 THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 nounced had come. In order to understand, however, what 
 is implied in that we must remember that formerly the 
 " kingdom " embraced the whole life of man in the family 
 and in the state. The ideal then was vastly larger than is 
 possible in an age when the church and the state are sepa- 
 rated. In our Lord's time the early Davidic ideal had 
 given place to that of later prophecy, in which both the 
 state and the church as human institutions were subordi- 
 nated to the rule of righteousness in the life of all the 
 people, under the sovereignty of Jehovah, who was no 
 longer a tribal Deity, but who was making ready to bring 
 all men under his sway When we turn from the Old 
 Testament to the New we note that the Master came to 
 fulfil, not to destroy. The Davidic ideal had been merged 
 in the prophetic, and what the prophets predicted he came 
 to establish. 
 
 Let us now observe a few characteristics of this kingdom 
 as taught by our Lord. It has a vital relation with the 
 Creator. From him it receives its life. The King is the 
 Father. It is a royal household. When our Master prayed, 
 " Thy kingdom come," he began his prayer with, " Our 
 Father." The kingdom, then, is the household of the 
 Father of the universe, who cares for his children as he 
 clothes the grass and feeds the raven; who knows their 
 wants, who hears their prayers. 
 
 The teaching of Christ concerning the subjects of the 
 kingdom is also clear. In the first place, the word " king- 
 dom" means literally "the royal rule of God," and it is 
 sometimes used "of the eternal sovereignty of God, his 
 government throughout all time of every part of his crea- 
 tion ; but chiefly, both in the Old and New Testaments, in 
 a narrower and richer sense. The preparation in Israel has 
 shown us that the kingdom of God is not merely a divine 
 reign or government or order or spiritual condition, but also 
 
THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 21 
 
 the royal rule of God realized, at least to some extent, in 
 the responsive attitude of subjects ; a commonwealth, there- 
 fore, or society or fellowship of souls. As such it contains 
 citizens or subjects, who have a certain status or charac- 
 ter, and stand in certain relations to God, to one another, 
 and to the Christ." * In the teaching of the Master, what 
 are the conditions of entrance into this kingdom ? They 
 all refer to character. " Repent and believe " ; " Exceed 
 the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees " ; " Do 
 the will of God " ; " Become as a little child " ; " Re- 
 ceive the kingdom " ; " Deny thyself " ; " Follow Christ " ; 
 " Lose your own life." He then says that the kingdom is 
 already possessed by those who are childlike ; by those who 
 have been persecuted for righteousness' sake ; that it is 
 meant to include all nations ; that whosoever shall do the 
 will of God is of Christ's kindred. All these are signifi- 
 cantly spiritual conditions. Whenever he refers to the 
 expansion of the kingdom it is always along vital lines. 
 It is to grow, but not with observation. It is mysteri- 
 ous. It is like the leaven, pervasive and assimilative. 
 Its sacraments are the simplest possible — the application 
 of pure water and the use of the common meal. It is 
 the life of God in heaven realized among men on earth. 
 It excludes the wicked; it receives the righteous. It is 
 made up of those who do the will of God. It is the cen- 
 tral theme of Christ's teaching. It is a fellowship of souls, 
 divine and human, the human realizing that they are to 
 follow Christ and have but one law, and that, love. The 
 kingdom has two characteristics — fatherhood and brother- 
 hood. It is the community of those who acknowledge 
 Jesus to be the Christ, and who seek to do his will. It 
 dwells not in temples made with hands. It cannot be 
 articulated in creeds. 
 
 * " The Kingdom of God," Stead, p. 20. 
 
22 THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 The kingdom must embrace all life — it is the fellowship 
 of all men in the love of God and of one another. Those 
 who are righteous cannot be righteous in one sphere alone-. 
 The scribes and Pharisees were formalists in religion, but 
 Christ's righteousness exceeds theirs. 
 
 I do not at this time enter into a consideration of the 
 relation of our Master and his work to the kingdom. I am 
 trying to bring out the nature of the kingdom. The Davidic 
 ideal was of a state, narrow and exclusive. The prophetic 
 teaching pointed toward a universal sway in which righteous- 
 ness would prevail. The teaching of Christ goes still farther, 
 and shows a community of righteous spirits recognizing fa- 
 therhood and brotherhood, living the life of love — a com- 
 munity which is to grow by contact, as all life grows ; some- 
 thing which is independent of forms and ceremonies and 
 states ; something which is itself the divine life, and which 
 creates all the means which it will use for its own advance- 
 ment. " Such was the contribution of Jesus toward the shap- 
 ing of the future character of his church. He provided for 
 it no ecclesiastical constitution, issued no authoritative in- 
 structions concerning forms of church government, clerical 
 offices and orders, or even worship. These he left to be 
 determined by the self-organizing life of the society. He 
 concerned himself with the spirit, believing that if that was 
 right all would be right. He taught the apostles humility, 
 brotherly equality, charity, patience, concord, and for the 
 rest left them to their discretion. Neither of the three forms 
 which ecclesiastical organization has assumed is either justi- 
 fied or condemned by his instructions. Prelacy is possible 
 under Presbytery, humility is compatible with Episcopal 
 dignity, and catholicity is not irreconcilable with Congre- 
 gationalism." * 
 
 When we come to the teaching of the apostles concern- 
 
 * " The Kingdom of God," Bruce, p. 270. 
 
THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 23 
 
 ing the kingdom, we find that they put more emphasis 
 upon the church. " The word 'church ' occurs in the Acts 
 and the Epistles, including the Apocalypse, exactly the 
 same number of times as ' kingdom ' in the Gospels — one 
 hundred and twelve ; while ' kingdom ' appears in only 
 twenty-nine cases." * That is probably because they were 
 men, and it is always easier to emphasize the institution than 
 that which the institution represents. But there is never 
 any contradiction of the teachings of the Master, and with 
 the apostles " kingdom " is always the larger and more in- 
 clusive word. In the Acts and the Epistles the church is 
 always the local society of believers to whom the apostles 
 are writing or of whom they are speaking. There is no 
 evidence of any interrelation between those widely scat- 
 tered Christian communities. They were companies of 
 those who had common interests, and who were seeking to 
 know the truth as it was in Jesus. The other idea which 
 we find in the Epistles is of a future kingdom which shall 
 appear at the second advent of the Christ. " The idea of 
 the kingdom as a thing already existing on earth is not 
 wholly absent, but is only seldom expressly cited." Gradu- 
 ally in the teachings of Paul there is developed a new idea, 
 or at least there is a decided change in the phraseology. 
 With him Christ was everything. He said of himself that 
 he had been crucified with Christ and that he lived in him, 
 and that to be a subject of the kingdom was to be in Christ. 
 Surely by that he meant something different from member- 
 ship in a local society. According to Paul the subjects of 
 the kingdom were in some way included in the personality 
 of Christ, and the extension of that personality to believers 
 was the extension of his kingdom. Again, consider the 
 great text, "The kingdom of God is . . . righteousness 
 and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." That surely is 
 
 * " The Place of Christ in Modern Theology," p. 519. 
 
24 THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 not synonymous with any external and visible society ; 
 and cannot be translated into these words: the kingdom 
 of God is an organization with a bishop and elders and 
 deacons, whose condition is baptism, and whose highest act 
 of worship is the celebration of the Lord's Supper. Again, 
 Paul says, " Our citizenship is in heaven." And so the 
 thought moves on, and his teaching may perhaps be con- 
 densed as follows : " What Jesus meant by the kingdom of 
 God reappears substantially (i) under the same name, and 
 also under the figures of (2) the Human Organism (the Body 
 which is Christ); (3) the Home of the Adopted; (4) the 
 Realm of the Justified; (5) the Reign of Grace; (6) the 
 Heavenly Citizenship." * 
 
 From these considerations it is clear that " church " and 
 "kingdom" are not synonymous words. The church 
 was the ecclesia — was to Christians what the synagogue 
 was to Jews. We do not mean that that was all that 
 it was ever intended to be, but that is all it was at first, 
 and there are no hints in the New Testament of its 
 future development. The kingdom of God is the grand 
 and glorious ideal. It is "the royal rule" of God; it is 
 sometime to fill the earth, to embrace all spheres of life ; 
 its characteristics are fatherhood, brotherhood, love, and 
 " the realization of righteousness in the life of humanity."t 
 This was the good news which the prophets predicted, 
 the Master proclaimed, and the apostles preached. The 
 church, on the other hand, so far as it may be traced, 
 is an evolution of one phase of the kingdom. The king- 
 dom was preached ; the message was accepted ; the Christ 
 was obeyed ; and those who were of one heart and one 
 mind naturally came together. So far as they had the 
 common life they were one, but it was inevitable that the 
 
 * " The Kingdom of God," Stead, p. 37. 
 t " The Republic of God," Mulford. 
 
THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 25 
 
 kingdom should attract some because it pleased their in- 
 tellects. Many gave to it intellectual adherence who would 
 not yield their wills to its sway. From the first, there- 
 fore, there were those in the church who were not in the 
 kingdom — the apostle reproved the Corinthians because 
 of their unseemly conduct at the celebration of the Sup- 
 per. The church grew faster than the kingdom. From 
 the beginning some were in the kingdom who were not 
 in the church, as there were those in the church who 
 were not in the kingdom. " Kingdom " is the larger 
 word. The church is one of many instruments by which 
 the kingdom is to be advanced. If the inquiry now arises 
 as to whether the church is on a level with other instru- 
 ments, we reply that the ideal church is the kingdom in 
 the phase of " its corporate self-consciousness " ; that it is 
 composed of those, and those only, who are in the king- 
 dom, who are conscious of the fact, and who are seeking 
 to make the kingdom prevail. As Principal Fairbairn has 
 expressed it, " The church is the kingdom seen from below, 
 and the kingdom is the church seen from above."* " Pol- 
 ity is not of its essence ; saints and souls are." t 
 
 This study has brought us to the following conclusions : 
 1 . The kingdom is not an institution ; it is an organism. 
 It is not like any existing state. It is not like the old 
 Jewish Church, and surely as little resembles the Roman 
 Church, with its imperial pretensions and bewildering forms. 
 It has nothing corresponding to the sacrifices, the priest- 
 hood, the temple. It concerns character and the inner life 
 of man, and the world only as that inner life articulates 
 itself in righteousness, faith, and love. Here we must be 
 careful to make our meaning plain. Form is essential. 
 The kingdom required embodiment. It was more than a 
 
 * " The Place of Christ in Modern Theology," p. 528. 
 t Ibid., p. 510. 
 
26 THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 dream. What we contend is that it is embodied in a truly 
 spiritual church, not in our ecclesiastical societies. Life 
 always tends to form, and it always manifests itself through 
 form. The life is in all the denominations, working to 
 shape its own form, and sometime it will do so ; but it is 
 not correct to call the denominations the church. In the 
 kingdom there must be unity ; there is little in the denomi- 
 nations. When the form is the true expression of the life, 
 the kingdom and the church will be coordinate. Institu- 
 tions are necessary, but to be enduring they must be vital 
 — the outgrowth of the divine life, and not mechanisms 
 built around it. The kingdom is not an institution, and 
 yet it uses institutions ; it grows into them as the life in 
 nature grows into flowers and forests. " The identity of 
 church and kingdom is not absolute, but relative only. 
 The two categories do not entirely coincide, even when the 
 church as a visible society is all it ought to be — its mem- 
 bers all truly Christian in faith and life. The kingdom is 
 the larger category. It embraces all who by the key of a 
 true knowledge of the historical Christ are admitted within 
 its portals ; but also many more : the children of the Father 
 in every land who have unconsciously loved the Christ in 
 the person of his representatives — the poor, the suffering, 
 the sorrowful. For such no apostle or church officer opens the 
 door ; the Son of man himself admits them into the kingdom 
 prepared for them from the foundation of the world."* 
 
 2. The church as now existing and clearly visible is an 
 institution, or a series of institutions, and not an organism. 
 At first it was composed of those who accepted the teach- 
 ing of Christ and his apostles concerning the kingdom. 
 At present what is called the church shows many signs of 
 degeneration. To acknowledge this is to exalt the church, 
 since we maintain that when the visible society is once more 
 
 * " The Kingdom of God," Bruce, p. 265. 
 
THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 27 
 
 composed of those, and those only, who have the mind of 
 Christ, " the kingdom will be the church seen from above, 
 and the church the kingdom seen from below." 
 
 3. As the number of Christians increased, organization 
 began. The simplicity of the earlier Christian life was 
 quickly invaded by two forces: one came from the old 
 Jewish faith, and tended to introduce Jewish forms and 
 ceremonies ; the other culminated in the practical absorp- 
 tion of Christianity by the Roman empire, and flooded 
 the infant church with the theories and ideals of pagan 
 civilization. From that time the spiritual conception of 
 the kingdom was lost. The identification of the kingdom 
 and the church with the visible society bearing Christ's 
 name is a pagan conception. The growth of ritual and 
 of ecclesiasticism has not been so much from the divine 
 life as from the Jewish and pagan life, which intruded 
 themselves into the place which belonged to Christ. 
 The church within the church during all these Christian 
 centuries has been trying to slough off its heathen skin. 
 But the divine life has been slowly and surely asserting 
 itself, and in our time, more than in any since the apostles, 
 Christians recognize that the kingdom is the ideal; that 
 the church is the means by which the kingdom is to be 
 advanced; that the real church cannot be defined in the 
 terms of any religious society now existing; and that, be- 
 fore it can be thus defined, what is commonly called the 
 church must become more Christian, more truly the real 
 church, which is ever the kingdom in manifestation. 
 
 4. If what has been said is true, it follows that the church 
 is divine only as the state and the family are divine. The 
 state and the family are not eternal, nor destined to be uni- 
 versal in their sway. The ideal state is one form of the 
 manifestation of the kingdom of God ; the ideal family is 
 another form ; and the ideal church is still another form. 
 
28 THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 The state may manifest the kingdom of God without the 
 element of self-consciousness, and so may the family ; but 
 the church is the self-conscious manifestation of the king- 
 dom. The kingdom may be advanced by science and by 
 art as well as by the church; but science and art do not 
 exist primarily for the sake of the kingdom, while the 
 church does. 
 
 5. Only as the church is devoted to the advancement of 
 the kingdom does it fulfil its function ; when it seeks any- 
 thing for itself it is false to the kingdom. It is as true of 
 the church as of individuals that " he that would save his 
 life must lose it." Denominational selfishness is as perni- 
 cious as individual selfishness. In so far as liturgies and 
 polities are manifestations of the divine life they are of 
 value, and helps to the kingdom ; but in so far as they 
 are simply the expression of esthetic sense, or desire for 
 power, they are worldly, and hindrances to the kingdom. 
 The kingdom, which is the divine life in humanity, can 
 never develop into anything which is in antagonism with 
 itself. The visible church is composed of sects. No one 
 sect has any more right than another to call itself the 
 church. The Roman and the Anglican are as truly sects 
 as the Primitive Methodist and the Plymouth Brethren. 
 Historic continuity is not necessarily divine development. 
 It is a serious question how much of the machinery and 
 how many of the forms of worship of our time have any 
 relation to the life of God as it was in Christ Jesus. That 
 life is spirit ; it is manifested only by holiness ; it cannot be 
 communicated through material channels ; it is not depen- 
 dent on physical touch. Whatever gives that life freer pas- 
 sage is of God ; whatever attracts attention to itself and 
 away from that life is of man. 
 
 6. It follows from what has been said that the organiza- 
 tion of the church must change with the expansion of the 
 
THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 29 
 
 kingdom. In the nature of things, as time advances and 
 localities are different, the means by which men may be 
 induced to accept the royal sway of God must of them- 
 selves be different. Character is not the same in India 
 as in Greenland : zones have much to do with conduct. 
 Mountaineers differ physically, mentally, and spiritually 
 from those who live in valleys. Fertility of soil breeds one 
 class of men ; hard and barren fields another class. Cities 
 present conditions of existence unknown in country districts. 
 One century is not like another. The nineteenth century is 
 to the first as a youth to a child. The year 3000 will be to 
 the year 2 000 as a full-grown man to a growing youth. Con- 
 ditions constantly change, and the divine life always adjusts 
 itself to its environment. Consequently it cannot be sup- 
 posed that there is any one divine order of church polity, 
 or any one element of polity which can very long endure. 
 The episcopate may be best for to-day, but who can tell 
 whether it will be best for to-morrow ? Independency 
 may be best for one class of people, but he would be pre- 
 sumptuous who would assert that it is best for all classes. 
 That is always nearest the divine ecclesiastical order which 
 best allows the divine life to manifest itself and do its 
 work. 
 
 7. We have a hint of what will be realized when the 
 kingdom of God is fully come. Then all who are Christ's 
 will be " kings and priests unto God " ; then all will have 
 entered into the meaning of the great text of St. John, " Ye 
 have an annointing from the Holy One, and ye know all 
 things." I confess the more I study this subject the more I 
 am led to believe that all our forms of polity are ephemeral. 
 They are like the scaffolding around a cathedral ; they are 
 not the real church. The first time I visited Cologne 
 the scaffolding was more conspicuous than the spires, but 
 the last time I was there the scaffolds had disappeared, 
 
30 THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 
 
 and the spires, magnificent and splendid, lifted themselves 
 toward the heavens. So it seems to me are what we call 
 our churches. When individuals are dominated by the 
 Christ there will be no need of churches or creeds or sac- 
 raments or ministry. Did not the Apostle have something 
 like this in his mind when in the vision of the New Jeru- 
 salem he saw no temple therein? And yet I would speak 
 carefully here, for I do not mean to liken the church — but 
 only the denominations— to scaffolding, for surely the Mas- 
 ter founded the church and gave to it his life. It is divine. 
 It manifests God. Its lines are not coordinate with those 
 of the kingdom, because it is the kingdom in one phase of 
 its manifestation. The real church is the kingdom as it is 
 manifest, and the glorified church the kingdom trium- 
 phant ; but the denominations are all of them scaffolds built 
 by man. When they disappear the glory of the kingdom 
 will be distinctly, if not completely, visible in the church. 
 
 Finally, the Lambeth Articles, like those which have been 
 put forth by the Disciples of Christ, may suggest temporary 
 expedients by which the kingdom for a little while may be 
 more swiftly advanced. If so, it is the duty of all Chris- 
 tians to give to them earnest and serious consideration, and 
 so far as they may be made to help the advancement of 
 the kingdom to adopt them, recognizing the scandal of the 
 present divided state of Christendom, but never expecting 
 that any expedient — which in the nature of the case is only 
 transitory — can be a substitute for the life of God in man and 
 in society. 
 
 We conclude, then, that the church, in so far as it is 
 composed of those in the kingdom, is divine. In that 
 church there is already of necessity perfect unity. Those 
 who have Christ see face to face and work hand in hand. 
 Division and discord are sure signs of the absence of the 
 divine life. We may best promote the kingdom, and the 
 
THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH 3 1 
 
 only real and enduring unity, by opening our hearts 
 to the life of God as it is in Jesus Christ, and helping 
 others to do so. Some things can be made one by weld- 
 ing ; others only by growing. Christian union must be a 
 growth. Church union without Christian union will make 
 more scandals than it will cure. Only vital unity is desira- 
 ble, and only that will be enduring. The kingdom of God 
 is the " goal of history," the 
 
 " One far-off divine event 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 It was among men when the God-man walked in the 
 flesh ; it is in all men in whom he dwells. His prayer will 
 be answered, and his kingdom will come, when, not one 
 man only, nor many men, but when humanity has reached 
 the stature of the fullness of Christ. 
 
II 
 
 THE INCARNATION PHILOSOPHICALLY CON- 
 SIDERED ; or, 
 
 AVAILABLE LIVING EVIDENCE, AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE 
 EVIDENCE OF THE GOSPELS OR THE EVIDENCE OF FAITH, 
 FOR THE HISTORIC AND DIVINE CHRIST. 
 
 LEWIS LAMPMAN, D.D., 
 High Street Presbyterian Church, Newark, N.J. 
 
 33 
 
II 
 
 THE INCARNATION PHILOSOPHICALLY CONSIDERED 
 
 I propose to try to formulate an argument for the per- 
 son of Christ that does not depend mainly on gospel his- 
 tory or the evidence of faith.* 
 
 The age is skeptical of so-called historical evidence, and 
 the evidence of faith is not available for the man who does 
 not believe. Discarding these, what is left on which one 
 can build an argument for both the human and the divine 
 Christ ? What is the present living evidence that does not 
 depend on Scripture history and the evidence of faith for 
 the life and claims of Jesus Christ? 
 
 Caesar and Napoleon lived and attracted the attention 
 of their times. Socrates and Savonarola lived, so history 
 says. But what is left over of these lives ? What is the 
 actual amount of survival on which we can put our finger 
 — which we can count as an actual, available material or 
 moral asset ? Now, is Jesus of Galilee like those who pre- 
 ceded him and like most who have followed him — simply 
 a memory, an historical shadow ? What, if anything, is left 
 that creates obligations now and here ? 
 
 * This line of argument was begun by Clement of Alexandria, and 
 has been extended by Horace Bushnell, Dr. John Young, Lyman Ab- 
 bott, and Newman Smyth. There is no claim to any originality — not 
 even in its particular application. I have simply put together what 
 others have formulated. — L. L. 
 
 35 
 
36 THE INCARNATION 
 
 To the question, What survives ? I answer : 
 
 i. His life survives. It survives as the life of no other 
 person that has ever lived survives. It is recognized now 
 as an example of exalted and perfect manhood ; it is both 
 power and inspiration. The Gospels, indeed, drew its out- 
 line, and without them this new evidence could never have 
 been developed ; but into it has been breathed the breath 
 of life, and it has become a living soul, with a power inde- 
 pendent of the Gospels, and with a life of its own that would 
 survive the loss of the Gospels. 
 
 The fact is that Jesus of Galilee lived a life so extraordi- 
 nary that men have not forgotten it. It was a universal life. 
 It was not simply fitted to the age in which he lived ; it is 
 as much a pattern in the nineteenth century as it was in the 
 first. It was not simply adapted to the race from which he 
 sprang ; it is as much a pattern for the Gentile as for the 
 Jew ; for the dreamy Oriental as for the bustling, feverish 
 life of the Occident ; for a woman as for a man. No 
 bounds of race or country or time limited it. It was a 
 universal life, fitted to every age, to every people, and to 
 every clime. 
 
 This life, then, as a pattern and inspiration, survives. 
 It is not a memory ; it is an actual existing thing which a 
 man can see and feel. " In his name " is the motto of the 
 Christian world. By the power of it Livingstone gave his 
 life for Africa, and under its inspiration men are pressing 
 forward to take the place left vacant by Mackay of Uganda ; 
 and in Christian lands men are consecrating time and 
 labor and goods to establish the influence of the name 
 over all the earth ; it is the sweetest lullaby that mothers 
 sing to their babes. It is the sign by which dying men 
 conquer; and through it sobs are hushed and hearts are 
 kept from breaking. The old song we sing is literally 
 true: 
 
PHILOSOPHICALLY CONSIDERED 37 
 
 " There is no name so sweet on earth, 
 No name so sweet in heaven — 
 The name before his wondrous birth 
 To Christ the Saviour given." 
 
 Says Lyman Abbott : " The influence of most men dies 
 with them ; if in some few instances it survives, it grows 
 less and less as the years pass on — first a power, then an 
 influence, then only a memory. Of whom is not this true, 
 if we except Jesus of Nazareth? In this case the reverse 
 is true." Says Newman Smyth : " The influence of Jesus 
 is a perpetual influence ; in his name is named whatever is 
 most worthy our consecration of power, our devotion of 
 heart, our endless endeavor of life." He is not a mere 
 memory: he is a magnificent force at present. He lived 
 a life so extraordinary that men cannot forget it, and new 
 centuries only bring new wonder and catch new inspiration 
 from it. 
 
 What Jesus is as an existing personal force is easily illus- 
 trated. We can forget Alexander and Socrates and Antoni- 
 nus ; we can forget them, and lose little by our forgetting. 
 But suppose this world should forget Jesus of Galilee ? 
 Suppose it should keep all of his philosophy and teaching, 
 and should forget the man Jesus, so that his life would not 
 survive — what then ? Why, it would blot out the Chris- 
 tian church. It would break up all distinctively Christian 
 organizations, end missions at home and abroad, and turn 
 the whole world backward. I affirm that it is the person of 
 Jesus of Galilee — the actual living personality — that is the 
 power that underlies every Christian thing, and not simply 
 his teaching. The inspiration of the world, the civilization 
 of this nineteenth century, are not so much from the words 
 of Christ as from the person of Christ. Neither in Egypt, 
 nor in Persia, nor in India, nor in China, is either religion 
 or philosophy wanting. Some of the hymns of the Vedas 
 
3§ THE INCARNATION 
 
 sound like our penitential psalms. The lack of these 
 nations is, that they have not the knowledge of and the 
 inspiration from the person of Jesus Christ. 
 
 His life has changed and is changing the world. A sim- 
 ple lesson in geography will illustrate it. In the words of 
 James Russell Lowell, " There isn't a decent place on God's 
 earth that hasn't been made decent by Jesus of Nazareth." 
 
 Explain it as you will, you cannot explain away the fact 
 that this son of a carpenter, this untaught Galilean, this 
 man who was crucified outside of the wall of Jerusalem, 
 has revolutionized the world, and that after nineteen cen- 
 turies he continues his leadership unimpaired. His life is 
 making men patient under wrong ; developing self-restraint 
 and making liberty possible ; tempering justice ; and chang- 
 ing equality and fraternity from a dream into a reality. For 
 Jesus of Nazareth is not only the author of the doctrine of 
 the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, but 
 he is the power by which that doctrine is being transmuted 
 into life. 
 
 And the present power of the life of Jesus is recognized 
 by unbelievers as well as by those who accept him. Says 
 John Stuart Mill : " Whatever else may be taken from us 
 by rational criticism, Christ is still left ; a unique figure, not 
 more unlike all his precursors than all his followers." Says 
 Lyman Abbott from the Christian side : " He still marches 
 at the head of humanity; and the world after eighteen 
 centuries has much to learn before it has learned him, and 
 much to do before it becomes like him. . . . He died in 
 darkness and amid scorn and contumely. The religion of 
 Judea, the culture of Greece, the power of Rome, knew 
 him not. The few faithful friends who still clung to his 
 memory were not too many to be contained in one upper 
 chamber. To-day his name fills the world. . . . And the 
 last eighty years sees a greater accession to his followers 
 
PHILOSOPHICALLY CONSIDERED 39 
 
 than the total growth of all the eighteen hundred years 
 which preceded. The scoffs and sneers of infidelity are 
 silenced not by the arguments of Christian scholars, but by 
 the character of Christ himself. And Renan, Hooykaas, 
 and John Stuart Mill join in ascriptions of honor to his 
 name, and in expressions of gratitude for his influence." 
 
 You ask, then, What survives of Jesus of Galilee ? and 
 I answer, his life survives. He lived a life so extraordinary 
 that men cannot forget it. And it is not a memory. It 
 has become a vital, a living thing ; a force in this world 
 that has to be estimated. His life survives — a pattern and 
 an inspiration to the world. 
 
 2. In the second place, his authority as a teacher survives. 
 
 We may be indebted to history, and to gospel history 
 especially, for the fact that Christ won his way to the posi- 
 tion of a recognized leader and teacher, and that he has 
 held it for nineteen hundred years ; but we are indebted to 
 no history for the tremendous fact that he holds the place 
 of the recognized leader and teacher of the civilized world 
 to-day, and that, too, with no signs of any impairment of 
 his authority, but, on the contrary, with increasing author- 
 ity. That fact neither depends on the Gospels nor on 
 faith. It is one of the noisy, living, and demonstrative 
 facts of the present. And is there any question as to the 
 fact ? Where is the court of last appeal in any question of 
 religion or morals? If in any controversy on these mat- 
 ters there can be found a clear and undoubted statement 
 of Christ, or a deciding act of Christ, is not the matter 
 settled ? Not only is there no dissent among the actual 
 followers of Christ, but four hundred millions of nominal 
 Christendom accept it as final. 
 
 Who turns to Socrates or Plato to settle the moral or 
 spiritual controversies of the age ? Such an appeal would 
 be laughed out of court. And yet only five hundred years 
 
40 THE INCARNATION 
 
 later than these — nineteen hundred years ago — a man comes 
 out of a humble shop in Nazareth and declares to the 
 wondering crowd, " I am the light of the world," and pro- 
 claims the doctrines which men were to believe and teach. 
 
 The centuries have come and gone since then. The lit- 
 tle country that was his home, and once the center of the 
 world, is far one side, and with no place or rank among 
 the nations ; the intellect of man has broadened more than 
 his territory; each age has accumulated greater treasures 
 of knowledge than of wealth ; and still in spite of changed 
 position, in spite of passing centuries, in spite of gathered 
 wisdom, this Galilean, reared in the meanest town in all 
 the province, untutored, and dying while but a youth — this 
 Galilean still remains as the leader and teacher of the world ; 
 and in every controversy with reference to morals or reli- 
 gion, he is the court of last appeal. 
 
 And if this is true, how do you account for it? The 
 last word on any other branch of knowledge has not been 
 spoken. In this age we outgrow books and theories and 
 men in a generation. Everything is in flux. New light is 
 breaking out from every quarter, and no man, however 
 profound his knowledge, is able to keep the ear of the 
 people and to teach them beyond a brief stretch of years. 
 But here this son of a carpenter stands yet. No one ques- 
 tions his authority or wisdom — not even the men who do 
 not believe in him. It is accepted that up to this date he 
 has spoken the last, highest, and best word with reference 
 to the most intricate questions of the soul. 
 
 You ask, What actually survives of Jesus Christ ? and I 
 answer, his authority as a teacher survives. The study of 
 nineteen hundred years has not yet emptied his words of 
 their meaning. He is easily Master and Lord in the domain 
 of spiritual knowledge, and men of the profoundest insight 
 and wisdom are glad to call themselves his disciples. And 
 
PHILOSOPHICALLY CONSIDERED 41 
 
 there never was a time in the history of the world when so 
 many men were listening to his words, and when they were 
 so impressed by them, as in this year of our Lord 1894. 
 Says Dr. John Young : " It may be affirmed that, of all the 
 spiritual truth existing in the world at this moment, not only 
 is there not a single important idea which is not found in 
 the words of Christ, but all the most important ideas can 
 be found nowhere else, and they have their sole foundation 
 in his mind. From his mind there shone a light which no 
 age before his day ever saw, and none since, except in him 
 alone, has ever seen." 
 
 3. Not only does the authority of Christ as a teacher 
 survive, so that it is a present fact on which you can 
 put your finger, but also his power survives. He is the 
 King of the civilized world to-day. One of the courtiers 
 in the palace turned to Scotland's king one day, and, 
 plucking his sleeve, said, " Sire, there is a greater king in 
 Scotland than thou." " Who is it?" said the ruler. " King 
 People," answered the courtier. To-day it needs no daring 
 courtier to say to the czar of all the Russias, to the Ger- 
 man emperor, or to the empress of India and queen of all 
 England, " There is a greater ruler in thy dominions than 
 thou. It is Jesus of Nazareth." If any ruler of Europe 
 should attempt deliberately to dishonor Christ's name or 
 prohibit his service, I think it would be perfectly safe to 
 say that rebellion would be begun within an hour. Not 
 one of them would dare, either on account of his life or of 
 his kingdom, to put himself or herself in open hostility to 
 the rule of Christ. Nearly nineteen hundred years ago the 
 Roman procurator asked in scorn of a pale-faced Galilean 
 who had been arraigned before him, "Art thou a king 
 then ? " and this last century gives the answer, rising louder 
 and more triumphant as nation after nation adds its testi- 
 mony, " Yea, thou art a king." 
 
42 THE INCARNATION 
 
 You ask again, What did he actually accomplish? I 
 answer, he established a kingdom whose bounds each year 
 approach nearer the bounds of the habitable earth. You 
 ask, What survives ? I answer, his power survives, grow- 
 ing larger and more extended every year. He is King of 
 this world. Any government of Europe or America that 
 should attempt deliberately to run counter to what is recog- 
 nized as the clear teaching of Christ would be overturned. 
 He is the undoubted power behind every civilized throne. 
 
 Who is this man ? Born in Nazareth, yet a citizen of 
 the world ; born a Jew, yet akin to every race ; untaught, 
 yet the teacher of the world ; scourged by the brutal 
 Roman soldiers, and dying a death of shame on the cross 
 amid the taunts of Jerusalem's mob, yet living, and draw- 
 ing knight and banneret to the same city to struggle for his 
 tomb ; crowned with thorns, yet seated to-day on every 
 throne of every civilized nation, ruling the world as the 
 King over all kings and kingdoms. 
 
 Men in his day asked after some sign. They ask it 
 now. Here is his sign to-day : the living, constant miracle 
 of his endless, deathless life and power ; the witness that he 
 came from beyond the stars and that he wields the power 
 that moves the world. 
 
 4. In the fourth place, his religion survives. It is known 
 distinctively as the Christian religion. It is an existing fact 
 to be accounted for. And it is a new religion, new in its 
 conception and actual knowledge of God, and new in its 
 conception of the destiny of man — that large and lumi- 
 nous ideal known now as "the kingdom of God." 
 
 The philosophers of the Old World had tried by search- 
 ing to find out God. Worshipers built their altars, offered 
 their sacrifices, sang their penitential psalms, and turned 
 away wearied with unavailing search and sacrifice, and 
 sought their heaven in a personal annihilation. Judea 
 
PHILOSOPHICALLY CONSIDERED 43 
 
 came, but the God of Judah was enthroned upon a 
 mountain ; clouds were about him, and lightning darted 
 from the darkness, and the hearts of his people trembled 
 while his thunders rolled. " But Jesus of Galilee revealed 
 God metaphysically, intellectually, and morally as he never 
 was known before. This untutored Galilean proclaims God 
 as Spirit, and clears away in a single sentence the crude 
 notions of the ages, ' God is Spirit,' unlimited and uncon- 
 ditioned." " ' God is light,' and he centers all knowledge 
 and wisdom in the eternal." " God is love." Hear him 
 again as he dispels the fears of the trembling company at the 
 foot of Sinat, and wipes away the tears of a troubled world. 
 God is love. And ye " are not come unto the mount that 
 . . . burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, 
 and tempest : . . . but ye are come unto Mount Sion, and 
 unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, 
 . . . and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and 
 to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than 
 that of Abel." 
 
 (i) He gave the world a new conception of God, so that 
 we can think of him as Father. " No man cometh unto 
 the Father, but by me." He has taken the sting out of 
 the sweep of the storm, and fear out of the thunder. He 
 has revealed to us the supreme Power of the universe, filled 
 with love for his creatures, and striving to bless them. So 
 that we need no Mary to personify tenderness and com- 
 passion ; we have it all in God. He is our Father, and our 
 Mother too. 
 
 (2) And he gave the world a new conception of the 
 destiny of man. It was Jesus Christ who drew the lines 
 of that marvelous picture of the kingdom of God — a king- 
 dom full of light and beauty, whose atmosphere is peace 
 and righteousness, unto which all the world is called ; a 
 kingdom that grows larger and more luminous as time goes 
 
44 THE INCARNATION 
 
 on. Man never had such a dream of destiny until Jesus 
 of Galilee suggested it. He had dreamed of terrestrial gar- 
 dens, of summer lands with sensuous delights, of triumph 
 over enemies, of material rewards and honors ; but of a 
 kingdom built on righteousness, of a peace, not conquered, 
 but unfolded, of intimate union and fellowship with God, 
 he had not the power to dream until Christ inspired the 
 dream. " Neither in the philosophies of the Old World, 
 nor in the Jewish religion, nor in any religion, can be found 
 the conceptions of God and of the destiny of the human 
 race revealed by this Nazarene. His positions were bold 
 and startling, and his doctrines were denounced by the re- 
 ligious teachers of his country as blasphemous." But the 
 point is that this conception of God and human destiny 
 survives. That is not a matter of tradition, or even of his- 
 tory. It is a living fact to be accounted for. The religion 
 of the civilized world to-day is the Christian religion. 
 
 Centuries have come and gone since he died. What has 
 become of the doctrines of this Nazarene ? Are they for- 
 gotten ? Why, what else is remembered in the world to- 
 day? What else is talked about and taught and written 
 about as the teaching of Jesus? His religion has become 
 an organized thing, until it represents more and better ma- 
 chinery, more men, and more money than any other move- 
 ment on the face of the globe. The sound of the church 
 bells girdles the world. 
 
 Do you ask, What survives ? I answer, his religion sur- 
 vives. Mothers teach it to their children. Strong men go 
 out to fight their battles taking it as their armor ; and when 
 men come to die they wrap it as the drapery of their couch 
 about them, and lie down to pleasant dreams. Every as- 
 sault upon it has been idle. The infidels of the first cen- 
 tury are dead and forgotten. The infidels of the eighteenth 
 boasted that they would wipe it from the face of the earth. 
 
PHILOSOPHICALLY CONSIDERED 45 
 
 The infidels of the nineteenth century continue their activ- 
 ity. But what does it all matter? It moves on with mys- 
 terious power, resistless, so that whosoever falls upon it 
 is broken, and on whomsoever it falls it grinds him to 
 powder. 
 
 It survives, this religion of Jesus. At no period of the 
 world were there so many devotees as now, and at no 
 period of the world did it ever have the same look of mas- 
 tery. Says Abbott, " To-day his name fills the world ; the 
 cross, emblem of ignominy, on which he seemed to perish, 
 is worn as the outward symbol of the heart's adoration on 
 many a gentle woman's breast; and the last eighty years 
 of the church's life sees a greater accession to his follow- 
 ers than the total growth of all the eighteen hundred years 
 which had preceded." 
 
 Now, who is this Nazarene who walks out of his hum- 
 ble shop, out from the narrow streets of this inconsequent 
 town, and lifts his hands and proclaims, " I am the light 
 of the world," and men for two thousand years continue 
 to exclaim, "Surely no man ever spake as this man"? 
 Who is this man to whom costly structures are reared in 
 every land ; for whom strong men grow tender, and tender 
 women grow brave ; for whose sake trouble is borne with- 
 out a murmur, and in whose strength death is met without 
 fear ? Who is this man who calls to praise and service, 
 and all the world responds ? Answer for yourselves. This 
 world has not gone mad ; it never was so clear and strong 
 of brain as now ; and this world answers with an emphasis 
 that grows stronger every year, this man is none other than 
 the Son of God. The life that prolongs itself is eternal 
 life ; the power that thus grips the world is divine power ; 
 the religion that has lifted, inspired, comforted, and is sav- 
 ing this world is the Word of God spoken to us in these 
 last days by Jesus Christ his Son. Jesus of Nazareth orig- 
 
46 THE INCARNATION 
 
 inated a movement that has changed the world ; a move- 
 ment that survives, that gathers power with the ages. 
 
 5. To the question, What survives ? I answer finally, 
 Jesus Christ in all his miraculous and transforming power 
 survives. 
 
 The evidence for miracles is as good, if not better, in 
 the nineteenth century than it was in the first. There is a 
 power in this world by which men can exorcise devils now ; 
 by which miracles are wrought in this present age ; by which 
 the blind receive their sight, and the dead are brought to 
 life ; by which men can face disaster and death itself with 
 heroic courage, and even with joy. 
 
 Men say, " Oh well, your Jesus of Nazareth lived a good 
 many years ago, if he ever lived at all, and the proofs of 
 his wonderful works are confined to the first century. Show 
 me something tangible now, something on which I can put 
 my finger, some sign of divine power that I can witness, 
 and then I will consider his claims." That is a challenge 
 that can be met. The age of miracles is not past. They 
 are being performed almost every day. 
 
 Last winter, at my mission, a locomotive engineer arose 
 one night and said : " My friends, a few years ago I was a 
 swearing, drinking man, going to the devil as fast as a man 
 could go ; careless of mother, wife, and children ; careless of 
 my own life and soul. But Jesus Christ came to me and 
 convicted me and saved me. He drove out the devils of 
 profanity and drink, and made me hate the things I once 
 loved, and love the things I once hated." That statement 
 was made by a strong-brained, clear-eyed fellow, in a tone 
 that carried conviction. Was he mistaken ? About what ? 
 Not about the transformation; that was perfectly plain. 
 A whole ward of the city of Newark could be brought in 
 as witnesses. This once drinking and profane engineer is 
 now an active worker for Jesus of Galilee; has Christ's 
 
PHILOSOPHICALLY CONSIDERED 47 
 
 mottoes hanging in his cab, and preaches the gospel when- 
 ever he has a chance. The transformation is evident and 
 marvelous. Is he mistaken about the means of the transfor- 
 mation? That is a matter that I cannot make out. Kinan 
 and Cary say that they have been changed by the power 
 of Christ. The change is acknowledged, but the power by 
 which the change was wrought is denied. Now, who ought 
 to know best how they were healed and who healed them 
 — the men out of whom the devils have been cast, or the 
 men who come to inspect them after they have been re- 
 stored ? These healed men say that Jesus Christ did it ; 
 and, more than that, they say that it is this same Jesus who 
 is keeping the room against the return of the evil spirits. 
 And this argument does not turn on one or more isolated 
 cases. There is no dearth of evidence. Kinan had no 
 sooner taken his seat than another arose and made the 
 same statement. And I know of him and of his transfor- 
 mation. He is at the head of the Rescue Mission in the 
 city of Newark at this present time. 
 
 In my home is hanging a picture of a mother and a son. 
 The face of the mother shines with almost a celestial light. 
 It is St. Monica and her son Augustine. They are at 
 Ostia waiting for the ship, and the mother has heard the 
 full story of the transformation which Christ has wrought. 
 Was the strong-brained and learned Augustine mistaken ? 
 He said that it was Christ that had wrought the transfor- 
 mation. Who ought to know better than he how he was 
 healed ? Was John Bunyan the drunken tinker transformed 
 into John Bunyan the seer mistaken ? He said that it was 
 Jesus Christ who transformed him. 
 
 Last winter, one Saturday night, I stood in Water Street 
 Mission, New York. There were three hundred men floated 
 in from the sewers of that great city, covered with the very 
 slime and ooze of life ; outcasts every one of them, with- 
 
48 THE INCARNATION 
 
 out God and without any hope in this world. On the 
 platform were twenty men with every mark of the world's 
 prosperity and comfort about them. When the service was 
 thrown open, one after another of these men arose and told 
 the same story. A few years ago they, too, were outcasts, 
 and dying in the gutter, without homes, without friends, 
 without any good and without any God in this world ; and 
 there came to them this same Jesus of Nazareth, and 
 kindled dead affections and hopes — recreated them, made 
 them new men. Were these men mistaken — one and all 
 of them ? Who ought to know the power by which they 
 had been transformed ? 
 
 Here, then, is something tangible, something on which a 
 man can put his finger — a sign of divine power that a man 
 can witness. We need not ask men to believe in Christ for 
 his works' sake — works only that were wrought two thou- 
 sand years ago, and transmitted to us by history — but on 
 account of the works wrought now — the casting out of 
 devils and the bringing of the dead to life. Jesus of Gali- 
 lee is still in this world with all of his miraculous and trans- 
 forming power. 
 
 To sum up, What survives ? I answer : 
 
 i. His life survives, the pattern and the inspiration of 
 the world. The power of this nineteenth century is not in 
 philosophy or in material development ; it is in the posses- 
 sion by the world of Jesus of Galilee. 
 
 2. His teaching and leadership survive. Never in the 
 history of the world had he the same authority as now. 
 He is the court of last appeal in every moral and spiritual 
 issue, and a clear " Thus saith the Lord " ends the contro- 
 versy. 
 
 3. And his power survives. He is molding states and 
 controlling kings and people, and the one resistless force 
 
PHILOSOPHICALLY CONSIDERED 49 
 
 that subdues rebellion and prevents revolution is the power 
 of this uncrowned King of Galilee, 
 
 4. His conceptions of God and of human relations and 
 human destiny survive. The religion of the civilized nations 
 of the earth is Christ's religion. Men are willing to live 
 and die for him in increasing numbers, and there has been 
 a greater accession to his following in the last eighty years 
 than in the eighteen hundred years preceding. 
 
 5. And finally, Jesus Christ in all his miraculous and 
 transforming power survives. He is here working miracles 
 in the redemption of men in this last century as he was in 
 the first. 
 
 Who is he ? The old question comes again, Who is he ? 
 This strange, mysterious figure that enters the world but 
 never quits it, whose power is broken by neither time nor 
 death, who has in himself the power of an endless life — 
 who is he ? This startling figure, unlike any other the 
 world has ever seen, with a conception of a mission that 
 was fitted to the thought of Almighty God, speaking as man 
 never spake before, and with power to perpetuate his life, 
 so that the increasing years but increase his sway, working 
 miracles in this nineteenth century as he worked them in 
 the first — who is he ? There is but one answer, the old 
 answer of the centurion, " Truly this man was the Son of 
 God." 
 
 Friends, men in his day asked for some sign of his divine 
 commission, and he gave it. He gives it still. Here is his 
 sign to-day : the living, constant miracle, viz., his endless, 
 deathless life and power, the witness that he came from be- 
 yond the stars and wields the power that moves the worlds. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE INCARNATION BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED- 
 
 GEORGE T. PURVES, D.D., 
 
 Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis in Princeton 
 
 Theological Seminary. 
 
 5i 
 
Ill 
 
 THE INCARNATION BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 
 
 The purpose of this paper is to set forth the way in which 
 the fact and the doctrine of the incarnation are presented 
 in the Bible. In attempting to do this in the limited space 
 at my command, I shall relieve myself entirely from the 
 consideration of two matters which it would be necessary 
 to introduce if it were my task to prove the incarnation to 
 be an original Christian doctrine, but which the title of my 
 paper justifies me in regarding as assumed. 
 
 On the one hand, I am to take the Bible as a whole, 
 and as it has been received by the church, without enter- 
 ing upon the discussion of any critical questions concerning 
 the genesis or authenticity of its parts. " The Incarnation 
 Biblically Considered " can mean nothing but a discussion 
 of the topic as it lies in the existing volume which we know 
 as the Bible. It is not a question, therefore, whether the 
 Bible rightly represents the history of this idea in Jewish or 
 apostolic times. I have no doubt that it does ; but I am 
 relieved from the necessity of proving it by the terms of 
 my subject. Our question simply is, How does the Bible 
 present this truth ? though I may remark, in passing, that 
 this seems to me the true question for biblical theology to 
 answer. Biblical theology is the theology of the Bible. It 
 has no right to attempt to go by critical processes behind 
 the Bible in order to present what is supposed to have been 
 the history of religious ideas among the Hebrews or in the 
 
 53 
 
54 THE INCARNATION 
 
 apostolic church, and yet call itself biblical theology. Such 
 critical reconstructions, supposing them to be historically 
 true, belong to the department of historical religion. A 
 biblical theology must ground itself entirely upon the Bible, 
 and must have for its purpose to set forth the progressive 
 unfolding of religious truth in that volume. It must pro- 
 ceed upon the assumption of the organic unity of the book, 
 and use exegesis alone as its instrument. This is the 
 method upon which I shall proceed in the following paper, 
 and therefore all questions of critical introduction will be 
 neglected. 
 
 On the other hand, I may assume that the Bible teaches 
 that Jesus Christ was and is the incarnate Son of God. On 
 this there is general consent among those who are interested 
 in the present discussion. Commentators differ about the 
 precise force of particular proof-texts and about particular 
 phases of the doctrine, but few deny that the Bible teaches 
 our Lord to be a real divine incarnation. Those who dis- 
 pute the doctrine are generally content to deny the author- 
 ity of the Bible. As, however, it is not my object to prove 
 the authority of Scripture, so I may fairly assume that the 
 Scriptures teach the fact and the doctrine of the incarna- 
 tion. By that I mean that they teach the absolute deity 
 of our Lord ; his personal and eternal preexistence as the 
 divine Son or Word or Image or Effulgence ; his real and 
 complete humanity, which was conceived by the Holy 
 Ghost in the Virgin's womb ; and, consequently, the union 
 in him of divinity and humanity, effected by his mysteri- 
 ously making this human nature his personal organ and 
 particular dwelling-place, in order that he might be truly 
 man as well as truly God. It is sufficient for me to quote 
 the words of Paul to the Romans (i. 3, 4) : " Concerning 
 [God's] Son, who was born of the seed of David according 
 to the flesh, who was declared to be the Son of God with 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 55 
 
 power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead," together with the words of John's prologue 
 to his Gospel : " In the beginning was the Word, and the 
 Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... And 
 the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we be- 
 held his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the 
 Father), full of grace and truth." It lies, however, beyond 
 the scope of this article to prove the incarnation to be a 
 biblical idea. I shall assume this in order to devote atten- 
 tion to the incarnation from a biblical point of view. I 
 propose to inquire concerning the way in which the incar- 
 nation is presented and attested in the Bible, the relations 
 in which it is placed to other biblical ideas, and finally to 
 attempt a more precise statement of the nature of the in- 
 carnation as biblically described. It appears to me that 
 thus we shall be led to deal with those aspects of the theme 
 which are of most interest and importance in current dis- 
 cussions. 
 
 i. I call attention, in the first place, to the fact that the 
 incarnation appears, when biblically considered, as a doc- 
 trine based on historical facts and produced by the need 
 of elucidating them. The truth is not first declared as a 
 dogma and then substantiated by evidence from facts ; but 
 the historical advent, career, and teaching of our Lord are 
 first historically attested, and only as explanatory of the 
 history is the profound truth of the incarnation explicitly 
 declared. It thus appears as a fact before it appears as a 
 doctrine. We have in the New Testament first the histor- 
 ical Christ of the Gospels, then the theological Christ of 
 the Epistles. This is in obvious accord with the actual 
 movement of the apostles' minds in setting forth, in re- 
 sponse to the church's needs, the great mystery of which 
 they were the witnesses. It is in accordance, too, with the 
 general character of the Bible, which is not only, when com- 
 
56 THE INCARNATION 
 
 pleted, a revelation itself, but is also the professed record 
 of an historical process of revelation, since the truths given 
 by God were adapted to the movement of his providence 
 and to the external events which marked his interposition 
 in behalf of his church. 
 
 The consequence of this is that in the Old Testament 
 the incarnation is but dimly and fragmentarily presented, 
 though in the light of the New Testament we can see it 
 adumbrated. In the Old Testament the Agent by whom 
 salvation was to be accomplished is represented in various 
 aspects, all of which appear to the New Testament student 
 as partial presentations of the Great Deliverer. It begins 
 with the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise 
 the serpent's head. Later follows the promise to Abram 
 that in his seed should all nations be blessed. Still later 
 we read of Messiah as the last of the prophets ; again, as 
 the Son of David with an everlasting throne ; then, as the 
 prophets enriched by their successive revelations the hope 
 of Israel, we read of the lowly Branch from the root of 
 Jesse, of the humble but glorious King of Israel, and of 
 the suffering Servant of Jehovah, in whose personal and 
 vicarious passion the mission of Israel itself is represented 
 as being achieved. In this line of promise the human, 
 Abrahamic, Israelitish character of the Agent of salvation 
 is made prominent. But we also find in the Old Testa- 
 ment foreshadowings of his divine character. The Angel 
 of Jehovah, who often appears identified with Jehovah 
 himself, is in the earlier history represented as the guide 
 and deliverer of the church. In the Psalms appellations 
 are given to Messiah which go far beyond the possibilities 
 of merely human dignity. It is sufficient to refer to the 
 instance which Christ himself cited, where David's Son is 
 called by the psalmist David's Lord. Similar titles are as- 
 cribed to him by the prophets, and the era of future deliver- 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 57 
 
 ance is frequently described as the day of Jehovah or as his 
 coming to earth. In the Old Testament, however, these 
 predictions and descriptions are not brought together into 
 a completed exhibition of Messiah as God incarnate, save 
 in a few rapt utterances of the prophets, such as Isaiah ix. 
 6 and Micah v. 2. At the same time, all the Old Testa- 
 ment representations of the Agent of salvation were at once 
 harmonized by the fact of the incarnation when that was 
 historically revealed, and it in turn appears as so organi- 
 cally related to the previous promises as to be the only fact 
 by which they can all be unified and fulfilled. Perhaps in 
 no respect does the Christian gospel more plainly appear 
 as the intended accomplishment of the earlier promises of 
 God than in its presentation of the divine-human personal- 
 ity of its Founder ; and likewise the earlier promises con- 
 tained in the Old Testament plainly appear as revelations 
 and as parts of one divine plan by the fact that when the 
 incarnation is accepted the key to all of them is found. 
 As Oehler says (quoted by Riehm, " Messianic Prophecy," 
 p. 297) : "It belongs to the character of prophecy to pre- 
 sent in its envisaging forms disjecta membra, which are har- 
 moniously blended only in the course of the fulfilling his- 
 tory. The presuppositions of all the essential determinations 
 of New Testament Christology are to be found in the Old 
 Testament, but the revealing word which unites them 
 organically and gives them their ultimate form is given 
 only along with the accomplished revealing fact." 
 
 It is, however, in the New Testament, as we should ex- 
 pect, that the relation of the incarnation to the history of 
 the Incarnate One most plainly appears. There the doc- 
 trine is distinctly presented as growing out of and as neces- 
 sitated by external events. 
 
 The only apparent exception to this mode of presenta- 
 tion is the prologue to the Fourth Gospel, where we find 
 
58 THE INCARNATION 
 
 theological reflection preceding the historical narrative. 
 Yet it is to be observed that John's narrative approves 
 itself as historically accurate, and as forming the basis of 
 his theology, by the fact that the most distinctive term of 
 the latter — the Logos — is nowhere attributed by him to 
 Jesus himself. Even in this instance, therefore, we see the 
 doctrine resting on the facts. 
 
 In the Synoptic Gospels, although they, too, were com- 
 posed from special points of view, and therefore not with- 
 out some theological reflection, the narrative reveals very 
 plainly that the understanding by the disciples of the truth 
 concerning Christ was gradually forced upon them by the 
 events which took place, so that their apprehension of 
 the truth was conditioned by the facts, and expanded as 
 new facts occurred or became known. Thus, for example, 
 we find the miraculous conception of our Lord recorded, 
 but in the announcements of it to Mary and Joseph the 
 deeper mystery of the incarnation was not explicitly dis- 
 closed. Mary was indeed told, " He shall be called the 
 Son of the Most High: . . . and he shall reign over the 
 house of Israel forever;" also, "The Holy Ghost shall 
 come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall 
 overshadow thee : wherefore also that which is to be born 
 shall be called holy, the Son of God ;" but all these expres- 
 sions could have been, and doubtless were, interpreted by 
 her without rising to the thought of an incarnation of God, 
 while the second of the two declarations just cited turned 
 her mind directly to the miraculous conception as the rea- 
 son why the title " Son of God " would belong to her off- 
 spring. This, of course, was not to exclude other and 
 higher reasons for the title ; but the expression was evi- 
 dently designed to accord with the facts as she knew them, 
 and to go no farther. The narrative thus indicates the de- 
 pendence of the first disciples, even of the Virgin herself, 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 59 
 
 on facts for their belief about Christ ; and the precise rela- 
 tion of the annunciation as thus narrated to the facts as 
 then known, rather than to the full truth as known later, is 
 a strong guaranty of the truthfulness of the evangelist. 
 
 Again, the gospel narratives make clear the progress of 
 the disciples in the belief concerning the real nature of 
 Christ during his ministry among them. It lies beyond 
 my present purpose to present Christ's testimony to him- 
 self, but it may be remarked, in passing, that it was, as re- 
 ported in the Gospels, as explicit as the character of the 
 work which, according to the Bible, he had come to do 
 permitted. That work involved his appearance on eartli 
 as man, and the veiling for the most part of the splendors 
 of both his divinity and Messiahship, save as these were 
 manifested to those with eyes to see them through his 
 humanity and lowliness, his teaching, character, actions, 
 and sufferings. The Gospels, however, record enough to 
 prove that he asserted the consciousness of being divine. 
 Even the Synoptics testify to his claim. They represent 
 the demons as silenced, but not rebuked, for their witness 
 to him as Son of God. They record the divine testimony 
 at the baptism and the transfiguration, as well as the con- 
 fession of Peter for which Christ pronounced him blessed 
 and taught of the Father. They record these words of our 
 Lord, only paralleled in the Fourth Gospel : " All things 
 have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one 
 knoweth the Son, save the Father ; neither doth any know 
 the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son 
 willeth to reveal him." The Fourth Gospel provides much 
 more explicit testimony. I will refer to this hereafter. It 
 is sufficient now to refer to the fifth, sixth, seventh, tenth, 
 and seventeenth chapters. If these reports of Christ's lan- 
 guage be accurate, certainly Christ claimed to be con- 
 sciously divine. But the very character of Christ's self- 
 
60 THE INCARNATION 
 
 revelation necessitated that the disciples should penetrate 
 gradually into its mystery, and so they are represented in 
 the Gospels. We may observe them, unlike the populace 
 and the rulers, advancing slowly and unequally into the 
 understanding of Him whom they had learned to trust and 
 love. We should indeed be careful not to attribute to their 
 earlier expressions the full significance which at a later time 
 they would undoubtedly themselves have attributed to the 
 same words. The title " Son of God," as used by Nathanael, 
 or even as used by Peter at Caesarea Philippi, probably did 
 not express to the speaker the developed theological con- 
 ception of the Epistles. But it seems impossible to read 
 the Gospels sympathetically without perceiving that the 
 divine mystery in Christ took shape in the apostles' minds 
 in a firm belief in his divinity as they received and pon- 
 dered upon his words and deeds and character. They dif- 
 fered among themselves, doubtless, in the degree to which 
 this belief had as yet taken distinct shape. Philip merited 
 Christ's reproachful question, " Have I been so long time 
 with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that 
 hath seen me hath seen the Father." But soon they could 
 all say, " Now are we sure that thou knowest all things : 
 ... by this we believe that thou earnest forth from God ; " 
 and after the resurrection Thomas may be well thought to 
 have uttered the conviction of the rest as well as of himself : 
 " My Lord and my God." Again, therefore, the biblical 
 narrative depicts the apprehension of this truth proceeding 
 in accordance with the progress of external events. 
 
 If, once more, we examine the Acts and the Epistles, the 
 same method of revelation appears. The disciples' appre- 
 hension of their Lord's real nature was verified by the tran- 
 scendent facts of his resurrection and ascension. To the 
 natural power of these facts there was also added, accord- 
 ing to the biblical narrative, the illuminating power of the 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 61 
 
 Spirit, whose specific function it was to take of the things 
 of Christ and show them unto his disciples. What they 
 had formerly perceived dimly was now made clear, and as 
 the true character of Christ's work was more and more 
 definitely unveiled to them the true nature of Christ him- 
 self was also more explicitly apprehended. The course of 
 their thought, so far as it can be traced, appears to have 
 been backward from the divine dignity of Christ as mani- 
 fested in his resurrection and ascension to the essential 
 divinity of his nature and the clearer recollection of his 
 divine claims. Yet the process is represented as still grad- 
 ual and as conditioned by the progress of events. Peter's 
 speeches in the early chapters of the Acts show that his 
 thought mainly rested as yet on the external proofs of the 
 Messiahship of Jesus, and do not give expression to any 
 definite conception of the Lord's essential divinity. Neither 
 did the course of events during the earliest period in the 
 apostolic age evoke developed teaching upon this point. 
 The Judaistic controversy dealt with another aspect of 
 Christianity, so that in the first and second cycle of Paul's 
 Epistles we find the incarnation assumed and stated, but 
 not argued or elaborated. It was at a later period, when 
 apostolic teaching was forced to meet the attack of theo- 
 sophical errorists, that the truth of the incarnation was both 
 explicitly asserted and defended. Then we are elaborately 
 told of the dignity of Christ's person both before he came 
 to earth and after he assumed humanity ; his sublime self- 
 humiliation is made to be an example for our imitation; 
 his infinite superiority to all other messengers from God is 
 used to set forth the sufficiency and finality of his priestly 
 work of salvation ; and the last surviving apostle completes 
 the testimony of his colleagues by exhibiting in Jesus the 
 eternal, personal, divine Word, who, by manifesting in the 
 flesh, through word and deed, the character and will of God, 
 
62 THE INCARNATION 
 
 had completed revelation, and had performed the work by 
 which the salvation of his people is made secure. 
 
 In thus hastily outlining the way in which the incarnation 
 is progressively presented in the Bible, I have not thought 
 it necessary to cite passages in proof. My object is simply 
 to direct attention to the fact that the doctrine is brought 
 out in dependence upon the history. When this is con- 
 sidered, the testimony of the Bible on this subject appears 
 doubly valuable. It does not present the truth after the 
 manner of a theoretical treatise, but as first a revelation of 
 facts through which the truth was almost forced upon the 
 minds of the disciples, and into the full purport of which 
 they penetrated gradually. A mythical explanation is im- 
 possible, since the doctrine arose under the pressure of 
 attested and external events. It is equally impossible to 
 regard it as the offspring of dogmatic speculation. The 
 incarnation, when biblically considered, seeks no confirma- 
 tion from philosophy. It is made so exclusively dependent 
 on historical facts that, as we have seen, the expectation of 
 an incarnation only fragmentarily appears in the Old Testa- 
 ment, and in the New its unfolding is the result of external 
 evidence which to the apostles was convincing and irresis- 
 tible. The Bible, therefore, presents the incarnation not 
 as a speculation, and not primarily even as a dogma, but 
 as an historical fact. This feature of its teaching should 
 surely weigh heavily in our estimate of its testimony. 
 
 2. Closely connected with this relation of the doctrine 
 to history is the next fact to which I call attention, that 
 the incarnation, when biblically considered, appears most 
 prominently as a stupendous moral truth, and again sec- 
 ondarily as a theological dogma. This, too, is an example 
 of the characteristic method of the Bible. It usually ad- 
 vances from the concrete to the general ; from example to 
 principle ; from life to its analysis and explanation. To it 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 63 
 
 truth is not abstract, but embodied ; God is not absolute 
 Being, but Creator, King, Benefactor, and Father. In large 
 part the Bible is like nature, where truth lies in actual 
 operation, to be discovered, analyzed, and systematized by 
 the student. In part, however, the Bible is like science, by 
 which existing truth is pointed out and reduced to state- 
 ment. But in the Bible the living truth in concrete form 
 usually appears first and the doctrinal statement follows, 
 so that both aspects appear in their proper relation and 
 proportion. 
 
 The incarnation, then, biblically considered, appears 
 preeminently a living, moral fact in human history. Take, 
 for example, our Lord's testimony to his divine nature as 
 recorded in the Gospels, and observe the practical pur- 
 poses for which it is always made. If he sublimely de- 
 clared that none knoweth the Son, save the Father, or the 
 Father, save the Son, it was that he might immediately 
 add, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest." So when he called him- 
 self the Son of man — a phrase used, doubtless, with refer- 
 ence to his representative assumption of humanity — it was 
 that he might indicate the spirit which, after his example, 
 should animate his followers, or the character of his mis- 
 sion upon earth, or some other practical inference. In 
 the Fourth Gospel the moral significance of the incarna- 
 tion appears no less than in the Synoptics, though it was 
 written more in a theological interest than they were. In 
 the fifth chapter Christ's equality with the Father is rep- 
 resented as a state of uninterrupted communion, and this 
 in order that the Son may bring forth life out of death 
 (vs. 17-29). In the seventh (ver. 57) his obedience to and 
 loving dependence on the Father are made the type of the 
 relation of the believer to himself. Again, his testimony 
 to his perfect knowledge of the Father (vii. 29) and to his 
 
64 THE INCARNATION 
 
 superiority to the limitations of time (viii. 58) is given for 
 the purpose of defending his authority to teach. In the 
 phrase, " I and my Father are one " (x. 30), the moral 
 unity of the Father and the Son is shown by the context 
 to be quite as prominent a thought as the unity of being 
 which in the light of other passages we must also see in- 
 cluded in it ; and hence the force of the following argument 
 by which he met the Jews' charge of blasphemy: " If he 
 called them gods, unto whom the Word of God came, 
 . . . say ye of him, whom the Father sanctified and sent 
 into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am 
 the Son of God ? " In his last prayer, likewise (ch. xvii.), 
 the union and communion of the Father and the Son are 
 again and with great emphasis represented as the spiritual 
 basis and type of the union and communion of believers 
 with one another and in Christ with God. Not, therefore, 
 as a separate, unrelated doctrine is the incarnation set forth 
 by our Lord, but as a moral phenomenon, revealing God 
 to man and man to himself, forming the foundation upon 
 which the renewed life of his people rests, and the spiritual 
 image to which they are to be conformed. 
 
 Nor do the Epistles lose this apprehension of the moral 
 and practical aspect of the truth before us, even when they 
 express a dogmatic conception of it. Thus Paul saw in it 
 the means by which a truly representative Redeemer was 
 provided for men, when he wrote, " But when the fullness 
 of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a 
 woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them 
 which were under the law, that we might receive the adop- 
 tion." (Gal. iv. 4, 5.) Again, he appeals to it as a reason 
 for Christian generosity, reminding the Corinthians of him 
 who, " though he was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, 
 that ye through his poverty might become rich." To the 
 Colossians he would make the fact that in Christ " dwelleth 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 65 
 
 all the fullness of Deity bodily " the assurance that they were 
 complete in him; while the Philippians are urged by the 
 Apostle to let the same self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice 
 which Christ exhibited in becoming man be their mind also. 
 So when we turn to the Epistle to the Hebrews the incar- 
 nation appears as the bond of union between Christ and 
 his people, and the assurance to them of their high priest's 
 sympathy and effectual intercession. Finally, to St. John 
 the incarnation of the divine Word meant the revelation of 
 light and life to those who received him, and the entrance 
 by them into a divine fellowship. According to both Paul 
 and John, union with Christ is the condition of becoming 
 the sons of God, since he is the incarnate Son of God ; 
 but the latter apostle most emphatically sets forth the mys- 
 tery of Christ's person as the fundamental fact on the basis 
 of which grace and truth have been brought to man in the 
 knowledge of God, and whereby, through faith in Jesus as 
 the Word of God, man's joy may be full. 
 
 Thus the biblical writers never lose the perception of the 
 moral and practical significance of the incarnation. To 
 them it was not in the least an abstract or philosophic 
 dogma, but a sunlike truth, shedding beauty and fertility 
 on human life. It was the actual revelation of God in his 
 most gracious aspect ; the dawn of light, the birth of life, 
 to a darkened and dead world. 
 
 While, however, it is of the utmost importance to pre- 
 serve, as the Bible does, this moral or dynamic view of the 
 incarnation, it would be unjust to conclude that the biblical 
 writers did not also penetrate to or intend to teach a really 
 dogmatic view of it. Such a conclusion is contradicted by 
 the obviously dogmatic thought and statement of many of 
 the New Testament Epistles, especially those of Paul and 
 John. It is idle to deny to these writers the intellectual 
 articulation of Christian truth, as well as sharp and clear 
 
66 THE INCARNATION 
 
 distinctions between truth and error and the careful choice 
 of words to define the doctrines of the faith. It is a favor- 
 ite idea with some theologians that this dogmatic process 
 was Hellenistic and post-apostolic, and that it introduced 
 an alien, intellectual element into the creed of Catholic 
 Christendom. But in fact this process is not peculiarly 
 Hellenic, but universally human ; and since the biblical 
 writers were thinking men, and since the belief of the early 
 church was confronted from the beginning by intellectual 
 opponents, there soon appeared in the apostolic Epistles 
 clearly cut and well-articulated statements of the dogmatic 
 content of the new religion. It is true that this process is 
 not carried so far in the Bible as to include the whole sys- 
 tem of religious truth in a single and formal series of state- 
 ments, or to preclude the formulation of such by the later 
 church. But it is also true that the biblical writers are not 
 content with the moral apprehension of the truths of Chris- 
 tianity. While that is prominent, as we have seen, it leads 
 back with them, as it must do with all intelligent believers, 
 to an intellectually constructed dogma. 
 
 In respect to the incarnation the dogmatic statements of 
 Scripture cannot be questioned. Thus we have Paul's most 
 carefully chosen language in the Epistle to the Colossians. 
 Writing against the theosophical errorists of Asia, he used 
 words to describe the incarnation which were evidently in- 
 tended to combat incipient Gnosticism : " God was pleased 
 that in Christ all the pleroma [i.e., the entire manifestation 
 of the graces and attributes of Deity] should dwell." Again, 
 and still more definitely, " In him dwelleth all the pleroma 
 of the Deity in a bodily form." Here we have the direct 
 statement that Christ is the absolute Deity and no inferior 
 being; the statement that he is the manifestation of the 
 entire plenitude of divine attributes ; the statement that his 
 is a continuous embodiment of this manifestation of Deity ; 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 67 
 
 and the statement that this manifestation of Deity in Christ 
 is " in bodily form," ocooaTtxdi? — a word intended to describe 
 the real, corporeal nature of Christ's physical frame, and 
 selected, doubtless, to combat expressly the notion that 
 matter is evil. 
 
 Again, the classical passage in the Epistle to the Philip- 
 pians is perhaps even more clearly a dogmatic construction 
 of the doctrine, and that, too, in closest connection with a 
 practical exhortation ; for the Bible never conceives of doc- 
 trine as unrelated to life, or of spiritual life as capable of con- 
 tinuance and growth without the nourishment of doctrine. 
 In this passage we note the careful use of 'ev jxopcp-^ d-tob 
 to describe the condition of Christ's preexistent activity, in- 
 volving "equality with God," and of (j-opcpTjv 006X00 to describe 
 his condition upon earth. Mopcpv] is " form " ; the intrinsic, 
 distinguishing peculiarity of an object; that by virtue of 
 which it is what it is ; unlike v/yma, which describes the ex- 
 ternal appearance. Hence the Apostle asserts the posses- 
 sion and exercise by the preincarnate Christ of the divine 
 attributes, and the possession and exercise of real humanity 
 after his incarnation. He also represents our Lord's self- 
 humiliation as his voluntary act, and traces it as the work 
 of one person from its beginning in heaven to its consum- 
 mation on the cross. I shall have occasion to recur to 
 this passage again. What I have said is sufficient to show 
 that to this biblical writer the moral power of the incarna- 
 tion rested on its dogmatic idea, and that, as the moral as- 
 pect led to the dogmatic, so the latter was necessary for the 
 continuance and power of the former. 
 
 I might present other Christological passages, particularly 
 those in the Johannean writings ; but what I have adduced 
 must suffice. They make very clear the relation of the 
 moral and dogmatic aspects of the incarnation as it is pre- 
 sented in the Bible. The consequence is that this truth, 
 
68 THE INCARNATION 
 
 biblically considered, appears neither an abstract proposi- 
 tion nor a vague, unreasoned impression. It is powerful 
 through its reality. It is presented as a living fact, supreme 
 in its revelation of true deity and true humanity ; appealing 
 to our gratitude, our aspirations, our wondering love and 
 hope ; bringing heaven to earth and God to revealed Fa- 
 therhood, and thus truth to man. Yet it is also set forth 
 in dogmatic form, and the dogmatic truth is authoritatively 
 proclaimed. This, however, is only to say that it is a real 
 truth, capable of exact statement. Being such, it is then 
 depicted for us in the living colors of the Bible's sublime 
 portrait of the living Christ. 
 
 3. I pass on to observe, in the third place, that the in- 
 carnation, biblically considered, stands in definitely assigned 
 relation to other parts of God's revealed activity with re- 
 spect to this world. The Bible presents this truth in its 
 relation to other truths, and the correct observance of these 
 relations is essential to a complete biblical view of the 
 doctrine. 
 
 (1) Thus the incarnation, biblically considered, is related 
 fundamentally to the biblical representation of God as a 
 Trinity. It was the eternal Son, the divine Word, who be- 
 came incarnate — not the Father, nor the Holy Spirit. At 
 the same time the Bible teaches an harmonious action of 
 all three Persons of the Trinity in respect to this as to other 
 external acts. The Son became incarnate in accordance 
 with the will of the Father, so that he spake constantly of 
 having been sent by the Father, and of doing the work 
 which had been given him to do. The incarnation is rep- 
 resented also as performed through the agency of the Spirit, 
 the latter producing and endowing the humanity which the 
 Son assumed, so that when incarnate he was filled with the 
 Spirit. All this is in strict accordance with the biblical 
 doctrine of the Trinity, in which the Son is ever represented 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 69 
 
 as the personal Agent of the Father in the accomplishment 
 of his will ad extra, while both Father and Son are repre- 
 sented as operating by the Spirit. In such operations the 
 Son ever manifests the subordination of office and the lov- 
 ing obedience toward the Father which the name " Son " 
 implies, and in harmony with which he is represented as 
 assuming the work of human salvation. 
 
 Now the effect of this fundamental relation, in the bib- 
 lical view, between the incarnation and the Trinity is to 
 represent the former as having been accomplished in pro- 
 foundest harmony with the nature of God — a harmony so 
 profound that the fact of the incarnation results immedi- 
 ately in the revelation of the triune nature of Deity. From 
 this it further follows that the Bible does not present the 
 incarnation as a mechanical or necessary process of evo- 
 lution, but as effected upon the basis of the personal and 
 free, though most certain, relations which it represents as 
 existing between Father, Son, and Spirit. The Father sent 
 and gave the Son. The Son agreed to come. The Spirit 
 produced and endowed the human organ. These are free 
 acts, not necessary processes. In fact, by resting its view 
 of the incarnation on the fundamental conception of God 
 as a Trinity, the Bible at once removes its teaching from 
 the two extremes into which the idea of incarnation has 
 elsewhere been carried. It appears neither as a necessary 
 process of the self -manifestation of God, such as panthe- 
 ism has taught ; nor as the pagan notion of an isolated or 
 partial appearance of deity on the part of one of the gods. 
 Its relation to the Trinity causes the biblical view of the 
 incarnation to present us with the idea of a real manifesta- 
 tion of the absolute Deity, which is yet the result of a 
 freely devised and adopted plan on God's part, performed 
 in strictest harmony with his revealed intrinsic nature. 
 
 This relation to the Trinity is the fundamental relation 
 
70 THE INCARNATION 
 
 in which the incarnation is placed by the biblical writers ; 
 but we should next note the relation in which our doctrine 
 is placed to the several phases of God's activity with refer- 
 ence to the world. 
 
 (2) Thus it is placed in relation to the work of creation. 
 The incarnate Son is always represented as having been the 
 Creator of the entire universe, or, more strictly, as having 
 been the Agent through whom creation was accomplished. 
 He is represented also as the One in whom the universe 
 consists, " upholding all things by the word of his power." 
 He is set forth as being, in his relation to the universe, the 
 image of the invisible God, " the effulgence of his glory and 
 the very impress of his nature," by whom and for whom 
 all things in heaven and earth, both material and rational, 
 were made. He is thus represented as sustaining to crea- 
 tion the position of revealed Deity, creation's Author and 
 Lord. 
 
 Now the effect of this upon the incarnation, biblically 
 considered, is not only to give the highest dignity to the 
 person of our Lord, but to represent his incarnation as in 
 harmony with, and as the culmination of, God's relation 
 to the universe, even as we have seen it to be in harmony 
 with the biblical representation of the nature of God him- 
 self. Thus the biblical view implies that the incarnation is 
 not an act to which the divine Son is compelled by any 
 force outside of himself ; but, as he is the sovereign Author 
 of the universe, so he freely exercised his power in becom- 
 ing man. Again, it is implied that he no more limited his 
 intrinsic nature or subjected himself to unforeseen contin- 
 gencies by becoming incarnate than he did by creating the 
 universe. In both cases, indeed, he determined to work 
 out the divine will by means of instruments created for the 
 purpose, and to be used in accordance with the qualities 
 bestowed upon them. Hence both the creation and the 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 7 1 
 
 incarnation were the beginnings of historical processes. 
 But in neither case did the Son's transcendence over the 
 instrument cease. As by creation he did not cease to be 
 God, so by incarnation he did not become merely man. 
 And then, still further, it is implied that, since the Incar- 
 nate One was the Creator, the work which he undertook in 
 becoming incarnate is in some sense the highest operation 
 of his creative activity. Creation is here carried to its 
 highest point. As man is the goal of the creation of this 
 world, so the God-man is the highest realization of that 
 goal ; and as, according to the Bible, the history of man is 
 to be the means of supremely revealing God's glory to the 
 entire universe, the God-man becomes not only the end of 
 this world's formation, but the climax of the entire uni- 
 verse itself. Such, for example, is the teaching of the first 
 and second chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Be- 
 ginning with the Son as Creator, the writer explains his in- 
 carnation by showing that in him the promised dominion 
 of man had been already accomplished, and would be 
 shared by those who are in him. In the fact that Christ 
 was the Creator the early church found a ready answer to 
 the dualistic philosophy of Gnosticism, and by the same 
 fact the biblical doctrine of the incarnation appears not as 
 an isolated, unrelated fact in the scheme of nature, not even 
 as merely exalted by the dignity of the Incarnate One, but 
 as itself a part of the crowning work of the Creator. This 
 is not to say that, if man had not fallen, the incarnation 
 would still have taken place. That hypothesis lies wholly 
 beyond the scope of the biblical survey, since the Bible 
 looks on the introduction of sin as included in the divine 
 plan. The hypothesis in question, therefore, is a purely 
 unverifiable speculation. But by linking the incarnation 
 with creation, by teaching that it was specifically the 
 Creator who became incarnate, the Bible seems to intend 
 
72 THE INCARNATION 
 
 to represent the incarnation as the climax of the works of 
 God, and in profoundest harmony, as I have said, with his 
 relation to the world, as well as with his own internal 
 nature. 
 
 (3) Further, the Bible places the incarnation in close 
 relation with God's self-revelation before and elsewhere. 
 In its view God is emphatically a self-revealing God. He 
 may, and does, judicially give men over to blindness and 
 hardness of soul, so that they do not see or worship him ; 
 but he is none the less self-revealing, and the revelations 
 given through chosen men have an analogy in his wider 
 self-manifestation in providence and nature. 
 
 I have already shown in part that the incarnation stands 
 in organic relation in the Bible to the earlier teaching of 
 the Old Testament concerning God and salvation. We 
 should now add that it is set forth as giving to the church 
 the final and complete revelation of God, so that it unites 
 the earlier foregleams in one clear light. " God, having of 
 old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers 
 portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these 
 days spoken unto us in his Son." It could be shown that 
 every revelation of God in the Old Testament, as holy, 
 just, good, true, almighty, omniscient, etc., is included in 
 the revelation of God in Christ, each quality and attribute 
 being blended in true proportion. In fact, according to 
 the Bible, Jesus is Jehovah. The revelation has only 
 become more explicit with the explicit disclosure of the 
 Trinity. " He that hath seen me," said Christ, " hath seen 
 the Father." 
 
 But the biblical view goes farther, and represents the 
 divine Logos not only as the Agent of creation, but also 
 as the Agent of the moral and rational illumination of all 
 intelligent beings. John brings this out most plainly. He 
 says of the Logos that " in him was life, and the life was 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 73 
 
 the light of men." Of Christ he could say, "There was 
 the true [original] light, which lighteth every man, coming 
 into the world." In our Lord's declaration that he was 
 the light of the world, the way, the truth, and the life — a 
 declaration which referred, undoubtedly, to his incarnate 
 activity — the apostle saw the historical and supreme culmi- 
 nation of his wider activity as the unincarnate Logos. Hence 
 he writes in his first Epistle : " The life was ma?iifested, and 
 we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the 
 life, the eternal [life], which was with the Father, and was 
 manifested unto us." We should observe the care and 
 caution with which this truth is stated. There is no iden- 
 tification of the Logos with the reason or conscience of man. 
 But the statement is that he is the life of the universe, i.e., 
 its organizing, controlling, guiding principle, since, as Paul 
 says, " in him all things consist," and that to intelligent be- 
 ings this manifestation in the universe of an intelligent and 
 ethical principle is the light which falls on their intelligences, 
 and so provides for them a rational and ethical interpreta- 
 tion of existence. The thought appears to be essentially 
 that of the Apostle Paul when he wrote to show man's 
 accountability under the light of nature : " The invisible 
 things of him since the creation of the world are clearly 
 seen, being perceived by the things that are made, even his 
 eternal power and divinity." John, however, represents the 
 Logos as the Mediator of this divine revelation, and then 
 adds : " The Logos became flesh, and dwelt among us (and 
 we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from 
 the Father), full of grace and truth. . . . No man hath seen 
 God at any time ; the only begotten Son [or ' God '], which 
 is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." 
 
 Thus the incarnation is set forth as the climax of the 
 self-revelation of God. It did not occur to the biblical 
 writers to discuss its possibility. They testify to it as a fact, 
 
74 THE INCARNATION 
 
 and then they show that it is the most adorable instance of 
 that determination of God to reveal himself to his creatures 
 to which Israel's prophets had borne repeated witness, and 
 of which the universe itself is, in their view, but an instru- 
 ment. 
 
 (4) Once more, the incarnation is related most closely of 
 all, by the biblical writers, to the work of redemption. It 
 is impossible for me here to discuss this most important 
 matter completely. I can only observe that, biblically con- 
 sidered, the incarnation was in order to redemption. The 
 biblical idea of the mode of redemption is that the Son of 
 God, by becoming man, was enabled to, and actually did, 
 meet the claims upon men of divine justice and law; did 
 in his life on earth perfectly obey for them the divine will 
 which they ought to, but cannot, perform, and did suffer 
 and die in their place, being made a curse for them, being 
 made sin for them ; so that on the ground of his faultless 
 righteousness those who by the Spirit are united to him are 
 literally redeemed, soul and body, from the guilt of trans- 
 gression, and will be delivered from the power of sin. It 
 is beyond the scope of my article to prove this, but it is 
 necessary to remark that this redemption is plainly repre- 
 sented, not only as the work of Christ, but as only possible 
 through his having become incarnate, and as the immediate 
 end of the incarnation. (Cf. Col. ii. 9-15 ; Phil. ii. 5-1 1 ; 
 Heb. ii. 9-18.) The mission of the divine Son is not rep- 
 resented as culminating in his becoming incarnate, but in 
 his obedience to the Father's will even unto death. He 
 was made a little lower than the angels that he should taste 
 death for every man. It behooved him in all things to be 
 made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful 
 and faithful high priest. The Son of man came to minister, 
 and to lay down his life a ransom for many. The song 
 of the saved is not an exultation over the humanity of the 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 75 
 
 Son of God, but a thanksgiving that he redeemed them 
 unto God and washed them from their sins in his own 
 blood. 
 
 The point to be noted is that according to this view the 
 incarnation is not an end in itself, but the means to an end. 
 The Bible does not teach that we are saved by the incarna- 
 tion, but through the incarnation, and by the cross. As we 
 now look back upon its relation to the Trinity, to creation, 
 and to the self-revelation of God, we must partly correct 
 our impressions. Not by itself is it related in the Bible to 
 these truths, but as the first moment, the fundamental con- 
 dition, of redemption. The biblical climax in Christ's life 
 is not at Bethlehem, but at Calvary, and the incarnation 
 appears the important biblical truth which it is because in 
 the biblical view it is the astonishing condition of the yet 
 more astonishing redemption of men by the sacrifice of the 
 Son of God. 
 
 When, then, we observe the way in which the incarna- 
 tion is related in the Bible to other truths, a fair idea may 
 be formed of the way in which it was intended to be prac- 
 tically conceived. It appears as a free act of sovereign 
 power and grace. It appears, more particularly, as part 
 of a moral scheme deliberately devised by God for suffi- 
 cient reasons. It is so sublime an act of wisdom, power, 
 love, and of desire on God's part to bestow the highest life 
 on guilty man, as to be the point where all his previous ac- 
 tivities converge, and where his whole nature is disclosed. 
 And yet it is not the ultimate end of the divine purposes. 
 It provided rather the condition on which the attainment 
 of the ultimate end depended. It is presented in the Bible 
 as an essential part in a scheme of grace which began with 
 the eternal counsels of the Godhead and is to end in a re- 
 deemed multitude of sons of God, who are joint heirs with 
 the Incarnate One, and conformed unto his image, because 
 
7 6 THE INCARNATION 
 
 they have been redeemed by no less' a ransom than his 
 precious blood. 
 
 4. Having thus endeavored to exhibit the way in which 
 the incarnation appears to me to lie in the Bible in its rela- 
 tions to historical fact, to moral life, and to theological truths, 
 I venture in conclusion to inquire briefly how, in the light 
 of biblical statements, we are to conceive of the incarnation 
 itself. I do so with especial reference to those aspects of 
 the subject which have been most discussed in recent years. 
 The greatest possible fidelity to the statements of the Bible 
 is here required. The nature of the incarnation so entirely 
 transcends our experience and understanding that purely 
 philosophical constructions of it must be quite untrust- 
 worthy. The biblical student must faithfully follow the 
 record, and not allow speculative theories to surreptitiously 
 intrude themselves. 
 
 Assuming, then, the real and personal divinity of our 
 Lord, we may with equal confidence affirm that the Bible 
 attributes to him an equally real and complete humanity, 
 both corporeal and rational. The reality of his corporeal 
 nature I may assume to be biblical without proof. No one 
 is now disposed to revive the early Docetic view. But the 
 reality and completeness of his rational human nature must 
 be equally held on exegetical grounds. He is called " the 
 man Christ Jesus." " In all things it behooved him to be 
 made like unto his brethren ;" and the context of this latter 
 statement shows that the writer had in mind both the like- 
 ness of nature and of sorrow which exists between Christ 
 and men. Again, he is said to have become flesh, to have 
 been born of the seed of David according to the flesh; 
 and the usage of the term " flesh " proves that it included 
 in such passages the mental and moral as well as the 
 physical nature of man. Again, we read in the Philippi- 
 ans that he took the "form of a servant," where, as already 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 77 
 
 observed, " form " (f*.op<p rp) means not the appearance, but 
 the essential and distinguishing qualities. Appeal may also 
 be made to the evidence afforded by Christ's life. He 
 called himself the Son of man. He exhibited the features 
 of man's mental and moral life, such as affection, sorrow, 
 ignorance, and growth, sin alone being excluded. Cer- 
 tainly the biblical portrait is that of one really divine and 
 really human, "born of the seed of David according to 
 the flesh, declared [or defined] to be the Son of God with 
 power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead." * 
 
 But while there is little need for me to show that the 
 Bible presents Christ as equally and completely God and 
 man, the question may be raised how we are, in conformity 
 with biblical teaching, to apprehend this mysterious union. 
 The church has replied by declaring Christ to possess two 
 natures, including two wills and intelligences. Many mod- 
 ern theologians reject this dogmatic construction, and main- 
 tain that the divinity and humanity of our Lord may be re- 
 garded as two aspects of one nature, or, at least, as two sides 
 of one consciousness, which must be considered a human 
 consciousness, whatever may be said of the substance in 
 which it inhered. With the philosophical basis of either 
 view I have here nothing to do. But my article would be 
 incomplete if I did not attempt to state the biblical evi- 
 dence upon this phase of our subject. 
 
 I find myself, then, confronted with several facts which 
 appear inconsistent with the modern theory. 
 
 * Whether "the spirit of holiness" (Rom. i. 4) describe Christ's 
 divine nature, after the analogy of Hebrews ix. 14, or whether it de- 
 scribe his human spirit, in either case the Apostle teaches the reality 
 and completeness of both the divinity and humanity of our Lord, for 
 even on the latter view his " spirit" is represented as the organ of his 
 divinity. 
 
78 THE INCARNATION 
 
 (i) First, the humiliation of our Lord, including his in- 
 carnation, is represented as a continuously voluntary act. 
 His determination to become incarnate, and the act of 
 becoming so, are certainly represented as voluntary. Its 
 whole moral value is described as consisting in the free- 
 ness with which it was done. It thus became the act of 
 self-sacrifice and self-humiliation that it was. " He who 
 was rich became poor." " He thought not equality with 
 God a matter for grasping, but made himself of no ac- 
 count, and took the form of a servant." The point, how- 
 ever, to which I call attention is that, after the act of 
 incarnation had been accomplished, the incarnate life of 
 humiliation on earth is represented as still a continuous act 
 of voluntary lowliness. Thus, in Philippians, he not only 
 took the form of a servant and became in the likeness of 
 men, but, being found in fashion as a man, he humbled 
 himself and became obedient unto death. His subjuga- 
 tion to law is here described as a continuously voluntary 
 act and as the continuation of the same purpose and per- 
 sonal determination by which he became man. So in the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews we read : " Forasmuch as the chil- 
 dren are partakers of flesh and blood, himself also in like 
 manner [::apa-)v7ploJS, "in every respect"] partook of the 
 same." Both the act of incarnation and all his experi- 
 mental identity with man were parts of one plan of volun- 
 tary self-humiliation. The same fact must appear, I think, 
 constantly to the careful student of the Gospels, for in these 
 Christ appears as possessing from the beginning a perfectly 
 clear knowledge of the real work he was to do and the 
 means by which it would be done, but as letting it appear 
 to others gradually, and as freely choosing to hide his real 
 glory in the somber life of popular disappointment, suffer- 
 ing, shame, and death. In the biblical view the self-humili- 
 ation of Christ does not appear as the resignation of a pious 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 79 
 
 man to strange providences, nor even as the vigorous and 
 willing acceptance of shame and death by one who in the 
 ordinary human way found such to be required of him. 
 It appears as a continuous act of free self-abasement, be- 
 ginning in the preincarnate state, and carrying out on 
 earth the purpose for which the coming to earth had been 
 determined. This implies, however, the continuance of his 
 divine consciousness. 
 
 (2) Again, the incarnation is represented as not interrupt- 
 ing the conscious relations of the Father and the Son in the 
 Trinity. In fact, those relations are principally revealed to 
 us through the declarations made by or about the incarnate 
 Son. Note, for example, the present tenses in Christ's lan- 
 guage : (< No one knoweth the Son, save the Father ; neither 
 doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whom 
 the Son willeth to reveal him." Observe that Christ replied 
 to the charge that he made himself equal to God by declar- 
 ing that both in view of the conscious relations between 
 the Father and him, and in view of the office assigned 
 him by the Father, he had a right to advance such a claim 
 (John v. 19, etc.): "Verily, verily, I say to you, The Son 
 can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father 
 doing. . . . For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth 
 him all things that himself doeth." These words are per- 
 haps unfathomable. They indicate the essential relation- 
 ship of Father and Son as at once necessary and yet ethical. 
 They lead us into the very mystery of the Trinity. But 
 they also disclose this relation as continuous in the incar- 
 nation, so that, whatever addition the latter made in the 
 consciousness of the divine Son, it did not interrupt his 
 conscious relation to the Father. To the same effect are 
 many other passages in the Fourth Gospel. Hence the 
 apostle could prefix to it his summary in this language : 
 " No man hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten 
 
8o THE INCARNATION 
 
 Son [or God], who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath 
 declared him." The divine consciousness thus appears in 
 the biblical representation along with the truly human and, 
 therefore, limited mind of Christ, and both must be pre- 
 served in our conception of him. The divine Son did not 
 lay aside the jtoptpty &zob when he took the |xopuv;v §o6\oo. 
 It was " the being equal with God " which he did not con- 
 sider a matter for grasping, and by that we are apparently 
 to understand an external manifestation of the equality — 
 " the glory which he had with the Father before the world 
 was," of which he spake in the presence of his disciples as 
 something which he had relinquished. But he could still 
 say, "I am in the Father, and the Father in me;" "He 
 that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 
 
 (3) Still again, the Sonship of Christ, as we should expect 
 from the foregoing, is represented as absolutely unique, and 
 the sonship of believers as something different from it. To 
 him belongs the title " God's only begotten Son." His Son- 
 ship is eternal, though manifested in time. The Word was 
 God, and always had been God, though he became flesh. 
 The sonship of believers, on the other hand, is dependent 
 on their legal and moral union with the incarnate Son of 
 God. To them he gave the right to become sons of God. 
 They are joint heirs with him. They have received the 
 adoption. They have been born again after his likeness. 
 When the two sonships are viewed purely in their moral 
 aspects, they are, indeed, evidently alike. This illustrates 
 the fact already stated, that in the Bible the incarnation is 
 presented preeminently in its moral aspects. The charac- 
 ter of the sons of God consists in conformity to the ethical 
 relationship of the divine Son to the Father. Looking 
 forward to the final consummation, John could write, " Be- 
 loved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made 
 manifest what we shall be. We know that, if it shall be mani- 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED Si 
 
 f ested, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him even as he 
 is." But, though ethically alike, the two sonships are rep- 
 resented as metaphysically different, the one being the mani- 
 festation in a man of the same personal Sonship which 
 exists eternally in Deity ; the other being the reproduction 
 in men, who are the creatures of God, of the divine Son's 
 ethical relationship to the Father, that they, too, may have 
 fellowship with him. Believers are not represented as being 
 or becoming divine. The sole phrase which seems to imply 
 such — viz., " that by these ye may become partakers of the 
 divine nature " — is to be interpreted ethically, unless it is to 
 be regarded as opposed to the rest of Scripture. Believers 
 obtain sonship in dependence entirely upon Christ, being 
 sons in him. Hence the two cannot be biblically considered 
 as differing only in degree, but must be held to differ also, 
 and most fundamentally, in kind. 
 
 (4) Once more, it appears to me that we shall most 
 consistently apprehend the nature of the incarnation as 
 presented in Scripture by taking as our key-word the one 
 habitually used for the purpose by St. John. This is the 
 word "manifested." "The life was manifested," he says, 
 " and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you 
 the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was 
 manifested unto us;" "He was manifested to take away 
 sins;" "He was manifested that he might destroy the 
 works of the devil." Similar language is found in other 
 apostolic writers. Thus Peter writes of " Christ, the Lamb 
 without blemish, foreknown before the foundation of the 
 world, but manifested in these last times on your account." 
 The term, however, is in exact accord with the point of 
 view of the Fourth Gospel, where the life of Christ is set 
 forth as the manifestation in the flesh of the spiritual life 
 and light which the eternal Word mediated from the be- 
 ginning of creation, but which was finally revealed for 
 
82 THE INCARNATION 
 
 men's salvation, in accordance with the loving will of the 
 Father, by the redeeming work of his incarnate Son. 
 
 In modern times, however, the word which has been 
 most widely taken as the key-word to the incarnation has 
 been Hivwotv. (Phil. ii. 7.) This has also been pressed to 
 its literal and etymological meaning, so that the incarnation 
 is represented as the Son's emptying himself of his divine 
 attributes or consciousness. The incarnation is thus con- 
 ceived of as the self-depotentiation of God, and the Incar- 
 nate One as consciously man alone, though, according to 
 some writers, gradually returning again to the remembrance 
 and finally to the exercise of what he had been, and to the 
 full enjoyment of perfect communion with the Father. 
 The " kenosis " has almost become equivalent, in modern 
 theology, to this particular theory. But I am compelled to 
 criticize this interpretation of the Apostle's language. In no 
 other instance in the New Testament is y.s\>6i» to be pressed 
 to its bare etymological meaning, but always signifies " to 
 make of no account," "to esteem as nothing." (See Rom. 
 iv. 14; 1 Cor. i. 17 ; ix. 15 ; 2 Cor. ix. 3.) Why should it 
 be thought to denote in this case a metaphysical process of 
 self-limitation, especially when the very object of the pas- 
 sage is to represent Christ as the ethical example which his 
 people are to imitate ? Moreover, the language of the 
 Apostle is simply kaoxob exevcooev, making the action of the 
 verb terminate simply and emphatically on the person of 
 the divine Son, and without expressly stating what he relin- 
 quished in becoming man. We may, indeed, infer the lat- 
 ter from the preceding verse, but the emphasis of the Apos- 
 tle's thought is not on it, but simply on the entire absence 
 of self-seeking and self-glorification on the part of the pre- 
 incarnate Christ. Still further, the modern interpretation 
 appears plainly inconsistent with the evidence which I have 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 83 
 
 already offered for the undiminished divine consciousness 
 of Christ when doing his work on earth. 
 
 The incarnation, therefore, when biblically considered, 
 should be described as a manifestation rather than an occul- 
 tation. It is represented as a particular mode of the reve- 
 lation of God. As God reveals himself in nature by act- 
 ing through the agency of second causes, without destroying 
 their reality and without contracting himself to their mea- 
 sure, but by using them in accordance with their nature, 
 dwelling in and working through the physical universe, 
 though transcending it in his own life, so we may believe that 
 the divine Son, who is the image of the invisible God, and 
 the Creator of the universe, united to himself a complete hu- 
 man nature, and manifested himself through it, in accor- 
 dance with its constitution, but preserving intact his tran- 
 scendence over it. This union was more intimate than that 
 between nature and God, for it is represented as personal, 
 so that the humanity of Christ was the immediate organ of 
 his divinity. The result, also, was a higher manifestation of 
 God than nature could mediate, since human nature is 
 spiritual, and could therefore directly embody spiritual quali- 
 ties. Viewed in contrast with those glories which are the 
 natural manifestation of God's supreme excellence, the 
 "form of a servant " was utter self-humiliation for the Son 
 of God, while the life of obedience and the death of atone- 
 ment were even more so. But viewed in relation to man's 
 ignorance and need, and in relation, also, to the ruin in 
 which mankind lay, it was the highest manifestation of God, 
 disclosing in perfection his nature and his will ; and it was 
 so, according to the biblical idea, just because it was a con- 
 tinuously voluntary and gracious act of divine manifestation 
 through a real human life. Such seems to me to be the bib- 
 lical way of conceiving of the incarnation itself. If so, then 
 
84 THE INCARNATION 
 
 we cannot suppose that Christ's divine Sonship differs from 
 ours only in degree, nor that he was possessed of but a 
 single conscious intelligence, nor that he laid aside his di- 
 vine activity when he became man. It appears to me that 
 the church has rightly embodied the biblical teaching in 
 her dogma of two natures, and that, far as the statement 
 may be beyond our comprehension, it is the only existing 
 formula which takes all the biblical facts and statements 
 into account. To the philosophical objector the best reply 
 is that in fact the divine and human did coexist in one his- 
 torical life. It is, of course, no explanation of the mystery. 
 But it brings to us a Master truly and consciously divine, 
 freely revealing through a truly and consciously human life 
 the character and will of God — a revelation which is per- 
 fectly trustworthy, because the person of Christ transcends 
 in his divine consciousness the human; and at the same 
 time perfectly apprehensible by us, because the medium 
 through which the manifestation is made is as human as we 
 are ourselves. 
 
 If now it be asked how in this view the, growth and 
 limitation of our Lord's humanity is to be reconciled with 
 the continuance of his conscious deity, I reply that the 
 Bible makes no attempt to reconcile them. It fearlessly 
 affirms both, and any attempt to adjust them lies beyond 
 the biblical survey. I cannot forbear remarking, however, 
 that the continuously voluntary character of the self-mani- 
 festation of God in Christ appears to supply the means for 
 such an adjustment, so far as it may be possible to our 
 thought. For in each stage of the growth of his humanity 
 the divine Son may be conceived as intentionally manifest- 
 ing himself in accordance with the condition of his human 
 organ. As child and boy, he manifested himself in a life 
 natural to these stages ; and, since his public ministry had 
 not begun, nothing more was necessary. As his human 
 
BIBLICALLY CONSIDERED 85 
 
 nature matured, and was, we are told, especially sanctified 
 by the Spirit, such a life of divine revelation as is recorded 
 in the Gospels became possible. It does not destroy the 
 reality of his humanity, nor the bond by which it was 
 united to his divinity, if we conceive of these as respec- 
 tively used and caused by the will of the latter. He could 
 speak and act under the limitations of his humanity. He 
 could manifest weariness and sorrow. He could even ex- 
 press ignorance. He could cry, " My God, why hast thou 
 forsaken me? " But, again, he could speak out of the un- 
 dimmed consciousness of divinity, as we have seen ; and 
 even when most evidently human we may comprehend in 
 some measure that the human was the voluntary expression 
 of his divine love or of his freely assumed and exercised 
 work of redemption. As it is unbiblical to suppose that the 
 incarnation destroyed the transcendence of the Son, so, it 
 appears to me, his genuine humanity seems the more attrac- 
 tive, helpful, and noble when it is regarded as the deliberate, 
 continuous manifestation of the eternal Son of God through 
 a medium which we appreciate by our own self-knowledge, 
 and yet through which we can see far beyond our own 
 limitations. 
 
 In concluding this meager study of the incarnation, bib- 
 lically considered, I will only say that the Bible has accom- 
 plished for religion the marvelous work, not only of giving 
 the idea of an incarnation which is consistent with theism 
 and with man's responsibility, but also of actually describ- 
 ing an incarnate God. It has dared to present the world 
 with the story of such a life and the portraiture of such a 
 person ; and lo ! the life and the person are felt by all to 
 perfectly fulfil the transcendent idea. We may well affirm 
 that nothing but the historical truth of the incarnation could 
 have produced such an idea of it as that which the Bible 
 gives ; and the best proof of the idea, in turn, is the fact of 
 
86 THE INCARNATION 
 
 the life of Jesus Christ. For the more closely we approach 
 that life the more overwhelming does the conviction become 
 that he was and is, what his church has ever confessed 
 him, perfect God and perfect man. It will be well for the 
 church if she keep this truth, not only in its integrity, but 
 in just those relations and aspects in which it is presented 
 in the Bible. 
 
IV 
 THE INCARNATION HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 
 
 CHESTER D. HARTRANFT, D.D., 
 President Hartford Theological Seminary. 
 
 37 
 
IV 
 
 THE INCARNATION HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 
 
 In tracing the history of the doctrine of the incarnation 
 we find the dogma of the Trinity its precursor, and neces- 
 sarily bound up with its solution. One cannot define the 
 human generation of our Lord without considering the 
 question of his preexistence, and, therefore, of his relation- 
 ship to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. Further, in any 
 sequential presentation, we cannot always classify the dis- 
 cussions current in a given age in a logical way, for they 
 do not always originate or develop in that fashion ; nor can 
 we invariably preserve the same rubrics for succeeding 
 periods, although one is more able to do so with these 
 affiliated themes than with some others. The limits of 
 such an occasion do not allow any full treatment of these 
 dogmas as they have unfolded themselves in the centuries. 
 We must pass over great names ; we must be silent about 
 great treatises ; we cannot pause for estimates or criticisms 
 of systems. My hearers must accept a rude outline, which 
 has as its style a necessary dryness and stiffness. Only the 
 transcendence of the subject can give it luminosity. 
 
 I. The First Period. — The post-apostolic age was a singu- 
 lar secession from the lofty quality and penetration of its 
 predecessor. Experience was about to essay its wings in 
 the new air and garden bequeathed it by the parent time. 
 The tendencies in doctrine moved in germinal forms only ; 
 they attained but little development, because there had 
 
90 THE INCARNATION 
 
 arisen no real argument to and fro, concerning the truths 
 themselves ; they had been accepted in their simplicity. 
 In Clemens Romanus, Polycarp, and Diognetus, we find 
 an unquestioning support of the evangelical belief. Christ 
 is recognized as the Son of God, both by quotations from 
 the New Testament and by direct assertion ; as if that were 
 a necessity of any true thought about Christ. Yet in every 
 naming of the affiliated persons the subordination of the 
 Son to the Father is prominent, without making any dis- 
 tinction between the internal and cosmic relations of the 
 Trinity. The humanity is set forth very positively as thor- 
 oughly real, but only in historic suggestion ; there is no at- 
 tempt at any analysis. In the teaching of the Twelve 
 there is not quite the same distinctness and height of affir- 
 mation. While the Son appears as one of the persons in 
 the formula of baptism, his subordination to the Father is 
 the predominant thought, for Jesus is the Vine and the 
 Servant, while also Lord. The earliest hymns, it would 
 seem, were the most strenuous witnesses to our Lord's deity. 
 Indeed, that conviction dominated the entire liturgical 
 thought and form, possibly even in the formulae of baptism 
 and the Lord's Supper in the Didache. With these authors 
 the operation of the incarnate Christ concerns salvation 
 mainly. There is a singular absence of the Logos idea, 
 and of his connection with the cosmic system in any phase. 
 The chief assault is upon the Docetic notion, but with no 
 allusion to any specific school who professed it. Docetism 
 must be regarded as the first effort to magnify the divine 
 nature at the expense of the human, as well as to sustain 
 the elevation and authority of the spirit over the body. 
 With almost all the primary Docetists matter was viewed 
 askance, either as evil or as lacking dignity at least. Hence 
 to ascribe genuine corporeity to God or Christ was to de- 
 grade and enslave both. In the polemic against Docetism 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 9 1 
 
 the Pseudo-Ignatius is the most decided and aggressive. 
 These letters abound in vigorous assertions of the deity and 
 humanity of Christ as the supreme realities of religion. 
 
 In so-called Ebionism we have the attempt to maintain 
 the divine unity intact. Hence some forms of it indulge in 
 a Docetic interpretation of the humanity of Christ ; others 
 lay the foundations of what is generally called dynamic 
 Monarchianism ; Jesus is but a man, yet his conspicuous 
 virtues, and certain impartations of grace and the Spirit, 
 especially at baptism, entitle him to the highest considera- 
 tion ; and in some cases worship is accorded him because 
 he is regarded as relatively divine. 
 
 Still another movement of thought appears in Hermas. 
 Existence before creation, and, indeed, a participation in 
 the divine councils concerning it, are affirmed, but it seems 
 purposely to stop short of declaring the eternity of our 
 Lord, and, therefore, his essential deity. This appears 
 very much like the beginnings of the higher rationalism, 
 which we shall encounter directly in the school of Antioch. 
 The popularity of this work must have given a wide diffu- 
 sion to this pre-Arian drift. The speculative tendency fills 
 a large space in this period in what is styled Gnosticism. 
 While Platonic in its hostile idea of evil and in much of its 
 animus, it did not hesitate to seek the comprehensiveness 
 which comes from the eclectic method. And nothing is 
 more curious in 'the phenomenal complexity and variety of 
 it, than its universality. It swept like an epidemic for a 
 century and a half over Africa, Europe, Asia, and over all 
 the provinces of these countries, and it was as many-hued 
 as the familiar racic and local notions prevalent in the reg- 
 ions it decimated ; and whatever its solution of the dual- 
 ity — whether the system proceeded from the unconscious 
 God through his evolution into consciousness or whether it 
 took as its first principle the non-existent and progressed 
 
92 THE INCARNATION 
 
 into the existent to be resolved again into the eternal blank 
 and solitude ; whether it found one or two independent 
 beginnings with corresponding independent persons, or 
 used the plan of single or dual emanation of aeons — its 
 main thought was to account for evil apart from God, and 
 to eliminate this evil and ignorance from the universe, and 
 in some cases superior knowledge itself from the psychic 
 and higher spheres, by processes of spiritual, light-subtract- 
 ing, and physical redemption. The media for this salvation 
 were the Logos, the superior and the inferior Christ, the 
 threefold Sonship, and Jesus. Some of these were made 
 to stand in more or less close -connection. Sophia was 
 constituted the material channel between the divine and 
 the human, with sufficient passion upward or downward to 
 connect the pleroma's interest in evil with the inherent 
 iniquity of matter ; or else there was a separate creator of 
 the hylic elements, with whom she became involved. In 
 most cases the humanity of the Logos or the Christ was 
 simply Docetic, because of the inherent badness of cor- 
 poreity. Into the minor forms of the system, especially 
 those that exhibited a revolutionary ethical cast, we cannot 
 enter. Suffice it to say that the aim of this massive specu- 
 lation was to vindicate and liberate the spiritual ; but that 
 spiritual was viewed ontologically only, seldom ethically. 
 As a consequence there was little salt left, even in the best 
 of the systems, to save them in the second generation from 
 corrupt practices, and this, too, in their worship. The in- 
 carnation was either by an accommodating union of aeons 
 or by Docetism. 
 
 It was easy for some of these schools of thought to run 
 into an eternal dualism, toward which Marcion and Her- 
 mogenes and parts of the Clementines incline, and which 
 Manes elaborated so popularly. 
 
 The apologists, as a rule, were of the more educated class. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 93 
 
 In them you have the same general views of the divinity 
 and humanity of our Lord, the current historic conception 
 of the incarnation, and its defense. The distinguishing 
 element in their literature is the emphasis on the doctrine 
 of the Logos. He is thoroughly identified with the Son of 
 God and the Messiah. It is he who has become man and 
 is called Jesus Christ. There is the thought of subordina- 
 tion, however, and not of equality, to the God who begat 
 him. He has the second place. Then, too, he is the first 
 product of that generation, without any sexual union, and 
 by a unique genesis. " He is the only Son which is born 
 as God's very own, being his Logos and Prototokos and 
 Dunamis, who by his own will became man." Moreover, 
 the Logos as Reason and Word is connected not only with 
 creation, but with the whole realm of creaturehood ; he is 
 Logos Spermatikos, to whom universal human reason and 
 thought are due, and eminently all the revelations, both 
 among the heathen, especially in their philosophy, and 
 among the Jews and Christians. Justin even assails a 
 trace of modalism, although that became a more promi- 
 nent feature in the earlier part of the succeeding period : 
 " For they who affirm that the Son is the Father are 
 proved neither to have become acquainted with the Father 
 nor to know that the Father of the universe has a Son ; who 
 also, being the first begotten Logos of God, is even God," 
 and he became man. We are therefore prepared to find a 
 much higher acknowledgment of the Logos as a person be- 
 gotten of the Father's substance, or the undivided essence 
 of the Father ; here is a crude and primary distinction be- 
 tween the person and the essence. Athanagoras and the 
 other apologists are a little less affirmative, although clear 
 in the deity and humanity ; and with them invariably the 
 Logos is the Son of God, and he is God. 
 
 There is still another tendency which finds the com- 
 
94 THE INCARNATION 
 
 pleteness of the incarnation and the Messianic conception 
 in new revelations and a new personality. Such were 
 the movements of Simon Magus and Dositheus, Mani, the 
 Clementines in a way, and a no inconsiderable section of 
 Gnosticism. In all these the action is represented as from 
 above downward ; it is not a dynamic elevation, but a 
 descent of God to men. Genuine Montanism, however, 
 must be distinguished from these dual incarnation systems, 
 for that is but the expansion of the universal prophetship 
 of believers, and the uninterrupted flow of inspiration by 
 the Holy Spirit ; it does not disturb, it rather confirms, the 
 fundamental tenets of the Christian faith. 
 
 We see, then, that this post-apostolic age lacks definition, 
 and it surely has little dream of analysis and synthesis of 
 dogma. Its omissions are, indeed, remarkable; neverthe- 
 less the seeds of all the later growths are already planted. 
 The little rills have already taken their rise from the origi- 
 nal fountain, and are on their way to breadth of stream and 
 violence of eddies and to volumes of rolling waters. 
 
 II. The Second Period.— -The old Catholic Church is 
 marked by the first attempts at determining the relations 
 of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and these controversies, 
 again, are potent in defining the incarnation itself. The 
 direct Christological disputes, however, begin to put forth 
 the earliest shoots. In the interpretation of God, dynamic 
 Monarchianism secured a wide geographical hold. The 
 Ebionitic name sank into desuetude, but a series of teach- 
 ers and their followers in this vein appear in all quarters of 
 the empire. While we know nothing of the positive tenets 
 of the Alogians, their very name indicates the denial of the 
 Logos as a person at least, and apparently they excluded 
 the Logos records of John from their canon. We have 
 a more positive averment of the dynamic quality in the 
 Byzantine currier Theodotus, who brought his doctrine to 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 95 
 
 Rome, where it secured recognition from the bishop him- 
 self. His tenet conceded the intervention of the Spirit in 
 the birth of our Lord, but allowed of no union between the 
 divine and the human. Christ was simply man, who, how- 
 ever, was eminently distinguished from others by God in 
 virtue of his righteousness. A later teacher of this group 
 in Rome was Artemon. There remains, however, no sen- 
 tence by which we can judge of his treatment of the dy- 
 namic concept. It is well to remember the claim set forth 
 by him, that the convictions of the bishops of Rome prior 
 to Victor (189) were of this school. 
 
 A remarkable expounder of this system was Paul, Bishop 
 of Samosata. In order to sustain Monarchianism, he re- 
 solved the Fatherhood, the Logos, both as endiathetos and 
 as prophorikos, and the Sophia into attributes of the one 
 God. He conceded the intervention of the Spirit in the 
 birth of Christ from the Virgin ; but the progress of Christ 
 into divinity was due solely to the expansion of implanted 
 excellence and worth, or else the divine reason was im- 
 parted to him in a supreme degree, but with no other rela- 
 tion than that of an energy. 
 
 A peculiar dynamic subordination tendency appears in 
 Theodotus, the banker, at Rome. Melchizedek to him was 
 a higher manifestation of God than Christ. Our Lord was 
 given a station second to that of the king of Salem, as if in 
 the latter there were more of the elements of deity, and 
 because our Lord is made a high priest after the order of 
 Melchizedek. That servant of the Most High God he re- 
 garded as a mediator for angels, while Christ was only so 
 for men. 
 
 The next tendency is modalistic Monarchianism, whose 
 first appearance we have seen combated by Justin Martyr. 
 Of course its object was to maintain the oneness of God. 
 Its incipient phase was to identify the divine beings as 
 
96 THE INCARNATION 
 
 one and the same, and particularly so with regard to the 
 Father and the Son. A variety of expressions has been left 
 us to describe this substantive identity. The Father him- 
 self became incarnate as Son, and passed through all human 
 experiences, but both these are movements and manifesta- 
 tions of the one God. It was on this account that its pro- 
 fessors were called Patripassians. The doctrine was brought 
 to Rome from the East by Praxeas and Noetus, and ob- 
 tained recognition among the bishops of that city, especially 
 Callistus, which fact led to the persecution of the subordi- 
 nationists. By this interpretation the reality of the hu- 
 manity was thought to be preserved, as well as the unity 
 of the Godhead to be confirmed. Certainly this was the 
 intention ; but the difficult questions of the immutability of 
 God, and his sovereignty in the interval of the human limita- 
 tions, were not answered by this exposition, and the phe- 
 nomena of crucifixion and death were apt to receive a 
 Docetic resolution. 
 
 Perhaps we may discover a subtler outline of modalism 
 in the fragments of Beryllus, Bishop of Arabia. The pre- 
 existence of Christ seems to have been recognized, but its 
 distinctiveness was lost, for our Lord had not his own share 
 in the essence, but possessed that of the paternal Godhead. 
 This looks like a variant of the ~Logos-endiathetos theory, 
 for apparently this paternal essence exerted no influence in 
 forming a union with human nature by means of the super- 
 natural birth. It would appear that, after all, Beryllus re- 
 garded Christ as a mere man, whose uplift was due to the 
 inherent energy of his virtue, or the communicated gifts of 
 God, or the power of the merely indwelling, but not united, 
 Logos. Origen converted him from these errors. 
 
 The subtlest and most widely diffused cast of modalism 
 was that of Sabellius. He carried it to Rome, indeed, but 
 it had its strongest following in the Pentapolis. The natural 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 97 
 
 sun in the heavens is one substance, but it has three ener- 
 gies : the form of the periphery, the capacity of light, and 
 the function of heat. Similarly God is a monad, at first 
 quiescent ; through expansion and contraction he assumes 
 successively the masks of Father and of Son and of Holy 
 Spirit, and performs their respective offices. The entire 
 monad is in each of these manifestations, and after the re- 
 spective functions are fulfilled there is the return into the 
 original divine solitariness. The processes of incarnation 
 and procession are set forth from the divine side ; the 
 human certainly loses its reality ; the phenomena do seem 
 masks, and carry the air of Docetism. By Sabellius we 
 have the abundant use of the great words which enter into 
 the portentous debate. The hypostasis, the prosopa, the 
 ousia, the homoousia, are all in his vocabulary. And this 
 very fact necessitated subsequent changes in their meaning, 
 and became a barrier to their general acceptance, and led 
 to interminable confusion in their use during the heated 
 discussions to which we come in the next period. 
 
 The school whose teaching was reaching forward to a 
 Trinitarian statement which could harmonize with the real- 
 ity of the incarnation and the distinctness of the proces- 
 sion, still labored with the problem of reconciling Godhead 
 with the facts of subordination. The interrelations of the 
 Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were not clearly dis- 
 tinguished from their operative conditions. The subordina- 
 tion was carried within the divine council itself ; the facts 
 of the ungenerate and the generate, which from human 
 analogy seem to require a sequence, added to the diffi- 
 culty. The use of the speculative terms of the Logos as 
 endiathetos, and as afterward prophorikos, complicated the 
 problem still more. Another element of disturbance was 
 the identification of the Sophia of Proverbs with the Logos ; 
 
98 THE INCARNATION 
 
 and the famous passage viii. 22, according to the Septua- 
 gint, read : " The Lord created me a beginning of his ways 
 for his works." Had they but known their Hebrew! Sub- 
 ordination, then, had to begin at its lowest rung in Dionys- 
 ius, Bishop of Alexandria, and work its way out of the 
 chaos into order and light. 
 
 Out of the multitude of writers of this period, Eastern, 
 Western, notably the presbyters whom Irenseus quotes, 
 Irenseus himself, one of the chief intellects of this date in 
 determining the old Catholic faith, Hippolytus, Clemens 
 Alexandrinus, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, to- 
 gether with the incipient church creeds so frequently alluded 
 to and quoted by them, the following tendencies became 
 apparent : 
 
 (a) Subordinationism. The extreme statement of this 
 was made by Dionysius the Great when he declared that 
 the essence [oiisid) of Christ was as alien to that of the Father 
 as the husbandman to the vine and the sailor to the boat, 
 and was like a work which had no existence before it was 
 produced. This extreme utterance was really designed for 
 a polemic against Sabellianism. Athanasius apologizes for 
 him. Indeed, the unfortunate sentence verges on the later 
 Arian position ; but under the persuasion of his namesake 
 at Rome, he withdrew his objectionable phraseology. While 
 in general the deity of Christ is confessed, and, therefore, 
 the distinctness of his hypostasis, he nevertheless is called, 
 as previously, the second God, or as a God after the God. 
 Origen also urges a difference of ousia, while in other places 
 he dwells upon Christ's selfhood, his self-activity, his dis- 
 tinctness of attributes. 
 
 {p) The persons begin to be distinguished, and the essence 
 is viewed in its differentiation from the personality. The 
 attributes are mainly connected with the hypostasis, while 
 the nature, or the essence, is looked upon ontologically or as 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 99 
 
 simple being. But one is in danger of confusion, owing to 
 the lack of clear statement as to the meaning of the terms, 
 epecially those which had been employed by Sabellius. 
 
 (c) The Logos is now one of the chief terms in the the- 
 ology, especially of the Alexandrian school under Clemens 
 Alexandrinus and Origen. The spermatic quality is one 
 of the dominating thoughts. The affinity of the Word 
 and Wisdom and Will with all nature and all humanity is 
 beautifully set forth ; a truth that Occidental theology, alas! 
 has lost sight of these many centuries, to its own narrow- 
 ness, to its own aridity, to its hostility, indeed, to the 
 beauty and import of the divine handiwork, and to the life 
 of the heathen ; to the suppression of even a poetry of 
 nature, and to the injury of the loftiest conceptions of art. 
 Then, too, the Logos, in his alliance with revelation and 
 redemption, received a stronger accent by men of the East 
 than of the West. 
 
 (d) The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son 
 was propounded by Origen, not only as a solitary unique 
 act, but as a perpetual procedure ; the Father always gen- 
 erates the Son. The disposition to suggest analogies with 
 human conception and birth, the obtrusive effort to unveil 
 the mystery in physical explanations, is indignantly repressed 
 by the chief theologians. They leave it as a proposition 
 not to be resolved by reason, but to be received as a fact 
 by faith. 
 
 (<?) Tertullian draws attention to a threefold process in 
 the filiation of Christ, which is an enlargement on the Phi- 
 Ionic Logos : (i) the immanence of the Son in the Father; 
 (2) the projection of the Son alongside of the Father in 
 the process of creation ; and then (3) the Son's incarnation. 
 This forges a logical link between the Son of God and the 
 Son of man ; it prepares the way for the development of 
 that theory of the incarnation which will soon meet us. 
 
ioo THE INCARNATION 
 
 In the direct Christology of this period, while there are 
 variations of statement in each author, while there is by- 
 no means a consensus between different writers even on the 
 more important topics, all do agree in the supernatural con- 
 ception, in the exceptional quality of the humanity, al- 
 though its general similarity with our nature is insisted upon ; 
 and a certain method of union between the human and the 
 divine is instituted. Let us look at the prominent features 
 in this doctrine : 
 
 (a) The generation. As usual, the curious pry pruriently 
 into this mystery ; but the greater minds are content with 
 the historic statement ; the participation of the Father and 
 of the Holy Spirit in the mystery is recognized ; the vir- 
 ginity of Mary is an absolute belief ; the Logos presence in 
 the conception is generally accepted, although some think 
 that the divine linked itself with the human after the birth 
 of the child. The blessed union of God and man is a 
 theme of devoutest song and creed. 
 
 (b) There is, however, a great obscurity as to the exact 
 nature of Christ's human constitution. The majority of the 
 orthodox are dichotomists. They, for the most part, insist 
 on the body and the soul as components of the man Jesus. 
 But the nous of the soul is viewed by some as not a human 
 intelligence ; the divine Logos or reason is presumed to have 
 taken its place, and the nexus of the human and divine is 
 found herein. This is an anticipation of Apollinarianism. 
 Some also waver in attributing human necessities and weak- 
 nesses, appetite and passion, to the body of Christ, and 
 they are apt to practise a moderate Docetism in the matter 
 of sleep and eating and drinking; notably Clemens Alex- 
 andrinus. There were others, again, who held that Christ 
 brought a physical frame with him from heaven ; it was a 
 celestial body in which the Logos dwelt. Such was the 
 anxiety to preserve the divinity and majesty of Jesus un- 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 101 
 
 tarnished. So difficult is it for men to see that, apart from 
 the religious and ethical problems involved, the way of 
 God is always the best, and is the highest and the dearest 
 to himself, whether it lead through lowly tracks or through 
 the most exalted spiritual realms. 
 
 (c) The union between the human and divine was not 
 defined, except in the attempt to substitute the Logos for 
 the intellect. Nor were the qualities of the natures dif- 
 ferentiated with any accuracy ; nor was the relation of the 
 person to the natures made clear, although the bent was 
 to regard the person as the Logos, and therefore divine. 
 Yet in this lay the entire area of future Christological con- 
 troversy. There was already the vocable Deus-homo or 
 Theanthropos, and the inclination of the Alexandrians espe- 
 cially was to glorify the divine and minify the human. In- 
 deed, some dared even indulge the conviction that with 
 the ascension of Christ the human nature, body and all, 
 disappeared entirely. With a school like that of Antioch 
 under Lucian, although we have no definite records, it is suffi- 
 ciently evident that the standpoint was to exalt the human- 
 ity at the expense of the divinity, and to make the union of 
 the two natures a mere relation, without a vital interplay. 
 
 There are distinct utterances, too, as to the use of the 
 divine attributes in the incarnate sphere. The word xpo<j:<; 
 is already employed to describe the reserve of omniscience 
 and omnipotence ; it was contemplated as a necessary stage 
 of the humiliation. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the testimony is universal as to the 
 sinlessness of our Lord, even by the majority of the dynamic 
 theologians. 
 
 (d) Probably the best summary of the general belief is 
 found in the statement of Tertullian's creed : 
 
 " We believe, indeed, in the one God only, nevertheless, 
 in this dispensation which we call economy. So that there 
 
102 THE INCARNATION 
 
 is a Son of this one only God, his own Sermo, who pro- 
 ceeded from himself, through whom all things were made, 
 and without whom not anything was made. He was sent 
 by the Father into the Virgin, and was born of her, Man 
 and God, Son of man and Son of God, and called Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 The creed of Csesarea gives us even a fuller Christology : 
 
 " Following the evangelical and apostolic tradition, we 
 believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the Demiurge 
 and Maker and Forethinker of all things. 
 
 "And in one Lord Jesus Christ, his Son, the only begot- 
 ten God ; through whom all things came into being ; who 
 was begotten before the aeons, from the Father, God from 
 God, the whole from the whole, the only from the only, the 
 perfect from the perfect, King from King, Lord from Lord ; 
 the living Logos, wisdom, life, genuine light, way, truth, 
 resurrection, shepherd, door; unchangeable and unalter- 
 able; the immutable image of the Godhead, and of the 
 essence, and of the will, and of the power, and of the glory 
 of the Father ; the first-born of all creation. Who was in 
 the beginning with God ; through whom all things became, 
 and in whom all things consist ; who in the last days came 
 down from above and was begotten of the Virgin, accord- 
 ing to the Scripture, and became man ; the mediator between 
 God and man ; the Apostle of our faith and the Prince of 
 life, as he says : ' I have come down from heaven, not to 
 do mine own will, but the will of him who sent me.' " 
 
 III. The State-church Period. — This stage is remarkable 
 for its ecclesiastical settlement of the fundamental points in 
 the doctrine of the Trinity, and for its equally distinctive 
 and authoritative definitions in points of Christology. It 
 is, indeed, the age of largest and fiercest controversy, as 
 well as of political interference. The union of church and 
 state in a Csesaropapistic form had its influence upon the 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 103 
 
 decisions reached. All sides invoked the imperial force, 
 and all sides in turn felt the humiliation which issued from 
 this perversion of the divine kingdom's liberty. 
 
 1. The slumbering rationalism of Antioch asserted itself 
 in the heart of Alexandria under the leadership of Arius, a 
 pupil of Lucian. His chief theses, not without manifest 
 contradiction, were : 
 
 (a) That there was a time in which Christ did not exist. 
 He is a Son ; he is begotten, and not ungenerate. From 
 not being at all, he exists. 
 
 (b) God was not always the Father, but became one 
 afterward. 
 
 (c) Christ has no part of the unbegotten one in him ; he 
 is not of the Father; he has no property in the essence 
 of the Father. 
 
 (d) He is a creature and a product; Christ is not true 
 God, but he partakes of God and is deified. He was made 
 before all other things, and not out of anything that exists, 
 and is a product of the divine will. 
 
 (<?) The Son does not know the Father accurately, nor 
 does the Logos see the Father perfectly ; therefore he does 
 not have absolutely complete powers. He is susceptible of 
 increase and decrease. He is subject to all the changes 
 of a creature. 
 
 (/) He is not the genuine and only Logos of the Father, 
 but is simply Logos and Sophia nominally, and by grace he 
 is said to be a Son and a Power. We have here an adop- 
 tional idea of the Sonship. 
 
 2. The discussion which now arose led to the mainte- 
 nance of : 
 
 (a) The identity of Logos, Wisdom, the Son of God, and 
 Jesus. 
 
 (b) The reality of the Sonship, and therefore the reality 
 of the generation. 
 
104 THE INCARNATION 
 
 (c) The definition of the perichoresis or inner relation of 
 the Trinity : the Father unbegotten, the Son generated, the 
 Spirit the object of procession. 
 
 The dogma that the Son was God, consubstantial with 
 God, having the same attributes, distinct in person, that he 
 was therefore eternal. 
 
 To attain this end a minority in the Council of Nice 
 persuaded the majority — who, indeed, held to the deity of 
 Christ, as their church creeds proved — to accept the defini- 
 tive term homoousios as the positive exposition of the same- 
 ness of essence. In spite of its previous Sabellian coloring, 
 that seemed the only word that would settle the point at 
 issue ; and it did win the day, and determined the central 
 dogma of the church Catholic. 
 
 It is well to note here, also, the phraseology of the 
 symbol concerning the human Sonship as over against the 
 Arian conception. After dwelling upon his creative energy, 
 it says : " Who on account of us men, and for our salva- 
 tion, descended, and became flesh, and became a man." 
 The great end of the incarnation was for the help of 
 humanity, for the salvation of the men who live, who stand 
 in relations, who are in sin, who struggle to better things 
 or sink to lower, who suffer, who die. This is the noble, 
 sacrificial, salvatory end of the incarnation as defined by 
 the Nicene Symbol. It is a universal benefit, for conferring 
 which the benign Logos became also a Son of man. 
 
 Into the Trinitarian and Arian battles that ensued after 
 Nicaea, we cannot enter, nor criticize the temper and fierce- 
 ness and cruelty and falsehood of most of its participants. 
 We may only indicate the suggestions of religious and politi- 
 cal compromise in order to escape from the dread and final 
 homoousia. These were mainly four: 
 
 (a) The substitution of Homoiousianism, or similarity of 
 substance. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 105 
 
 (b) The adoption of Homoism as indicating general 
 sameness, without distinct reference to the substance. 
 
 (c) The theory of Anomoism, or total unlikeness. 
 
 (d) The dropping of all allusion to the controverted 
 point. 
 
 But the Homoousia triumphed, and the state church 
 finally determined its Christological belief to be : 
 
 " We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begot- 
 ten Son of God; who was born of the Father before all 
 aeons ; Light of Light, true God from true God ; begotten, 
 not made ; consubstantial with the Father ; through whom 
 all things were made ; who on account of us men, and for 
 our salvation, descended from the heavens, and became 
 flesh from the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin, and was 
 made man." 
 
 Athanasius is doubtless the best Greek expositor, histori- 
 cally, scripturally, and practically, of the Nicene theology, 
 although by no means the best logician. The treatise on 
 the Incarnation is the positive counterpart of his Apology, 
 and is full of heart and of most loving appeal to accept 
 the excellent way of God in Christ. The incarnation 
 answers the deep needs of man, and that is his choicest 
 argument. In the other treatises there is, with the fasci- 
 nating history of the momentous debate, a repetition of 
 the arguments, mainly drawn from Scripture. The three 
 Cappadocians made no real progress in the debate. At 
 first they found it difficult to cut loose from the very positive 
 subordination views of Origen. Hilary carried the Atha- 
 nasian fervor to the West with a superior light, and some- 
 times fought single-handed against the Arian politicians. 
 It was Augustine, however, who brought a new specula- 
 tion to bear upon the doctrine of the Trinity. He vacated 
 the Eastern starting-point, as we see it particularly in the 
 Nicene Symbol of God the Father Almighty. He begins 
 
106 THE INCARNATION 
 
 with the one triune God. He also ceases to consider 
 them chiefly in their personal relationship, and builds upon 
 the psychological analogy in man, who has memory, intel- 
 ligence, and will, and yet it is the one man who possesses and 
 exercises these faculties. Alas! his analogy fails him, and 
 although he confesses the insufficiency thereof he ever re- 
 curs to it. The correspondences in the Trinity are wisdom, 
 consciousness, and love. But these are not persons, though 
 they be functions of personality. It was this treatment 
 which gave tone to almost all the subsequent Western trea- 
 tises. Yet Augustine's work on the Trinity — the affectionate 
 labor of thirty years — will always remain a high classic on 
 this theme. The Quicunque contains the clearest result of 
 the fides Catholica, asserting the Trinity, guarding against 
 confusion of the persons, upholding the unity of the God- 
 head ; for the three alike are increatus, immensus, ceternus, 
 omnipotens, and yet these are all predicates of the one 
 nature. So a bulwark against tritheism is erected. Then 
 the true perichoresis is stated: the Father was not made 
 nor created nor begotten ; the Son is from the Father alone, 
 not made nor created, but begotten. Therefore in this 
 Trinity there is no precedence, but coequality ; it does not 
 advance to the economic moment. These are the main 
 conclusions in which the Western Church rested for cen- 
 turies. The Eastern had more positive struggles with trithe- 
 ism and tetratheism. There were also two curious phases 
 of Logos teaching : 
 
 (a) The one by Marcellus of Ancyra, which represented 
 the Logos as first in a state of quiescence and then of drastic 
 energy, issuing from God in his operative occasions. But 
 the Son of God was not preexistent ; that name was won 
 by the drastic Logos in the earthly sphere ; it applied only 
 to the Christ of the Gospels. 
 
 (b) Photinus seems to have made a still broader gulf be- 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 107 
 
 tween the Logos and the Son of God. It would appear that 
 he had inclined to a more dynamic view of the humanity 
 of our Lord. 
 
 The mystic tendency developed by Dionysius the Areop- 
 agite places its goal in the undisturbed enjoyment of the 
 divine vision. The incarnation is esteemed as the medium 
 for disclosing its possibility, especially through the sacra- 
 ments. The human life of Christ, however, has no place 
 in the system, which really has more to do with the 
 preexistent Logos after the sacramental grace is once 
 established ; it loses itself in a contemplative ecstasy. But 
 this phase of belief, although it originated in the East, 
 exerted an immense influence in all branches of the church, 
 and does so to-day. 
 
 Let us now turn to the more directly Christological un- 
 foldings of this period. 
 
 (a) As we have already seen, the Arian dip subjected 
 Christ as a creature to mutations. It also limited him on 
 his preexistent side, but made him susceptible of progress 
 therein, as well as in the human sphere. It has the merit, 
 however, of drawing a profounder attention to the human- 
 ity, especially to its capacity for development. In many 
 cases, however, the boundary-lines were conceived of as 
 having in them the possibilities and even probabilities of 
 sin. Arius himself held that the human nature was pec- 
 cable. The opinions of Aetius and Eunomius tended to 
 nullify even the superior qualities of our Lord's earthly life, 
 and to make him all too much like one of us. 
 
 (b) The theandric drift also manifested itself unduly. 
 The Alexandrians were prone to this ; Athanasius himself 
 thought that the humanity was well-nigh lost in the union 
 with the divine. Hilary, in the West, reflected much of the 
 sensitiveness that characterized Clemens Alexandrinus on 
 this question. 
 
lo8 THE INCARNATION 
 
 (c) The problem of the union was taken up with decision 
 in this period first by Apollinaris. His theory was that of 
 a trichotomous constitution, consisting of the body, the un- 
 reasoning soul, and the reasoning soul. Now in Christ the 
 Logos took the place of the rational soul. This was not 
 the incarnation itself, which lay in the fact of the Logos 
 becoming flesh, but it did furnish the basis of the union 
 and the unity as well. Here would be the throne of the 
 thought and the will, by which the entire human life might 
 be kept in harmony with the divine moral necessity. This 
 would prevent a wrong choice ; it would also compel an 
 upward development of both soul and body. And this too 
 furnished the fairest opportunity for the interpenetration of 
 the divine into the human. The decision of the councils, 
 however, affirmed the completeness of the human constitu- 
 tion of Christ ; he had a rational and an appetent soul and 
 a body, or a spirit, soul, and body, according to another 
 psychological view. Such was the confirmation of the per- 
 fect humanity of our Lord. 
 
 (d) There came next into dispute the way in which the 
 two natures stood related to one another. The Alexandrian 
 tendency was to make it a real, natural unity, and in such 
 wise, (i) according to one position, that the human was 
 more and more absorbed into the divine ; and, (2) accord- 
 ing to another impression, that there resulted a tertium 
 quid, namely, a real Theanthropos, an entirely unique genus, 
 a God-man. Both persuasions began to posit other medi- 
 ators, especially by elaborating the cult of Mary. She was 
 adored as the Theotokos. This second shade of the physical 
 unity developed into Monophysitism, whose profession sub- 
 sequently led to a permanent division in the church. In 
 the evolution of this doctrine such refinements of discus- 
 sion arose as these : Had Christ a corruptible body or 
 not ? Again, although he was a Son, was his body ere- 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 109 
 
 ated ? Others, again, believed that he had brought a divine 
 body with him into the earth. We cannot enter into phases 
 of conciliar action regarding these larger and smaller de- 
 bates; we must confine ourselves to indicating the main 
 trend. 
 
 The Antiochans, on the other hand, made the union 
 consist in a mere contact — synapheia. In some writers the 
 sharpest lines were drawn between the dual elements, but 
 as a rule the theologians held to the dignity of the human 
 nature, and worshiped it with the divine. They also de- 
 sired to separate the majesty and glory of the divine from 
 all the limitations and suffering of humanity ; they did not 
 like such expressions as Theotokos, or the phrases that de- 
 picted God as subject to anguish or as dying on the cross. 
 They allowed for but little intercommunion of the attri- 
 butes, whether as between person and natures or as between 
 the natures themselves. In their study of the manhood of 
 Jesus the following theses were asserted : 
 
 (a) That Christ in his humanity is peccable, although 
 he did not sin. 
 
 (b) That in his humanity he was ignorant of many things 
 and was capable of learning and improvement ; in other 
 words, his manhood was progressive. This agnostic thought 
 had its representatives, strange to say, among the Monophy- 
 sites also — such are some of the cross-purposes of theology. 
 
 (c) That there was, therefore, a manifest chasm between 
 the divine and the human; there was no interplay of the 
 attributes. 
 
 (d) That, consequently, the humiliation of Christ in- 
 volved the kenosis of the divine attributes, the actual sur- 
 render of exercise, although again here some held only to 
 the voluntary concealment of them. 
 
 (<?) There was a sort of parallel, after a favorite habit of 
 Gnosticism, between the life of Christ in the incarnation 
 
no THE INCARNATION 
 
 and onward and the redemption of the race. Christ as the 
 man was put in constant harmonized comparison with the 
 race as a whole. 
 
 (/) That his human nature is without personality. The 
 person is divine in which the divine nature subsists, and 
 into which the manhood is assumed. On the other hand, 
 there was a certain trend, and claim as well, for a dual 
 personality corresponding to the two natures. 
 
 These conflicting schools, with alternating success, finally 
 closed their individual preferences in the compromise of 
 Chalcedon, whose symbol is of the highest Christological 
 import. 
 
 The subsequent efforts to win the Monophysites led to 
 such concessions as theopaschism, a compromise which in- 
 volved a real physical unity. And still later the effort to 
 establish, by imperial decree, the monotheletic tenet that 
 there is but the one will and theandric energy in Christ, was 
 another such surrender. The church, however, refused to 
 accede, and insisted on a dyotheletic confession — that is, a 
 will and energy for each nature. Will and doubtless con- 
 sciousness were thus taken from the person and centered 
 in the natures, an important psychologic result, which re- 
 appears in Protestant Christological researches. 
 
 One of the clearest statements of these Christological con- 
 clusions is to be found in the Quicunque. As to the incar- 
 nation it teaches that Christ is : 
 
 i . The Son of God from the substance of the Father, be- 
 gotten before the ages ; and that God is man from the sub- 
 stance of his mother, and born in the world. 
 
 2. Perfect God, as before shown in the section on the 
 Trinity; perfect man also, having in his constitution a 
 rational soul and human flesh. 
 
 3. Equal to the Father according to divinity, inferior to 
 the Father according to his humanity. 
 
 4. He is the only, the one Christ, not by conversion of 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED ill 
 
 the Godhead into flesh, but by the assumption of human- 
 ity into God. 
 
 5. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but 
 by unity of person. 
 
 6. For as the rational soul and the flesh constitute one 
 man, so God and man constitute the one Christ. 
 
 The writers who finally shaped the Greek theology on 
 these points were Leontius of Byzantium and John of 
 Damascus. We would draw attention to a few of the 
 distinguishing points of the latter : 
 
 1 . God was never without the Logos ; rather, the Logos 
 is generated from him. He is enhypostatic, not like our 
 reason or utterance ; he never lives apart from God. 
 
 2. The genesis of the Son of God was without time and 
 without beginning; for he was not produced from non- 
 existence into existence. He is the splendor of the glory, 
 the impress of the substance of the Father ; the living wis- 
 dom and power ; the Logos who is enhypostatized. He is 
 coeternal with the Father. His divine generation must be 
 distinguished from creation. 
 
 3. The generation itself is eternal. He is of the same 
 eternal essence, just as fire and light are simultaneous. The 
 perichoresis, so far as the dyad is concerned, consists in 
 this : the Father is ingenerate, the Son is generate ; for he 
 is of the essence of the Father, begotten outside of time, 
 and without beginning. He is not an organon or instru- 
 ment, but a native force. 
 
 4. John ascribes properties to the persons and hence to 
 the person of Christ. There are also idiomata of the 
 divine nature. The persons are in one another, yet with- 
 out confusion and mixture ; so with the natures of Christ. 
 It is the Logos-person, who is incarnated through Mary. 
 The idiomata of person and natures are communicable. 
 Beyond the theology of John of Damascus the Greek 
 Church made no progress in these themes. 
 
H2 THE INCARNATION 
 
 From him we turn to the new periods of world and 
 church history. 
 
 IV. The Western Germanic State Church. — The orthodox 
 ecclesiastical statements add nothing to the theme under 
 review. But there are certain revivals of ancient trends, 
 which once more lead to repetitions of the old arguments, 
 with here and there a valuable contribution. 
 
 (a) The theory of adoptionism was projected by certain 
 Spanish bishops, and after being suppressed in its birth- 
 place, it was some centuries later resuscitated in parts of 
 southern Germany and Italy. The central teaching was 
 that Christ was indeed the Son of God, by nature divine ; 
 in his humanity, however, he bore that title, not by birth, 
 but by adoption, just as we are incorporated into the 
 heavenly household. This theory, of course, would lead 
 to the rupture of the continuity of the Sonship, and assur- 
 edly militates against the identity of the Logos and Jesus. 
 
 (b) It is sufficient to mention the unseemly inquiries into 
 the physiological conditions of the conception and birth and 
 nurture of our Lord. These, however, were very favorite 
 topics. The Mary and Anna cult, as a consequence, took 
 considerable access in this medieval period. 
 
 (e) Peter Lombard taught that Christ was born sinless ; 
 that it was the divine nature rather than person that was 
 incarnated, and that Christ in his human nature was not 
 an individual; he had no independent being, because he 
 was impersonal ; he was rather aliquid than aliquis; or, as 
 the Master's enemies expressed it, God became nothing 
 in the incarnation. Strong as the trend toward eviscer- 
 ating the humanity had become even in the West, this 
 caused a bitter controversy. He was charged with nihil- 
 ism because of this neutralization of the manhood. The 
 controversy served to bring into clearness, especially 
 through Walter of St. Victor, the psychological position 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 113 
 
 of the church, that nature, although destitute of a distinct 
 personality, does not lose its claim to individual being. 
 From which it ought to have followed, that will and con- 
 sciousness are predicates of the nature rather than of the 
 person as such. 
 
 (d) The speculative idealism of John Scotus Erigena. The 
 Trinity with him is rather appellational and attributive ; the 
 names signify no functions. In his evolutionary panthe- 
 ism the period of the Son is simply a great unformed, 
 undistributed, and unconscious aggregate. From its mixed 
 features the Spirit comes to individualize and separate and 
 complete. The Son is idealized as a potency, and yet is 
 not God. Nor does the historic Christ come into any full 
 connection with this idealized Christ of the primal universe. 
 But in him all the race is viewed as inherent ; what he does 
 every man does. We participate in the work wrought by 
 him ; we are treated as one in him and he in us. The in- 
 carnation, and hence the redemption, is universal. In this 
 speculation lay much of the force afterward developed in 
 some phases of mysticism and in the idealism of modern 
 times. While he drew vastly from the Pseudo-Dionysius, 
 his Christological bent was not sacramental, but pantheistic, 
 which viewed all as a monad. 
 
 (e) It is well, also, to remember the enormous growth of 
 the sacramental Christology in the medieval church, both 
 by its elaborate symbolism and particularly by the doctrine 
 of transubstantiation, a creative act, whereby the chosen 
 elements of nature are converted into the body and blood 
 of Christ, which in turn leads to the reception into the entire 
 constitution of man — body, soul, and spirit — of the com- 
 plete human Christ — and why not of the divine ? Thus 
 does the dearest mystery become a base act of eating, and 
 symbolism is inverted ; as with the cradle, so with the cross ; 
 as with the cross, so with the body that suffered thereon. 
 
H4 THE INCARNATION 
 
 (/) An old conception was restored by Rupert of Deutz. 
 He claimed that the incarnation had a cosmic purpose in- 
 dependent of salvation. Christ would have come even if 
 the first Adam had not sinned. It was a necessity of the 
 divine idea to complete the universal order; to give the 
 crown to manhood ; to bestow also upon Adam what he« 
 would not have been able to attain without the fall. This 
 conception, however, obtained no ecclesiastical nor ex- 
 tended scholastic recognition ; but it did find much accep- 
 tance among the mystics, both of the scholastic and the free 
 orders, and among some of the Reformers before the Refor- 
 mation. 
 
 (g) The Anselmic interpretation of the incarnation was 
 soteriological. Christ became flesh to connect himself with 
 our salvation ; it was the preparation for the temptation, 
 the ministry, and the cross, in their vicarious features. The 
 coming of Christ into the flesh would not have been a part 
 of the divine economy had not man fallen and made his 
 future endlessly hopeless, unless he were restored through 
 the interposition of God's love and the Son's generous will. 
 
 Into many minor questions of the medieval theologians 
 we cannot enter. They all seek to identify quality with 
 personality ; to require of an abstraction that it shall live ; 
 of an idea that it shall be, after all, a congeries of ideas, and 
 so become being. Thought and being, or will and being, 
 or love and being — these are asserted to be the same, but 
 they refuse to lose their distinctness. Aquinas makes intel- 
 ligence the Father and will the Son, while the Holy Ghost 
 is their mutual love ; and Duns Scotus demands of intelli- 
 gence that it desire and so produce the Son, and that it 
 reflect and so spirate the Holy Spirit; while scholastic 
 mysticism sought to make love and God identical. 
 
 The inadequate treatment of the incarnation after Anselm 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 115 
 
 was doubtless due to the growing usurpation of mediatorial 
 functions by the church. 
 
 The nominalism of Roscelinus led him to regard sub- 
 stance as a term only ; for if the three persons were actually 
 consubstantial, he claimed that they would each have to 
 be incarnated in Christ. But we may argue, that if there 
 be no point of unity in the one essence, the Triad must be 
 resolved into a tritheistic group ; he would give us three 
 independent Gods. The harmony of the incarnation and 
 its purpose would be entirely destroyed. This was a uni- 
 form danger of nominalistic philosophy, as tetratheism was 
 for the realists. 
 
 Medievalism adds really nothing substantial to these 
 great doctrines, for the simple reason that it did not study 
 the Scriptures in their clear, plain meaning. With the elab- 
 orate allegorical system of interpretation there remained 
 no sure foundation in the books of revelation. Even the 
 philosophic principles were borrowed from the worn sys- 
 tems of Plato and Aristotle. With all the acuteness, and 
 sometimes astuteness, of the schoolmen, they carry us into 
 no worthy new fields, and do not expand or cultivate the old. 
 
 V. We now turn to the Modem Period. 
 
 (a) In the Roman Church there has been no further 
 authoritative attempt to define the Trinity or any point of 
 Christology, save by the tenet of the immaculate conception 
 of the Virgin Mary, "the doctrine which holds that the 
 Most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her con- 
 ception, by a singular privilege of the grace of Almighty 
 God, through the protection of the merits of Christ Jesus, 
 the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all 
 stain of original guilt." Even this does not go much be- 
 yond Peter Lombard, and is a pitiful result. 
 
 (b) The Greek Church, in its theologians and confessions, 
 remains by the conclusions of John of Damascus. While 
 
n6 THE INCARNATION 
 
 it elaborates the doctrine of the Virgin, it does not attain 
 the logical result of the Roman statement of the tenet. 
 Thus in Dositheus : " We believe that the Son of God, our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, made the kenosis ; that is, he assumed 
 in his hypostasis the human flesh from the Holy Spirit in 
 the womb of the Virgin Mary, and so was conceived and 
 incarnated, and was born without giving pain or throes to 
 his own mother, according to the flesh, and without lesion 
 of her virginity." Philaret's catechism contributes no new 
 research in either rubric bearing upon the incarnation. Its 
 exposition of the various phases of the creeds is generally 
 clear and excellent. It confines itself, in accordance with 
 the symbol it interprets, to the soteriological view of the 
 incarnation. 
 
 (c) Protestantism. As we turn to the religious revolution 
 we note : 
 
 i. The attempt to restore the mediatorial office to Jesus 
 Christ, as the Prophet, the Priest, and the King, and, there- 
 fore, to banish all inferior intercessions and authorities from 
 heaven or from earth. 
 
 2. The attempt to live in the direct dependence of faith 
 upon the all-sufficient work of Christ, and to imitate his 
 holy example, as the standard of religion and morals. 
 
 3. The attempt to simplify the concept and number of 
 the sacraments, so as to deliver the church and nature from 
 the incubus of a false symbolism. 
 
 4. The attempt to ascend to the spiritual directly, to lift 
 the heart to the right hand of God, or to recognize Jesus 
 and the Holy Spirit as present invisibly, rather than to bring 
 down God into all visibility and into the sphere of sensuous 
 perceptions. 
 
 5. The attempt to come to the Scriptures as plain books, 
 with no esoteric teaching to be obtained by either allegorical 
 or churchly keys. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 117 
 
 Now all these inward upheavals, this longing for liberty 
 and simplicity, this assertion of freedom in Christ back and 
 forth, necessarily caused a revival of theological study. 
 But in the beginning there was not so much research con- 
 cerning the affiliated doctrines under consideration as one 
 would think, simply because the great councils had given a 
 bond of union for Romanism, Grecism, and Protestantism. 
 These matters were not in dispute ; there was at least the 
 outward consensus. The Protestant symbols contain no 
 new element in the discussion, save in two respects. In 
 the progress of the controversy concerning the Lord's Sup- 
 per, Luther defined the relation of the two natures as one 
 of intercommunion of attributes, whereby he substantiated 
 the ubiquity of Christ's body. Certainly there had been 
 much loose language as to the interrelation of the natures. 
 What influence they exerted upon one another, and how they 
 were coordinated in their thought and energy, had never as 
 yet been logically determined. In the progress of the Lu- 
 theran side of the discussion the following thoughts appeared : 
 
 1. The human nature is capable of the divine. It can 
 be enlarged enough to receive not only its impartations, 
 but can be used as a vehicle or instrument for the infinite 
 and the eternal. 
 
 2. The attributes are attributes of the natures, and not 
 of the person exclusively. 
 
 3. The bond of union is not in the person, but in the 
 natures; the perfect interpenetration and communion of 
 their proper qualities do produce the true unity, and in 
 that the union must be found. 
 
 4. The development of this humanity largely ceased to 
 be ethical from the Lutheran standpoint ; progress in char- 
 acter through self-determination and through the exercise 
 of native virtues was put into the background, because of 
 the transcendent infusion of the divine nature. 
 
n8 THE INCARNATION 
 
 It is true that the Melanchthonian section controverted 
 some of these points, and that many conceived multipres- 
 ence to be a better idea than ubiquity ; but the compromise 
 in the Formula of Concord left the burden of victory with 
 the ultra- Lutheran division. After that symbol has handled 
 the reality of the union and guarded against the confusion 
 of natures, it states the attributes of each. Those of the 
 human are mainly physical ; there is, strange to say, not a 
 solitary lineament of the moral image of God as a counter- 
 part of the divine. Then the intercommunion of these na- 
 tures is aggressively stated, and hence, too, God is man and 
 man is God. The Virgin Mary conceived and bore the 
 true Son of God ; she is truly the mater Dei. The threefold 
 division of the communicatio obtained quite a recognition 
 in later stages of the debate : 
 
 i. That by which the two natures imparted their attri- 
 butes to the person — genus idiomaticum. 
 
 2. That by which the person imparted its qualities to the 
 natures — genus apotelesmaticum. 
 
 3. That by which the divine nature conferred its energies 
 upon the human — genus majcstaticum. 
 
 4. A fourth was suggested later, namely, the genus tapei- 
 noticon, by which the human imparted its qualities to the 
 divine. 
 
 The Reformed churches, in this discussion, varied be- 
 tween different positions : 
 
 1 . A tendency to hold the strictest lines of divergence be- 
 tween the natures, and especially to a denial of the capa- 
 city of the human for the divine. A great wall was raised 
 between the infinite and the finite. 
 
 2. A purpose to confine to the divine person the greater 
 work of our salvation. 
 
 3. Others, again, acknowledged the God-man's agency 
 as a unit in redemption. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 119 
 
 4. An insistence upon the operation of the Logos extra 
 carnem as continuous, while the Logos with the human 
 nature also performed its offices. 
 
 5. They did allow the humanity to work more indepen- 
 dently, religiously, and ethically within its own limits, and 
 made much of the office-work of the Holy Spirit, and the 
 general development under infusions of grace, and the exer- 
 cise of native sinless powers, especially in the earthly min- 
 istry. 
 
 The original Melanchthonian tendency, and the Crypto- 
 Calvinistic movements, and the later freer attitudes of the 
 faculties of Helmstadt and Tubingen gradually brought 
 many of the Lutherans to a position very similar to that 
 of the Reformed on this question. 
 
 And here it will be well to note the most philosophic 
 and scriptural view of this period — that which was modestly 
 averred by Caspar Schwenckfeld. He held to the general 
 definitions of the church in all enunciated points, but be- 
 yond that he drew attention to the fact that while the 
 identities of Christ's humanity are many, there are also dif- 
 ferences. There is the sinlessness ; there is the union itself ; 
 but there is also the fact that God was his Father, in the 
 incarnating process. He is as truly the Son of God by his 
 human birth as he is by the eternal generation, and that to 
 no prejudice of the elements derived from his holy mother. 
 Moreover, it is the law of humanity to be a partaker of the 
 divine nature ; it must be supereminently so of a humanity 
 thus divinely produced. Its obligation of progress bears 
 equally upon body, soul, and spirit, Godward and in God- 
 similitude, to be a partaker of God ; but this is not a shar- 
 ing in Christ's own divine nature ; he does not participate 
 in himself, we must observe, it is in the general Godhead. 
 The natures are never confused by this progress ; although 
 the resemblance increases, it can never become immer- 
 
120 THE INCARNATION 
 
 gence, and it can never be consubstantial. This seems the 
 most scriptural of all the Christologies, and contains within 
 itself the most symmetrical and proportionate explanations 
 of the incarnation. And while the Reformer limits its pur- 
 pose in its first step to the soteriological idea, and is agnos- 
 tic as to what ought to have been done by God had not 
 Adam fallen, he holds to the accompanying cosmic effects 
 of that indwelling in the flesh. All nature is concerned in 
 it as connected with man, and participates in the glories of 
 the filial redemption. 
 
 An allied question in this period was, What disposition 
 did the Logos make of the divine attributes and functions 
 in the state of humiliation ? How could the human nature 
 be ignorant of certain divine facts and suffer under various 
 other limitations ? How could Christ exert his authority 
 if he laid aside his powers ? The general attitude of the 
 Lutherans in the secondary Reformation years is expressed 
 in the Formula of Concord : " In the state of humiliation 
 Christ deprived himself of the majesty which was always 
 his, and remained so in the personal union. Wherefore he 
 did not always make use of this majesty, but only when it 
 seemed good to him." The theologians of Tubingen held 
 to the possession, and made the kenosis consist in the con- 
 cealment, of these attributes. Christ had them under his 
 control, and exercised them, or not, in a hidden way, so that 
 he would appear wholly as man, while a God incognito. 
 Probably few controversies in the Lutheran body have 
 been more bitter than this. Others, following the Univer- 
 sity of Giessen, claimed the possession of the attributes, but 
 the surrender of their use on occasion ; and this became 
 the dominant opinion. In our own century the reopening 
 of this question has led to the following positions : 
 
 i. That the Logos, after all, does not possess necessarily 
 the complete divine attributes. Being capable of change, 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 121 
 
 he elected to strip himself of these qualities and become 
 entirely a man ; and subsequently regained, through the 
 exaltation, his original condition. 
 
 2. That the Logos has emptied himself of the non-ethical 
 attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence 
 during the earthly career. 
 
 3. That the Logos has the capacity to reduce his powers 
 into the human and finite limits, so that they shall be oper- 
 ative only in the bounds of the human nature. 
 
 4. That the Logos lays aside his consciousness and is 
 guided solely by the human consciousness and development. 
 
 5. That the Logos put by his S6£a, toward whose re- 
 sumption in its fullness, with the addition of human glory, 
 his ministry and suffering and triumph prepare him. 
 
 Such are some of the solutions proposed for this mystery. 
 There is not one of them that satisfies either reason or 
 Scripture or the desire of man ; and yet the study thereof 
 must not be vacated. 
 
 The clearest and noblest discussion of the Trinity and 
 the person of Christ, among the Reformation giants, is that 
 by John Calvin. Not to analyze his thought, which adds 
 nothing new to our problem, I would yet draw attention 
 to his own attitude toward definitions of terms in these 
 dogmas : " If, then, the words have not been rashly in- 
 vented, we should beware lest we be convicted of fastidi- 
 ous levity in rejecting them. I could wish them, indeed, 
 to be buried in oblivion, provided this faith were uni- 
 versally received : that the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Spirit are the one God; and that, nevertheless, the Son is 
 not the Father nor the Spirit the Son, but that they are 
 distinguished from each other by some peculiar property. 
 I am not so rigidly precise as to be fond of contending for 
 mere words." While he defends the Nicene and Chalce- 
 donian definitions with lucidity, I have adduced this testi- 
 
122 THE INCARNATION 
 
 mony rather as (i) a defense of his breadth and simplicity ; 
 (2) as a voice from the far Reformation century akin to the 
 sounds of discontent in our day, which criticize the ancient 
 terms for their inadequacy, and cry for a return to utter 
 simplicity in stating the theory of the immanent Trinity. 
 
 Protestantism moved from its first confessional attitude 
 in the Reformation, to the scholastic theologies, built on 
 the symbols. There were colossal theologians, Lutheran 
 and Reformed, the latter of every nationality ; there were 
 colossal systems, but they did not move beyond the con- 
 fessions. In breaking up the deadness of this level, two 
 powerful factors were set in play, philosophy, inductive 
 and subjective, and rationalism. This was followed by a 
 period of idealism, paralleled by criticism, especially of an 
 historical cast ; and so we reach our day. The doctrines of 
 the Trinity and the incarnation have passed through those 
 gradations. We cannot trace them chronologically in each 
 of these stages. We must be satisfied with the effort to 
 group the different modern trends. Narrow, indeed, are 
 the circles of human thought. The ancient world had 
 all the germs, and considerable unfolding of the possible 
 phases, of our doctrine, and it is, after all, mainly in the 
 old categories that we must now move. The West seeks 
 to break loose from the Augustinian analogies, even though 
 it may resort to abstract statements of the immanent Trin- 
 ity. Many, also, stand in open revolt against ecumenical 
 definitions. We may note : 
 
 1. The revival of subordination theories. These are 
 especially apparent in the Arminian theologians. The im- 
 manent Trinity was idealized by some, and made to give 
 place to the economic order. We may adduce Clericus, 
 who says, in effect : The eternal Spirit is compelled to 
 maintain within himself many orders of thought at the 
 same time. The threefold self-determination of God agrees 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 123 
 
 well with the thought of numerical unity. Through a pecu- 
 liar process of thought God presents himself as Father; 
 through two others as Son and Spirit. These processes of 
 thought are within the circle of God himself. They do 
 proceed into acts, and as such they may be called per- 
 sons. — This language makes the immanent Trinity one of 
 subordinated ideas, and the economic one of subordinated 
 actions, under persons so called. Leibnitz himself presents 
 the internal and external order in some such concept: 
 " Every process of divine reflection must develop itself into 
 a threefold activity and presentation in an inner circle. 
 The Spirit finds in itself its independent object. It is its 
 counterpart, which under relational exchange separates 
 itself as a second unit from the original ; but as it differen- 
 tiates itself it must recur to this original in a third inde- 
 pendent form." The perichoresis or immanent relation is 
 followed by the economic activity. 
 
 So Urlsperger: "There is an immanent Trinity of the 
 divine essence. This is obscure, and only becomes intel- 
 ligible in the three forms of operation, viz., creation, re- 
 demption, completion. The Son is the external mediator 
 of these processes. He is elevated above the world ?&fo?is 
 et principium deitatis. The deliverance of the race and the 
 completion is by him, and by the Holy Ghost, the third 
 potential, and is effected by alternate rises and falls." 
 Bishop Bull, in his defense of the Nicene faith, took refuge 
 in the ancient subordination, which he justly found in the 
 Nicene Symbol itself. Schleiermacher must, in some re- 
 spects, be viewed as ranking here, for he says that we 
 can regard the persons in gradation only. While he uses 
 churchly terms, his thoughts are different. With him the 
 historic Christ comes first; the ideal or the divine Christ 
 can enter into our consciousness only through the Jesus of 
 the earthly ministry. The Trinity is not an independent 
 
124 THE INCARNATION 
 
 part of the Christian consciousness. In like manner Bush- 
 nell : " We take, then, as a first point to be held immov- 
 ably, the strict personal unity of God — one mind, will, con- 
 sciousness. The Trinity we seek will be a Trinity that re- 
 sults of necessity from the revelation of God to man. I do 
 not undertake to fathom the interior being of God and tell 
 how it is composed." He, however, affirms reverently and 
 positively the divinity of our Lord. The Trinity he does 
 unfold is economic and operative in the historic sphere. 
 Lipsius also inclines to a subordinational presentation. 
 Immanently God is filled with the thought of love, and he 
 gives it expression in Fatherhood, Sonship, and Spirithood. 
 This is objectivized in the Logos and the Spirit. And 
 this is an explanation of the metaphysical doctrine of the 
 church. Then follow the three economies : (a) The econ- 
 omy of the Father: the eternal divine order of salvation, 
 and its relation to history in general, (b) The historical 
 revelation of salvation, and the founding of the fellowship 
 therein ; this is the economy of the Son. (c) The economy 
 of the Spirit, which is the historical realization of the life 
 of salvation in individuals and in the fellowship. 
 
 2. There has also been a distinct resuscitation of Arian- 
 ism. In the curious dual scheme of Campanus, the Son 
 is made before all creatures, and becomes the instrument 
 of God. Clarke, in England, revived a pure Arian teach- 
 ing. Tollner thought Arianism to be the most likely inter- 
 pretation of the Trinity and the incarnation. The right 
 wing of Unitarianism in England and the United States 
 had not a few who inclined to these nobler views of ex- 
 alted creaturehood. 
 
 3. Dynamic Monarchianism has had an impressive sup- 
 port. It appeared among many of the so-called Anabap- 
 tists, as with Denck and Hetzer. The Socinians, especially, 
 expanded the system, and organized it into a teaching and 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 125 
 
 worshiping community. The supernatural birth, as based 
 upon a valid record, is strongly emphasized ; and yet Jesus 
 is simply a man, with high capacities, who under divine 
 help becomes worthy of extraordinary recognition for char- 
 acter and greatness. In the reign of rationalism, save in 
 the purely deistic and vulgar camps, the dynamic theory 
 ruled, and frequently even to the denial of the sinlessness 
 of Christ. Thus Henke substantially affirms " that the 
 ascription of personality to Christ was due to piety, and to 
 the Johannic Logos teaching, and to the influence of Gnos- 
 tic emanation upon Christian thought. Christ really distin- 
 guished himself from God, yet was not himself divine, but 
 only rejoiced in the work he did for God, which was of a 
 quality superior to the Messianic conception of the Jew." 
 According to Eckermann : " The divine names attributed to 
 Jesus are simply official. He was not the Creator of the 
 world. He was simply a man, but sinless, who wrought 
 out divine ideas for the benefit of men." It took Herder 
 to say : " While Socinianism is antiscriptural, nevertheless 
 we must all be Unitarians in the proper understanding of 
 that word, because the doctrine of the one God is the 
 foundation of the Old as well as of the New Testament, 
 and the Triad is clear nonsense." Some assertions of 
 Schleiermacher, in his attempt to mediate between the 
 Christian doctrine and his own philosophy, sound very 
 dynamic, especially with regard to the Trinity. 
 
 Of course the great waves of rationalism, and criticism 
 too, in England, in France, and in the United States, have 
 culminated in organized Unitarianism, which, however, has 
 passed through all stages of religious unbelief, even to the 
 surrender of Christ and his system. The Noetic school of 
 Oxford headed the same way. We can only note these 
 facts, without delaying upon the important names. 
 
 Ritschl is no more than dynamic, in that he predicates 
 
126 THE INCARNATION 
 
 being of God the Father, and only becoming of the Son. 
 So, too, the analogies between God and the kingdom and 
 the Son are striking indeed, so far as Christ, through pa- 
 tience, suffering, love, holiness, has wrought them out, but 
 they are not yet fully rounded out by himself ; nay, others 
 may fulfil some of them. All this is a relative and not an 
 absolute Godhead. Nor does Kaftan, with all his exalted 
 preparatory strain, come beyond the conclusion that Christ 
 is the man in whom God causes the fullness of his eternal 
 being to dwell, so that he becomes to us the image of the 
 invisible God. The manhood is made the basis of the di- 
 vinity, not the divinity the basis and support of the human- 
 ity ; and it is but an indwelling, as with us, not an essence 
 and an absolute reality. 
 
 4. Hardly less pronounced have been the modalistic 
 revivals, and in one case proceeding to organization. 
 Pantheism is usually the philosophic basis of this the- 
 ory ; nor does it fail us, as a rule, in the modern instances. 
 Servetus regarded the one God as the source from which 
 emanated all things. " Son and Spirit were but the dispo- 
 sitions of God, issuing into activities. The Logos came 
 to personal objectivity only in the incarnation. After the 
 completion of their expulsive functions they will all return 
 into the original substance." Swedenborg's exposition is of 
 the Sabellian cast, for there is a Trinity of the second divine 
 person, viz., Christ : the Father is what is divine in Christ ; 
 the Son is the divine in union with the human ; and the Holy 
 Spirit is the divine which proceeds from the Son. So, since 
 Jesus was born of the Virgin by the Holy Ghost, his body 
 is divine. Earthly temptations and sorrows transmute the 
 elements still further. The parts derived from the mother 
 are sloughed off, and he ascended with a body already god- 
 like. 
 
 5. Allied to this modalistic form is one which has had 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 127 
 
 a peculiar fascination for modern thinkers ; we may call it 
 the universal idealistic, for its foundation is twofold : (a) 
 the ideal man, and (b) the race viewed as a unit. Christian 
 Sebastian Franck claimed " that the one universal force, 
 or God, pervades all, and all find their unity in him. The 
 incarnation was not, therefore, a single act in Christ, but is 
 a universal one. God becomes incarnate in each individ- 
 ual." Dippel says substantially : " The eternal Word of the 
 Father is to be seen in Christ. But the incarnation is not 
 to be viewed as a particularistic act ; it is the universal in- 
 dwelling of the Logos in humanity. The progressive gen- 
 eration of Christ in believers is always parallel therewith." 
 So Kant, in his restoration by means of freedom, would 
 have us set a human ideal before us, such as the Christ of 
 the Scriptures. We must have an example corresponding 
 to the moral good of character suggested by the practical 
 reason. Whether this Christ is of supernatural generation 
 cannot be determined. This resolves the incarnation into 
 an imitation and realization of a norm of excellence. Every 
 one, through his categorical imperative, can reach the stan- 
 dard, and in turn become universal. Tieftrnnk, a theolo- 
 gian of his school, held of the incarnation : " The doctrine 
 cannot be proved nor disproved scientifically, because of 
 the limitations of reason. But there is a moral side to it, 
 by which it may be restored. The Scriptures show the 
 Logos as the co-cause and instrument of all activity of the 
 Father. All the practical relations of God to humanity are 
 mediated by him as the primitive image of Reason, Holi- 
 ness, and Wisdom." Fichte is not far different, though his 
 terms are more Christian : " From the absolute point of view, 
 the eternal Word becomes at all times, and in every one, 
 flesh, in the same manner in which it became flesh in Christ ; 
 and manifests itself to every man who has a clear view of 
 his unity in God." Nor does Schelling differ substantially: 
 
128 THE INCARNATION 
 
 " The incarnation is not empirical, as the theologians repre- 
 sent it to be, as if Christ came at a distinct time into the 
 human sphere. It is an incarnation from eternity, in which 
 the eternally begotten Son of the Father of all things appears 
 in every sphere of the temporal, as he appears in the eternal, 
 view of God. Christ remains a wholly intelligent person, and 
 yet as the one in whom God first became truly objective." 
 The immanent Trinity is resolved by Hegel into a series 
 of ideas : (a) That of simple universality ; this is the Father. 
 (b) The idea particularized and manifested, which is the Son. 
 This identifies the divine with the human, (c) The con- 
 sciousness, which is the Holy Ghost ; or, again, as the Ego, 
 the object and the return. The incarnation, with him, is 
 also universal, and not a particularized movement or indi- 
 vidual. So do all these pantheistic motives combine to 
 eliminate history, and to merge the real in the ideal, the 
 particular in the universal, the mass in the unit. In the 
 spirit of universal idealism, Marheineke says : " The incar- 
 nation is nothing else than the most complete humanization 
 of the most perfect consciousness of God, a sanctification 
 and penetration of the human nature with immediate di- 
 vine life and true divine tendency." So Ch. H. Weisse 
 makes the divine reason the Father, the divine feeling and 
 nature in God the Son, and the divine will the Holy Ghost. 
 The ideal Son of man of this impersonal Trinity becomes 
 the historic Christ or personality. Biedemann's thought of 
 the Trinity and the incarnation is that the divine ideas are 
 thus realizing themselves, especially in the central point, viz., 
 the human spiritual life of Sonship. The idea of the Fa- 
 therhood is founded on this Sonship. The efficient cause 
 or energy for producing it is the Son. The completing 
 cause is the Holy Spirit. This idealism has been the most 
 dominant in the theology outside of the confessions, and, 
 indeed, has affected those not a little. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 129 
 
 6. Another theory is that of a somatic incarnation, accord- 
 ing to which Christ brought with him a heavenly body ; and 
 among some it is also conceived that this body was accom- 
 panied with a preexistent human soul. Prominent repre- 
 sentatives of this tenet are Melchior Hoffman, Mathy, Good- 
 win, and Isaac Watts. This, of course, at once makes the 
 birth Docetic, and destroys the representative quality of his 
 manhood. 
 
 7. Some have also contended that our Lord assumed the 
 fallen human nature in order to be in likeness with our pres- 
 ent state, and to be qualified to comprehend the conditions 
 of sin, so that the salvation might be effective through his 
 personal triumph over native corruption. Menken, Irving, 
 Trench, etc., are representatives of this view. But it intro- 
 duces the element of a corrupt disposition, which invali- 
 dates his sinlessness, a fact of more importance to our sal- 
 vation than all his conquest of native evil could be. 
 
 There is also a decided leaning toward Monophysitic 
 views, certainly to an extreme emphasis upon the divine 
 nature. This has appeared in the movements of Puseyism, 
 in the high Lutheranism of Germany, indeed in all sacra- 
 mental theologies, which combine with that trend a sacer- 
 dotal conception of the ministry, and the creation of a 
 body of intercessors. Dorner even, although belonging to 
 the mediating school, is not exempt from this color, in that 
 he strives to place the union not in the divine person of 
 the Logos, but in the two natures. 
 
 On the other hand, there is an equally marked inclination 
 to exalt the humanity at the expense of the divinity, in what 
 is called the anthropocentric Christology. The limitations 
 of Christ, his bodily weaknesses, his temptations, his igno- 
 rance, receive a very undue accent. These elements of his 
 kinship are, indeed, worthy of the most serious and sympa- 
 thetic regard ; but we must not forget the sinews of strength, 
 
130 THE INCARNATION 
 
 the virtues, the sinlessness, the intimacy with God, the ex- 
 haustive knowledge, the self-assertion, and the authoritative 
 tone. The growth of our Lord is a blessed fact. It is the 
 law of humanity radiant in him. But this, too, may be 
 pressed beyond bounds, when it is referred to the conscious- 
 ness of his mission, of his relationship to God, of himself, 
 and of his Father ; especially when it is pushed to such an 
 extreme statement as that of Dorner : " The incarnation is 
 not to be thought of as at once completed, but as continu- 
 ous, nay, augmentative, seeing that God as Logos ever 
 seizes and appropriates those of the new sides which are 
 generated by true human development, just as, conversely, 
 the growing actual receptiveness of the humanity combines 
 consciously and voluntarily with ever new sides of the 
 Logos." This is a confusion of appropriation with assimila- 
 tion, and, therefore, growth with birth. The difficulty in 
 all this discussion is that we diminish the value of the truth 
 we assail, and enhance fictitiously the truth we seek to es- 
 tablish. 
 
 Owing to the seeming impossibility of regarding the 
 human nature in Christ as independent, as individual, if it 
 be impersonal (unhypostatized), many theologians insist on 
 conceding to it a separate personality, so that there would 
 be two hypostases in the Christ, the divine and the human. 
 This has an accession of favorable argument from the fact 
 that there would be no will or consciousness for the man- 
 hood, apart from that in the divine person, if these be predi- 
 cates of personality and not of nature. 
 
 There is also current an educational idea of the incarna- 
 tion, which is just, if not made exclusive. The presentation 
 of his sinlessness, of his communion with God, of his lofty 
 moral aims, serves as an appeal to the world to better its 
 life under this stimulus, and to constitute a fellowship of 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 131 
 
 the good. This theory connects itself readily with the 
 moral-influence theory of the atonement. 
 
 The incarnation certainly does also set forth the harmony 
 between the ideal and the real man. In this perfect union 
 between two natures, and in the symmetrical meetness of 
 the man Jesus to be in eternal relationship with the Logos, 
 the imperfect Adam was to find his goal; and the fallen 
 man now seeks Christ's help for elaborating life into graces, 
 and into fruits of the Spirit, and into maturity for the eter- 
 nal and perfect vision of the Son and the Father. 
 
 Let us consider for a moment, also, the effort to break 
 away from the mere mathematical explanations of the Trin- 
 ity, in order to reach a transcendental mathematics such as 
 our Lord suggests in his high-priestly prayer and in other 
 unexplained sayings. His conception of unity there is cer- 
 tainly not one of mere figures. As Lessing has said : " There 
 is sufficient ground in the reason to posit a transcendental 
 unity in God which does not exclude a certain plurality." 
 " He therefore explains the Son as the completest pres- 
 entation of God, of his identical image, and of the Spirit 
 as the harmony of both." Here the mathematical Trinity 
 gives way to the moral Trinity, or the mathematics higher 
 than numbers. Coleridge, too, while not ignoring the au- 
 thority of the Scriptures, found in his own constitution, in 
 his own aspirations and necessities, a moral reason for the 
 incarnation and for the Trinity : " Christ could be the 
 Saviour only by being divine. The idea of redemption in- 
 volves belief in the divinity of our Lord ; and our Lord's 
 divinity, again, involves the Trinitarian idea, because in and 
 through that idea alone the divinity of Christ can be re- 
 ceived without breach of faith in the unity of the God- 
 head." Nor less does he ground it on the intellectual 
 side : " The Trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead 
 
132 THE INCARNATION 
 
 would have been a necessary idea of my speculative rea- 
 son. God must have had coeternally'an adequate idea of 
 himself, in and through which he created all things. But 
 this would have been a mere speculative idea. Solely in 
 consequence of our redemption does the Trinity become a 
 doctrine, the belief of which as real is commanded by the 
 conscience." The establishment of the doctrine by the 
 testimony of experience, as by Gore, is a veritable helpmeet 
 to the scientific study, but not more final as to definition 
 and authority, than the consciousness of Coleridge and 
 the idealistic schools, or of the mediating theology. One 
 of the strongest evidences for the divinity of our Lord 
 must ever be his sinlessness. That has already proved a 
 most fertile apologetic source of, and one of the most prac- 
 tical incentives as well to, the revival of purer religion and 
 to the formation of more earnest character, and, as Liddon 
 has used it, an equally powerful argument for the convic- 
 tion of the reason. 
 
 Nor dare we ignore the practical value of these related 
 doctrines. What so elevates our conception of the domes- 
 tic relations as this transcendent antetype ? Can a home 
 remain on a dead material level wherein the Father, the 
 Son, and the Holy Spirit are worshiped daily as such ? 
 And the infancy and childhood of Christ, the manger and 
 the cradle, the home and the shop in Nazareth, are not these 
 factors to regenerate all childhood, apart from the mystic 
 influences that radiate from the holy Infant ? And what 
 has so hallowed the year and the centuries as the return and 
 celebration of that natal day ? It has become the guide of 
 chronology, not to be changed. What art, conventional 
 or liberated, that has not found its chief beauty in this ideal 
 of humanity ? What music, medieval or modern, that has 
 found its highest form adequate to express the theme? And 
 yet is not every essay toward such an emotional delinea- 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 133 
 
 tion most dear to our hearts ? And what significance has 
 Jesus not given to each mourner and pilgrim and impover- 
 ished one ; to the hungry and thirsty ; the weary and the 
 heavy-laden, in every one of whom we may see him, and 
 so see the Father ? And what is the initial and central 
 power of his kingdom, numerically and spiritually, save the 
 little children whom he eternally blesses, and whom we are 
 to become like in spirit and trustfulness ? And what goal 
 is there for us all greater than this : to wear the image of 
 the heavenly ; as sons, to see the Father as he is ; to be as 
 God ? This practical bent is the subject of a beautiful ac- 
 knowledgment by Maurice to Kingsley : " As to the Trinity, 
 I do understand you. You first taught me that the doctrine 
 was a live thing, and not a mere formula to be swallowed by 
 the undigesting reason ; and from the time that I learned 
 from you that a Father meant a real father, and a Son a 
 real son, and a Holy Spirit a real spirit, who was really good 
 and holy, I have been able to draw all sorts of practical 
 lessons from it in the pulpit, and ground all my morality 
 and a great deal of my natural philosophy upon it, and 
 shall do so more and more." 
 
 In conclusion, we must note the immense dissatisfaction 
 with the terminology in use : persons, nature, subsistence, 
 substance, consubstantiality, etc. There remain also the 
 unsolved difficulties of the attributes of the person and the 
 attributes of the natures. There is no explanation of the 
 union that does not leave conscious gaps. There is no valid 
 interpretation of the kenosis. There is a constant strife be- 
 tween the critical, the historic, the idealistic, the metaphysi- 
 cal, and the mathematical schools. Fichte has said, the 
 metaphysical, and not the historical, will save man. Rather 
 is it faith, devout, loving, trustful faith in the transcendent 
 mystery, the one God, God in three, three in one ; the divine 
 and human Logos, Son of God, Son of man, Jesus. Let 
 
134 THE INCARNATION 
 
 us company with the innumerable hosts in their concentra- 
 tion of worship : 
 
 " All there, who reign in safety and in bliss, 
 Ages long past or now, on one sole mark 
 Their love and vision fix'd. O trinal beam 
 Of individual star, that charm'st them thus ! 
 Vouchsafe one glance to gild our storm below." 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH 
 
 GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN, D.D., LL.D., 
 Honorary Pastor First Baptist Church, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 135 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH 
 
 Mr. President: In speaking of the doctrine of the 
 church, I wish to confine myself in the main to two of the 
 many meanings which this term " church " has, presenting 
 it, first, as a divine organism, and, secondly, as a human or- 
 ganization ; or, to use more familiar but less accurate phrase- 
 ology, " the church invisible " and " the church visible." 
 
 I. THE CHURCH AS A DIVINE ORGANISM. 
 
 And, first, the church as a divine organism. Observe, I 
 do not now, at this stage of our discussion, mean by this 
 word "church" any local organization, or the aggregate 
 of organized churches, or the general mass of professing 
 Christians. But I do mean by this word "church" the 
 one organic, universal, spiritual church of the living God ; 
 that ideal church of his which he has bought with the 
 blood of his own adorable Son. In other words, I mean 
 by the church the kingdom of God as administered by his 
 Son in the hearts of men. 
 
 Glance, then, for a moment at some of the differences 
 between a church in the sense of a human organization and 
 the church in the sense of a divine organism. An organized 
 church is a voluntary association, dependent on conditions 
 of place and time and form. It may be, and often is, rent 
 
 i37 
 
13$ THE DOCTRINE 
 
 by dissensions ; it may suffer extinction ; it acts on itself 
 legislatively and executively, receiving or dismissing or dis- 
 ciplining or excluding its members according to its own will. 
 The relation between its components is constructed and 
 temporal. In brief, it is a human organization. 
 
 But the church organic is a divine society, independent 
 of conditions of place and time and form. It was never 
 " constituted " in human time and space ; it was born of a 
 past eternity, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the 
 world, having immortality for its birthright and creation for 
 its heirloom. Its members are not inserted into it by bap- 
 tism or by letters of transfer from other churches ; they are 
 corporate, essential, living parts of it. Being that spiritual 
 body of which Christ is the spiritual head, there is between 
 them, as between him and them, community of sentiment, 
 thought, experience, judgment, purpose, movement — in a 
 single word, life. And this ideal church, surveyed as a 
 whole, in and by itself, has never had an outward, formal 
 organization. True, it has its creed ; but this creed is not 
 written in any stone tables of theological symbols — this creed 
 is written with the Spirit of the living God in tables that 
 are hearts of flesh. It has its condition of membership ; but 
 this condition is neither baptism nor vote of those already 
 members — this condition is faith in the divine Father, as 
 revealed in Jesus Christ his Son, through demonstration of 
 the Holy Ghost. It has its member-roll; but this mem- 
 ber-roll no mortal eye has seen — this member-roll is the 
 Lamb's roll of life. It has its sessions ; but these sessions 
 are not held in any structures of wood or brick or stone — 
 these sessions are held in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. 
 It has its pastor ; but this pastor no earthly presbytery has 
 ordained — this pastor is the minister of the true tabernacle, 
 which the Lord pitched, not man. It has its music ; but 
 this music is not the audible melody of solo or chorus — 
 
OF THE CHURCH 139 
 
 this music is the silent rhythm of human works and divine 
 grace. It has its baptism ; but this baptism is not in any- 
 earthly water — this baptism is in the Holy Spirit. It has 
 its communion ; but this communion is not in any earthly 
 bread and wine — this communion is in the living bread and 
 the living water that came down from heaven. It has its 
 polity ; but this polity is not the polity of written constitu- 
 tion and by-laws — this polity is the polity of holy living 
 and godliness. It has its liturgy ; but this liturgy is not the 
 liturgy of rubric — this liturgy is the liturgy of daily char- 
 acter. Take all these things away — take away creed and 
 member-roll and sanctuary and minister and music and 
 baptistery and communion-table and liturgy and discipline. 
 What have you taken away ? You have taken away only 
 what is formal and incidental and transient ; the church of 
 the living God, in all the essentials of her nature, still sur- 
 vives. 
 
 Not that I would for a moment hint that we do not 
 need church organizations or the enforcement of our Mas- 
 ter's ordinances. These we must have and must strenu- 
 ously maintain ; for they are, at least in this world, essen- 
 tial not only to the spread of the gospel, but also to the 
 preservation of the Christian life itself. Indeed, I am al- 
 most ready to affirm that without churches — that is, formal 
 organizations — we could hardly have the church — that is, 
 the spiritual organism of which I am speaking to-day. In 
 fact, all life tends to organization, even as all death tends 
 to disorganization. Accordingly, a church in the sense of 
 a formal organization is as truly a divine institution as the 
 church in the sense of a spiritual organism. He who is 
 too good for a local, visible church is not good enough 
 for the universal, invisible church. In short, a church is 
 Christ's appointed means to the church. Nevertheless the 
 church which is the subject of my address at this point is 
 
140 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 larger and diviner than even the ecclesiastical organizations 
 of the apostolic period. It is the church of the heavenly 
 Bridegroom ; the corporation of regenerated characters ; the 
 body of Jesus Christ ; the kingdom of God. 
 
 I have dwelt thus long on this point because this dis- 
 tinction between the church as a human organization and 
 the church as a divine organism is of the utmost conse- 
 quence, doctrinally and practically. This word " church " 
 is so ambiguous that unless we use it discriminatingly the 
 spirit of a remark, or even the tenor of a whole volume, 
 may be misinterpreted. Let us, then, cherish the habit of 
 using this term " church " scrupulously, ever carefully dis- 
 tinguishing between a church organized and the church 
 organic ; between a church local and the church universal ; 
 between a church divisible and the church indivisible ; be- 
 tween a church mortal and the church immortal ; between 
 a church nominal and the church ideal ; between a church 
 constructed, or man's fabric, and the church born, or Christ's 
 body. 
 
 This Organic Church a Unity. — And this body of Christ 
 — not the organized churches of Christendom — is an organic 
 unity. St. Paul portrays this unity under a sevenfold aspect 
 thus: 
 
 " There is one body [namely, the one Christian church] ; 
 and one Spirit [namely, the one Holy Ghost] ; even as also ye 
 were called in one hope of your calling [namely, the one 
 heavenly vocation] ; one Lord [namely, the one Lord Jesus 
 Christ], one faith [namely, the one faith in this one Lord] ; 
 one baptism [namely, the one baptism in the one Spirit by 
 the one faith into the one body] ; one God and Father of 
 all [namely, the one All- Father- God], who is over all, and 
 through all, and in all." (Eph. iv. 4-6.) 
 
 This churchly unity is also divinely foreshadowed in such 
 figures as these : many stones, one temple ; many branches, 
 
OF THE CHURCH 141 
 
 one vine ; many folds, one flock ; many tribes, one Israel ; 
 many members, one body. Listen especially to a classic 
 analogy of our Master's greatest Apostle — an analogy so 
 profound that it will outlive all theories of Christian soci- 
 ety, because founded in living physiology, it being, so to 
 speak, a natural parable of the church of Jesus Christ : 
 
 Analogy of the Human Body. — " For as the body is one, 
 and hath many members, and all the members of the body, 
 being many, are one body ; so also is Chrjst. For in one 
 Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or 
 Greeks, whether bond or free ; and were all made to drink 
 of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. 
 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not 
 of the body; it is not therefore not of the body. And if 
 the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of 
 the body; it is not therefore not of the body. If the 
 whole body were an eye, where were the hearing ? If the 
 whole were hearing, where were the smelling ? But now 
 hath God set the members each one of them in the body, 
 even as it pleased him. And if they were all one member, 
 where were the body ? But now they are many members, 
 but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, I 
 have no need of thee : or again the head to the feet, I 
 have no need of you. Nay, much rather, those members 
 of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary : 
 and those parts of the body, which we think to be less 
 honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor; 
 and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness ; 
 whereas our comely parts have no need : but God tempered 
 the body together, giving more abundant honor to that part 
 which lacked ; that there should be no schism [rending, dis- 
 memberment] in the body; but that the members should 
 have the same care one for another. And whether one 
 member suffereth, all the members suffer with it ; or one 
 
i4 2 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now 
 ye are the body of Christ, and severally members thereof 
 [members each in his part]." (i Cor. xii. 12-27.) 
 
 Of course this paragraph does not teach that Christ and 
 his church form a corporeal structure having bodily organs. 
 It is an analogy, not a proposition ; accordingly it is to be 
 taken sense-wise, not sound-wise. And what the analogy 
 teaches is this — the relation between Christ and his church 
 is as real, as vital, as reciprocal," as organic, as the relation 
 between the head and its body. And now let us attend to 
 some of the lessons which this profound analogy suggests. 
 
 Christ and his Church one Personality. — And, first, as the 
 body, including head and members, forms one organism, so 
 the church, including Christ and his people, forms, so to 
 speak, one personality. 
 
 The statement, you perceive, is twofold. First, Christ 
 himself is the head : " Grow up in all things into him, who 
 is the head, even Christ." (Eph. iv. 15.) The church is no 
 headless torso. Being himself the head, Christ is, so to 
 speak, the nervous center of his church, sharing her sensa- 
 tions, whether of joy or of grief, coordinating her faculties, 
 directing her movements, unifying her activities, maintain- 
 ing her life. And as there is but one Christ, so there is but 
 one head. The Lamb of God is no hydra-headed monster. 
 And, secondly, as Christ is the head, so his church is his 
 body : " Gave him to be head over all things to the church, 
 which is his body, the fullness of him who filleth all in all " 
 (Eph. i. 22, 23), the overflowing receptacle of his measure- 
 less amplitudes. Being his own body, his church is, so to 
 speak, a part of his own personality, drawing from him 
 her life, sharing his experience and character, executing his 
 will. As Augustine profoundly says : " Totus Christus caput 
 et corpus est " (" The whole Christ is head and body "). Or, 
 as another Latin proverb states it still more compactly: 
 
OF THE CHURCH 143 
 
 " Ubi Christus, ibi Ecclesia " (" Where Christ is, there the 
 church is"). And as Christ is not a monstrosity in the 
 sense of being many-headed, so his church is not a mon- 
 strosity in the sense of being many-bodied. As there is 
 but one Christ, even the head, so there is but one church, 
 even his body. Christ and his church form one person- 
 ality. 
 
 Christ and his Church a Manifold Diversity. — Secondly, 
 as the body involves diversity of members and functions, 
 so does the church. As the body is not all brain or heart 
 or eye or foot or blood or nerve or bone or cell, so the 
 church is not all conscience or reason or sensibility or will 
 or creed or polity or minister or layman or sex or sect. 
 The church has all variety of gift, faculty, grace, tempera- 
 ment, experience, vocation, method, opportunity, concep- 
 tion. And as uniformity is a mark of the lowest stage of 
 existence, so variety is a mark of the. highest. The nobler 
 the life the more complex and differenced. For example : 
 how wonderfully life complicates and diversifies, as, start- 
 ing with the lowest forms of animal existence, we trace its 
 ever-multiplying differentiations in the amoeba, the polyp, 
 the clam, the spider, the salmon, the lizard, the eagle, the 
 lion, and, finally, man himself! Indeed, one of the happi- 
 est definitions of life is this by Professor Guyot : " Life is 
 the mutual exchanging of relations." And the higher the 
 life the intenser the exchanging. Contrast, for instance, 
 the child of barbarism and the child of civilization. How 
 simple the wants of the savage! how few and rude his 
 tools ! — you might almost gather them into a single shop. 
 But how diversified the wants of the civilized man! how 
 numberless and complicated his instruments! — the vast 
 grounds of our Columbian Exposition could not contain 
 them. In brief, differentiation is the very condition of life. 
 Dead things are uniform ; live things are multiform. Every 
 
144 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 growing thing grows by multiplication of organs and func- 
 tions and their consignment to specific ends. Development 
 is by specialization. How wonderfully this comes out in 
 the growth of the germinating vesicle of the egg or the 
 cell! And the higher the grade of being the more individu- 
 alized, as well as the more complicated, become its organs 
 and functions. Now the church is the superbest finite in- 
 stance of differentiation and specialization ; and this alike 
 in respect of organs, functions, gifts, opinions, methods. 
 The church is a myriad-fold diversity. 
 
 Christ and his Church a Diversified Unity. — Thirdly, as 
 the body is diversity in unity, so also is the church. For 
 consider for a moment what unity means, specially as dis- 
 tinguished from units. A unit is a single one, surveyed 
 externally, in isolation from other ones ; a unity is also a 
 single one, but it is surveyed internally, in its parts, each 
 and every part being in mutual adjustment to one common 
 end. A unit is a single, isolated one ; a unity is the sys- 
 tematized union of several diverse ones into a state of one- 
 ness. A unit is one in the sense of numerical singleness ; 
 a unity is one in the sense of harmonious pluralness. For 
 example : a molecule of water, considered in its wholeness 
 and in distinction from other molecules of water, is a unit ; 
 but the same molecule of water, considered in its parts as 
 consisting of eight weights of oxygen and one weight of 
 hydrogen, is a unity. But unity implies something more 
 than harmonious variety of parts ; it also implies the subor- 
 dination of these various parts to a common end. It is this 
 cooperation of diverse parts for a common end which makes 
 these diverse parts as a whole a unity. For example : the 
 separate blocks in a stone-yard are not a unity — they are 
 only units ; but actually bring them together and fit them 
 to one another in due shape and order, for the purpose, 
 say, of a temple structure, and they become a unity. In 
 
OF THE CHURCH H5 
 
 brief, it is the coordination of diverse units for a common 
 end which makes a unity. And observe the effectiveness 
 of a duly grouped, coordinated unity. How is it that a 
 steam-engine, although small compared with the mass it 
 moves, is able to drive a mighty craft, with her ponderous 
 cargo, in teeth of billow and tempest, from continent to 
 continent ? It is not merely because it is made of iron and 
 worked by the power of steam; it is also because valves 
 and pistons, cranks and wheels, shaft and propeller, all 
 work in reciprocal adjustment and harmonious cooperation 
 for a common end, namely, sending the steamer across the 
 Atlantic. But let some slight derangement of the machinery 
 occur — some valve refuse to work, some pin give way — and 
 the engine, which has been a useful unity, becomes a mass 
 of useless units. That is to say, unity consists in converged 
 diversities, where all the ends are means and all the means 
 are ends. Or, to illustrate from St. Paul's great analogy of 
 the bodily organism : A finger, surveyed as a finger in dis- 
 tinction from other fingers, is a unit ; but the hand, surveyed 
 as a system of fingers, is a unity. So a cell, surveyed as a 
 cell in distinction from other cells, is a unit ; but the body, 
 surveyed as a system of cells coordinated into a common 
 organism, is a unity. And this convergent diversity is in- 
 dispensable to the unity. If the whole body were an eye, 
 where were the hearing ? If all the members were similar 
 members — all eyes or ears or noses — where were the body ? 
 But now they are diverse members, and therefore one 
 body. And this diverse co-membership is mutually co- 
 necessary : the eye cannot say to the hand, " I have no need 
 of thee." And this necessity of diversity is especially true 
 of the smaller, obscurer members of the body : those mem- 
 bers which seem to be more feeble are necessary. If there 
 were no cells there could be no blood, and if there were no 
 blood there could be no body, either corporeal or personal. 
 
146 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 Thus the unity of the body consists in the unified diversity 
 of its parts. And the church is the noblest specimen of a 
 body, because she is Christ's body: he the head and she 
 the members. Accordingly the church, in the adjustment 
 of her own most multiform organs, in the coordination of 
 her own most diversified functions, in the unification of her 
 own most heterogeneous elements and conditions, is the 
 consummate, finite instance (Deity is the infinite instance) 
 of unity as well as of diversity ; of unity because of diver- 
 sity. " Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for breth- 
 ren to dwell together in unity!" (Ps. cxxxiii. 1.) 
 
 The Holy Spirit the Secret of the Church's Unity. — Ob- 
 serve, now, that it is the Holy Spirit who is the unifying 
 force in the church or body of Christ. He it is who diversi- 
 fies the gifts, allots the functions, and unifies the whole. 
 Let me read another classic paragraph from St. Paul : 
 
 " Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 
 And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same 
 Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the same 
 God, who worketh all things in all. But to each one is 
 given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal. For 
 to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom ; and 
 to another the word of knowledge, according to the same 
 Spirit : to another faith, in the same Spirit ; and to another 
 gifts of healings, in the one Spirit ; and to another work- 
 ings of miracles ; and to another prophecy ; and to another 
 discernings of spirits : to another divers kinds of tongues ; 
 and to another the interpretation of tongues : but all these 
 worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one 
 severally even as he will." (1 Cor. xii. 4-1 1.) 
 
 Thus it is that in one Spirit, even the Holy Ghost, all 
 we were baptized into one body, even the spiritual body 
 of Christ, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free, 
 whether Baptists or Quakers ; and were all made to drink 
 
OF THE CHURCH H7 
 
 of one Spirit, even the divine, (i Cor. xii. 13.) The Holy- 
 Ghost is the secret of the church's unity. 
 
 Thus the diversified unity of the bodily organism is the 
 palmary symbol and type of the spiritual organism, or 
 Christ's mystical body. And Christ's mystical body, or the 
 spiritual organism, is in a certain sense the divine model 
 for our ecclesiastical organizations, or the actual church of 
 Christendom. And the great practical problem of ecclesi- 
 ology is to make the church organized, or man's fabric, co- 
 incident with the church organic, or Christ's body — a prob- 
 lem which, like the famous problem of squaring the circle, 
 though incapable of absolute solution, is nevertheless capable 
 of approximations ever closer and closer. 
 
 II. THE CHURCH AS A HUMAN ORGANIZATION. 
 
 And this leads us to our second point, namely, the church 
 as a human organization, or the church of man's structure. 
 Alas! we must now move, at least for the present, in a 
 lower plane. 
 
 The Organized Church a Disunity. — For observe, with 
 grief and shame, the disunity of the organized church. 
 She is, indeed, literally speaking, a church militant on a 
 war footing. Unfortunately, however, this war footing is 
 an internecine strife. Instead of her wrestling against the 
 dark principalities of the spiritual hosts of wickedness in 
 the heavenlies, she is wrestling against her own flesh and 
 blood, making schism in her own body, tearing asunder the 
 limbs of her own personality. Survey her manifold and 
 bitter divisions and subdivisions ; her clashing sects, creeds, 
 polities, rivalries ; her shibboleth dins of " I am of Paul " ; 
 " I am of Apollos " ; "I am of Cephas " ; "I am of Christ." 
 Paradoxical as it sounds, the church militant will never be- 
 come the church triumphant till she becomes the church 
 
148 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 pacific. Instead of her being one united Israel of Jehovah 
 of hosts, she is rather a captive and dismembered Israel, 
 her dislocated bones lying scattered in the great valley of 
 this world's Babylonia. And were James the Just or Peter 
 the Rock to return and indite another Epistle General to 
 the church of God, I fear that he would still have to ad- 
 dress it somewhat as follows : 
 
 " To the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion, even 
 to the elect sojourners scattered in the Pontus of Baptis- 
 malism, the Galatia of Episcopalianism, the Cappadocia of 
 Presbyterianism, the Asia of Methodism, the Bithynia of 
 Lutheranism, greeting." 
 
 Evils of Sectarianism. — Who of us does not feel that 
 this is a most deplorable state of things ? Consider for a 
 moment some of the evils of sectarianism — I mean the 
 spirit of sectarianism, not the mere fact that there are sects. 
 Sectarianism, for instance, alienates the brotherhood, setting 
 the members of the one great family in Christ against each 
 other ; it narrows our spiritual horizon ; inverts the gospel 
 order by exalting ordinances above principles, ritual above 
 character ; caricatures truth by magnifying its fractions and 
 minifying its integer ; dissipates spiritual energies by scat- 
 tering them instead of concentrating them ; involves need- 
 less expense by rearing and maintaining several kinds of 
 churches in a neighborhood where God would be better 
 served were there but one church ; repels the onlooker, for 
 he will not confess a divided, sectarian Christ ; worse than 
 all, arrests moral growth. Listen to St. Paul as he expos- 
 tulates with the sectaries of Corinth : 
 
 " Brothers, I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, 
 but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ. I fed you 
 with milk, not with meat ; for ye were not able to bear it : 
 nay, not even now are ye able ; for ye are yet carnal : for 
 
OF THE CHURCH 149 
 
 whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not 
 carnal, and walk after the manner of men [not Christians] ? 
 For when one saith, I am of Paul ; and another, I am of 
 Apollos; are ye not men ?" (1 Cor. hi. 1-4.) 
 
 That is to say, catholicity is the output of maturity, the 
 full costume of manhood ; sectarianism is the stair-bar of 
 infancy, the small-clothes of babyhood. Such are some of 
 the many evils of the denominational spirit. Taking every- 
 thing into account, I am inclined to think that sectarianism 
 is the church's mightiest obstacle in her march to the City 
 of the Foundations. For every kingdom divided against 
 itself cannot stand, but must come to desolation. If Mes- 
 siah's forces are divided, how then can his kingdom stand ? 
 But let us be fair, and not overlook the true church's real 
 unity. For at all essential points Christ's church — the church 
 organic — whatever the land or age or sect, is at bottom sub- 
 limely one. And for that one church of Christ every true 
 member of it, whether Baptist, Quaker, or Romanist, will, 
 if need should arise, be equally ready to die. But, although 
 Christ's church in its essentials is one, men's churches in 
 their incidentals are many and diverse. What we quarrel 
 about is not moralities, but ceremonies; not divine com- 
 mandments, but human inferences; not God's truth, but 
 men's interpretation of it, that is, men's creeds. Neverthe- 
 less our blessed Lord has prayed the Father that the mem- 
 bers of his body may be perfected into one ; and surely he 
 did not pray in vain. 
 
 Problem of Ecclesiastical Unity. — And so we pass to pon- 
 der the problem of ecclesiastical unity. How shall we 
 make the church of man and the church of Christ — the 
 church organized and the church organic, the church of 
 manner and the church of matter, the church of form and 
 the church of life — coincident ? In short, how shall we 
 
15° THE DOCTRINE 
 
 bring about the ideal, promised unity? It is a mighty 
 problem, and as gracious as it is mighty, wholly worthy 
 the best thought of Christendom. 
 
 Is the Unification of Christendom Desirable? — First of all, 
 then, is the unification of Christendom desirable ? " Unifi- 
 cation" I say — not "reunion." For I am not aware that 
 Christendom has ever been united in such a way as to make 
 a reunion desirable. The sad fact seems to be that the 
 church of the primitive period, in so far as it was organized 
 at all, instead of having been, as we so often fondly imagine, 
 a concord of brothers, was largely a discord of wranglers, 
 so that St. Paul felt himself constrained to rectify the doc- 
 trinal heresies of Rome ; to pacify the warring sectaries of 
 Corinth ; to reclaim the theological apostates of Galatia ; to 
 guard against a pagan life in Ephesus; to exhort Euoclia 
 and Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord in 
 Philippi ; to warn against the dangerous tendencies in 
 Colosse ; to rebuke the disorderly walkers in Thessalonica ; 
 to caution Timothy and Titus against the heresiarchs who 
 were already subverting the churches. If the " Christen- 
 dom " of Christ's day was already a union, why did Christ 
 pray that his followers might become one, " perfected into 
 unity "? The truth is, the primitive church, like every other 
 thing of life, began in infantile imperfection, yet subject to 
 the blessed law of growth and perfectation. Ideals, always 
 excepting the one Perfect Man, are ever before us, never 
 behind us. "That is not first which is spiritual, but that 
 which is natural; then that which is spiritual." (i Cor. 
 xv. 46.) Our question, then, is not, "Is the reunion of 
 Christendom desirable? " but our question is, " Is the unifi- 
 cation of Christendom desirable? " And to this question 
 I must answer both no and yes. Let me, then, discuss 
 this problem of ecclesiastical unity both negatively and 
 affirmatively. 
 
OF THE CHURCH 15 1 
 
 Unity Cannot be Secured by Decreeing Uniformity. — And, 
 first, negatively : the church cannot unify herself by decree- 
 ing uniformity of outward organization. For recall our 
 definition of unity. Allow me to reemphasize this point. 
 For while the longing of many of God's chosen spirits for 
 the unification of Christendom is one of the blessed signs 
 of our times, I fear that this longing is in many instances 
 as vague as it is intense. Accordingly one of my principal 
 objects in this paper is to clear away, so far as possible, the 
 mists which envelop this great problem, and this by show- 
 ing wherein church unity really consists — what it does not 
 mean as well as what it does mean. For when the mists 
 lift, Jehovah's watchmen will see eye to eye. Recall then, 
 I say, what church unity means. It does not mean out- 
 ward uniformity of creed and polity, not even an organized 
 union of churches and sects ; that is an artificial combina- 
 tion or mechanical union which can be ordered, and also 
 revoked, by decrees of councils and by votes of assemblies. 
 On the other hand, church unity does mean an inward, 
 organic, so to speak, divinely biological life, wherein all 
 varieties of organs and functions are vitally convergent to 
 one divine end. You can organize an external organiza- 
 tion — that is man's work. You cannot organize an internal 
 organism — that is God's work. All attempts, therefore, to 
 ordain ecclesiastical unity, either by decrees of hierarchical 
 conclaves or by votes of congregational assemblies, are 
 attempts at human manufacture rather than recognition of 
 divine offspring, and, therefore, sooner or later issue in 
 moral failures. Here is the secret of the inevitable fail- 
 ures of all ecclesiastical irenica, whether the Pope's recent 
 paternal encyclical, or the Episcopate's splendid overture, 
 or the Disciples' generous propositions, or the catholic dec- 
 laration by the Congregational Association of New Jersey, 
 or your humble speaker's proposal at Florence, Italy. The 
 
152 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 truth is, all attempts at singleness or uniformity of outward 
 formal organization are against all the analogies of organic 
 living nature. Take the plant world : what varieties of 
 structures and functions, from the cedar of Lebanon to 
 the hyssop that springs up by the wall! Take the animal 
 world : all flesh is not the same flesh : but there is one 
 flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of birds, 
 another of fishes, (i Cor. xv. 39.) Take the man world: 
 what varieties of races, statures, sexes, faculties, tempera- 
 ments, customs! Take the church world: what varieties 
 of creeds, polities, gifts, missions, graces! To undertake 
 to decree that there shall be but one kind of church organ- 
 ization is as unnatural and futile as to undertake to decree 
 that there shall be but one kind of plant or one kind of 
 animal or one kind of man. Many different members, but 
 one common body. True, an unvarying uniformity of 
 creed and polity and ritual in all lands and through all 
 times, such as the Church of Rome signally illustrates, is 
 in a certain way very impressive. But there is peril in this 
 very uniformity ; and the exacter the uniformity the more 
 perilous. For decrees of concordance or "Acts of Uni- 
 formity" imply an autocracy which is more than apt to 
 become despotic. See how, in the case of Rome, ecclesi- 
 asticism has tended to supplant character ; the church, the 
 Bible ; the Pope, our Lord. Thus the very uniformity of 
 Romanism (and there is no splendider sample of homogene- 
 ousness) is morally perilous, tending to extinguish individu- 
 alism and to deify churchism, and so annihilating the very 
 idea of unity. No, church unity cannot be secured by de- 
 creeing uniformity of organization. 
 
 Unity Camiot be Secured by Abolishing Sects. — Nor, again, 
 can the church unify herself, at least in this aeon, by abol- 
 ishing sects. In fact, I believe that each Christian sect, in 
 so far as it really has Christ's own spirit, has a divine mis- 
 
OF THE CHURCH 153 
 
 sion of its own. Who would wish to erase from the history 
 of Christendom the story of the Waldenses, the Lutherans, 
 the Puritans, the Moravians, the Jansenists, the Episcopa- 
 lians, the Methodists, the Congregationalists, the Quakers, 
 the Baptists ? Of course I cannot go into a detailed state- 
 ment of the mission of each one of the sects. Let me only 
 attempt a swift characterization in roughest outline of the 
 more salient features of the more prominent denominations. 
 A chief distinctive mission of the Roman Catholic branch 
 of Christ's one church (I mention it first only because it 
 has by far the largest number of members) is, as it seems 
 to me, to give play to the body side of our nature ; and 
 this it does by its appeal to our senses in the way of archi- 
 tecture, statuary, painting, music, colors, forms ; and nobly 
 is it fulfilling its sensitive vocation. A chief distinctive mis- 
 sion of the Lutheran branch of Christ's one church is to 
 give play to the reformatory side of our nature ; and this it 
 does by protesting against ecclesiastical and theological per- 
 versions and insisting on a return to the apostolic evangel ; 
 and nobly is it fulfilling its conservative vocation. A chief 
 distinctive mission of the Presbyterian branch of Christ's 
 one church is to give play to the theological side of our 
 nature ; and this it does by the prominence it assigns to 
 creed and catechetical instruction; and nobly is it fulfill- 
 ing its sturdy vocation. A chief distinctive mission of the 
 Episcopal branch of Christ's one church is to give play to 
 the worshipful side of our nature ; and this it does by the 
 prominence it assigns to liturgy and esthetics ; and nobly is 
 it fulfilling its devotional vocation. A chief distinctive mis- 
 sion of the Methodist branch of Christ's one church is to 
 give play to the active side of our nature ; and this it does 
 by the vigor of its ecclesiastical system and its recognition 
 of the lay element in its class-meetings ; and nobly is it ful- 
 filling its robust vocation. A chief distinctive mission of 
 
154 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 the Quaker branch of Christ's one church is to give play 
 to the passive side of our nature ; and this it does by its 
 doctrine of the inner light and by its disuse of forms ; and 
 nobly is it fulfilling its placid vocation. A chief distinc- 
 tive mission of the Congregational branch of Christ's one 
 church is to give play to the personal side of our nature ; 
 and this it does by its insistence on the right of each con- 
 gregation to ecclesiastical independence ; and nobly is it 
 fulfilling its manly vocation. A chief distinctive mission 
 of the Baptist branch of Christ's one church is to give 
 play to the exacter side of our nature ; and this it does by 
 its demanding literal obedience to the scriptural ordinance 
 of baptism ; and nobly is it fulfilling its stalwart vocation. 
 Thus each of the sects has its own peculiar mission, and 
 each, I doubt not, would be benefited by some absorption 
 of the peculiarities of the others. I am quite sure that we 
 Baptists (and this without abating one jot or tittle of our 
 distinctive mission) would not be harmed by a little infu- 
 sion of the Presbyterian polity, the Episcopal esthetics, the 
 Methodist discipline, the Quaker simplicity. For all things 
 are ours ; whether Paul — the apostle of advance — or Cephas 
 — the apostle of arrest — or Apollos — the apostle of cul- 
 ture ; all are ours ; and we are Christ's ; and Christ is God's, 
 (i Cor. iii. 21, 22.) 
 
 Unity Cannot be Secured by Compromise. — Nor, once 
 more, and most decidedly, can the church unify herself by 
 compromise. This is the mistake of those unfortunates 
 who are afflicted with cardiac hypertrophy or diseased en- 
 largement of heart. Compromise is often right in matters 
 of policy or method. Compromise is always wrong in 
 matters of principle or duty. Truth abhors compromise as 
 light abhors darkness. Truth advances her kingdom by 
 affirmation, not by evasion ; by victory, not by surrender. 
 If there is in all this world a sacred right it is the right of 
 
OF THE CHURCH 155 
 
 every human being to have his own personal moral convic- 
 tions. If there is in all this world a sacred responsibility 
 it is the responsibility which every human being has before 
 his God and before his fellows for those convictions. If 
 there is in all this world a sacred obligation it is the obliga- 
 tion which rests on every human being to be true, at what- 
 ever cost, to those convictions. For the man who is willing 
 to surrender his own convictions for the sake of "unity" 
 is a man whose convictions for the sake of unity or of any- 
 thing else are to be distrusted. For he who begins with 
 being false to himself will end with being false to everybody 
 else. Moreover, the unity which is brought about by com- 
 promise is not unity at all ; it is only a weak, sentimental, 
 flabby uniformity. The boneless, pulpy compromiser, like 
 a composite photograph in which every sign of individual- 
 ity is merged, looks remarkably kind and also remarkably 
 weak. No, unity cannot be secured by compromise. 
 
 Unity Can be Secured only by Comprehension. — How, then, 
 shall the church unify herself ? And so, affirmatively : the 
 church must unify herself by comprehension. Here was 
 the grievous mistake of the beloved disciple when he said 
 to his divine Teacher : 
 
 " Master, we saw one casting out demons in thy name ; 
 and we forbade him, because he followeth not with us." 
 (Luke ix. 49.) 
 
 It was the outburst of an intense sectarianism. It mat- 
 tered not to John that this stranger was really doing a 
 blessed service in Christ's name. The trouble was that he 
 did not belong to St. John's little coterie ; he was marching 
 under a sort of independent flag. That was enough to 
 condemn him; the Master had no use for irregular out- 
 siders. 
 
 " But Jesus said, Forbid him not : for there is no man 
 who shall do a mighty work in my name, and be able 
 
156 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 quickly to speak evil of me. For he that is not against 
 us is for us. For whosoever shall give you a cup of water 
 to drink, because ye are Christ's, verily I say unto you, he 
 shall in no wise lose his reward. And whosoever shall 
 cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stum- 
 ble, it were better for him if a great millstone were hanged 
 about his neck, and he were cast into the sea." (Mark ix. 
 
 39-42.) 
 
 It is as though our Master had said : " No one who is 
 really doing good in my name — in the sphere of my char- 
 acter and work — can be false to me. I even declare that 
 he who does not array himself against me is really on my 
 side. Whoever does us any service, however slight, shall 
 have a heavenly reward ; but whoever, by harsh treatment, 
 causes one of these little ones or outsiders who love me, 
 however obscure, to fall into sin, it were better for him that 
 he had suffered a felon's death. Instead, then, of repelling 
 the stranger, you ought to have bidden him God-speed." 
 You see, then, our Master's attitude in this matter of com- 
 prehension. The coming unity of his church is to be se- 
 cured, not by exclusion, but by inclusion. 
 
 "But to what extent would you include?" I hear you 
 asking. To the extent of Christianity's horizon, I reply ; in- 
 cluding anybody and everybody, of whatever sect or no sect 
 at all, who can be described by that august word " Chris- 
 tian " ; or, as the Apostle Paul expresses it (1 Cor. i. 2), 
 " All that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in 
 every place, their Lord and ours." 
 
 " I will not ask my neighbor of his creed; 
 
 Nor what he deems of doctrine old or new ; 
 Nor what rights his honest soul may need 
 
 To worship God — the only wise and true ; 
 Nor what he thinks of the anointed Christ ; 
 Nor with what baptism he has been baptized. 
 
OF THE CHURCH 157 
 
 " I ask not what temptations have beset 
 
 His human heart, now self-abased and sore ; 
 
 Nor by what wayside well the Lord he met ; 
 Nor where was uttered, ' Go, and sin no more.' 
 
 Between his soul and God that business lies ; 
 
 Not mine to cavil, question, or despise. 
 
 " I ask not by which name, among the rest 
 
 That Christians go by, he is named or known ; 
 
 Whether his faith has ever been ' professed,' 
 Or whether proven by his deeds alone ; 
 
 So there be Christhood in him, all is well ; 
 
 He^is my brother, and in peace we dwell. 
 
 " If grace and patience in his actions speak, 
 
 Or fall in words of kindness from his tongue, 
 Which raise the fallen, fortify the weak, 
 
 And heal the heart by sorrow rent and wrung ; 
 If he give good for ill, and love for hate — 
 Friend of the friendless, poor and desolate — 
 
 " I find in him discipleship so true, 
 
 So full, that nothing further I demand. 
 He may be bondman, freedman, Gentile, Jew : 
 But we are brothers — walk we hand in hand. 
 In his white life let me the Christhood see ; 
 It is enough for him, enough for me." 
 
 Now this idea of comprehension is the modern contribu- 
 tion to ecclesiology or the doctrine of the church. The 
 old method was to search for similarities ; the new method 
 is to recognize diversities. The church's true policy here 
 is not rejection, but adjustment ; not insistence, but assis- 
 tance ; not as Paul and Barnabas angrily parted at Antioch, 
 but as Abraham and Lot peacefully parted at Bethel ; not 
 as John, who cried, " Forbid ! " but as Jesus, who replied, 
 "Welcome! " ; not as cave-dwellers moping in solitude, but 
 as cosmopolitans living in God's open air. O ye Christian 
 sectarians ; ye who are dwelling in dark glens of denomi- 
 
8 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 nationalism ; ye who, like Elijah in his cave, imagine that 
 you alone are Jehovah's true prophets ; ye who live in the 
 hamlet of your sect, and 
 
 " Think the rustic cackle of your bourg 
 The murmur of the world " — 
 
 come out from your dark little glen into the sunlight of 
 God's open country, and see how vast is the dome of his 
 sky. 
 
 Catholicity the Ideal Church Form. — But how shall this 
 unity by comprehension be effected ? And so I pass to 
 present for a moment catholicity as the ideal church form. 
 For each Christian sect, in so far as it has Christ's own 
 spirit, does have its own divine mission. Each sect is a 
 facet in God's great diamond of truth, flashing prismatic 
 hues, the union of which makes the white light. It is not 
 given to any one man or to any one set of men, however 
 great, to comprehend all truth ; for, if it were, men them- 
 selves would be infinite. Accordingly, while sectarianism 
 is born of sin, and is devilish, sect is born of finiteness, and 
 may be even angelic. Do not try, then, to secure unity 
 by hammering diversities into monotonous flatness. But 
 try to secure unity by soaring high enough to comprehend 
 diversities, even as God's own sky comprehends ocean and 
 forest, valley and mountain, man and flower. 
 
 As a matter of fact, each denomination, in rearing its 
 own ecclesiastical structure, works selectively. That is to 
 say, each sect, in building its own creed or polity, builds 
 on the remembrance of certain Scriptures which it regards 
 as favorable and on the oblivion of certain other Scriptures 
 which it regards as unfavorable ; equally skilled in the art 
 of remembering and in the art of forgetting; dexterously 
 adjusting its powers of memory and its powers of oblivion 
 to the supposed necessities of the case. In other words, 
 
OF THE CHURCH 159 
 
 each sect errs not so much in what it believes as in what it 
 I fails to believe. The coming ideal church will be built not 
 on a selection of Scriptures, but on the Bible in its whole- 
 ness. Can there be any better way of bringing about the 
 unification of Christendom than by the occasional and con- 
 siderate interchange of Christian views in quiet and informal 
 conferences of representative Christian thinkers of all com- 
 munions ? If the church is ever to be perfected into one, 
 that perfectation will be effected, not by resolutions of 
 conventions or decrees of councils, but by the gradual and 
 silent permeation of Christian sentiments throughout Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 The Coming Ideal Church. — One thing is certain : the 
 coming ideal church will neither be wholly Baptist nor 
 / Episcopal nor Methodist nor Presbyterian nor Roman nor 
 Quaker ; but it will be Catholic with " Roman " left out. 
 For Christianity, or the kingdom of God, is larger than any 
 denominational province in it, even as the United States 
 is larger than the State of Pennsylvania. Christ's body is 
 larger than any one member of it. Our Lord Jesus has 
 but one body — he is not a monster. Denominationalism 
 still has its place in the economy of Christendom ; but that 
 place is no longer in the foreground ; that place is to be 
 henceforth in the background. We are still to work along 
 denominational ; lines but we are to work along denomina- 
 tional lines only with a view to the church as a one Whole. 
 Christians are not disjecta membra; they are members one 
 of another, and there is but one divine body. Is Christ 
 divided? Can Satan dismember that blessed body, and toss 
 one member into the camp of the Baptists, a second mem- 
 ber into the camp of the Methodists, a third into the camp 
 of the Presbyterians? Was Paul crucified for you ? Were 
 you baptized into the name of Peter or Luther or Calvin 
 or Wesley or Fox or Bunyan or Swedenborg? No; One 
 
160 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 is your Master, and all ye are brothers ; fellow-members of 
 that one body of which Christ is the one Head. And the 
 fellow-members are coordinate. The eye is a member of 
 the body, and a very important member ; but was the eye 
 created to gaze only in a mirror and see nothing but the 
 image of itself ? The ear is another very important mem- 
 ber of the organism ; but what becomes of its importance 
 if it is separated from the body ? All the worth it has lies 
 in the fact that it is a part of the body and ministers to it. 
 If the whole church were only one gigantic Congregational 
 eye, or one colossal Methodist ear, or one stupendous Epis- 
 copal hand, or one enormous Baptist thumb, or one measure- 
 less Presbyterian foot, where were Christ's one, yet many- 
 membered, body ? But now they are many members, yet 
 but one body. Accordingly the Episcopal hand cannot 
 say to the Methodist ear, "I have no need of thee;" nor, 
 again, the Pontifical head to the Waldensian feet, " I have 
 no need of you." For all Christians form the one body of 
 Christ, and each Christian is a functional member thereof. 
 And the one body of Christ is healthy and effective in 
 proportion as each Christian faithfully discharges his own 
 organic function, all the members — whether eye or hand, 
 ear or foot, sinew or nerve, bone or cell — working together 
 in reciprocal cooperation. 
 
 Our Topic Momentous. — Our topic is indeed momentous. 
 I am quite aware that this struggling after Christian unity 
 is often sneered at as a girlish sentimentalism, unworthy 
 the sturdy muscle of denominational champions, contend- 
 ing earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered 
 unto the saints. But does it never occur to these redoubt- 
 able knights of the faith once for all delivered unto the 
 saints that this ancient faith meant, and still means, chiefly 
 this : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart," and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"; 
 
OF THE CHURCH 161 
 
 there being no other commandment greater than these, since 
 "on these two commandments hangeth the whole law, and 
 the prophets"? (Matt. xxii. 37-40.) Do these doughty 
 warriors of the primitive orthodoxy never catch a glimpse 
 of the majestic truth that (Rom. xhi. 8-10; Gal. v. 14; 
 James ii. 8) the whole law is summed up in this royal word, 
 namely, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," this love 
 being itself the very "bond of perfectness "? (Col. iii. 14.) 
 Aye, 
 
 "I'm apt to think the man 
 That could surround the sum of things, and spy 
 The heart of God and secrets of his empire, 
 Would speak but love. With him the bright result 
 Would change the hue of intermediate scenes, 
 And make one thing of all theology." 
 
 This matter, then, of the unification of Christendom is 
 more than a mere sentiment or sweet privilege ; like humil- 
 ity or prayer or faith, it is not even a matter of option ; it 
 is the most imperial of the commandments ; it is the ordi- 
 nance of the ordinances. " Now abideth faith, hope, love, 
 these three; and the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor. 
 xiii. 13.) And no wonder; for God himself is love, so that 
 he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. 
 (1 John iv. 16.) In brief, love is the characterizing mark 
 of the Christian religion, separating it discretively from all 
 other religions, and by that fact proving it to be divine : 
 " By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye 
 have love one to another." (John xiii. 35.) 
 
 Auspicious Auguries. — Thank God, we are living under 
 happy auguries. The growing catholicity of our times, as 
 indicated by such expressions as these : international arbi- 
 tration ; international law ; international congresses for se- 
 curing a common standard of time, of distance, of weight, 
 of money, of signals ; international Sunday-school lessons ; 
 
162 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 a universal alphabet; the world's fairs; the world's week 
 of prayer ; the numerous union societies throughout Chris- 
 tendom — the Evangelical Alliance ; Young Men's Christian 
 Associations ; Christian Endeavor Societies ; King's Sons ; 
 King's Daughters — the McAll Mission; the overtures of 
 a liturgical church and the responses of at least some non- 
 liturgical churches; the interdenominational salutations 
 and reciprocities ; the growing observance of ecclesiastical 
 comity in mission stations ; the letters of commendation and 
 transfer from one denomination to another; the growing 
 care for the poor and feeble and " uncomely parts " ; the 
 marked tendency toward cooperation in Christian reforms 
 and charities throughout the world ; the recent recognition 
 of the Sunday before Christmas as the universal Peace Sun- 
 day ; the already well-nigh observance of Sunday itself as 
 the world's common Sabbath ; the Parliament of Religions ; 
 the growing disposition to maximize the points wherein the 
 sects agree, and to minimize the points wherein the sects dif- 
 fer ; the interchange of ecclesiastical opinions by the Ameri- 
 can Institute of Christian Philosophy, under the auspices of 
 Methodist Chautauqua ; in brief, the growing desire to " fol- 
 low after things which make for peace, and things where- 
 by we may upbuild one another " (Rom. xiv. 19) — all this, 
 and such as this, is auspicious of the happy day when 
 " Ephraim shall no longer envy Judah, and Judah shall no 
 longer vex Ephraim." (Isa. xi. 13.) And in that day of 
 everlasting amity all Christians, of whatever sect, will be 
 " Low-churchmen," because true to man ; all will be " High- 
 churchmen," because true to God ; all will be " Broad- 
 churchmen," because true to God and to man. Or, to bor- 
 row phrases from continental parliaments, all Christians will 
 belong to the " Right," and all will belong to the " Left," 
 and all will belong to the " Center " ; because Jesus Christ — 
 himself the Master of Assemblies — is alike center, radius, 
 
OF THE CHURCH 163 
 
 circumference. Then shall all earth become one Jerusalem, 
 and all days one perpetual Pentecost, wherein the unity of 
 mankind, lost at Babel, shall be restored in Christ, and all 
 men shall again be of one speech. 
 
 Heaven grant us the blessedness of seeing with our own 
 eyes what many prophets and righteous men have from 
 the beginning desired to see, namely, one Christian church 
 throughout the world, even 
 
 THE ONE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH OF THE SON OF GOD! 
 
 Collect for All Saints' Day. — " O Almighty God, who 
 hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fel- 
 lowship, in the mystical body of thy Son, Christ our Lord ; 
 grant us grace so to follow thy blessed saints in all virtuous 
 and godly living that we may come to those unspeakable 
 joys which thou hast prepared for those who unfeignedly 
 love thee ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 
 
VI 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE 
 AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 By HENRY MITCHELL MacCRACKEN, 
 Chancellor of the University of the City of New York. 
 
 165 
 
VI 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE AND 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The church is the body of men and women who enlist 
 to serve God and Jesus Christ. The single fact of enlist- 
 ment — which word I use as equivalent to promising in pub- 
 lic or deliberately engaging with others — constitutes these 
 men and women a visible organism. No rite or ceremony 
 beyond the declaration of service is needed in order that 
 an individual may join the church visible. When David 
 sang to his father and mother, "The Lord is my shepherd," 
 he joined the church. When Ruth said to Naomi, " Thy 
 God shall be my God," she joined the church. When the 
 younger son said to his fellow-swineherds, " I will arise and 
 go to my father," he became part of that organization, and 
 no baptism, or communion, or vote of session, or confirma- 
 tion by bishop, could do any more than impress the fact 
 on his own attention and that of others. This body, the 
 church, has a single end: to present itself, in each of its 
 constituent members, perfect before God and before one 
 another, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." 
 The object at which the church aims is to save. Salva- 
 tion is likeness to God; godliness is godlikeness. To be 
 like God is achieved by choosing to be like God. Salva- 
 tion demands, therefore, as the first question, What are we 
 to believe concerning God ? Learning God is the earliest 
 necessity of the soul ; it is also the latest necessity in order 
 
 167 
 
1 68 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS 
 
 to salvation. The church is a school of men and women 
 learning God because, intending to become like God, they 
 fix their minds on this ; they begin also to love God as 
 much as they know how. They love also and sometimes 
 even more intensely objects which they think show God to 
 their minds — a brazen serpent, a ceremony, a creed. It is 
 an old mistake to substitute the creature for the Creator, 
 the ordinance of God for the Divine, Perfect One. 
 
 Turning from this statement respecting the church and 
 its object, I take up the other member of my theme, 
 namely, "Science and Philosophy." The theme, as as- 
 signed, does not, to my mind, follow the order in which 
 we should approach the subjects named. Instead of " The 
 Church and the Problems of Science and Philosophy," it 
 should be " The Church and the Problems of Philosophy 
 and Science." It is in the interest of clear thinking that 
 we attach to each of these words a definition as nearly as 
 possible exclusive of the definition given the other. Phi- 
 losophy asks, What and whence the world ? and, as in- 
 volved in this, What and whence myself ? What, if any, 
 higher intelligence than myself, and what relation exists 
 between us? In science, self observes phenomena or 
 facts, reasons upon them and reduces them to a system 
 of proposition — in other words, reduces them to laws. 
 Science is the superstructure ; philosophy is the foundation. 
 The results of science often seem more real than philoso- 
 phy ; so the bridge towers and cables seem more real than 
 the foundations. They impress themselves upon the atten- 
 tion, while with the substructure the proverb is true, " Out 
 of sight, out of mind." If the engineer of the proposed 
 bridge across the Hudson, which Congress has authorized, 
 would let me dictate the part of the bridge under water, I 
 could make it impossible for his bridge to carry its own 
 weight. If the church let university professors dictate its 
 
OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 169 
 
 philosophy, the theology or morals of the church may be 
 discovered, to our amazement, to rest on nothing and to 
 be nothing. And there are plenty of university profes- 
 sors ready to present us with a philosophy. 
 
 Even novel-writers, nowadays, define philosophy and sci- 
 ence. Mr. J. Marion Crawford has recently published a 
 story which I was led to read because the scene was laid 
 in New York City, and in the part of New York City 
 where I have for ten years past had my home. He puts 
 in the mouth of one of his characters this deliverance on 
 philosophy and science: "We know everything that's true, 
 and it all seems old because we do know it. I don't mean 
 little peddling properties of petroleum and tricks with tele- 
 phones — what they call science, you know. I mean about 
 big things that don't change : ideas, right and wrong, and 
 the future life, and the soul." This character, albeit not 
 the hero or heroine, is not altogether without a notion of 
 things as they are. 
 
 The first question is, therefore, What do we know ? What 
 is it the church knows ? What philosophy can the church 
 tolerate ? To what, if to any, must she be intolerant ? If 
 we take as the church's motto, "In necessariis Veritas^ in 
 dubiis caritas" what is necessarius and what dubius ? 
 
 Let me turn to the problems of philosophy, asking you 
 to recollect that the question is, What shall the church do 
 with them ? The most recent book on metaphysics — sent 
 to me, as a professor of philosophy, for an opinion — may 
 serve for illustration. It is published in English this year 
 for the first time. It is written by a professor of philosophy 
 in a North German university. It declares : " The simple, 
 fundamental question of all philosophy is, What is the 
 world ?" The answer makes God to be the world and the 
 world to be God. It says of theism : " It is the funda- 
 mental dogma of primitive Judaism, according to which 
 
170 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS 
 
 the world is created by a personal being similar to our- 
 selves — an hypothesis at the boldness of which we are not 
 surprised, only because we are accustomed to hear it from 
 our youth up." " This view," the writer continues, " seems 
 to have been not so much a result of natural development 
 as, rather, the inspiration of a single man, of Moses, whose 
 greatness it is not easy to overrate. With the people it 
 never became very popular." 
 
 " If any one tries," he goes on to say, " to understand 
 what personality really means, he will be inclined to regard 
 this conception of the Being of beings as personality almost 
 a blasphemy. It is, rather, a supernatural power, a world- 
 forming principle, a something which no eye sees, no name 
 denotes, no concept reaches nor ever can reach. And this 
 Being [with a capital B], in the last and profoundest sense, 
 is ourselves." 
 
 With such a notion of theism this professor of philosophy 
 at Kiel University is, of course, a pantheist. 
 
 " All is Will " [with a capital W]. " Only negative as- 
 sertions about Will are possible to us." " Every being in 
 nature is a manifestation of the whole and individual Will." 
 
 If any student thinks that the rejecter of theism and up- 
 holder of pantheism will be obliged to quarrel openly with 
 the creed of Christianity he little knows the skill of such 
 jugglers of language. This writer (who has visited India, 
 and quotes copiously from Hindu metaphysics) amazes by 
 his linguistic jugglery more than an Indian juggler amazes 
 by his manual dexterity. 
 
 After saying that the Being of beings, in the last and pro- 
 foundest sense, is ourselves, he says this same supernatural 
 power is the Holy Ghost. But not only do we know God 
 and the Holy Ghost as ourselves, but, also, we become the 
 Christ who delivers or redeems the world, when we reach 
 
OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 171 
 
 the point of redeeming the world from the sphere of real 
 things, and of looking on it as " a nonentity." 
 
 Having thus denned God and the Holy Ghost and re- 
 demption, he is ready to explain the ground of duty : 
 
 " Why should I love my neighbor as myself ? The 
 answer is not in the Bible, but is in the Veda: 'Because 
 you are your neighbor, and mere delusion makes you believe 
 that your neighbor is something different from yourself.' " 
 
 Also he explains immortality: "There is no real con- 
 tinuance of life beyond death." But the Will "hastens 
 from generation to generation to an ever new expansion 
 of its being." 
 
 I have presented this writer at some length because his 
 book is the latest that has come to me. He is professor 
 of philosophy in a Christian university. And a great edu- 
 cational publishing-house in New York writes me, asking 
 me if this book will not suit me for class-room use, and if I 
 cannot commend it. The book, no doubt, is sent to every 
 college professor of philosophy in the land. It is only one 
 specimen — the latest specimen — of one philosophy — pan- 
 theistic philosophy. But I must not let this philosophy go 
 without a quotation from its metaphysics of morality : 
 
 " The eternal saving doctrine of denial appears in Chris- 
 tianity as the giving up of one's own sinful will to a holy 
 will conceived as personal. This," he says, " is an anthro- 
 pomorphic conception, irreconcilable with science, and 
 favors eudemonism. On the other hand, we cannot hope 
 to find a form more capable of moving the soul, one more 
 conducive to the spirit of genuine religion. Therefore, for 
 the people, it will still have currency as exoteric teaching." 
 He instances Christ as practising exoteric teaching when 
 he uttered parables ; then adds : " Enough if by means of 
 science we succeed in leading the thinking portion of man- 
 
i7 2 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS 
 
 kind from exoteric to esoteric Christianity," which, says he, 
 is the metaphysics of Schopenhauer. 
 
 Here is the latest morality: People believe that there 
 is a personal will above theirs. This is false ; but let them 
 believe it and think that they have Christianity. Really 
 only we have got hold of the essence of Christianity who 
 hold that there is no will above ours, and who follow 
 Schopenhauer. 
 
 This affords me an opportunity for my proposition re- 
 garding the church and philosophy. The church has a 
 philosophy. She can tolerate only one philosophy, and she 
 can no more endure any one of the other three philosophies 
 than a man sailing from the south seas can look east, west, 
 and south in order to sail north. The church's relation to 
 philosophy is not to discover new continents, but to steer 
 the ship in the known channel, deep and safe. It is not to 
 be a Christopher Columbus, but a Palinurus ; a Palinurus, 
 however, who keeps wide awake, with firm hold on the 
 helm. 
 
 Every man has a philosophy, original or second-hand. 
 A man's philosophy makes him or mars him. A man's 
 theology rests upon his philosophy as a wall rests upon its 
 foundation. 
 
 Suppose false theology win the day so far as to convince 
 men that Christ never lived ; or, if he lived, he was cruci- 
 fied and buried, but he rose never at all. Still there would 
 be a church that would say, " I believe in God, the Father 
 Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. I believe in the 
 life everlasting." 
 
 But suppose false philosophies win the day. Then there 
 will be no church, because we shall all have entered into 
 esoteric Christianity, and found that the giving up of one's 
 own sinful will to a holy will conceived as personal is un- 
 scientific and untrue. 
 
OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 173 
 
 The church's relation to philosophy is to know the false 
 philosophies when they are taught, and to expose their false- 
 ness, and to exclude whoever insists on teaching them from 
 the place of a Christian teacher. Less than this is for the 
 church to propagate a lie and to make herself a liar. 
 
 I have said that though antichristian belief should win the 
 day, and convince men that Christ never lived, the church 
 must remain, because the faith would exist, as it existed in 
 David or Isaiah, that Christ could live and would live. It 
 would be only the matter of waiting till we had the proofs 
 of a Christ among us. 
 
 A saying of John Stuart Mill, in his posthumous work, 
 has ever had a weighty influence on my mind, namely, 
 that the Christian faith is open to no philosophical objec- 
 tion that does not hold equally well against theism. That 
 is, theism as a philosophy makes miracles reasonable and 
 probable. It becomes no longer a question of philosophy 
 whether Christ rose and ascended to heaven ; it is ques- 
 tion of evidence for the jury. Paul's saying, that " if Christ 
 be not risen, we are of all men most miserable," has always 
 meant to me that Paul could disbelieve the resurrection 
 only by disbelieving God altogether. This antithesis is be- 
 tween Christ and the materialism which he quotes as say- 
 ing, " Let us eat and drink ; for to-morrow we die." Paul 
 was as sure of Christ's living as of a living God. He did 
 not mean to say that provided a man could cling to his 
 Heavenly Father, even without faith in Christ's resurrec- 
 tion, he would be most miserable, but that he himself could 
 not do it ; that if he let the latter go he let everything go. 
 We are many of us not quite like Paul in this belief. We 
 say not, " If we let the historical Christ gG we let God go," 
 but that, " If we let the possibility of the resurrection go 
 we let theism also go." The church, in order not to let 
 everything go, must not let the philosophy of theism give 
 
174 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS 
 
 ground one instant to false philosophies. She must not 
 rest as confident and indifferent as now. She must attack 
 pantheism, with its assumption of the eternal " Substance " 
 of Spinoza, "the absolute Idea" of Hegel, or the "Will" 
 of Schopenhauer, as a theory going in a circle and explain- 
 ing really nothing. According to it God evolves the world, 
 yet is only realized in its evolution. 
 
 We attack atheism and agnosticism as contradicting every 
 kind of knowledge and reducing every proposition of every 
 science to a nothing. We attack materialism as a half- 
 baked theory or hypothesis giving as the basis and origin 
 of self-consciousness, of duty, of imagination, of a Paul, a 
 Moses, or a Christ, the motion of particles that we know 
 by sight and touch. It is blind to the deeper knowing that 
 we have immediately of our own soul. 
 
 If time allowed I should like to show at length how ac- 
 tive is the propaganda of agnostic philosophy ; how sus- 
 pense of judgment, in regard to the greatest questions, is 
 considered not only allowable, but a work of wisdom. As 
 John Stuart Mill writes, " The rational attitude of a think- 
 ing man toward the supreme force, whether in natural or 
 revealed religion, is that of skepticism, as distinguished from 
 belief on the one hand and from atheism on the other." 
 In connection therewith it could be shown that the heir 
 apparent of agnostic philosophy is materialistic philosophy. 
 Time forbids my entering upon this question. 
 
 I accept it that the question of philosophy is, " What is 
 the world ?" because that question involves, " What is God, 
 and what is soul, and what is the relation of each to the 
 other two? " also, " What is duty ? " and so includes the rela- 
 tion of Tightness. Science asks, " What are we to do with 
 phenomena or facts ? " It observes, reasons, and reduces 
 to a system of laws or propositions. This is so in psycho- 
 logical science and physical science, political science and 
 
OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 175 
 
 theological science, biblical science and ethical science, his- 
 torical science and linguistic science. But science does 
 not deal with certain questions that are presupposed. The 
 questions which I have named — What is God ? What is 
 the world ? What is soul ? What is duty? — these are 
 philosophy. 
 
 Science has to accept its foundation from philosophy. 
 In the science of the stars you accept that the star is ; that 
 self is ; that there is a relation between them called knowing 
 or knowledge ; and that certain knowledge is infallible — 
 for example, that a star is ego or non-ego ; it cannot pos- 
 sibly be an entity between these two. 
 
 Now what has the church to do with science ? I have 
 intimated that it has everything to do with philosophy. 
 But what has the church, organized to present souls per- 
 fect in purity before God, to do with physical and psycho- 
 logical science ; with ethical and political science as a body 
 of facts reduced to laws or propositions ; what to do with 
 linguistic and historical science ; what with biblical science, 
 as a science of theology derived from the Bible ; or with 
 theological science, as gathered not only from the Bible, 
 but from universal observation — the world of nature and 
 of man ? 
 
 He is a very dim-sighted person who does not see that 
 the question what the church has to do with science divides 
 itself at once into two. Because the church is an organiza- 
 tion to make men like God, it has everything to do with 
 theological science, or what God says, and ethical science, 
 or what ought we to do. Because the church has accepted 
 the Bible as the infallible rule of faith and practice, it has 
 everything to do with biblical science in the sense of the 
 science of what the Bible teaches we are to believe concern- 
 ing God and concerning the duty God requires of man. 
 But as to mathematics and physical science (I mean apart 
 
176 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS 
 
 from the philosophy of the soul and of the world ; I mean 
 as a system of observed phenomena), as to psychological 
 and linguistic science, historical, sociological, and political 
 science, and the rest, I am sure the church, as such, is not 
 called to elaborate or to know them. The greatest mis- 
 takes the church has made have come from thinking that 
 she had everything to do and to say about them as mere 
 sciences. 
 
 The foundation mistake of the church has come from 
 the same feeling that turned the Hebrews from Jehovah to 
 the golden calf, from God to the temple, from the weightier 
 matters of the law to the trifles of tithings and ablutions. 
 It is the tired feeling that comes over the soul in trying to 
 keep company with its Maker. It grows weary, and still it 
 is afraid not to be religious ; so it deceives itself by substi- 
 tuting for studying God and serving God and toiling to win 
 men to be like God, studying something more tangible and 
 material — for example, what the Bible says about the mode 
 of creation or the mode of civil government or the shape 
 of the earth — and then setting up its theory on a pedestal 
 to be idolized, and toiling to win and to coerce men to 
 bow down thereunto. 
 
 It is not religion, but antireligion ; it is not Christ, but 
 antichrist, that has brought the church into conflict at any 
 time with true science. 
 
 Now I grant that the Bible touches in some part every 
 science that I have mentioned. It seems in psychological 
 science, to men like Delitzsch, to make body, soul, and 
 spirit — a trichotomy ; to others, and to myself, only body 
 and soul — a dichotomy. It seems to Mr. Jasper to teach 
 "the sun do move," and so it seemed to the church that 
 condemned Galileo. It seems to us not to enforce this 
 proposition in physical science. It seems to many to teach 
 that varieties of language all came from the occurrence at 
 
OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 177 
 
 Babel ; to others that they came by a long evolution ; and 
 in this it touches, albeit very slightly, linguistic science. 
 
 It was an important and, I think, accurate saying of one 
 of my predecessors on this platform when he declared that 
 higher criticism does not belong to biblical science, but to 
 historical science. Biblical science is to concern itself ex- 
 clusively with the question, What does the Bible teach as 
 to what we are to believe concerning God, and what duty 
 God requires of man ? 
 
 Historical science settles when and how the Bible was 
 written. I have had serious questions as to whether the 
 problems of higher criticism do not belong to a professor- 
 ship in the university faculty of arts and science, rather 
 than to a professorship of theology. Higher criticism is not 
 vital to theology in the same sense in which philosophy is 
 vital to theology. Yet no theological seminary has a pro- 
 fessorship of philosophy. A General Assembly might be 
 fairly well qualified to sit upon a question of philosophy, 
 because philosophy is to be settled by data in the possession 
 of every man. A General Assembly might be well quali- 
 fied to sit upon a question of biblical science in the sense 
 of what the Bible teaches about God and duty. But it is 
 very poorly qualified to sit upon a question of historical 
 science, because historical science requires the teaching of 
 a vast number of facts ; the reasoning upon them ; the re- 
 ducing them to propositions. The pope, the embodiment 
 of a large part of the visible church, has been often found 
 very poorly qualified to sit upon a question of natural 
 science. 
 
 If I were amending things I would transfer every theo- 
 logical professor who wants to devote himself to higher 
 criticism to the university faculty of arts, and give him full 
 sweep there. Then I would transfer the decision of such 
 questions as, "Who wrote the latter part of Isaiah?" to a 
 
178 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS 
 
 conference of university professors of historical science. 
 Many a student of theology receives very much such a re- 
 turn from the theological faculty as the Englishman com- 
 plained of receiving when he went to hear a celebrated 
 preacher. Said he : " I went to learn the way to heaven, 
 and the only information I got was how to travel to Pales- 
 tine." 
 
 Biblical science is what the Bible teaches of God and 
 duty. Biblical science is not political science nor socio- 
 logical science. Biblical science is not the whole of ethi- 
 cal science. That is, while the Bible is an infallible rule 
 of duty, it does not relieve the individual from the use of 
 his intellect in working out the application of the ten com- 
 mandments, or of the eleventh and new commandment, to 
 the condition of facts by which he is surrounded. The 
 value of the Bible is that it is human and counts nothing 
 human foreign or hostile. This has made it the cyclopedia 
 of generations — nay, the library ; the common school — nay, 
 the university. But the Bible itself nowhere proposes to 
 be a cyclopedia of any science. 
 
 Here comes in frequent mistake. Albeit the Bible itself 
 records moral advance in its writers on questions of ap- 
 plied ethics or ordinary civil law, as, for example, in the 
 matter of polygamy and the matter of divorce : in one age 
 Bible writers allowing polygamy and arbitrary divorce as 
 quite moral, while Christ distinctly teaches that they are 
 immoral — nevertheless some are unwilling to look at the 
 Bible as progressive in its ethical science. 
 
 We claim that the Bible for each generation has been 
 the infallible rule of faith and practice, in the sense that it 
 was ever perfect in its philosophy of God and man, of the 
 world and duty, and the highest possible rule for each gen- 
 eration in applied ethics and also in applied science. But 
 we find the Bible also a history of the growth of the church 
 
OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 179 
 
 in morals and doctrine. The greatest misuse of the Bible 
 is to treat it as if it had fallen down complete from the 
 skies, like the fabled image of Diana. Mistaken interpreta- 
 tion of the Bible has attended every conilict between the 
 church and true science. 
 
 The relation of the church to science demands that the 
 church place in its creed only what it is needful to believe, 
 concerning God and concerning duty. Whether this should 
 be as brief as the Apostles' Creed or as elaborate as the 
 Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church is something 
 that the church must decide. But it must mark out the line 
 by this test : Is the proposition one that is needful to show 
 God and to show duty ? Adopting this rule, the church 
 will often enough touch the field of this or that science 
 outside biblical or theological science. It is well that the 
 preacher should not be afraid of any fence round any sci- 
 entific inclosure. Outside his office as a preacher he may 
 debate Darwinism or woman-suffrage ; debate higher criti- 
 cism or prohibition. But do not let him drag the church, 
 as the church, into the arena, and try to stretch the creed 
 that is to teach God and duty to cover any and every 
 subject. On the other hand, let the church give wide lib- 
 erty of opinion and teaching as to all questions that do not 
 necessarily conflict with her doctrine of God and of obliga- 
 tion. The church of the first centuries gave wide room to 
 Gnosticism, except when Gnosticism forsook the questions 
 of science and shook the foundations of theology because 
 she inculcated false philosophy. 
 
 The scientists who profess agnosticism are in one re- 
 spect very like their predecessors who professed Gnosti- 
 cism. Gnosticism speculated in respect to the intelligences 
 above man. It speculated celestially. It guessed what 
 kind of and how many intelligent beings were in the next 
 grade above man, and in the degree above that, and so on. 
 
180 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS 
 
 In that age there had been comparatively little observation 
 of the material universe, for there was no telescope nor 
 microscope nor spectroscope. Hence speculation was in 
 regard to the world of intelligences. In our day agnosti- 
 cism speculates not at all celestially, but altogether terres- 
 trially: How shall we fill in the gaps, not between man 
 and the highest intelligence, but between man and proto- 
 plasm? I do not mean to say that all who speculate are 
 agnostics, but as a rule agnostics are speculators. I have 
 no objection to this speculation so long as it does not 
 proceed upon a false metaphysic. But it should be borne 
 in mind that there is a deal of hypothesis that remains as 
 purely mere guess as the Gnostic hypotheses were mere 
 guesses ; you could neither prove them nor disprove them. 
 
 The attitude of the church toward a vast deal of the 
 natural science of the day should be patient waiting ; and 
 of individual church-members, kindly skepticism or agnos- 
 ticism. 
 
 May I draw a leaf from my own experience ? For some 
 time after leaving college my attitude as to the Christian 
 creed was undecided and skeptical. When I accepted it 
 and chose to follow it I resolved to employ any agnostic 
 or skeptical tendency of my mind chiefly in reference to 
 new hypotheses in science. I have practised this for thirty 
 years with a decided economy of both intellect and feel- 
 ing. It has been a misfortune for the church and the pope, 
 and many a lesser teacher of morals and religion, that as 
 to science he was not ready oftener to say simply, " I do 
 not know." 
 
 It is an excellent time now for the church to say, " I do 
 not know," as to sociological matters. There are not a 
 few people who would commit the church to this or that 
 solution of the strifes between the employed and the em- 
 ployer. They would make it obligatory upon employers 
 
OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 181 
 
 and employed to accept arbitration as the solution of every 
 difference of opinion. They would prescribe wage-sharing 
 to every business enterprise. They would settle the num- 
 ber of hours in a day's work. 
 
 Now, interesting as these questions are as a part of soci- 
 ology, I submit that the church, as such, is not qualified 
 to solve them. She must leave them to specialists to work 
 out, confining herself to the ethical rules which she is sure 
 of, as covering all questions. But she must exhort her 
 sons, her mightiest intellects, as individuals, to give them- 
 selves to these questions, and to find their solution. She 
 must quicken the intellect and conscience of her members, 
 till they apply the law of love, far and near, to the relation 
 of the employer and the employed. She must quicken the 
 conscience and intellect of the nations, so that when men 
 will not be amenable to the law of love the sword of the 
 ruler shall be upheld as a terror to evil-doers and a com- 
 fort to those who do well. 
 
 I fully recognize that on what the church should teach 
 and practise as duty there will ever be divergences. Within 
 our own lifetimes we have seen one part of the church 
 formally proclaiming slaveholding sinful, another part ex- 
 cusing and upholding it ; one part proclaiming every use 
 of intoxicating drinks sinful, other parts of the church at 
 least tolerating it ; one part of the Roman Catholic Church 
 suspending Father McGlynn for his sociological theories, 
 another part championing him, and the pope at Rome, as 
 usual, effecting a compromise on the question. 
 
 There never will come a time when the church will agree 
 with herself, still less when she will agree with the world 
 outside, as to what is needed in her sphere of instruction, 
 which is to embrace all that we are to believe concerning 
 God and concerning what duty God requires of man. 
 Hence comes the expediency of divers denominations in 
 
1 82 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS 
 
 the one church, which I assert and maintain with all my 
 heart. All theories of a church without denominations 
 resolve themselves, to me, into, first, either independency 
 (every parish, with its preacher, a denomination, or every 
 person his own denomination, like David Deans, in Walter 
 Scott's " Heart of Mid-Lothian ") ; or, second, the church 
 declaring and teaching only a-b-c's of theology and ethics, 
 and not venturing into deeper questions, and so presenting 
 apparent uniformity ; or, third, the church calling itself one 
 denomination, as the Romanist Church has called itself, 
 with Thomists and Scotists, Jansenists and Jesuits, within 
 its fold, and pretending falsely that it has no denominations. 
 
 Among such extremes the true mean is found in accept- 
 ing denominations as having a right to exist, but only when 
 they have something to say in ecclesiastical science or theo- 
 logical science, in ethical science or biblical science, that 
 is not said already, and that, in the judgment of those who 
 have learned it, needs to be said for the glory of God and 
 the good of mankind. 
 
 The relation of the church to science means to many 
 persons especially its relation to natural science. This 
 relation, let me say, is one of suggestion, inspiration, and 
 true aid. 
 
 The church accepts doubt and questioning as the fore- 
 runners of truth in religion. This is the pedagogic of the 
 church as to religious discovery. The same has proved 
 the method which leads to scientific discovery. 
 
 The church teaches final cause. When it sets children 
 to answering the first question of the Shorter Catechism, 
 "What is the chief end of man ?" it suggests what is the 
 chief end of the earth, of animals, of plants, of steam, of 
 electricity. This acceptance of a divine end for everything 
 has ever been a stimulant to intellect to discover ends or 
 final cause. 
 
OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY ^3 
 
 The church teaches that order is God's law ; that he is 
 the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variableness 
 nor shadow of turning. And this naturally impels a Kep- 
 ler, a Copernicus, and an Isaac Newton to inquire into the 
 universe as a cosmos, being first sure of God, and that God 
 is a God of order, and that there is an order of the uni- 
 verse, if it can only be discovered. The order of the solar 
 system never was found out by Greek or Roman, but only 
 by devout Christians. 
 
 The church has been (beyond all that books of science 
 have ever admitted) the friend and promoter of true science 
 of every kind. She must continue to be the same. How ? 
 It seems to be a requisite of the true scientist that he be a 
 thorough theist. A distinguished writer upon physics says : 
 " There is not a single one of the founders or great origina- 
 tors [of physical science] who has not been placed under 
 the influence of the idea of a mighty and wise Creator, 
 and who has not received, from that lofty contemplation, 
 the rays of light which have directed his steps." 
 
 This is diametrically opposite to the assertion often 
 made that the chief discoverers in the field of science are 
 agnostic. I find the roll reads thus : Copernicus, Kepler, 
 Galileo, Newton, and Herschel ; Descartes, Pascal, and 
 Liebnitz ; Linnseus and Cuvier ; Davy and Liebig ; Ampere 
 and Faraday; Owen and Agassiz; Brewster and Clerk 
 Maxwell ; Thomson and Tait ; Dawson and Beale, and 
 Pasteur. It seems, then, that not the pantheistic atmo- 
 sphere, nor materialistic, nor atheistic, has nourished scien- 
 tists, but the air of countries where the church has been 
 an influence. 
 
 There is nothing so sophistical as writers who, when they 
 discuss the conflict of new truth with old error, identify old 
 error with the church, new truth with the antichurch. It 
 is because they identify the church with some official bureau. 
 
1 84 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS 
 
 I heard Dr. McGlynn distinguish between the Catholic 
 Church and the official " ring " in the city of Rome. At 
 the Reformation the old error and the hierarchy that im- 
 posed itself upon the church were in league ; but the real 
 church, which included the members who were preeminent 
 in faith and good works, was with Luther, and aided new 
 truth everywhere. Whence came new truth as to the rights 
 of man and free government, if not from John Calvin and 
 John Knox ? It was in the very nature of their doctrine 
 to inspire men with the feeling that it is worth while to in- 
 quire into and learn whatever is useful to mankind. Their 
 science was political science more than physical science, 
 and I excuse them for omitting the latter when I find that 
 these two men virtually organized the principles of free 
 government which have blessed Switzerland and Holland, 
 Britain and America, for the last three hundred years. 
 
 The church, therefore, in teaching man his dignity and 
 responsibility, is maintaining a most fruitful relation to sci- 
 ence. It is forbidding the young man to sit down saying 
 as to pure science, as to knowledge for its own sake, "Cui 
 bono I" It inspires a man to effort in order to be worthy 
 of himself, and nerves him to deal with this world, taking 
 as his motto, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;" 
 " We are laborers together with God." 
 
 Kant declares, in his " Critique of Pure Reason " : " The 
 hypothesis of a wise Author of the universe is necessary 
 for my guidance in the investigation of nature." But who 
 maintains this hypothesis of one God, a Person wise and 
 good, except the church? 
 
 There is nothing under inductive logic unless one God is 
 there. When, along with a certain element in the labora- 
 tory, I find certain appearances, and when experimenting 
 with the sun and the stars I find the same appearances, 
 why should I declare that I find the same element yonder 
 
OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 185 
 
 in the stars ? Except I hold that there is unity in the uni- 
 verse — that is, one God, and he a wise God — I have no 
 basis for any induction whatever. 
 
 As I have shown, by far the greater number of the best- 
 known discoverers have not shunned to profess that they 
 worked not as unto man, but unto God. My conception 
 is that when true philosophy and true religion die the 
 funeral of science will not be long deferred. 
 
 The head of the Scientific School of Yale said to me, 
 some years since, that more real, public, self-forgetful in- 
 terest had been shown by the clergymen trustees of Yale in 
 the development of science than by all the other trustees 
 put together. How often have you and I known Chris- 
 tian men, with no special knowledge or enjoyment of the 
 natural sciences, give hearty effort and liberal endowments 
 to astronomy, physics, biology, just because they wanted 
 to help their generation serve God and man by making 
 the most of itself and discovering whatever there is in 
 God's universe to discover! 
 
 Neither antichurch nor non-church founded the system 
 of Chautauqua. Chautauqua, in its scientific relations, is a 
 spokesman of the church. It stirs young men and young 
 women to become students to the glory of God. It says : 
 " Choose, if you will, chemistry, biology, or physics as your 
 field of lifelong study and investigation. Strive to discover, 
 or to teach others to discover, new foods, new materials for 
 illumination, new colors, new medicines, new extinguishers 
 of pain, new mechanical appliances, new and more plenti- 
 ful instruments of pleasure to mankind." 
 
 The motive that may be behind such choice and effort 
 may, indeed, be avarice, or love of power disguised as love 
 of knowledge, or it may be curiosity pure and simple ; but 
 I have never yet known well any true scientist that did not 
 comfort himself with the belief that he was working with 
 
1 86 THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEMS 
 
 an additional motive, namely, the motive of love to God 
 and man. 
 
 The church fulfils perhaps her greatest work in reference 
 to science at large when she inspires youth with the resolve 
 to investigate and know, in order to add to the worth and 
 happiness of man, and so to exalt and worship Almighty 
 God. 
 
VII 
 THE CHURCH AND THE CITY PROBLEM 
 
 REV. JOHN B. DEVINS, 
 
 Pastor of Hope Chapel, New York, and President of the 
 New York Employment Society. 
 
 187 
 
VII 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE CITY PROBLEM 
 
 " The Doctrine of the Church " and " The Church and 
 Problems of Science and Philosophy " have been pre- 
 sented before the American Institute of Christian Philoso- 
 phy by masters whom all delight to honor. Another emi- 
 nent teacher was announced for this afternoon, to whom 
 we should all have listened reverently and with great 
 profit ; for from his rich experience as a pastor of an insti- 
 tutional church in Hartford, Conn., and as the professor 
 of sociology in the Chicago Theological Seminary, Dr. 
 Graham Taylor would have spread before us a royal feast 
 on "The Church and the Problems of Modern Society." 
 No one regrets his absence more than the speaker. When 
 President Bradford wrote that Professor Taylor could not 
 be here to-day, and added that he wished me to speak on 
 the special features of the social problem, in which I am 
 interested as a mission-worker in New York, my first im- 
 pulse was to decline the invitation ; but, on reflection, it 
 seemed wrong to refuse to say a word in behalf of those 
 to whom we are giving our lives ; and with the hope that 
 the facts which I shall give may arouse interest and stimu- 
 late inquiry, I have prepared this paper. 
 
 (i) What are the problems of the city that confront the 
 church in its work among the so-called "Other Half"? 
 (2) What is the church doing to solve these problems ? 
 
 189 
 
190 THE CHURCH 
 
 (3) What may the church do to hasten their solution that 
 she is not doing to-day? 
 
 Will you pardon a personal word as we begin this study 
 together ? I come to you merely as a student of the city 
 problem. For nearly twenty years I have given it my daily 
 attention, first as a college student in the New York Uni- 
 versity, then as a theological student in the Union Semi- 
 nary, and later in connection with one of the leading daily 
 papers. For several years I went among the working 
 classes every summer for the Fresh-air Fund of the New 
 York Tribune, and learned many things about the people 
 and their surroundings. But it was not until, with my wife 
 and family, I moved into the chapel building whose people 
 I serve, a mile east of the Bowery and half a mile below 
 Fourteenth Street, that I really began to know anything 
 about the problem of the poor. After more than six years 
 of daily contact with the people as pastor, friend, and neigh- 
 bor, I am still a student, and shall repeat to you simply a 
 few of the lessons which I have learned so far, and mention 
 others in the solution of which many men and women are 
 now engaged. 
 
 You may have seen recently, in an illustrated paper, a 
 picture entitled " Satisfaction." A pretty society girl sits 
 in an easy arm-chair, wearing a far-away look. On one of 
 the arms of her chair reclines a girl friend, equally pretty, 
 but not so angelic in appearance ; and this is the burden 
 of their very interesting conversation : 
 
 Arabella : Yes, I feel quite saintly these days. 
 
 Murilla : What is the reason ? 
 
 Arabella: Oh, I haven't gotten over the feeling yet 
 that I had when I went to the Charity Ball and enjoyed 
 myself so much for the benefit of the poor. 
 
 There are thousands of people who are studying the 
 problem of the city to-day with something of Arabella's 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 191 
 
 spirit — "enjoying themselves so much for the benefit of 
 the poor." Some of them tell us, in magazine articles and 
 in platform speeches, how to "reach the masses." They 
 know to a certainty. But too many of them, in outlining 
 their plans, beautiful to the eye, lose sight altogether of the 
 human nature of the people with whom they would have 
 to deal if they attempted to carry out their plans. Leave 
 that out of the problem and the solution is not so difficult. 
 But — believe one who speaks from observation and expe- 
 rience — the church cannot ignore the human nature which 
 it finds here. 
 
 I. THE PROBLEM OF THE CITY. 
 
 Walter Besant, in his " Children of Gibeon," gives us one 
 class of people that the city missionary meets daily. But 
 no writer, no speaker, no camera, can portray the several 
 classes of people as they really are. You cannot present 
 the tenement-house problem on paper : you cannot draw a 
 picture sufficiently vivid to be lifelike. The camera fails 
 here also : you cannot photograph an odor. The stereop- 
 ticon tells only half the truth : you cannot flash a dwarfed 
 intellect or a stunted soul upon canvas. To understand 
 very much about the homes of the poor you must live with 
 the people and live as they live ; you must sleep where they 
 sleep and sleep as they sleep in their poorly ventilated 
 rooms ; you must eat what they eat, with quality frequently 
 sacrificed to quantity ; you must breathe the foul air which 
 they are obliged to inhale, often through no fault of their 
 own ; you must walk through the filthy streets in which they 
 are compelled to spend much of their time, because some 
 one withholds the small parks to which they are entitled ; 
 you must read the cheap literature which they read, quality 
 again being a secondary matter ; you must climb the steps 
 
192 THE CHURCH 
 
 of the dark and often ill-smelling stairs which lead to their 
 "room," or "room and bedroom," where frequently five or 
 six persons live, eat, sleep, and die ; you must undergo priva- 
 tion as they do — unjustly, it seems to them sometimes, and 
 to others also ; you must go to bed hungry and fall asleep 
 from exhaustion after walking for hours looking for work ; 
 you must hear the landlord or, worse, his agent, insisting 
 on the rent already overdue, when you have not a dime 
 in the house ; you must meet the insurance agent, whose 
 weekly visits alone seem to stand between you and the 
 Potter's Field ; you must listen to your children crying for 
 bread, when there is not a crust in the cupboard nor a 
 penny in the purse to supply it ; you must watch your wife 
 or child suffer and waste and die, when the prescription 
 lies on the table, and you cannot get the medicine for lack 
 of money : you must know something of these every-day 
 experiences of hundreds of families before you can under- 
 stand very much about the tenement-house problem and 
 its relation to the municipal government. 
 
 When those who influence public opinion realize what a 
 terrible danger to the city the tenement-house as an insti- 
 tution is, a wonderful change will take place. Much is 
 expected from the Tenement-house Committee appointed 
 by Governor Flower, which is to report to the legislature 
 next winter. Efforts to purify politics or to raise the moral 
 standard of the city will be of little avail while the source 
 of the trouble remains untouched. Superintendent Byrnes, 
 of the New York Police Department, is quoted as saying, 
 recently : 
 
 "The tenements are one of the biggest cogs in the 
 machine which makes criminals, male and female. The 
 associations of the tenement districts are dangerous — no 
 one knows it better than I — both to the purity of women 
 and the honesty of men. That the overcrowding of the 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 193 
 
 tenements must fill childish minds" with vicious and wicked 
 knowledge is certain. That a large proportion of our popu- 
 lation lives in such environment cannot but be a serious 
 menace to society." 
 
 The questions that perplex the poor man are as varied 
 as those which concern his more fortunate brother. The 
 daily struggle for bread and clothing and a home for him- 
 self and family ; the education of his children, that they 
 may have a better start in life than he had ; the religious 
 life, especially the Sunday question, which presents itself 
 to the car-driver from a different point of view than to the 
 stock-holder; the true relation of capital and labor, with 
 their strikes and their lockouts; the tenement-house, with 
 all its evils ; the corner groggery, often more inviting than 
 the church building that stands near it ; the daily tempta- 
 tions, of which you and your children have never so much 
 as dreamed, which meet the sons and especially the daugh- 
 ters of the laboring man, as they leave home, at an age when 
 they should be in school, to earn the two or three dollars a 
 week needed to eke out the monthly rent — these are a few 
 of the pressing features of the problem which daily con- 
 fronts the laboring man and those who are working among 
 the poor. 
 
 American cities are too near home for us to grasp the 
 problems bound up in them as we should if we were deal- 
 ing with Tokio or Pekin or even London. It is not good 
 form to have a pessimistic spirit regarding our great coun- 
 try. Our national pride is touched when the spiritual needs 
 of our own cities are faithfully presented. " Darkest Eng- 
 land " moved America to tears, and yet London has a very 
 small percent, of foreign population and New York has 
 more than forty percent. When the true " Bitter Cry of 
 Outcast New York " is heard, the Christian world will be 
 stirred to its depths. Let us glance at a few facts appa- 
 
194 THE CHURCH 
 
 rent to the most casual observer of the problems confront- 
 ing the church in the gateway of the nation. 
 
 Between the dawn of two days one hundred and some- 
 times two hundred people die in New York City ; one body 
 in every ten fills an unknown grave in the Potter's Field. 
 One and sometimes more of these unknown, uncared-for 
 people are girls and young women from the streets, many 
 of them born in the quiet country towns and picturesque 
 villages in which some of you may live. Two thousand 
 people, it is said, live in the canal-boats which lie in the 
 docks around the city during the winter, responsible to no 
 church in particular, and no denomination caring especially 
 for them. The sailors on the high seas fare far better than 
 these poor boatmen and their families. A great French 
 colony on the West Side is almost wholly destitute of re- 
 ligious instruction or religious care. We send generous 
 contributions to the McAll Mission in France, and we do 
 well; but this colony is so near us that we overlook its 
 needs. The colored people living in New York are far less 
 romantic to us than are their brethren, the freedmen, living 
 in the South. I have never heard of a freedmen's board 
 carrying the gospel to the negroes in our city. The Pres- 
 byterians have one small church for the colored people ; 
 they have a single Bohemian church and two or three 
 missions for the immense Bohemian population eager to 
 hear the gospel of Christ. Within five miles of the heathen 
 temple in Mott Street — an abomination in a Christian land 
 — are three or four thousand Chinamen who will rise up in 
 the judgment-day against some of us, I fear. And the sad 
 fact must be added that many American women associated 
 with these Celestials are heathen practically quite as much 
 as are the followers of Confucius. 
 
 More people live in the lodging-houses of New York 
 than the entire population of many of the most important 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 195 
 
 cities of the nation. Do you know what a cheap lodging- 
 house is ? Did you ever see one in operation ? One mid- 
 night visit will keep you from ever saying again, " We are 
 of all men most miserable." Come with me to one of the 
 Mulberry Street dives after midnight. Your heart will be 
 moved to pity as you see the miserable men and women 
 herded together, drinking stale beer, singing vile songs, and 
 cursing their ill luck. Let us visit together the five-cent 
 and the two-cent lodging-houses. The farmer who did 
 not provide for his cattle better than these people are cared 
 for would be arrested for cruelty to animals ; and yet these 
 rough bodies that we see cover souls whose destiny is 
 eternal. Do we care where they spend their eternity ? 
 Are they mere cattle to us ? With a policeman and a 
 health officer I entered one of these dismal dens, not long 
 ago, in a James Street basement. There was at least a 
 foot of water on the floor, and the considerate proprietor 
 had placed boards on little piles of brick, and thrown straw 
 over the boards ; and there, like so many swine, lay men and 
 women and children, the water within a few inches of their 
 bodies, but not near enough to do the good for which water 
 was intended. When the tide in the East River was high 
 the water rose, and another brick was added to the pile. 
 
 In one house in Bone Alley, not far from Hope Chapel, 
 eighty families live to-day. I tried to hire two vacant 
 rooms in this tenement-house a few years ago, that we 
 might start a mission-school there for the scores of appa- 
 rently neglected children in the alley. The housekeeper 
 refused to rent them, and when I pressed her for a reason 
 she told me that every one of the eighty families in the 
 building earned its living by picking bones and rags from 
 the street barrels. She added that she had positive orders 
 from the owner of the house not to rent the rooms to any 
 one but a rag-picker or a bone-picker. She did not know 
 
196 THE CHURCH 
 
 my errand, and as she stood in a room in which there was 
 a large pile of rags — not new ones either — I had no reason 
 to doubt her statement. Imagine a village of four hundred 
 people in one part of these Chautauqua grounds, if you 
 please, supported by ash-barrel refuse. I will not say that 
 I wish them here, but I would be glad to have them out of 
 New York. I can take you to an alley on the East Side 
 where only blind people live ; but their very affliction is 
 their capital. 
 
 Think of the Italians in the city — an army of them — for 
 whom very little is done by the Protestant Church. Ange- 
 lini touches our hearts and our pockets with his earnest 
 plea for sunny Italy ; but the rag-picker who soils our side- 
 walk, or the seller of fruit on the next corner, is too near 
 us to excite our interest or our sympathy. More Italians 
 landed at New York two years ago than the entire popu- 
 lation of Camden, N. J., or of Reading, Pa. Russia, with- 
 out Poland, sent a city in that single year larger than Pat- 
 erson, N. J. If the immigrants landing at New York two 
 years ago had all settled on the shores of Chautauqua 
 Lake — and I devoutly wish they had — they would have 
 formed the fifth largest city in the United States. More 
 immigrants came in 1891-92 than the population of any 
 city in the Union except New York. Every seventh per- 
 son, perhaps every sixth, in the metropolis is a follower of 
 Abraham, with only here and there a follower of Jesus 
 among them. There are nearly as many Jews in New 
 York at this moment as there are people in Cincinnati or 
 Pittsburg. The Protestant Church sends missionaries to 
 Brazil, Belgium, and Italy, but lets severely alone the great 
 body of Catholics in our own country. 
 
 A down-town clergyman — not a Presbyterian — says of 
 his parish : " On one side of me is a block in which, the 
 police say, thirty-nine languages and dialects are spoken. 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 197 
 
 Within four blocks is a city more foreign than any city in 
 Europe this side of Constantinople. I have found nothing 
 in Whitechapel so squalid." Of a thousand men employed 
 in one branch of relief work last winter, twenty-seven nation- 
 alities were represented, counting all who call themselves 
 Americans as one nation. For years I had intended to be 
 a foreign missionary, and had that field in view ; but Provi- 
 dence directed my steps otherwise, and I find that after all 
 I am a foreign missionary: the people have come to me 
 instead of my going to them. 
 
 " I said, ' Let me walk in the fields.' 
 He said, 'No, walk in the town.' 
 I said, 'There are no flowers there.' 
 He said, ' No flowers but a crown.' 
 
 " I said, ' But the skies are black ; 
 
 There is nothing but noise and din.' 
 And he wept as he sent me back ; 
 'There is more,' he said — 'there is sin.' 
 
 " I said, ' But the air is thick, 
 And fogs are veiling the sun. 
 He answered, ' Yet souls are sick, 
 And souls in the darkness undone.' 
 
 " I said, ' I shall miss the light, 
 
 And friends will miss me, they say.' 
 He answered, ' Choose to-night, 
 If I am to miss you, or they.' 
 
 " I pleaded for time to be given. 
 He said, ' Is it hard to decide ? 
 It will not seem hard in heaven 
 
 To have followed the steps of your Guide.' " 
 
 You will not understand me, when I emphasize so 
 strongly the needs of the poor, to hold that all the saints 
 
198 THE CHURCH 
 
 in New York are among the " Other Half," and that all 
 the sinners are among those who live up-town. Saintship 
 is not altogether a question of locality ; but one cannot 
 help feeling that those who have less of this world's goods 
 than their fellows have more cause for our sympathy and 
 our efforts. Mrs. Lofty has ridden behind her prancing 
 team in Central Park or on the boulevard at Newport to- 
 day, enjoying the invigorating air and also the attention 
 attracted by her beautiful turnout. Mrs. Lowly has car- 
 ried her little one down the side street, on the shady side, 
 to the East River ; and there, sitting on the deserted pier, 
 she has thanked God for a chance to breathe even the 
 air poisoned by the sewer filth emptying into the stream 
 beneath her feet. The Lord will hold some one responsi- 
 ble some day for denying to the poor of New York the 
 small parks already granted to them by the State. All honor 
 to the noble men and women who have been working for 
 years to secure parks and playgrounds for the working- 
 man and his family. 
 
 The children of the poor. " Have ye no pity for the poor, 
 miserable children?" says Canon Farrar. "Is there no 
 voice strong enough to plead ' like angels, trumpet-tongued, 
 against the deep damnation of their taking off' — these 
 children who, in the language of Southey, are not so much 
 born into the world as damned into the world ; predestined, 
 as it were, to live lives of disease and degradation, because 
 of the drink in the midst of which they are brought up, and 
 of which they have the hereditary taint in their very veins." 
 Thank God for the St. John's Guild, the Tribune Fresh- 
 air Fund, the Herald Ice Fund, the World Sick Babies' 
 Fund, the Christian Herald Fresh-air Fund, and a host of 
 other public and private charities that care for the children 
 of the poor! 
 
 Does some one ask why there is so much poverty in the 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 199 
 
 city ? Many people are poor always because they were 
 born poor. They have never had a fair chance in the 
 race, in this world at least. They were handicapped at 
 the outset. Their ancestry, for several generations, were 
 shiftless, and the probabilities are that their descendants 
 will be equally shiftless. New blood must be infused, new 
 surroundings made, new ambitions aroused, before a change 
 for the better will be seen. You remember " Margaret, the 
 Mother of Criminals," a pauper child born in this State a 
 century ago. Mr. E. V. Smalley says of her descendants : 
 " In one generation of her unhappy line there were twenty 
 children, of whom seventeen lived to maturity. Nine served 
 terms, aggregating fifty years, in the State prison, for high 
 crimes, and all the others were frequent inmates of jails and 
 almshouses. It is said that of the six hundred and twenty- 
 three descendants of this outcast girl, two hundred com- 
 mitted crimes which brought them upon the court records, 
 and most of them were idiots, drunkards, lunatics, paupers, 
 or prostitutes." So much may depend upon a single in- 
 dividual. One child's life started wrong set in motion this 
 fearful criminal train. What if one of us may start on the 
 right line a girl who otherwise would be a second Margaret? 
 Would it not be worth the work of a lifetime ? 
 
 Many men are pure and upright through no effort of 
 their own ; it is natural for them to be so. Many men are 
 poor and dependent, some are degraded, and others are 
 vicious, who would not have been so with different ancestry. 
 Dr. Holmes is right : you must begin to train the child of 
 2094 to-day. 
 
 Misfortune is another cause of poverty that must ex- 
 cite our pity. The illness or death of a parent or a child 
 has thrown many a self-reliant family upon the charity of 
 the world. Its little income ceases, the small bank-ac- 
 count is exhausted, and poverty takes the place of inde- 
 
200 THE CHURCH 
 
 pendence. Well-to-do families have suddenly become de- 
 pendent through investments that did not prosper, through 
 faithless friends, or through the rascality of some one of 
 their own members. 
 
 Much of the poverty is due to circumstances beyond the 
 control of those who suffer. Competition is the curse of the 
 poor. We demand that we shall have cheap living, cheap 
 clothing, cheap furniture, cheap hats — everything must be 
 as cheap as possible. The merchant, to secure our trade, 
 buys of a manufacturer who will sell for a penny less than 
 the one from whom he had purchased before. That penny 
 must be saved, and the man who makes the garment gets a 
 penny less and sometimes two ; for " business is business." 
 A cent on one article, or five cents on one article, for that 
 matter, does not make much difference to you or me ; but 
 a single cent on every one of a hundred articles made by 
 the poor man in the tenement-house or in the crowded shop 
 means a great deal to him, especially when work is slack 
 and there are thousands of competitors. A single element 
 in this race for greed is that, while the consumer pays less 
 for his clothing and the workman has received less for his 
 labor, no one has thought of reducing the rent of tenement- 
 houses. Recent investigation has shown conclusively that 
 in a district containing the most congested portion of the 
 world's population the poorest tenement rooms are more 
 expensive, when space is considered, than the costly apart- 
 ments in the large houses in the upper part of the city. 
 
 The homes of the poor. To walk through some of the 
 tenement streets one longs to do one of two things : tear 
 down the buildings or compel their owners to live in them 
 at least one day in the year. With bad plumbing, filthy 
 yards, and barrels of refuse in the cellars, it would be pretty 
 difficult for you and me to attain a very high degree of 
 spirituality. Can we expect it from those doomed to this 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 201 
 
 environment ? One evening, in a pastoral call, less than 
 three hundred feet from our chapel, as I knocked, the 
 mother opened the door and said through the darkness, 
 "Are you the plumber ?" As I was only a minister my 
 visit was not so much appreciated as it would have been if 
 I had been a minister and a plumber. The mother showed 
 me a sink filled with refuse, due to a broken pipe. Three 
 or four times within as many days she had gone to the agent 
 of the house and urged him to have the pipes mended. I 
 did not leave any tract there, nor did I offer a prayer 
 aloud. I did not quite dare to do so, for while talking to 
 the mother a full pail of slops from the upper floors came 
 into the sink. With her little children clinging to her dress 
 or playing on the floor, the patient woman dipped out the 
 dirty water without a word. I have in mind another house 
 where, a few weeks ago, through a similar cause, one child 
 died from diphtheria, and the family moved carrying a 
 second child suffering from the same disease, into a better 
 tenement-house, thereby exposing the new household to 
 diphtheria. I would not be surprised if in some of these 
 families the clothing displayed so beautifully in Broadway 
 stores was being made at that time. Suppose the landlord's 
 son should buy a suit, and the disease should be carried 
 from the tenement to the mansion, who would be guilty of 
 murder ? 
 
 II. HOW THE CHURCH TREATS THE CITY PROBLEM. 
 
 What is the church doing with the problem of the city ? 
 Studying it as never before ; trying honestly, in the fear of 
 her Master, to better the conditions of the laboring peo- 
 ple; sending many of her noblest sons and most conse- 
 crated daughters into the neglected field as volunteer work- 
 ers ; pouring out her treasures in funds of various kinds 
 
2o2 THE CHURCH 
 
 for alleviating the distress found in the tenement districts ; 
 starting free kindergartens, in order to shape the twig while 
 it is yet tender ; providing for the safety of young men and 
 young women by clubs under the care of the church ; and 
 in various ways showing practical sympathy for those who 
 need friends more than they need alms. In rescue mis- 
 sions, in mission-schools, and in chapels and churches once 
 prosperous, you will find every week hundreds of earnest 
 Christians working, on Sunday and week-day alike, for those 
 who are not always so grateful as one could wish. Ladies 
 whom you would expect to meet at a reception in an up- 
 town parlor, you will find in a humble home planning a va- 
 cation trip for the mother and babe ; one may be carrying 
 the information that she has secured a position for the eldest 
 boy in the store where she does her purchasing. 
 
 " The superintendent would not see John or his mother," 
 she tells you, " but he seemed pleased to grant my request." 
 Her wish was that this poor boy should get work. God 
 bless those who " consider the poor "! It is easier to feed 
 them, but the blessing goes with the " considering." 
 
 The church is supporting many chapels and missions 
 among the poor in addition to the voluntary work of which 
 I have spoken, and in addition, also, to the large amount 
 spent for charity — between nine and ten millions of dol- 
 lars annually — much of which comes from Christian people. 
 One church of which I know gives $6000 a year to support 
 its two chapels. Another contributes $8000 to a single 
 chapel. The pastor of a third church asks his people on 
 Sabbath morning for $13,000 for the three chapels for which 
 they are directly responsible, and that amount is found upon 
 the plates. Should he ask for $50,000 for the same purpose 
 it would be given as freely. A society with nine missions 
 and churches under its care spent last year about $60,000 
 for city mission work, employing, besides its pastors, sev- 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 203 
 
 eral workers among the Germans, Italians, and Jews, and 
 more than forty experienced trained nurses and mission- 
 aries. The Protestant Episcopal Church has several mod- 
 ern buildings in which the life that now is is not forgotten 
 while providing for the life to come. The Collegiate Church 
 and the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church and 
 the Baptist Church, and the Congregational churches and 
 other religious bodies, are working along institutional lines 
 to some extent. 
 
 Nor must the Young Men's and Young Women's Chris- 
 tian Associations be omitted. The value of the distinc- 
 tively religious work in the main building and the branches 
 is scarcely greater than that afforded in their class-rooms, 
 libraries, gymnasiums, labor bureaus, lecture courses, etc. 
 For many thousands of young people they take the place 
 of church, club, and home. The Hebrew Institute in East 
 Broadway reaches weekly twenty-five thousand people, who 
 go there for instruction and enjoyment. The rescue mis- 
 sion work, like the McAuley Mission, the Florence Mission, 
 the Door of Hope, the Industrial Christian Alliance, the 
 Cremorne Mission, the Slum Brigade of the Salvation Army, 
 St. Bartholomew's Mission, the Metropolitan Meetings con- 
 ducted by Mr. Yatman— this class of work deserves a lec- 
 ture by itself, for to my mind it is the most difficult and 
 discouraging form of religious work in the world. So 
 many of the " rescued " men and women have to be saved 
 so often, that it requires a faith that can actually remove 
 mountains to stand the frequent shocks that come to the 
 
 workers. 
 
 A member of my church was for many years a drinking 
 man, and even now, though I believe him to be an earnest 
 Christian, he sometimes falls under the temptation of drink, 
 and then he is a devil incarnate. At such times he cares, 
 apparently, for no one except his pastor. An indulgent 
 
204 THE CHURCH 
 
 father naturally, wife, children, and friends are made the 
 special subjects of his insane temper when he is drinking. 
 They may starve, and they often are in a starving condition 
 when I find them. Then comes the talk with the father 
 and comfort for the family, and a prayer, and penitence 
 and reconciliation, and, for six months or a year, reforma- 
 tion. Generally the sad times end, as one did last winter, 
 by the weak Christian brother saying, " Mr. Devins, you 
 hold on to me and I will hold on to you, and we will stand 
 together." Besides the arm of Omnipotence, on which he 
 leans by faith, he needs a human arm which he can feel 
 about him constantly. 
 
 What is the church doing to solve the problem of the 
 poor ? Did your little daughter ever meet you at night 
 and say, with a shout of exultation, " Papa, I went bathing 
 in the surf to-day " ? You congratulate her upon her splen- 
 did daring, and she receives it with as much complacency 
 as if you did not know that all she means is this : She had 
 her little dress pinned about her waist, and with bare feet 
 she pattered down toward the surf as brave as a man, till 
 she saw a long breaker just beginning to dash into foam 
 far out beyond the life-lines. Then her bravery oozed out 
 rapidly, and she started up the hill faster than she started 
 down. As the wave receded her courage rose, and so she 
 played with the mighty ocean stretching out before her. 
 Now and then, in spite of her agility, a spent wave flowed 
 over her tiny feet, and she tells you, with something of 
 truthfulness, that she has been surf-bathing. 
 
 The church is solving the problem of the city in about 
 the same manner that your little daughter battled with the 
 surf. Without taking back a word of all that has been said 
 regarding the men and the money engaged in city mission- 
 ary work, we are reaching the masses only on paper. In- 
 dividuals in many churches are doing yeoman service, 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 205 
 
 but individuals are units. A half-million people live below 
 Fourteenth Street and east of Broadway. The Congrega- 
 tionalists have one small Welsh congregation and one mis- 
 sion-chapel in that district, and not another church within 
 a mile of it. The Baptists let one of their noble men die 
 at the foot of the Bowery. Pleading for money, pleading 
 for helpers, the brave worker went to his grave. But his 
 death was not in vain. A splendid work has sprung up 
 where he labored so faithfully amid great discouragements. 
 The Methodist Church has supported liberally the great 
 meetings in the Academy of Music and in Metropolitan 
 Hall ; but the denomination which pours out its wealth so 
 lavishly in this way is not equally generous in the support 
 of its churches among the poor. I know a Methodist pas- 
 tor in New York who received last year the munificent sal- 
 ary of $750 ; and out of that he paid a missionary to assist 
 him in relieving the poor and the distressed that crowded 
 about his doors. God pity those who let this heroic, un- 
 complaining servant stand in the breach with such support ! 
 And as for the Presbyterian Church — here you have the 
 child at her surf-bathing. Two years ago a committee of 
 the Presbytery of New York, appointed to investigate the 
 spiritual needs of the city, made this report regarding the 
 down-town districts : " The region, with its third of a million 
 of mostly foreign population, is genuinely foreign mission- 
 ary ground, where methods well adapted to or even moder- 
 ately successful in other localities are likely to prove of lit- 
 tle service. Just as soon as the Presbyterian Church finds 
 itself in honest shape once more, occupying buildings that 
 are paid for, its duty toward this district will be imperative. 
 This will be its first duty in the direction of missionary work." 
 Within two months after the reading of that report two lead- 
 ing Presbyterian churches — one of them almost the strong- 
 est, financially, in the denomination — gave notice that they 
 
206 THE CHURCH 
 
 would soon move up-town. One is now three miles and the 
 other four miles farther away from this missionary region 
 than they were when the report was read ; and since that 
 time the Presbyterians have decided to sell another church 
 building. Before the incoming tide of immigration our 
 church is receding rapidly, leaving chapels and missions 
 to take the place of the churches which have followed and 
 sometimes led the up-town movement ; for people move up- 
 town to be near their church quite as often as the church 
 goes to be near its people. 
 
 III. WHAT SHOULD THE CHURCH DO WITH THE PROBLEM? 
 
 Let her first read again what Professor Drummond has 
 so happily termed " the program of Christianity." In the 
 Nazareth synagogue the Master said : " The Spirit of the 
 Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach 
 the gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken- 
 hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recover- 
 ing of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
 bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 
 Having studied anew this program, the church must 
 " follow Christ." He might have sat in his cheerful home, 
 or in the Nazareth synagogue even, and invited all who 
 desired his help or his teaching to come where he was ; 
 or he might have erected a church — the Church of the 
 Messiah, if you please — on the leading avenue of Jerusa- 
 lem, announcing in the morning papers the hours of ser- 
 vice, and had a sufficient number of ushers present on Sab- 
 bath morning to see that the pewholders were seated before 
 he began his sermon on " Love " — love to God and love 
 to fellow-men. But this was not his way. It would not 
 seem as though the representatives of the Christ would find 
 the Master by walking in that direction. 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 207 
 
 The church has many representatives at work among the 
 people, so called. This number must be vastly increased 
 before the problem can be solved. A regiment from the 
 Bay State marched proudly down Broadway thirty-two 
 years ago. Every soldier bore evidence of an ancestry 
 that knew no defeat. Puritan principle and Puritan pluck 
 were seen on every countenance. 
 
 " How often can your State send out such a regiment ?" 
 asked a New-Yorker. 
 
 " Once a week for months to come," was the proud 
 answer, " and," the officer added, " if we cannot put down 
 the rebellion, Massachusetts herself will step to the front." 
 We have many soldiers of the cross in the field to-day, but 
 the church as an institution is marching to Canaan's happy 
 land too frequently through Harlem, Brooklyn, and New 
 Jersey. American independence dates from 1776 ; but be- 
 tween the signing of the Declaration, on July 4th of that 
 year, and the evacuation of New York by the British, on 
 November 25, 1783, there was a great deal of practical 
 cooperation, and you will recall that the severest battles 
 were fought at the front. The church of Christ must do 
 all that she is doing now, and as much more as possible, 
 and still remember that 
 
 " It is not the things we have done here, 
 But the things we have left undone, 
 That will give us the bitter heartache 
 At the setting of the sun." 
 
 The church must study the changed conditions of the 
 city. Across the street from our chapel stands a double 
 tenement-house where three private houses were four years 
 ago. Forty-four families live to-day where there were 
 three or four then. A saloon has been opened in the same 
 block where there was a grocery three years ago. Next to 
 
208 THE CHURCH 
 
 the saloon there is a large garment factory with a stable or 
 two on the lower floors. The street has changed in char- 
 acter quite as much as in appearance during that time. 
 
 The church must study the various questions that inter- 
 est the poor, not so much from the church's point of view 
 as from the people's point of view. Take the temperance 
 question. The other night I distributed invitations to a tem- 
 perance meeting in our chapel to the customers in twenty- 
 five of the one hundred and seventy saloons within twelve 
 hundred feet of our home. Many of my people see more 
 harm in the coffee which their pastor drinks at the midday 
 meal than in the beer which they drink at the same time. 
 He does not consider it a sin to drink the coffee, nor do 
 they to drink the beer. They think that I waste money in 
 buying a quart of ice-cream. Their pail of beer is to them 
 not a luxury, not even a stimulant, but, from their point of 
 view, an article of food — a necessity. When the church 
 has studied the temperance question from its several 
 points of view, then her representatives must unite in some 
 practical method of fighting the evil. It may not be your 
 method nor mine which will be adopted. Theories, reso- 
 lutions, platforms, will not kill the saloon. After the study 
 of the question there must be cooperation. 
 
 Or take the labor problem. The church of the Galilean 
 carpenter is the working-man's best friend. She should be, 
 and he should know it. Too often I fear that he looks 
 upon the church as a club, where one negative vote black- 
 balls ; and he is afraid that his rough hands and his plain 
 clothing and his untaught manners will lead some one to 
 cast the negative vote, and he hates to run the risk : so 
 would you and so would I. Or he looks upon the church 
 as a vestibuled train of sleeping-cars upon which only the 
 " classes " may travel. 
 
 " Out of work, is that all ? " said a friend the other day, 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 209 
 
 in speaking of a neighbor of ours. Is that all ? What 
 worse evil could one wish for his bitterest foe ? Out of 
 work! The father comes home at night weary, hungry, 
 foot-sore, discouraged. The little money laid aside for rent 
 goes for food. Work is promised soon. The month closes 
 — nothing yet. But hope is not gone. The agent demands 
 the rent. " Pay up or move out," says he, in answer to 
 the prayer of the wife for a few days' delay ; and the little 
 bank-account is soon exhausted, and still no work. And 
 finally, when evening shades will partly conceal her move- 
 ments, the mother steals away to a pawnshop and exchanges 
 some jewel dearly prized for a few cents with which to 
 buy bread for her crying children. The clock follows the 
 jewelry, and the clothing the timepiece, and frequently the 
 clothing from the bed on which the parents sleep. The 
 children's bed is the last to go — and yet no work. Were 
 you ever hungry ? Were you ever out of work ? Did 
 you ever walk the streets looking for it, willing to do any- 
 thing ? I know something of the experience which I am 
 suggesting: the sense of loneliness; the feeling that with 
 so much to do in the city there must be a place for you ; 
 the feeling of inequality, of injustice. God pity those who 
 are willing to work, but cannot find one willing to hire 
 them! 
 
 One of the bright little German girls in our chapel, ten 
 years old, said to Mrs. Devins the other day : " My papa 
 walks all day every day looking for work. Yesterday he 
 walked clear up to One Hundred and Fiftieth Street and 
 back [fifteen miles], and after all there was no work. He 
 has been in every coal-yard and stone-yard and every fac- 
 tory that he can hear of in all the city. Sometimes I go 
 with him and talk for him ; and last week he and I walked 
 forty-six blocks up and forty-six blocks back, and I was 
 that tired before I got back that I had to sit down on every 
 
210 THE CHURCH 
 
 curbstone to get strength to walk to the next. Oh, my feet 
 ached ! and I cried when I got home, I was so tired. This 
 morning mama had only six cents in the house, and papa 
 heard that perhaps he could get work over the ferry ; so 
 she gave him that six cents to ride over the ferry, and then 
 there was no work after all, and mama cried. I wish my 
 papa could get some work. He tries so hard all the time, 
 Mrs. Devins." The first thing we did with little Hannah 
 and her brother Bethel was to send them through the Trib- 
 une Fund to the ideal summer home for city children, at 
 Curtisville, Mass., supported so generously by Mr. John E. 
 Parsons, of New York. When more men of wealth realize 
 that they are trustees rather than owners of the property 
 which they hold, the question of capital and labor will not 
 be raised so frequently as it is now. Having secured an 
 outing for the children, we tried to get work for the father. 
 It is work, and not money, that this family and thousands 
 of other families need. 
 
 When it was found, last winter, by the police census 
 that there were seventy thousand unemployed men in New 
 York, a committee, representing various churches and be- 
 nevolent societies, was organized to help a few of them by 
 giving them work. A dollar a day was paid to those sweep- 
 ing the streets and renovating the tenement-houses, and 
 seventy-five cents a day was given to the tailors. The 
 efficient chairman of the East Side Relief Work Commit- 
 tee was Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell, of the Charity Organ- 
 ization Society, a woman of rare judgment, and indefati- 
 gable in her work among the poor. The College Settlement, 
 the University Settlement, the Roman Catholic Church, the 
 Hebrew Institute, the Society for Ethical Culture, the City 
 Mission Society (undenominational), the Brotherhood of 
 St. Andrew, a Presbyterian chapel, and, later, a Unitarian 
 church and a Congregational church were represented on 
 the committee. Tickets were sent to all the churches, 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 211 
 
 societies, and labor organizations in the neighborhood. In 
 five months $125,000 was spent in the relief of the unem- 
 ployed. Not a dollar was given in direct relief — every 
 penny was earned. We employed five thousand heads of 
 families. Hundreds of the vilest tenement-house cellars 
 were cleaned, and nearly four thousand barrels of refuse 
 were carted away. Three thousand halls, cellars, and rooms 
 were whitewashed and scrubbed. Almost the entire East 
 Side of the city from the Bridge to the Harlem River was 
 swept daily. Quantities of clothing were made and dis- 
 tributed among the cyclone sufferers of South Carolina 
 and the destitute of New York. The central work of the 
 committee was carried on at the rooms of the College Set- 
 tlement in Rivington Street. 
 
 Hope Chapel was made the center of the sanitation 
 work, and branches of the street-sweeping and sewing de- 
 partments were established there, $40,000 of the relief fund 
 passed through our hands. Seventeen hours a day were 
 given to this work for five months. The tales of suffering 
 which were poured into my ears — many of which I investi- 
 gated and found to be true — I would not dare to tell you. 
 More than one of the men whom we employed said that 
 he thanked God for the hard times, for, while he had suf- 
 fered severely, he had found that the church really loved 
 him and cared for his family. Cain's question, "Am I 
 my brother's keeper? " is not heard much now. It should 
 never rise to the lips of those who say " Our Father." 
 
 " Say not, ' It matters not to me, 
 
 My brother's weal is his behoof ; ' 
 For in this wondrous human web, 
 If your life's warp, his life is woof. 
 
 " Woven together are the threads, 
 And you and he are in one loom ; 
 For good or ill, for glad or sad, 
 
 Your lives must share one common doom." 
 
212 THE CHURCH 
 
 When the relief fund was exhausted the need was by no 
 means at an end, and some of the workers formed a perma- 
 nent organization, which has been incorporated as the New 
 York Employment Society, and is virtually an employment 
 agency, free to employer and employee. Among the direc- 
 tors are Presbyterians, Baptists, Episcopalians, a Congrega- 
 tionalism a Unitarian, a Roman Catholic, and a Hebrew. 
 This, Mr. President, we believe to be a long step toward 
 Christian unity. It is not unity on paper — it is practical 
 unity backed by bank-checks. Besides investigating the 
 references and the moral character of some fifteen hundred 
 men who have applied for positions in six weeks, we have 
 secured positions for about two hundred men. We have 
 sent some men out of town, and as rapidly as possible we 
 shall extend this branch of our work ; and we invite the 
 cooperation of all those who can help us. The church 
 must do more than feel sorry for the laboring man ; she 
 must help him. Mrs. Browning says somewhere, " Most 
 people are kind, if they only think of it." "To sympa- 
 thize with distress," said Horace Mann, "is human; to re- 
 lieve distress is godlike." 
 
 Another phase of practical cooperation is the plan 
 adopted by the Federation of East Side Workers. Here 
 again Protestants, Catholics, and Hebrews are found will- 
 ing to forget their " ism " for the time and unite upon what 
 they can agree upon. We learned last winter, in working 
 for the poor, that there were many phases of work where 
 cooperation was possible. The Protestant learned, also, 
 that his Roman Catholic brother had a heart for the suffer- 
 ing poor in New York, whatever he might think of the 
 papal authority of Rome. The Roman Catholic found 
 that his Protestant brother, like the Master of them both, 
 goes about doing good, whether Luther's theses were right 
 or wrong. The Jew saw that the Christian considers the 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 213 
 
 poor as well as he. The Christian discovered that no race 
 on earth exceeds that of the Hebrew in giving aid to the 
 destitute. Catholic and Jew, Christian and agnostic, found 
 that none of the others had divided hoofs. 
 
 The object of the new Federation is to increase the effi- 
 ciency of benevolent work among the half-million of people 
 living below Fourteenth Street and east of Broadway. No 
 new relief-giving society was needed, but brotherly feeling, 
 practical federation, a united front — this is what the world 
 has a right to expect from those who are laboring there, 
 especially in the humane work in which the churches and 
 philanthropic societies are alike engaged. Every phase 
 of life will be carefully studied, and the evils found will be 
 corrected so far as possible. Lectures will be given on 
 practical topics, such as the care of the home, the training 
 of children, the rights and duties of citizens, the relation of 
 capital and labor, the question of wages, rent, improved 
 dwellings, temperance, etc. The tenement-house problem, 
 existing sanitation laws, public baths, small parks, etc., will 
 receive the attention of the committee. While the imme- 
 diate needs of the people in distress will not be over- 
 looked, self-help rather than direct relief will be the goal. 
 
 What may the church do to solve the problems of modern 
 society ? First, study the problems on the ground, recog- 
 nizing the changed conditions of the people ; and then carry 
 help, temporal and spiritual, where it is needed. Professor 
 Graham Taylor said recently that Chicago needed a hun- 
 dred missionaries. " New York," said that prince of men, 
 Howard Crosby, a few weeks before his death — " New 
 York will be evangelized when every Christian becomes an 
 evangelist." The church will solve her knotty problems 
 when her representatives, regardless of ecclesiastical con- 
 nections, set themselves to the task, willing to learn, will- 
 ing to cooperate. 
 
2i4 THE CHURCH 
 
 When Napoleon asked for one hundred men to lead a 
 forlorn hope he explained that every man would probably 
 be killed the moment the enemy opened fire. Now who 
 would die for the emperor? "A hundred men forward! 
 Step out of the ranks ! " And not a hundred men, but the 
 whole regiment, we are told, as one man, sprang forward 
 in solid line and rang their muskets at the feet of the em- 
 peror. 
 
 You will pardon me, Mr. President, for referring to your 
 family ; but I believe that the noble, consecrated life which 
 Miss Bradford, the cultured sister of our honored president, 
 is giving to the poor in Jersey City is worth more to the 
 people who come under her refining influences than bags of 
 gold would be to them. The uplifting power of the Whit- 
 tier Home, instituted and sustained, in part, if not wholly, 
 by this earnest Christian woman, is one of the strongest 
 arguments for the religion of Jesus Christ to be found in 
 that city. Miss Bradford is good, she does good, she goes 
 about doing good. A hundred equally consecrated women 
 should offer her their services. And what Miss Bradford is 
 doing in Jersey City the College Settlement women in Riv- 
 ington Street, and the Tenement-house Chapter of King's 
 Daughters in Madison Street, and the University Settle- 
 ment men in Delancey Street, and many other circles and 
 bands and societies and individuals are doing in New York. 
 Their aim is to share their lives with the people, to follow 
 the Christ as they come in contact with human men and 
 women and children longing not for alms, but for unselfish 
 friendship. 
 
 But there are those who think that the church of Christ, 
 as a church, and individual members representing the 
 church, as an institution, should do this very work. In 
 something of this spirit is Dr. Judson's splendid enterprise 
 in Washington Square, which has been called " a college set- 
 
AND THE CITY PROBLEM 21$ 
 
 tlement plus religion." Dr. Judson says: " God wants his 
 church to be the center of spiritual and intellectual activity, 
 the seat of aggressive and philanthropic enterprise, the ideals 
 and teachings of Christ translated into a definite social 
 organ." There is a danger lest these outside agencies, 
 unless bound to the church in some way, will become for- 
 midable rivals and not helpful allies. But, at any rate, 
 they have already served a grand purpose in calling our at- 
 tention to the need of personal work and in showing its 
 beneficent results. 
 
 Finally, the church must solve her problems by reaching 
 the people as individuals. This was the Master's method. 
 Andrew hears John's words about the Christ; he follows 
 Jesus and brings Peter to the Saviour. Philip, imbibing 
 the spirit of the Master, brings Nathanael under the same 
 blessed influence. Every church, every chapel, every mis- 
 sion, every humane agency, needs its Andrews and its 
 Philips to-day. The prayer of Holmes may well be ours 
 to-day : 
 
 " God give us men. A time like this demands 
 Great hearts, strong minds, true faith, and willing hands." 
 
 What an opportunity for personal service every Christian 
 has in helping to solve the problems before the church ! An 
 individual is only a unit ; but one man may do so much, 
 and one woman may do so much, when the Christ life rules 
 and the Christ spirit is manifested among the lowly! 
 
 During those memorable days in 1863 when New York 
 was in the hands of the draft-rioters it is said that a mob 
 of lawless men and boys was headed by one of the most 
 daring and godless of the six or eight thousand that had 
 gathered by the time Madison Square was reached. The 
 yelling, hooting crowd had for its objective point the house 
 of a prominent man on Murray Hill. As the mob reached 
 
216 THE CHURCH 
 
 the house the leader rushed up to the door. Hardly had 
 he reached the steps when the door swung open, and a lady 
 greeted him with a smile and asked how she could serve 
 him. For an instant they faced each other — the desper- 
 ate man with murder in his heart, the woman as gentle as 
 an angel, her beautiful face an index of the Christlike spirit 
 within. 
 
 For an instant only they faced each other. Not a word 
 was exchanged. The leader turned to his followers, drew 
 his revolver, and said deliberately, " The first man whose 
 foot touches these steps dies. I will lay down my life for 
 this lady and her home. Wheel, forward, march!" When 
 the astonished crowd deemed it wise they asked their leader 
 what had changed his plans. This was his reply : 
 
 " When the door opened I recognized in that lady whom 
 you saw one who had visited my home when I was out of 
 work last winter. My wife was ill and the children were 
 nearly naked. She brought food and clothing for my chil- 
 dren ; she brought dainties for my sick wife, prepared by 
 her own hand. She was kind to me when I was in trouble, 
 and secured work for me." 
 
 Here, to my mind, is the key that is going to unlock 
 the Problem of the City, and that is going to answer the 
 questions how to reach the masses and how to fill the 
 churches at the second service. When the rich know how 
 the poor live by personal observation, and the poor know 
 how the rich work, the chasm between the " masses " and 
 the " classes " will be bridged ; and in this manifestation 
 of personal Christianity we shall be exhibiting the spirit of 
 our Master, " who went about doing good." Shall we fol- 
 low the Christ ? 
 
VIII 
 
 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM AS IT APPEARS 
 TO AN EPISCOPALIAN 
 
 REV. GEORGE HODGES, D.D., 
 Dean of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 217 
 
VIII 
 
 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM AS IT APPEARS TO 
 AN EPISCOPALIAN 
 
 As it appears to one Episcopalian. For it is more true 
 of the Episcopal Church than of any other religious com- 
 munion with which I am acquainted, that it is made up of 
 people who differ one from another. 
 
 Those temperamental distinctions to which we give the 
 easy names of " high " and " low " and " broad " belong to 
 our universal human nature. They are found in every con- 
 siderable company. Some there are always whose look is 
 up, toward God, and for whom the largest word in religion 
 is " adoration " ; others there are whose look is in, toward 
 their own soul, and for whom the essential word is " con- 
 version " ; and others still are to be found whose most fre- 
 quent look is out, toward their neighbors, and for whom 
 the emphatic word is "ministration." They who are of 
 the first sort are forever trying to enrich the services ; they 
 who are of the second sort seek appealing sermons, and 
 delight in prayer-meetings ; they who are of the third sort 
 endeavor to approve religious truth to the reason of men, 
 and to apply religious precepts to the bettering of present 
 living. 
 
 These various attitudes are discovered, not only in every 
 congregation of Christians, Roman or Protestant, Unitarian 
 or Presbyterian, but are found more or less developed in 
 every good Christian individual. It is plain, however, that 
 
 219 
 
220 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 each of us inclines especially in one or other of these direc- 
 tions, rarely holding them in balance. And it is equally 
 plain that different religious communions belong, upon the 
 whole, to one or other of these elemental parties. Thus the 
 Roman Catholic communion is distinctly "high church"; 
 the Methodist communion is distinctly " low church " ; the 
 Unitarian communion is distinctly " broad church." 
 
 But among Episcopalians these three strains of religious 
 character are so blended that no man may definitely ap- 
 ply to this church any one of these descriptive adjectives 
 alone. The citizens of one town, judging from the ex- 
 ample of the Episcopal parish in the midst of them, may 
 say that the Episcopal Church is a high church ; that it is 
 devoted to forms and ceremonies ; that it burns candles and 
 waves smoking censers ; and that it holds that the ministers 
 of other communions are but intrusive and presumptuous 
 laymen. But in the next county the inhabitants of another 
 town may argue from the same premises and reach an alto- 
 gether different conclusion : they may say that the Episco- 
 pal Church is intent upon the supreme task of saving souls ; 
 that the revivals, the prayer-meetings, and the inquiry- 
 meetings which are held within its walls bespeak the most 
 vital sort of evangelical piety ; and that the clergyman walks 
 with his ministerial neighbors of other names as brethren. 
 Let the religious reporter ask questions about the Episco- 
 pal Church from people who live in New York next door 
 to the church of which Dr. Rainsford is the rector, and 
 next door to the church of which Dr. Heber Newton is 
 the rector, and next door to the church whose parish priest 
 is Father Brown, and let him compare the answers. 
 
 The fact is plain, then, that while in any church it is im- 
 possible for anybody to represent everybody, in the Episco- 
 pal Church the idea of such a general representation is not 
 only idle, but absurd. We speak each for himself. The 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO AN EPISCOPALIAN 221 
 
 harnessing of an Eskimo pack illustrates the state of things : 
 each dog is fastened to the sled separately. They all pull, 
 and the sled goes on, but each one pulls in his own way 
 and by himself. This paper, accordingly, is the statement 
 of one Episcopalian. Another Episcopalian may put the 
 case quite differently. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this unique construction of the Episco- 
 pal Church with so much emphasis not only for the sake 
 of denning my own single responsibility for the views of 
 this paper, but also in order to assure our brethren of other 
 communions, who are accustomed to follow with interest 
 the discussion of the reunion of Christendom, that they 
 must not be discouraged when they hear protesting voices 
 raised against the fraternal positions which some of us 
 maintain toward them. There will always be protesting 
 voices ; that is in the nature of things. There will always 
 be even bishops who will insist upon narrow interpretations. 
 For our bishops are elected by our clergy and laity, and 
 represent often the predominant party of their own diocese. 
 No bishop represents the church. No six bishops setting 
 down episcopal signatures one below the other, with epis- 
 copal seals attached, represent the church. They speak 
 only for those who agree with them, and the number may 
 be small or great. The time will never come when any 
 terms of ecclesiastical fraternity with any other religious 
 communion whatsoever will be agreed to by everybody. If 
 the invitation, or the proposition, comes from a fair major- 
 ity of our household, our brethren may take it as the action 
 of the church. 
 
 I. This characteristic of the Episcopal Church establishes 
 the possibility of the reunion of Christendom. 
 
 Men have lived together in one church in the past — 
 men of all the temperamental differences which appear in 
 human nature ; and men equally different are living to- 
 
222 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 gether in one church to-day. If reunion means uniformity 
 we will have none of it ; that we all agree to. The experi- 
 ence of the past teaches us that. No plan for Christian 
 unity can gain acceptance which contemplates the sinking 
 of subordinate differences. The eternal fact of difference 
 must be taken into account. God has made us different. 
 We do not look alike and we do not think alike, and God 
 never meant that we should. He never intended that the 
 great orchestrated oratorio of religion should fall at last 
 into one note, all the various instruments playing that one 
 note, all the different voices joining in that one monoto- 
 nous, everlasting note. The reunion of Christendom must 
 be brought about with full recognition of the righteousness 
 of difference. 
 
 The idea that in the united church we must all use the 
 Book of Common Prayer is not held by very many Episco- 
 palians. When the bishops and the representative clergy- 
 men and laymen met in the last General Convention, and 
 solemnly set forth those elements of religion which we in 
 this church consider essential, the Prayer-book was not 
 mentioned. The missal and the breviary will be counted 
 among the books of authorized devotion in the united 
 church ; and so will the order of service which is set forth in 
 the Presbyterian directory ; and so will the no-order of ser- 
 vice which the Salvation Army finds most expressive of its 
 praise and prayer. Ritual uniformity will not characterize 
 the reunited Christendom. 
 
 Gradually, no doubt, we will come closer together. That 
 is going on at present. The missal and the breviary would 
 need some doctrinal amendment before they could be ac- 
 cepted as permissible by the new Christendom. Other 
 services would shape themselves according to the desires 
 of the people. The fittest would survive. We Episcopa- 
 lians believe that that survival would greatly resemble that 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO AN EPISCOPALIAN 223 
 
 form of adoration and petition which has stood the test of 
 centuries, which breathes the spirit of all that is most he- 
 roic, most saintly, and most Christian in the past, which is 
 the common heritage of Christendom, and which is to be 
 read in English between the covers of the Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer. But that should come about, if it came at 
 all, not by legislative enactment, not by the old fashion of 
 a date from which all churches should conduct their wor- 
 ship after that manner, but by the growing appreciation 
 and the general wish of the people. It would then be left 
 to every branch of the united household to say its prayers 
 in its own way. 
 
 In the Episcopal Church there is,-indeed, a uniformity of 
 worship, but the common form is so changed from parish 
 to parish, to suit the wish of the worshipers — here as simple 
 as the use of old Geneva, and there as elaborate as Rome 
 — that the principle of difference has ample play. People 
 who are almost Presbyterians, people who are almost Ro- 
 man Catholics, belong to the Episcopal Church. There are 
 not only ritual differences among us, but doctrinal differ- 
 ences also, answering to them. We are Calvinists and 
 Arminians ; we hold the widest and the narrowest views 
 of inspiration ; we disagree about everlasting punishment, 
 and about a score of other matters of more or less impor- 
 tance ; and yet we are all brethren in one communion. 
 
 And this, I say, demonstrates the possibility of Christian 
 unity. The idea that some folks are born Methodists and 
 can never be anything else, or are born Cumberland Pres- 
 byterians and can never be anything else, is a mistake. 
 Human nature has not greatly changed. People who were 
 born Methodists and Cumberland Presbyterians in the 
 middle ages were baptized in the medieval church and grew 
 up good Catholics, becoming Franciscans or Carthusians, 
 perhaps, but never needing to go outside the church. And 
 
224 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 there are people with the Methodist temperament and with 
 the Cumberland Presbyterian temperament in the Episcopal 
 Church to-day who do not feel compelled to go out of it. 
 The uniformity of Christendom is, indeed, forbidden by the 
 constitution of human nature, and there is not the least 
 likelihood that that disastrous experiment will be tried over 
 again. But the reunion of Christendom is a possibility 
 which is to-day in a small way realized in the Episcopal 
 Church, and thereby shown to be a reasonable thing. 
 
 II. We are also agreed, in the Episcopal Church, that 
 the reunion of Christendom, which our own experience 
 proves to be possible, is highly desirable. 
 
 This we deduce partly from our readings in Holy Scrip- 
 ture and partly from our daily observation of the course of 
 human events. We are sure that our Lord Jesus Christ 
 does not approve of our present disordered and combative, 
 or, at least, unfraternal condition. He came to establish a 
 kingdom of heaven, in which order should prevail, wherein 
 the united citizens should work together in obedience to 
 the King's will. St. Paul spoke words of no uncertain 
 meaning when he saw the beginnings of our present un- 
 happy divisions. It is of no avail to point to our general 
 spiritual agreement and to our invisible union. When that 
 agreement and union are real enough to amount to some- 
 thing they will certainly bring us together. So long as the 
 visible fraternity is lacking we must apply the same argu- 
 ment concerning the reality of the spiritual brotherhood 
 which we apply to the seed at harvest-time from the appear- 
 ance of the fruit. " By their fruits " is the test. 
 
 And, anyhow, looking only into the face of present con- 
 ditions, we see the need of far more union than we have. 
 For the Christian church has a work to do and a battle to 
 fight, and in order to any sort of success we must stand 
 together. Fifty men labor to move a rock, and they go 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO AN EPISCOPALIAN 225 
 
 up five men at a time and push, and the great rock does 
 not stir. Then all the fifty push together, and up comes 
 the mass of stone out of the earth. That is what united 
 action does. Or the time comes when a man must strike 
 a blow, and he extends four fingers and a - thumb against 
 his adversary, and strikes with these. What does such a 
 blow accomplish ? It hurts the man himself ; it does not 
 hurt the other man at all. The only effective blow is that 
 which is struck with the good, hard, concentrated fist. We 
 have been fighting the devil, for now these many, many 
 years, with our foolishly extended hand, in the four-fingers- 
 and-a-thumb fashion, with the Presbyterian finger and the 
 Baptist finger and the Methodist finger and the Roman 
 Catholic finger and the Episcopal thumb. No wonder that 
 we have made so small an impression. We must smite the 
 devil with our doubled fist. 
 
 Thus we learn the need of the reunion of Christendom 
 both from the Bible and from human life. And we Epis- 
 copalians realize the need. That is one of the rare things 
 upon which we all agree. When we come to consider ways 
 and means we part at once into various sides ; but that 
 this better and more efficient Christian condition must 
 somehow be brought about we are of one accord. 
 
 Thus one of the changes in our recent revision of the 
 Prayer-book was the addition of a prayer For the Unity of 
 God's People. This prayer had been already prayed by 
 many of our people for many years, being printed in various 
 much-used manuals of devotion. It has been in especial 
 use, and is still, among those of us who are commonly 
 accounted the most exclusive and self-centered — our High- 
 churchmen. All people know of the propositions looking 
 toward closer unity which were first put forth by our bish- 
 ops at Chicago, afterward by bishops of the whole Anglican 
 Church at the conference called at Lambeth by the Arch- 
 
226 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 bishop of Canterbury, and finally by the General Conven- 
 tion, representing the whole Episcopal Church in this coun- 
 try, convened at Baltimore in October, 1892. Our desire 
 for the reunion of Christendom has thus been made evident 
 beyond mistake. 
 
 III. It may need to be said, just here, that what we 
 want is the reunion of Christendom. And Christendom is 
 of wide extent. It takes in a great many very different 
 kinds of Christians. Our allegiance to the eternal principle 
 of the rightfulness of difference is here tested with a severe 
 and perilous test. 
 
 This sort of reunion means much more than the coming 
 together of various Protestant bodies. It includes the 
 Roman Catholics and the Greek Catholics. It touches not 
 only evangelical, but unevangelical communions, so called. 
 It means the cooperation of all people everywhere who call 
 Jesus Christ their Master. It does not mean a union of 
 errors, a confraternity of heresies, a subordination of truth. 
 It implies a great many changes, concessions, compromises, 
 adjustments, amendments. Reunited Christendom, accord- 
 ing to the Episcopalian ideal, will accept the same Scrip- 
 tures, accounting them to contain all things necessary to 
 eternal salvation, and will recite the same brief and vener- 
 able creeds, and will administer the same essential sacra- 
 ments — the two of the Lord's own appointing — and will be 
 included within the same general scheme of church order 
 whereof the Historic Episcopate is the visible sign. 
 
 It is in this last provision that the Episcopal Church 
 most markedly contemplates a reunion of all Christendom. 
 For the Historic Episcopate has to do with the past, the 
 present, and the future. 
 
 1. It reaches back into the past and links our own day 
 with the age of the apostles. There are certain simple 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO AN EPISCOPALIAN 227 
 
 statements which the Episcopal Church maintains as ele- 
 mental truths touching the constitution of the church. 
 
 (1) The first is that Jesus Christ founded a society, and 
 that that society is shown to be visible and capable of ready 
 recognition, like any other organized company of human 
 beings, partly by the parables which compare it to a field 
 sown with wheat and tares, and to a net containing fishes 
 good and bad, partly by the institution of a sacrament of 
 initiation whereby persons become members of it, and partly 
 by the historic appearance of it in the Acts of the Apostles 
 and so on through the centuries. 
 
 (2) The second statement is that Jesus Christ intended 
 that this society should continue. He said plainly that 
 he would be with its officers always, even unto the end of 
 the world, and that the gates of hell should not prevail 
 against it. 
 
 (3) The third statement is that the perpetuation of this 
 society, as of any other, depends upon the orderly succes- 
 sion of its officers. It is evident that if for any reason in 
 any organization some of the members decline to accept 
 the regularly appointed or elected president and secretary 
 and treasurer, and go apart to choose others for themselves, 
 they thereby forsake the original organization and begin 
 anew. In the account of the church contained in the New 
 Testament at least two kinds of ecclesiastical officers ap- 
 pear. We may call them "appointing officers" and "ap- 
 pointed officers." The appointing officers are few, the 
 appointed are many. The appointing officers go about 
 from place to place ; the appointed officers are stationed 
 each in his. own town. The classic passage is that m 
 which Titus, appointing officer for Crete, is directed to 
 ordain elders in every city. (Titus i. 5.) Presently, when 
 history again gets a good sight at the church, after the con- 
 
228 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 fusion of the first century of its life, the appointing officer 
 is plainly seen going about his duties, and named bishop, 
 and the appointed officers appear also, named presbyters 
 and deacons ; and it is a settled understanding in the Chris- 
 tian society that no man may become a lawful officer of 
 that organization unless he is regularly directed to his duties 
 by the action of the bishop. Whenever any members of 
 the Christian society became, rightly or wrongly, dissatisfied 
 with the administration, so that they withdrew from the 
 fellowship of the regularly appointed officials, and irregu- 
 larly chose others of their own, they were accounted to 
 have departed from that organization which Jesus Christ 
 founded, and of which the apostles were the first ministers. 
 Those departures were in many instances for good and 
 sufficient cause ; men were sometimes compelled to choose 
 between Christ's doctrine and Christ's society. But the 
 effect of the departure was, nevertheless, to introduce divi- 
 sion, and to bring in, finally, that unhappy condition of 
 things which we are just now trying to get out of. 
 
 This Historic Episcopate, which marks to-day the original 
 apostolic society still continuing, and which is thus of itself 
 a note of unity, is possessed by the Episcopal Church, and 
 is offered by that church as its especial contribution to the 
 cause of the reunion of Christendom. At the Reformation 
 the church in England effected its own amendment; no- 
 body needed to go out of the Christian society. There was 
 no break with what was essential in the past. The pope, 
 a comparatively new officer, not contemplated in the apos- 
 tolic ordering of the church, was, indeed, rejected ; but the 
 bishops, the original appointing officials, the characteristic 
 and necessary ministers of the church from the beginning, 
 continued without interruption, and have since continued, 
 and are alive to-day and busy at their old tasks in this 
 country in the Episcopal Church. 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO AN EPISCOPALIAN 229 
 
 2. The value of the Historic Episcopate for the present 
 and for the future is shown, first, by the fact that Christen- 
 dom is chiefly composed of Christians who both hold and 
 prize that apostolic government, and who are not likely to 
 be persuaded at this time of day to forsake it and join any 
 brand-new experimental Christian church. If we intend 
 as our ideal the reunion of Christendom, and not simply 
 the combination of a dozen friendly Protestant denomina- 
 tions in the United States of America, we may set down the 
 Historic Episcopate as one of the essential characteristics of 
 that millennial church in which Greeks and Romans, Pres- 
 byterians and Methodists, Episcopalians and Baptists, shall 
 say their prayers together. To form an association upon 
 the basis of the abandonment of the Historic Episcopate 
 would be only to erect another barrier across the way into 
 the kingdom of heaven. It would be the gaining of a tem- 
 porary, local, and delusive advantage at the cost of losing 
 all opportunity of that genuine union of all Christians for 
 which we daily pray in the Lord's Prayer, and which God 
 in his own good time will surely bring about. 
 
 This, I suppose, was in the minds of the bishops when 
 they returned their negative answers to the informal propo- 
 sition to permit an interchange of pulpits. They felt that 
 the gain would be small and unreal, and that it is of im- 
 portance to maintain, for the sake of future larger unity, a 
 difference which shall be easily visible between the ministry 
 of apostolic appointment and other ministers ordained in 
 other ways. 
 
 A second fact looking toward the present and the future 
 value of the Historic Episcopate is that which Dr. Shields 
 has admirably stated in his monograph upon this subject. 
 The only working-center of union is that which is afforded 
 by a common government. Only thus can free play be 
 given to our temperamental differences. We cannot unite 
 
230 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 on ritual ; if we could, such union would avail little. We 
 cannot unite on doctrine — not, at least, upon a body of 
 doctrine like the confessions of the fathers of the Reforma- 
 tion. We must be free to think. But we can unite in alle- 
 giance to a company of officers of our own choosing ; their 
 powers properly limited by a written constitution of our 
 own devising, and their ordination given in the ancient 
 regular manner of the church of the ages. In natural 
 loyalty to these living men, taking hold upon the actual 
 present, and having their faces turned toward the future, a 
 living church may live. These leaders may lead us, a united 
 and effective army, against the allied forces of the world, 
 the devil, and the flesh. Unity we want, not for the senti- 
 ment of it, but for its working and fighting quality. And 
 such unity, in the opinion of the Episcopal Church, the 
 episcopate has given in the past — even when inadequately 
 ordered — and is giving in the present, and will give in the 
 future. 
 
 The doctrine of transmitted grace does not enter in. 
 The phrase " Historic Episcopate " was substituted for the 
 old phrase " Apostolic Succession " in the bishops' articles 
 of union, and the emphasis was thereby transferred from a 
 private opinion to a universal truth. The Historic Episco- 
 pate means effective Christian leadership. When we get 
 it we will not need to dispute about the grace of orders. 
 The blessing of the God of Pentecost will rest upon the 
 reunited church. 
 
 IV. As to the way by which the reunion of Christendom 
 may best be brought about the Episcopal Church has ex- 
 pressed a decided opinion. 
 
 The first step, in our judgment, is a statement on the 
 part of all concerned of what are held to be essentials. 
 What is our own best ? What do we feel bound to main- 
 tain as the condition of our entrance into this Christian 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO AN EPISCOPALIAN 231 
 
 union ? What especial contribution do we bring to this 
 church of the future ? This is the initial step. This is 
 necessary to any kind of understanding. 
 
 Accordingly the Episcopal Church set the example. We 
 drew up a statement of our own position. We said that, 
 for our part, we must insist upon the Scriptures, the creeds, 
 the sacraments, and the Historic Episcopate. The next 
 natural step would have been for the Presbyterians and 
 the Congregationalists and the Methodists and the Roman 
 Catholics and our various other brethren to have done like- 
 wise. What are the essential Presbyterian positions ? What 
 do Congregationalists consider vital ? and so on. Instead 
 of that the action of the Episcopal Church was in many 
 quarters misunderstood. The brethren, instead of deter- 
 mining their own essentials and bringing them into friendly 
 conference, began to attack ours. Some of them even re- 
 viled us for making any statement whatsoever. 
 
 All this, however, comes naturally into the day's work 
 and is to be expected. We have so long lived in a state 
 of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness that frater- 
 nal words are reasonably open to suspicion. What hidden 
 purpose lay behind these plausible, smooth, probably hypo- 
 critical propositions of ours ? — that was what various dig- 
 nified members of ecclesiastical conventions wanted to know. 
 Surely it was some sort of shrewd prelatical trap into which 
 the brethren were lured to walk, that they might suddenly 
 find themselves snared in the superstitions of episcopacy. 
 It was simply incredible that we meant just what we said 
 — that was the conclusion. And it looked for a time as if 
 confusion were to be but worse confounded, and as if our 
 " precious balms " — in the language of the Psalter — were 
 to serve no better purpose than to break our heads withal. 
 
 Yet the Episcopalian proposition remains the only rea- 
 sonable road toward reunion. Let us each make an essen- 
 
232 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 tial statement. And then, secondly, after the essential 
 statements are in from as many Christian communions as 
 are willing to make them, let us institute a careful compari- 
 son ; let us see of what elements the reunited church, on 
 this basis, must consist. Then we may be ready for a fair 
 debate. Then the adjustments, the more efficient phras- 
 ings, the compromises, the reasonable changes of position, 
 may begin, and not before. Out of this parliament of 
 churches, this federation of communions, this new ecumen- 
 ical council, wherein each deputy holds in his hand, as he 
 prays the Lord's Prayer at the opening service, a statement 
 in brief terms of that which every denomination asks for 
 in the ideal church — out of this new pentecostal company, 
 met in one place with one devout intent, under the gui- 
 dance of the enabling Spirit, may issue the new church, old 
 as the apostles, defiant of the gates of hell, the Reunited 
 Christendom. 
 
IX 
 
 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM AS IT APPEARS 
 TO A CONGREGATIONALIST 
 
 WILLIAM G. BALLANTINE, D.D., LL.D., 
 President of Oberlin College. 
 
 233 
 
IX 
 
 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM AS IT APPEARS TO 
 A CONGREGATION A LIST 
 
 " Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for breth- 
 ren to dwell together in unity ! " Theologians have exer- 
 cised a good deal of ingenuity in defining what they have 
 termed the " notes of the church" — that is, the marks 
 by which it may be determined whether any given com- 
 pany of people is or is not a part of the body of Christ. 
 Our Lord himself gave us one, which, since it has his ex- 
 press sanction, should be written down first : " By this shall 
 all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one 
 to another." In his last great high-priestly prayer Jesus 
 prayed : " Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou 
 hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are." 
 Unity, then, or at least the spirit of unity, the impulse to- 
 ward and effort for unity, " as much as in us lieth," is the 
 first note of genuine Christianity. 
 
 It is passing strange that this great truth has been, until 
 recently, so much neglected. Those of us in middle life, 
 or past it, can remember, among the hundreds of sermons 
 to which we have listened, but very few upon the duty of 
 promoting unity among Christians. To most people it 
 seems a far more hopeful undertaking to convert the 
 heathen than to persuade Christians to give up their preju- 
 dices. Besotted as the pagans are in superstition, it ap- 
 pears less visionary to attempt to carry them all the way 
 
 235 
 
236 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 from fetish-worship to Christ than to carry a Christian 
 from sectarianism to catholicity. 
 
 But Christian thought has come now to a point where 
 unity among Christians is recognized in its true character 
 as a duty. And what is more encouraging still, many 
 Christian hearts are crying out for larger fellowship. The 
 necessities of the great work of saving the world are forcing 
 us to see the folly of wasting men and money and labor in 
 jealousy and mutual opposition. Common enterprises of 
 benevolence are bringing us into fellowship so sweet that 
 we cannot pull asunder. 
 
 Christianity, indeed, is above all things a fellowship. 
 " If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have 
 fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his 
 Son cleanseth us from all sin." The Apostle John, in 
 his wonderful First Epistle, develops this idea that the 
 Christian life is a fellowship with the Father and with the 
 Son and with one another. The Christian life cannot be 
 lived in isolation, surrounded by a Chinese wall of suspi- 
 cion and censoriousness. It is a common life like that of 
 one human body. We are all members one of another, 
 and Christ is the head. This is true not simply of the local 
 church, but of the universal church — the holy catholic 
 church. 
 
 The tendency to division among Christians early showed 
 itself, for it is a natural product of the carnal mind. Paul 
 sternly rebuked the Corinthians for this fault : " Whereas 
 there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal, 
 and walk after the manner of men ? For when one saith, 
 I am of Paul ; and another, I am of Apollos ; are ye not 
 men ? What then is Apollos ? and what is Paul ? Min- 
 isters through whom ye believed ; and each as the Lord 
 gave to him." Yet in the face of the Apostle's express 
 condemnation of such a course we have gone on to the 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A CONGREGATIONALIST 237 
 
 present time saying, " I am of Calvin," and " I of Luther," 
 and " I of Wesley," and " I of Christ." 
 
 The question before us now is how these shameful and 
 harmful divisions in the one church may be healed, and 
 how we may return most quickly and most sweetly to the 
 original unity around our common Lord. The mere enun- 
 ciation of such a proposition ennobles us all. It is like a 
 breath from heaven quickening every holy emotion. May 
 He whom we all adore — the Prince of Peace — guide us in 
 genuine progress toward a happy consummation ! 
 
 1. At the outset it is necessary to consider attentively 
 those two fundamental principles of Christian relationship 
 and association which Paul unfolds in the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth chapters of his Epistle to the Romans, the neglect 
 of which is the cause of all our present unhappy divisions. 
 These two principles are : 
 
 (1) Mutual Independence. 
 
 (2) Mutual Self-subordination. 
 
 The more intimately people are associated the more need 
 there is for regulative principles. With such a diversity of 
 mental endowments, tastes, and temperaments, the brother- 
 hood of all men would be hopeless unless controlled by 
 some sublime universal principles applicable to all situa- 
 tions and adequate for the solution of every difficulty. 
 Such principles Paul clearly laid down and reiterated with 
 all his forceful rhetoric. But the church forgot them, or, 
 rather, never really comprehended them, and hence " con- 
 fusion and every evil work." 
 
 The text, " For none of us liveth to himself, and none 
 dieth to himself," is usually chosen when a minister is to 
 preach on the solidarity of the human race or of the church. 
 This text is assumed to teach that we are all so interlinked 
 that each affects all, and, consequently, that each owes 
 duties to all. Here is a striking example of that shameful 
 
2$% THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 slovenliness in handling the Scriptures, which even those 
 who profess the highest reverence for them often show, 
 and which loses for us the meaning of so many important 
 passages. 
 
 When Paul said, " None of us liveth to himself, and 
 none dieth to himself," he was not emphasizing our rela- 
 tion to one another, but our relation to God. He was say- 
 ing that we have no right to judge our brother, because 
 that brother is not living to himself, but to God. Our 
 brother is God's servant, not his own nor ours. A Chris- 
 tian life is no private affair amenable to human supervision. 
 It is a sacred and divine relationship, upon which let no 
 man dare to intrude. The context proves that this is 
 Paul's meaning. He goes right on to say, " For whether 
 we live, we live unto the Lord ; or whether we die, we die 
 unto the Lord : whether we live therefore, or die, we are 
 the Lord's. . . . But thou, why dost thou judge thy 
 brother ? or thou again, why dost thou set at naught thy 
 brother ? for we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of 
 God. ... So then each one of us shall give account of 
 himself to God." Paul's point is, each of us shall give ac- 
 count, not of his brother, but of /iimse/f, not to his brother, 
 but to God. 
 
 Paul did not attempt to decide all disputed questions, 
 although he was an inspired apostle. Such an attempt 
 would have been futile. As long as men are men differ- 
 ences of view will arise. Paul did not say, " Let the ency- 
 clical of the pope, or the resolutions of the National Coun- 
 cil, settle all." He did not say, " Appeal to the Conference 
 or the General Assembly." He distinctly said, " Let each 
 man be fully assured in his own mind." According to 
 this each Christian stands in direct personal fellowship with 
 God and responsibility to him alone. Upon his opinions 
 and practices no living man has a right to pass judgment. 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A CONGREGATION A LIST 239 
 
 At the end each shall give account of himself to God; not 
 of his neighbor to God, nor of himself to his neighbor or 
 to the church. 
 
 It is of no use to talk about unity or union until this 
 great principle is fully understood and accepted. It is, in- 
 deed, the fundamental principle of Protestantism, although 
 most Protestants largely traverse it in practice. This is 
 nothing but the principle of the right of private judgment. 
 
 The second great principle of Christian association is 
 like unto the first. It is the principle of mutual self-subor- 
 dination. Although in Christ I am free from the dictation 
 of all men, yet I am also free, and, indeed, feel the im- 
 pulse, to make myself the servant of all for their salvation. 
 " Let each one of us," says Paul, "please his neighbor for 
 that which is good, unto edifying. For Christ also pleased 
 not himself." There is no limit to the concessions which, 
 in external things, we may make for a weak brother's sake. 
 We may become all things to all men. No one has a right 
 to judge me for using meat or wine or tobacco, if I do it 
 conscientiously in faith. But if it appears that meat or 
 wine or tobacco makes my brother to offend, I am free to 
 go without it to the end of life. No one may disparage 
 me for neglecting immersion or ordination, on principle. 
 But no principle should dictate my course in regard to those 
 externals but the principle of love for my brother. The 
 fact that each man is " my brother," and that Christ my 
 Saviour died for him, should make me ready even to lay 
 down my life for him. 
 
 It is an interesting thing to observe in passing that these 
 two principles of Christian fellowship, namely, mutual in- 
 dependence and mutual self-subordination, with the conse- 
 quent mutual joy, educed exegetically from the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth chapters of Romans, agree exactly with the 
 philosophical analysis of love so eloquently given by 
 
240 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 Dr. Newman Smyth in his " Christian Ethics " (pp. 226 ff.). 
 " Love," according to Dr. Smyth, " contains in its unity a 
 trinity of virtue. It comprehends within itself the three 
 following distinctions: moral self-affirmation, self-imparta- 
 tion, and self-existence in others. Love affirms its own 
 worthiness, imparts to others its good, and finds its life 
 again in the well-being of others." 
 
 It may be added, also, that these two Pauline principles 
 are the two principles which we seek to work out in the 
 Congregational church polity. Each local church is ab- 
 solutely independent, and yet it freely acts in consultation 
 and concurrence and sisterly affection with neighboring 
 churches. Each party to the fellowship participates, not 
 because it must, but because it will. 
 
 2. Secondly, in our movement toward unity we must 
 proceed inductively. This is an age of inductive science ; 
 and religion, if it is not to fall behind the times, must open 
 its eyes to the objective existence of facts. We are not to 
 construct the church out of our own inner consciousness, 
 as the German metaphysician is said to have constructed 
 the camel. We are not the founders of the church or the 
 authors of its constitution. We are merely converted men 
 who, having found the Saviour, or, rather, having been 
 found by him, are looking about to see what other sheep 
 he has, that we may love them and rejoice with them and 
 labor with them. We are told by our Master that it is our 
 duty to do this. The question is not whether we will ad- 
 mit into our fellowship persons having or lacking certain 
 marks, but, What are the marks by which we may recognize 
 those already in Christ's fellowship ? You and I do not 
 own any fellowship to admit people into or to exclude them 
 from. There is but one Head, even Christ. The newly 
 regenerate man may think that immersion is plainly taught 
 in the New Testament, and that it is so simple and beau.ti- 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A CONGREGATION ALIST 241 
 
 ful and reasonable an ordinance that it surely is a mark of 
 discipleship. But he comes across a community of Qua- 
 kers, who have no visible sacraments. Here is a fact as 
 solid and as immovable as Plymouth Rock. No people 
 in the world have a clearer title to the name of Christ than 
 the Quakers. It is of no use to argue ; you cannot argue 
 away a fact. There they are, in the visible church, and 
 I, for one, hasten to unite with them, much surprised, I 
 confess, and puzzled, but exclaiming, " O the depth of the 
 riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God ! how 
 unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing 
 out!" 
 
 I have chosen the Quakers as an illustration because 
 they have neither the " Historic Episcopate" nor the "prim- 
 itive sacraments," and yet they are undoubtedly Christians 
 of the best type. If " righteousness and peace and joy in 
 the Holy Ghost " are the tests, the Quakers stand high. 
 When facts are appealed to theories must give way. The 
 reunion of Christendom must be on the basis of a full ac- 
 knowledgment of existing facts. We must check our own 
 pride of knowledge and orthodoxy, and reverently trace 
 the lines marked out by the divine Spirit. We must not 
 deny liberty which the Spirit has sanctioned. As well try 
 to preserve the American Union by asking all of our sixty- 
 five millions to move into the State of Rhode Island as to 
 invite all Christians to reunion within the lines of immer- 
 sion and the Historic Episcopate. 
 
 3. This brings us, in the third place, to observe the un- 
 expected light which falls from the admitted duty of unity 
 upon our theoretical theology and polity. Starting out 
 for what seems a simple, practical duty, something within 
 the domain of " ecclesiastical politics," we find that we 
 cannot do that duty without an entire revision of our theory 
 of the proportions of Christianity. Before we can unite, it 
 
242 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 must be determined what we are going to unite about, and 
 in what sense. 
 
 We have been accustomed to think of unity as a far-off 
 happy result to come at the end of Christian ages. We 
 have thought that the world was to be converted to Christ 
 by the sporadic efforts of discordant sects, and that theo- 
 logical truth and the best polity were to be wrought out in 
 the heat of partizan controversy and the acrimony of heresy 
 trials ; and then at the end, when the millennium had been 
 brought about in this way, we should rush into one another's 
 arms in mutual congratulation. Upon this theory there 
 were many duties more pressing than the duty of unity, 
 and a great many things were right although obviously in- 
 compatible with unity. But now that we have come, to 
 see that it is our duty to unite instantly, that unity is the 
 primary mark of Christianity, the whole perspective has 
 changed. The whole order of procedure is different. In- 
 stead of starting out to make propaganda for our own pet 
 theories of church government or the ordinances, we see 
 that we must accept the church of Christ just as it is, and 
 unite just as we are. The important truths, the vital prin- 
 ciples, the basis of reunion, must be not something yet to 
 be accepted by a portion of Christendom, but simply what 
 is already accepted. The old maxim that that is essential 
 Christian doctrine which has been accepted always, every- 
 where, and by all — quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab 
 omnibus — a dictum often ridiculed as utterly indefinite, is 
 now seen to be the only possible truth. 
 
 An early result of our search for an inductive basis of 
 union, one formulated after examination of all living Chris- 
 tians, and a statement of that in which they do in fact 
 agree, will be a rediscovery of that sublime truth which 
 Paul wrought out in the Epistle to the Galatians, himself 
 quivering with an intense emotion which even oaths and 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A CONGREGATIONALIST 243 
 
 curses could not relieve, while on the anvil of his logic he 
 hammered the glowing links of his argument to prove that 
 " in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor 
 uncircumcision ; but faith working through love." That is, 
 Christianity is purely ethical and spiritual. It is not sacra- 
 mental nor theological nor hierarchical. The sole question 
 is whether the candidate is a new creature in Christ. It 
 is not, Does he acknowledge Paul as his bishop ? It is, 
 Does he yield in life the fruit of the Spirit ? If we see in 
 him "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, 
 faithfulness, meekness, temperance," then we are to recog- 
 nize him at once as a brother. 
 
 We are not to unite after we have settled all our differ- 
 ences, but we are to unite at once, that we may rightly set- 
 tle them. It may well be true that the denomination called 
 Disciples of Christ are right on the question of baptism ; 
 but how can I receive candidly their arguments, and take 
 that brotherly attitude of sympathy which will enable me 
 to reach their view-point, while I am separated from them 
 by a denominational wall, and am in a measure pledged 
 to cooperate with those who reject immersion? The Epis- 
 copalians may be right as to the principles of church polity 
 and as to the historic character of the episcopate ; but I 
 am at a sad disadvantage in discussing that question while 
 all my immediate associations and personal interests are in- 
 volved with a different view. The truth of the unity of the 
 church and the duty of unity among Christians are points 
 about which we can all agree. Let us come at once upon 
 that platform, and from that basis work out all the rest. 
 It is more imperative that we should be united than that 
 we should be rightly baptized or rightly officered. 
 
 What we want is " the unity of the Spirit in the bond of 
 peace." To unite on any other basis would be a delusion. 
 It would not be Christian union. Union on the basis of 
 
244 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 episcopal ordination, or immersion, or faith in the infallible 
 original autographs of Holy Scripture, or acceptance of 
 the Apostles' and Nicene creeds, would not be a step in 
 advance. It would be a step backward. It would be an 
 association under a mistake, putting the physical or the in- 
 tellectual or even the superstitious for the spiritual. We 
 want a union which will guarantee to us intellectual liberty, 
 not suppress it ; and which shall, by necessary consequence, 
 legitimize that variety which always springs out of liberty. 
 The only union of value, the union to be prayed for, is that 
 union which springs spontaneously from mutual recognition 
 of those who have the mind of Christ. As two drops of 
 quicksilver rush into one, so every two neighboring Chris- 
 tian hearts should blend. 
 
 An immediate movement for union would force a revi- 
 sion of our ideas of church government. We should have 
 to acknowledge the legitimacy of every kind of polity, and 
 the right of each several company of Christians to follow 
 their own conscientious convictions of duty. Above all, we 
 should have to concede the widest liberty. For myself, as 
 a Congregationalist, I do not find in Scripture or in church 
 history any indication of a legitimate sphere for a govern- 
 ment above the local assembly of Christians, each of whom 
 is a king and a priest unto God, an authorized and final in- 
 terpreter of Scripture, and a creed-maker. If immoralities 
 occur Christ himself has told us how to proceed in expel- 
 ling the sinful and contumacious member from the local 
 church. If some brother, while conscientious and faithful 
 in practical life, reaches theological convictions which others 
 regard as unsound, there is no legitimate way to get rid of 
 him. 
 
 To all this it will be replied that what I am contending 
 for we already have, and that such a union is virtually no 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A CONGREGATIONALIST 245 
 union at all. This I do not admit. True, we are making 
 
 rapid progress toward what I am advocating. One of the 
 delights of living nowadays is to watch the rapidly advanc- 
 ing reunion of Christendom. Nowhere in the world is that 
 reunion more beautifully manifest than in these delightful 
 groves of Chautauqua. Here under the trees is a genuine 
 and visible and practical fellowship among Methodists and 
 Baptists and Presbyterians and Congregationalists and all 
 the rest, which very nearly fulfils my ideal. We recognize 
 here that what we have in common infinitely exceeds what 
 we hold apart. This is what we wish to realize all over 
 the world. 
 
 The true program for those of us who wish to promote the 
 spiritual reunion of Christendom will be somewhat as follows : 
 
 1. To concede fully and freely to every Christian and 
 every body of Christians the right to independent assur- 
 ance as to each disputed point. 
 
 2. To cultivate the utmost courtesy in discussion, seek- 
 ing not for- verbal victories, but simply the establishment 
 of truth, admitting that we ourselves may be in the wrong. 
 
 3. Just as far as possible to drop all controversy re- 
 garding disputed points, inferring at once that if anything 
 is doubtful to any it cannot be of primary importance, al- 
 though it might otherwise seem so to us. 
 
 4. To magnify the things in which all Christians agree, 
 and to put all the cordiality possible into all union efforts, 
 like this at Chautauqua, work like Mr. Moody's and Mr. 
 Mills's, the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, 
 the Young Men's Christian Association, the associated chari- 
 ties, the civic federations, etc. 
 
 5. To concentrate Christian attention on the needs of a 
 sinful, ignorant, suffering, and sorrowing world, and the 
 paramount necessity of comity and cooperation in using 
 the means at command for the salvation of mankind. 
 
246 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 I myself do not pray for the organic union of Christen- 
 dom. In the church to which I belong we feel no need of 
 more government. We have no use for an historic bishop 
 to set things in order, nor for a General Assembly to revise 
 our creed. We are not impatient to commune with the 
 immersionists, nor to preach in Episcopalian pulpits. Like 
 Gallio, we "care for none of these things." We do not 
 desire all to think and act alike in non-essentials. What 
 we want is the mutual assurance of perfect love and con- 
 fidence and recognition. If asked in what Christian assem- 
 blies I have felt most impressed I should find it hard to 
 say whether most where the anthems of heavenly sweetness, 
 sung by boys' voices, swelled through the historic arches of 
 Westminster, or in a plain Quaker meeting-house in New 
 York City, where in silence a whole congregation waited 
 for the illumination of the divine Spirit. God fulfils him- 
 self in many ways. One good custom might corrupt the 
 world. " All things are ours ; whether Paul, or Apollos, or 
 Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, 
 or things to come ; all are ours ; and we are Christ's ; and 
 Christ is God's." 
 
 The practical results of a spiritual union would be mani- 
 fold. That competition of sects in small towns which is 
 now the scandal of the times would cease. All missionary 
 efforts would receive a new strength from mutual coopera- 
 tion. There would be an immense enrichment of the Chris- 
 tian life of each denomination by appropriation of the best 
 things belonging to all the others. This has already been 
 accomplished in our hymn-books, so that we all sing Roman 
 Catholic and Unitarian and Calvinistic and Arminian hymns 
 in sweet unconsciousness of their being anything but Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 The consciousness of spiritual union with the whole body 
 of Christ would have, I believe, on the individual Christian a 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A CONGREGATIONALIST 247 
 
 peculiarly enlarging and inspiring effect. What a delight- 
 ful change of attitude, from suspicion and coldness and 
 opposition to brotherly love ! A new thrill of life and joy 
 and peace, a new sense of power and hope, would come to 
 all. The unbelieving multitudes would feel it ; the cavil- 
 ings of objectors would sink into silence ; the icy barriers 
 of heathenism would melt, and the world lie conquered at 
 the feet of the Prince of Peace. 
 
X 
 
 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM AS IT APPEARS 
 TO A PRESBYTERIAN 
 
 HENRY M. BOOTH, D.D., 
 President of the Auburn Theological Seminary. 
 
 249 
 
THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM AS IT APPEARS 
 TO A PRESBYTERIAN 
 
 A Presbyterian can speak of the reunion of Christen- 
 dom, because the Presbyterian Church has spoken and is 
 still speaking. The opinions of a Presbyterian may not 
 possess especial interest or importance, while the opinions 
 of the Presbyterian Church, as expressed by a Presbyterian, 
 are entitled to respectful consideration. For the Presby- 
 terian Church is one of the great historic churches of 
 Christendom. The intelligence, the courage, the piety of 
 the Christians who bear this honored name are never ques- 
 tioned. In the forefront of every battle for liberty Pres- 
 byterian warriors contend ; in the select circles of accurate 
 and profound scholarship Presbyterian theologians are wel- 
 come ; in the dark places of the earth, which are the habi- 
 tations of cruelty, Presbyterian missionaries are heroic ; and 
 in the relief of poverty, distress, and sickness Presbyterian 
 resources are a dependence. Christendom cannot be in- 
 different to the Presbyterian Church, and Christendom is 
 not. 
 
 Nor is the Presbyterian Church indifferent to the reunion 
 of Christendom. The standards of the church prepare the 
 way for such a reunion by clear, definite, and catholic 
 statements as to the nature of the church and the essential 
 characteristics of the ministry ; while repeated deliverances 
 of the General Assembly — the supreme judicatory of the 
 
 251 
 
252 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 church — and the writings of many approved divines exhibit 
 the thought and the spirit of Presbyterians on this important 
 subject. A Presbyterian may, therefore, speak with author- 
 ity, if his speech is in harmony with the utterances of the 
 church, of which he may be only a very humble member. 
 
 When the reunion of Christendom comes up for consid- 
 eration a Presbyterian is ready to ask and to answer three 
 questions : 1 . In the reunion of Christendom what does a 
 Presbyterian anticipate ? 2. To the reunion of Christendom 
 what does a Presbyterian contribute? 3. With the reunion 
 of Christendom what does a Presbyterian become ? 
 
 1. In the reunion of Christendom what does a Presby- 
 terian anticipate ? When the reunion is accomplished, 
 what will be the condition of Christendom ? What is the 
 ideal ? Can there be unity without uniformity ? Must 
 there be one visible organization, like the Papacy ? Is the 
 reunion to be on the basis of dogma, of polity, or of ritual ? 
 If dogma is essential will the dogma be Pelagian, Arminian, 
 or Calvinistic ? Which one of the existing polities is to 
 prevail ? Will the church of the future carry a prayer- 
 book in her hand ? 
 
 Visible organic union is the avowed aim and purpose of 
 the Roman Catholic Church, whose antiquity, influence, 
 and numerical supremacy are universally recognized. The 
 astute Pontiff who rules this organization from the seclu- 
 sion of the Vatican Palace is now making overtures to the 
 Greek Church, whose membership is 84,000,000, and is 
 evidently planning to absorb the prelatical communions of 
 every nation. When this result is reached, if it ever is, the 
 Roman Catholic Church will be the exponent of unity, and 
 the churches that are left outside that fold will be the scat- 
 tered sheep in the wilderness. 
 
 It must be confessed that the Church of Rome has ex- 
 ceptional advantages for absorbing the rest of Christendom. 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A PRESBYTERIAN 253 
 
 Dogma, polity, and ritual have all been " infallibly " deter- 
 mined. From the verdict of the church there can be no 
 appeal. Submission must be absolute. The pope will rule 
 over all as he now rules over a part, and uniformity will be 
 evident, even if it is the uniformity that is witnessed when 
 the rod of the master has silenced all speech. 
 
 The Presbyterian, who consults the Word of God, and 
 derives his expectations from that inspired teaching, is not 
 looking for such organic reunion. It is formal, unspiritual, 
 inimical to the progress of the gospel, and without the 
 warrant of Holy Scripture. The baptized paganism of the 
 Emperor Constantine's reign was responsible for the Dark 
 Ages; and the baptized paganism of the Emperor Vladi- 
 mir's reign must answer for the Cossack and his career of 
 ignorance and superstition. 
 
 He who gave the true ideal of unity by saying, " As 
 thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may 
 be one in us," did not encourage the unity of uniformity. 
 For the unity of the Godhead — we say it reverently — is 
 that of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. "These three are 
 one true, eternal God ; the same in substance, equal in 
 power and glory ;" although distinguished by their personal 
 properties. 
 
 There may be many folds, as the true reading of 
 John x. 16 declares, and yet there may be only one flock, 
 and one Shepherd. There may be a sincere attachment 
 to Jesus Christ as the Head of the church, and a genuine 
 sympathy with all who name that name divine, along with 
 intelligent and allowable preferences for dogmas, polities, 
 and rituals which would make a formal organic unity im- 
 possible. 
 
 If the Presbyterian is not looking for an organic reunion 
 of Christendom, how is it with a federative reunion ? Within 
 the limits of several of the historic churches such a reunion 
 
254 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 has been accomplished. The Presbyterian, the Methodist 
 Episcopal, the Protestant Episcopal, the Congregational, 
 and other churches, have formed federations for mutual 
 acquaintance, for the defense of the weak, for the dissem- 
 ination of distinctive opinions, and for the promotion of 
 church unity. It has been felt, and properly, that Chris- 
 tians who are most nearly allied should get together and 
 exhibit their agreement to the other churches and to the 
 world. Thus these federations have become important 
 signs of the times. They have already answered an im- 
 portant purpose, and are destined to be more largely influ- 
 ential. Their danger lurks in the tendency to impose re- 
 quirements, and to legislate for the people of God. This 
 tendency is a characteristic of ecclesiasticism, and will 
 prove destructive of the true purpose of federation. The 
 liberty wherewith Christ has made us free is the individual 
 Christian's birthright. No man, or body of men, can be 
 allowed to take it from him. If federation means confer- 
 ence and fellowship and work, then it will further the great 
 cause of reunion ; but if it means assertion and dictation 
 and undue restraint, it will only prove that the disciples of 
 Christ are unable to live together peacefully when their liv- 
 ing is intimate fellowship. 
 
 Thus far in their history these federations have for the 
 most part avoided legislation. They have been grand par- 
 liaments of believers, who have met to talk about the church 
 and the evangelization of the world, and to consider what 
 may be done to hasten the triumph of our blessed Lord. 
 They have splendid opportunities, because they appear as 
 one body ; and their unity gives them exceptional advan- 
 tages of consideration, and of enabling them to issue state- 
 ments to the world of the beliefs and purposes of large and 
 influential bodies of Christians. Thus the Pan-Anglican 
 Council of 1888 a.d., which was held in the city palace of 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A PRESBYTERIAN 255 
 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, enjoys the rare distinction 
 of having issued authoritatively four definite propositions 
 as a basis of reunion. These propositions are expressed in 
 clear and definite terms, and are the candid statement of a 
 great church. While we may dissent, as we do, from one of 
 these terms — that concerning the " Historic Episcopate " 
 — let us not fail to honor the spirit that has reduced the con- 
 victions of a noble church to these few terms of reunion. 
 If other churches would go and do likewise, stating in 
 simple language the terms that each one regards as essen- 
 tial, the real unity that now exists would be evident. For 
 the Presbyterian Church, it is well known, has met the 
 Lambeth Propositions with a cordial assent as to the first 
 three, and with a desire to discuss the fourth, so that there 
 may be an intelligent agreement as to its meaning. This is 
 certainly an advance upon anything that has hitherto been 
 known. When churchmen can reduce the barriers that 
 separate them from others to one obstacle, never mind what 
 that may be, the Spirit of our blessed Lord is certainly 
 present and influential. All honor, then, to the Anglican 
 Church and to the Protestant Episcopal Church of the 
 United States for this suggestive leadership ! May it prove 
 to be the herald of many other messengers of peace, who 
 shall bring invitations that those who love our Lord may 
 reason together! 
 
 This federative reunion, however, must be the outgrowth 
 and expression of Christian love. " The unity of the Spirit 
 in the bond of peace " is more to be desired than any 
 formal compacts, and if it does not precede and accom- 
 pany such compacts they will only promote the bondage 
 of ecclesiasticism. The New Testament makes very little 
 of organization as such. The spirit is above the letter. 
 " Ubi Christies, ibi ecclesia." Learned writers of all schools 
 agree that the polity of the apostolic age was very simple. 
 
256 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 Apparently the synagogue order was perpetuated in the 
 early church. The existing elaborate polities have been a 
 development, and a development that has been rapid when 
 formalism has prevailed. 
 
 A genuine spiritual union is a present reality to a degree 
 that few persons appreciate. The one widely recognized 
 Head of the church is our adorable Redeemer, Jesus Christ 
 the one common ground of salvation is his atoning sacrifice 
 the one condition of acceptance is repentance and faith 
 and the one hope of regeneration, holiness, and heaven is 
 the indwelling of the divine Spirit. As the lamented Dr. 
 SchafI said, in the paper read by him before the Chicago 
 Parliament of Religions, " The church of Christ has been 
 one from the beginning, and he has pledged to her his un- 
 broken presence all the days to the end of the world. The 
 one invisible church is the soul which animates the divided 
 visible churches. All true believers are members of the 
 mystical body of Christ." 
 
 There can be no more satisfactory statement of the 
 nature of the church than is given in these words of the 
 seventeenth century : 
 
 "The catholic or universal church, which is invisible, 
 consists of the whole number of the elect that have been, 
 are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the Head 
 thereof ; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him 
 that filleth all in all. 
 
 "The visible church, which is also catholic or universal 
 under the gospel — not confined to one nation, as before 
 under the law — consists of all those throughout the world 
 that profess the true religion, together with their children ; 
 and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house 
 and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary pos- 
 sibility of salvation." 
 
 Such a statement as that is true to the teaching of Holy 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A PRESBYTERIAN 257 
 
 Scripture, and to history, and to the divinely implanted 
 characteristics of the Christian life. It is catholic, for no 
 exclusive human claims are pressed, No one is denied 
 church privileges because he has failed of a prescribed 
 mode of baptism, of an especial mode of confirmation, or 
 of a particular mode of ordination. It does not insist upon 
 any one creed, nor upon any one polity, nor upon any one 
 ritual. It does not unchurch the Arminian, who cannot 
 accept the five points of Calvinism ; nor the Baptist, who 
 denies the perpetuity of the Abrahamic covenant in a 
 gracious care of little children ; nor the prelatist, who has 
 failed of ordination by the laying on of the hands of the 
 presbytery. It declares that the church is the body of 
 Christ, and that all who are joined to him by faith are 
 members of that body and thus members of the church. 
 It is willing to recognize, to work with, and even to unite 
 with, in a modified union, all who profess and call them- 
 selves Christians. 
 
 This, the statement claims, is the divine ideal. For 
 going, as it does, to the New Testament, the Westminster 
 Confession hears " the Wisest of the wise and the Holiest of 
 the holy" speaking of one vine and the many branches, of 
 one flock and one Shepherd and the many folds ; and hears, 
 also, St. Paul, an inspired apostle, who speaks of the many 
 members of the one body, whose Head is Christ, and of 
 the household of God, which is composed of a multitude 
 who were once strangers and sojourners ; and listens as 
 St. Peter, another inspired apostle, describes the glory of 
 that spiritual house which is built up of living stones ; and 
 is taught by St. John, the inspired seer, who saw the Holy 
 City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, 
 with love holding together in perfect harmony the nations 
 of them that are saved, who have gathered from the east, 
 and from the west, and from the north, and from the south. 
 
25S THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 This is the Kingdom of the older economy, or the Church 
 of the present dispensation, or the City of God of the end- 
 less ages. The Lord of life and glory is supreme in all 
 this realm. His presence is magnetic. Redemption is 
 evident everywhere. For whether we speak of Kingdom, 
 of Church, or of City, we refer to that one organized society 
 whose law, whose life, whose purpose, are from him whom 
 saints aforetime called Messiah, and who is now, and ever 
 shall be, Jesus: "for he shall save his people from their 
 sins." 
 
 The anticipation of a Presbyterian is simply the realization 
 of this ideal. The unity of love is the reunion of Christen- 
 dom. Such unity may be trusted to find its expression in 
 dogma, in polity, and in ritual. There is a generous tol- 
 eration of differences and a large liberty as to details of 
 organization and worship. The end is not yet. Dr. A. A. 
 Hodge remarked, in his " Popular Lectures on Theological 
 Themes," that " the principle of the union is spiritual and 
 vital, and hence it must be the result of an internal growth. 
 The more perfect the inward life the more perfect will 
 be its outward expression. The final external form of the 
 holy catholic church will never be reached by adding de- 
 nomination to denomination. It will come, as all growth 
 into organized form, alike in the physiological and in the 
 social world, comes, by the spontaneous action of central 
 vital forces from within." Those forces are the power of 
 the Holy Spirit working love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
 meekness, gentleness, and other gracious results of the 
 divine indwelling in the hearts of all true Christians. A 
 strong churchman, and a distinguished Presbyterian, once 
 said : " I am a Presbyterian, not only by birth, but by con- 
 viction, and yield to no man in loyalty to the denomina- 
 tion in whose service my life has been spent and in whose 
 bosom I hope to die. But I do not expect to be a Pres- 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A PRESBYTERIAN 259 
 
 byterian, nor anything of the kind, in heaven. And as my 
 sun grows larger and more mellow toward its setting, I 
 would gladly exchange everything that is not essentially 
 Christian for a few of the days of heaven on earth, in the 
 unity and peace of the church of God, which he hath pur- 
 chased with his own blood." I believe that my beloved 
 and lamented friend, Dr. H. J. van Dyke, fairly represented 
 the anticipations of a Presbyterian. Our baptism is freely 
 offered to all believers and their children. Our table is 
 spread for all who confess Jesus Christ as Saviour and 
 Lord. Our pulpits are free to all who preach Jesus Christ, 
 and him crucified. We are ready to commune with our 
 Baptist brethren, and to exchange pulpits with our Epis- 
 copal brethren, and to rejoice in the prosperity of all breth- 
 ren who are seeking to honor Him who is the only source 
 of life. As a Presbyterian I am not conscious that I place 
 a single obstacle in the way of the reunion of Christen- 
 dom. I do not ask other churches to become Calvinistic, 
 although I myself am Calvinistic. I do not ask them to 
 throw away their prayer-books, although I myself prefer 
 free prayer. I do not ask them to dismiss their diocesan 
 bishops, although I myself agree with Lightfoot, Jacob, 
 Hatch, Stanley, and many other notable prelatical writers, 
 that a diocesan bishop is of later than New Testament 
 date. The church that evidently enjoys the presence of 
 our Lord is the church that I wish to welcome into my 
 fellowship. More than that I cannot say. I do not think 
 that I should be asked to accept the distinctive peculiarities 
 of each church. Rebaptism or reordination would be an 
 impeachment of the baptism and the ordination that I 
 have received, and that I regard as valid and regular. I 
 can respect the convictions of a brother even when I can- 
 not always agree with him, and I can love him as a brother 
 in Christ. 
 
260 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 In this way the unity of love will bind together, as one 
 body, the hands and the feet, the eyes and the ears, that 
 act in obedience to the will of Him whose we are and 
 whom we serve. When that blessed consummation is real- 
 ized the world will believe that the Father sent the Son, and 
 that salvation is through him. Thus the prayer of interces- 
 sion will be answered, and Christendom will be one. 
 
 2. To the reunion of Christendom what does a Presby- 
 terian contribute ? The Presbyterian Church has made, 
 and is still making, valuable contributions to the reunion 
 of Christendom. These contributions are : 
 
 (a) Biblical Christianity. — The Presbyterian Church does 
 not claim any monopoly in the ownership or control of bib- 
 lical Christianity. Yet there is no church in Christendom 
 that honors the Word of God with more intelligent loyalty 
 than the Presbyterian Church does. That Word is author- 
 itative. It is believed that a divine inspiration covers the 
 entire contents of that Word, from Genesis to the Apoca- 
 lypse. That Word is the source of dogmatic teaching, of 
 polity, and of ritual. The Presbyterian goes to the Bible, 
 rather than to the fathers, and the saints of the post-apos- 
 tolic centuries, for his theology and practical instruction. 
 For God speaks in and through the Bible, and when the 
 mind of God is known on any subject the last word has 
 been spoken. Beyond that, argument is an impertinence. 
 Bible reading is the birthright of all Presbyterians. Every 
 man can read for himself, and judge for himself. A Bible 
 in every home is true of the Presbyterian Church. Conse- 
 quently the church is a biblical church. No better service 
 has been rendered than this of giving prominence to the 
 Word of God. The Roman Catholic Church has used 
 ritualistic Christianity in missionary effort, and her success 
 in converting the nations, in purifying common life, and in 
 uniting Christendom has not been conspicuous. Biblical 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A PRESBYTERIAN 261 
 
 Christianity can show better results. It is easy to contrast 
 the work of Columba with that of the devoted Xavier, and 
 the work of the Pilgrims with that of the Spanish Jesuits. 
 
 Biblical Christianity must prevail if reunion is to be an 
 accomplishment. For the prevalence of biblical Christian- 
 ity is the only assurance that Christ will be known in all 
 the completeness of his mediatorial character ; and until he 
 is thus known the suggestion of reunion is an idle dream. 
 
 (b) Genuine Catholicity. — Biblical Christianity leads to a 
 genuine catholicity. We can be satisfied to be as catholic 
 as Jesus was, and we need not desire to be more so. This 
 is our position. If in this we err, may God forgive our mis- 
 takes. But on this part of our subject it is not necessary 
 that I should enlarge, as enough has been said already to 
 present the attitude of the Presbyterian Church. 
 
 {c) Missionary Zeal. — It is as true in the church as it is 
 in the nursery that 
 
 " Satan finds some mischief still 
 For idle hands to do." 
 
 A working church is apt to be a church that is ready to 
 meet other churches in Christian effort. On the mission- 
 ary fields men recognize the help and comfort of Chris- 
 tian brotherhood. Minor distinctions disappear in the pres- 
 ence of a common foe. Soldiers of the Republic may talk 
 about the superiority of their States in time of peace and 
 inaction ; but when the battle is on the one flag that com- 
 mands enthusiasm is the stars and stripes. What care you 
 and I that this sin-stricken world should become Presby- 
 terian, Methodist, Baptist, or Episcopalian? We want it to 
 be Christian, and for that we care more than for all other 
 things combined. Besides, on the mission fields there is a 
 clear recognition of the important fact that one situation 
 may demand one phase or expression of the church, and 
 
262 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 another one quite different. The poetic Orient should 
 never be held firmly to the order that flourished on the 
 shores of Boston Bay. Sunny Italy will call for more of 
 song and of ritual than is required in phlegmatic Holland. 
 There are racial characteristics that present their demands ; 
 and He was divinely wise who announced certain principles 
 for the government of his church, and left the nations and 
 the centuries who should believe on him to a large liberty 
 in the expression of those principles. All this becomes evi- 
 dent to a missionary church like the Presbyterian, whose 
 contributions to reunion are thus of a most practical kind. 
 
 But time will not admit of an elaboration of these inter- 
 esting and important points. Let me pass, then, in con- 
 clusion, to raise and to answer our third question. It is 
 this: 
 
 3. With the reunion of Christendom what does a Presby- 
 terian become ? Why, simply a recognized member of the 
 body of Christ. Now he is a member, but unrecognized by 
 many whose churchmanship he is glad to recognize. Then 
 the recognition will be mutual. This is all that a Presby- 
 terian asks. He claims his rights in his Father's house — 
 that is all. Certainly a modest demand. He is not a 
 heretic, although he is so considered by the majority of 
 those who bear the Christian name. He is not unbap- 
 tized, although his baptism is denied by many whose faith 
 and service he rejoices to honor. He is not unordained, 
 although the laying on of the hands of the presbytery is 
 not valid ordination in the estimate of multitudes whose 
 orders and sacraments are cordially accepted by him. A 
 Presbyterian asks reciprocity. Love alone can secure this 
 blessed result. For, as a holy apostle has said : " Love 
 suffereth long, and is kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunteth 
 not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, 
 seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A PRESBYTERIAN 263 
 
 of evil ; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with 
 the truth ; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all 
 things, endureth all things." Add to the words of St. Paul 
 the gracious announcement of St. John : " God is love ; and 
 he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in 
 him." No more is needed. For we have divine authority 
 for the statement that " in one Spirit were we all baptized 
 into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or 
 free ; and were all made to drink of one Spirit." 
 
 In conclusion I would say that reunion must follow : 
 
 1. The prevalence of a sincere Christian spirit. Chris- 
 tians must trust one another and love one another. With- 
 out confidence and love reunion would be like a flower- 
 garden on Vesuvius. The exhortation of the Apostle must 
 be met : " Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and 
 clamor, and railing, be put away from you, with all mal- 
 ice : and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiv- 
 ing each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you." 
 Such a spirit is not now prevalent in Christendom, and as 
 a consequence reunion is often ridiculed as the dream of 
 enthusiasts. We shall do our best work for reunion by 
 working for confidence and love. When Christians trust 
 one another and love one another reunion will announce 
 its presence. 
 
 2. The recognition of the validity of orders and ordi- 
 nances whose regularity may be questioned. This is the 
 intelligent toleration that a Presbyterian values. With this 
 several of the barriers that now divide Christendom will be 
 swept away. 
 
 3. The avoidance of unfriendly competition in mission- 
 ary work, and the promotion of comity. The field is the 
 world, and the destitute regions are numerous. Why should 
 churches seem anxious to crowd one another in Christian 
 lands, when there is room enough on the continents where 
 
264 THE REUNION OE CHRISTENDOM 
 
 heathenism and Mohammedanism should be crowded to 
 death ? 
 
 4. The federation for sympathy and work of all churches 
 whose faith and worship are the same, and the statement of 
 the essential and necessary truths as they are held. What 
 a gain it would be if a church like the Presbyterian could 
 formulate a brief irenical statement of the truths that Pres- 
 byterians regard as vital! How many members of other 
 churches would see in such a statement " a declaration of 
 those things which are most surely believed among us"! 
 We can sing the same hymns and pray the same prayers ; 
 may it not be that we could accept the same creed if the 
 creed could be framed with simplicity ? 
 
 A Presbyterian cares more for the spirit than for the 
 letter. He is confident that when the Lord Jesus controls 
 the heart and life the expression will be unity, whatever the 
 form or organization may be ; and so he prays, " Thy king- 
 dom come," with the added petition, "Thy will be done." 
 
 For more than twenty years of my pastoral life I was 
 permitted to meet with Christian brethren in a ministerial 
 society whose membership was representative of seven of 
 the great churches of Christendom : Lutheran, Methodist 
 Episcopal, Protestant Episcopal, Baptist, Congregational, 
 Dutch Reformed, and Presbyterian. These brethren were 
 earnest men, who had decided preferences which they freely 
 expressed. But Christian confidence and love held them 
 together, so that there was truer unity than can be found 
 in a presbytery, a conference, or a diocesan convention. 
 We often talked together about the reunion of Christen- 
 dom, and we always agreed that in our fellowship we had 
 such unity as the Lord contemplated in his intercessory 
 prayer. 
 
 Such unity, the unity of confidence and love, must appear. 
 For it we may work, by making our Lord known. For it 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A PRESBYTERIAN 265 
 
 we may pray, as we plead that Christ may dwell in men's 
 hearts by faith. For it we may hope, as we familiarize our- 
 selves with the promises of Holy Scripture, and look for- 
 ward to the day of Christ, which is the golden age. When 
 that day comes it will not find Christians under one polity 
 nor with one ritual. But it will find them at peace and in 
 love, rejoicing that Jesus Christ is honored, and that the 
 many members of his body, the church, are obedient in all 
 things to him who is the Head. 
 
XI 
 
 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM AS IT APPEARS 
 TO A DISCIPLE 
 
 BENJAMIN B.TYLER, D.D., 
 Of the Church of the Disciples, New York. 
 
 267 
 
XI 
 
 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM AS IT APPEARS 
 TO A DISCIPLE 
 
 In this meeting I speak as an individual, and not in 
 any formal sense as a representative of the people who are 
 known as Disciples of Christ. Having, however, been born 
 of Disciple parents, bred in a Disciple home, educated in 
 a college under the control of Disciples, and having spent 
 nearly one third of a century in the ministry of the gospel 
 with this people, I feel that what I will say in this presence 
 will be indorsed by the brethren with whom in ecclesiastical 
 fellowship I am most intimately associated. 
 
 Permit me, also, in beginning, to premise that I have ac- 
 cepted the invitation to speak upon this occasion with the 
 understanding that our utterances are to be characterized by 
 the utmost candor. Each person will speak honestly and 
 boldly what he thinks concerning the problem of union; 
 or, to change the phraseology, will present the problem of 
 union as it appears to him. 
 
 A realization of the evils of division among the people 
 of God, with an earnest desire for such a spiritual unity 
 and visible oneness as will please the Master and hasten 
 the conversion of the world, was the inspiration of a move- 
 ment in the beginning of the present century which has 
 resulted in the organization of more than seven thousand 
 congregations embracing nearly seven hundred thousand 
 
 269 
 
270 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 communicants. These congregations are known in legal 
 documents and in letters of introduction and commendation 
 as simply and only churches of Christ. They are devoted 
 in large part to an attempted solution of the problem of 
 union, as well as to the turning of men to the Lord Jesus 
 Christ by the preaching of his gospel. These congrega- 
 tions of Disciples may appropriately be characterized as 
 Christian Unity Societies. The problem of union among 
 the people of God has ever been — and at no time to a 
 greater extent than at this present moment — a question of 
 the deepest interest to us. 
 
 We all agree in regarding "the Holy Scriptures of the 
 Old and New Testaments as containing all things necessary 
 to salvation, and as being the rule and ultimate standard 
 of faith." ("The Historic Episcopate," Charles Wood- 
 ruff Shields, D.D., LL.D., p. 24.) We stand on common 
 ground at this point, whether we call ourselves Episcopa- 
 lians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, or Disciples. To 
 the writings of Moses and the prophets, of Jesus and the 
 apostles, we make our appeal as to an ultimate authority. 
 From the decision of the Christ and those who spoke and 
 wrote as moved by his Spirit there is no appeal, neither on 
 this nor on any other matter pertaining to our most holy 
 religion. 
 
 It is not at all difficult to discover the mind of the Christ 
 concerning the relation in which he would have his people 
 stand toward himself and then toward one another. As he 
 approached the end of his mission among men he uttered 
 a prayer in which he besought the Father that those who 
 would believe on him as a result of the teaching of his elect 
 ambassadors might all be one, " even as thou, Father, art 
 in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us : that the 
 world may believe that thou didst send me." This prayer, 
 being a prayer in behalf of believers, has for us in the pres- 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 271 
 
 ent emergency a peculiar interest. We have been led by 
 the testimony of inspired men to believe in Jesus as the 
 Son of God and our Saviour. For us, therefore, and not 
 merely for men who lived in the long ago, did the Son of 
 God pray. For us his desire is, not was — for he is the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and forever — that we may be joined 
 together in a unity similar to that which exists between 
 the Father and the Son, and this in order that " the world 
 may believe that thou didst send me." It is difficult, if 
 not impossible, to exaggerate the importance of the prob- 
 lem of unity and union among the people of God. 
 
 This prayer will yet be answered. The Master said at 
 the grave of Lazarus, " Thou nearest me always." In the 
 prayer from which I have quoted, written in the seven- 
 teenth chapter of John, the Christ prayed for those who 
 were his personal friends, " that they may be one, even as 
 we are." The prayer of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus we 
 know was answered ; the prayer of the Son of man concern- 
 ing the unity of his personal friends was also answered ; so, 
 too, his petition in behalf of those who " believe on me " 
 will be answered. We may, therefore, labor and pray for 
 the unity and union of believers with the fullest confidence 
 that sooner or later such a oneness, spiritual and visible, will 
 be realized as will fully satisfy the desires of the Master. 
 
 When Jesus gave the great commission to his disciples to 
 go " into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole 
 creation," he placed upon them an embargo, saying, " But 
 tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on 
 high." Having given this solemn charge to his disciples, 
 with the limitation just mentioned, we are told that "while 
 he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried 
 up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to 
 Jerusalem with great joy." We are told, also, that " when 
 the day of Pentecost was now come, they were all together 
 
272 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a 
 sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all 
 the house where they were sitting. And there appeared 
 unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire ; and it 
 sat upon each one of them. And they were all filled with 
 the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as 
 the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling 
 at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under 
 heaven. . . . And they were all amazed, and were per- 
 plexed, saying one to another, What meaneth this ? But 
 others mocking said, They are filled with new wine." 
 Simon Peter, " a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ," 
 explained the strange scene, saying to them, " This is that 
 which hath been spoken by the prophet Joel." He then 
 reasoned with the people out of the sacred writings con- 
 cerning Jesus and the resurrection, reaching a climax when 
 he declared, " Let all the house of Israel therefore know 
 assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, 
 this Jesus whom ye crucified. Now when they heard this, 
 they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and 
 the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do ? And 
 Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every 
 one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission 
 of your sins ; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost. . . . They then that received his word were bap- 
 tized : and there were added unto them [unto the original 
 one hundred and twenty] in that day about three thousand 
 souls." 
 
 Thus the church of Christ began to be on earth. It ori- 
 ginated in a protracted prayer-meeting in which the parti- 
 cipants, we are assured, were "all with one accord." We 
 are told that those who were turned to the Christ as a re- 
 sult of the discourse on this great Pentecost day, immedi- 
 ately after the coronation of Messiah, " were together, and 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 273 
 
 had all things common." We are also informed that " day 
 by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the tem- 
 ple, and breaking bread at home, they did take their food 
 with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and 
 having favor with all the people." Turning another leaf 
 in the New Testament, we are not surprised when we read 
 that "the multitude of them that believed were of one 
 heart and soul: and not one of them said that aught of 
 the things which he possessed was his own ; but they had 
 all things common." It was at this time, when "the mul- 
 titude of them that believed were of one heart and soul," 
 that the historian assures us there was "great grace upon 
 them all." As to the value of this unity, a unity in per- 
 fect accord with the prayer which our Saviour offered, we 
 are told that "the number of the disciples multiplied in 
 Jerusalem exceedingly ; and a great company of the priests 
 were obedient to the faith." 
 
 That " a great company of the priests were obedient to 
 the faith " indicates the well-nigh irresistible power of the 
 gospel when presented by a united church. Naturally the 
 priesthood was conservative. The priests were satisfied 
 with things as they were. They had interests which were 
 sacred because divinely conferred and on account of their 
 antiquity. But such was the potency of the gospel of 
 Jesus Christ presented by a united church that even these 
 conservative priests turned from their self-interest and be- 
 came "obedient to the faith." There could be no greater 
 testimony to the effectiveness of a united church in the 
 preaching of the gospel of the grace of God. 
 
 In the facts here recited we have two things to which 
 especial attention is directed. We have, in the first place, a 
 record of the exact fulfilment of the prayer of our Saviour 
 in behalf of his personal friends, and of those who through 
 their influence would be led to believe in him. We have, 
 
274 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 in the second place, an indication of the tremendous, the 
 well-nigh irresistible power exerted on the world by believ- 
 ers when they were " perfected together in the same mind 
 and in the same judgment." 
 
 Have we not a right, therefore, to look for the realiza- 
 tion on earth among believers of our Saviour's manifest 
 desire expressed in this prayer, and ought we not to labor 
 in hope that even in our day our eyes may behold a more 
 perfect unity and union than at present exists ? 
 
 Not many years passed, however, until discords and 
 divisions began to manifest themselves among those early 
 believers in Christ. The time came when they were no 
 longer "with one accord"; when they no longer lived in 
 such unity as to have " favor with all the people." How 
 did the men who were especially inspired by the Holy Spirit 
 for their work — how did the men who had the promise of 
 the Christ that they would be guided by the Spirit into all 
 truth in the discharge of the exceedingly difficult duty which 
 had been placed upon them by their Master — how did these 
 men regard the changed relation which the disciples were 
 coming to sustain toward one another ? 
 
 Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, said that "it 
 hath been signified unto me concerning you, my brethren, 
 by them which are of the household of Chloe, that there are 
 contentions among you." This was what Paul had heard 
 about those in Corinth "sanctified in Christ Jesus, called 
 to be saints." What had he to say to them concerning this 
 matter ? Did he approve ? Was he indifferent ? He said 
 this : "I beseech you, brethren, through the name of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and 
 that there be no divisions among you ; but that ye be per- 
 fected together in the same mind and in the same judg- 
 ment." And then, having mentioned the message which 
 he had received, he proceeds to describe the character of 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 275 
 
 their divisions. He said : " Each one of you saith, I am of 
 Paul ; and I of Apollos ; and I of Cephas ; and I of Christ." 
 Having stated the nature of the trouble, he administers a 
 rebuke in the words following : " Is Christ divided ? was 
 Paul crucified for you ? or were ye baptized into the name 
 of Paul ? I thank God that I baptized none of you [schis- 
 matics, I think he means], save Crispus and Gaius ; lest any 
 man should say that ye were baptized into my name," and 
 so there would be an apparent reason for calling some of 
 the members of the " church of God which is at Corinth " 
 Paulites. Then he recalls to mind — Paul does — that he 
 "baptized also the household of Stephanas." 
 
 In another part of this epistle, referring to this same 
 matter, the Apostle says : " And I, brethren, could not speak 
 unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes 
 in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat ; for ye were 
 not yet able to bear it : nay, not even now are ye able." 
 Why were they so enfeebled ? His answer is, " There is 
 among you jealousy and strife." And in his Second Epis- 
 tle Paul expresses a fear that were he to visit the church of 
 God in Corinth he would find among the " saints " in that 
 city "strife, jealousy, wraths, factions, backbitings, whisper- 
 ings, swellings, disorders " ; that he would, as a result of 
 their unseemly spirit and conduct, be humbled and caused 
 to "mourn for many of them that have sinned heretofore, 
 and repented not." The presence of jealousy and strife 
 among members of the church of God is evidence of a 
 lack of spirituality ; is evidence of the presence of carnal- 
 ity. Where there is jealousy and strife there is an absence 
 of spiritual health and robustness. "James, a servant of 
 God and of the Lord Jesus Christ," says that "where 
 jealousy and faction are, there is confusion and every vile 
 deed." 
 
 If it was ever lawful or permissible for disciples of Christ 
 
276 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 to call themselves by the names of men, and to rally around 
 party banners, it was permissible in the city of Corinth. 
 The men who were elected as leaders by these schismatics 
 were no ordinary characters. Paul and Apollos and Peter 
 are colossal figures in the history of the primitive church-. 
 Yet Paul spurns the thought of founding and leading a sect 
 in the church of Christ, and says to these schismatics : Who 
 are we ? Paul ? Apollos ? Cephas ? Who are we but " min- 
 isters through whom ye believed ; and each as the Lord 
 gave to him ? I planted, Apollos watered ; but God gave 
 the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, 
 neither he that watereth ; but God that giveth the increase." 
 
 Please observe, also, that in the midst of the rebuke ad- 
 ministered by this ambassador of Christ to the schismatics 
 in the " church of God which is at Corinth " he specifies 
 the foundation on which they should stand as one body. 
 It is at the eleventh verse of the third chapter of the First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians that he declares, " Other founda- 
 tion can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 But Paul says more than this. He does not simply say, 
 " Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, 
 which is Jesus Christ." This is what he says: "Other 
 foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which 
 is Jesus the Christ." The definite article is employed by 
 St. Paul when he speaks of the foundation of the church 
 in Corinth. Do you ask what is the difference between 
 Jesus Christ and Jesus the Christ ? I reply, what is the 
 difference between George King and George the King ? 
 In the one case you have a simple proper name, while in 
 the other you have an official designation. The Son of 
 Mary is not simply Jesus Christ ; he is Jesus the Christ. 
 He is the Anointed of the Father, full of grace and truth. 
 The statement of Paul is in harmony with what the Mas- 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 277 
 
 ter said in his conversation with the disciples in Caesarea 
 Philippi after Simon Peter had "answered and said, Thou 
 art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus said, 
 " Upon this rock I will build my church." That is to say, 
 on this great truth, this central truth of Christianity, this 
 primitive creed, this original confession of faith — on this 
 " my church " shall be built, and it will stand on this 
 foundation so solidly that "the gates of Hades shall not 
 prevail against it." 
 
 In the twelfth chapter of this First Epistle to the Cor- 
 inthians Paul presents his idea as to the nature of the unity 
 which should prevail among the people of God. It is, he 
 says, similar to the unity which prevails in the human body 
 between the different members thereof. He declares that 
 " in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether 
 Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free ; and were all made 
 to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, 
 but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the 
 hand, I am not of the body ; it is not therefore not of the 
 body. And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, 
 I am not of the body ; it is not therefore not of the body. 
 If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing ? 
 If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling ? But 
 now hath God set the members each one of them in the 
 body, even as it pleased him. And if they were all one 
 member, where were the body ? But now they are many 
 members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the 
 hand, I have no need of thee: or again the head to the 
 feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much rather, those 
 members of the body which seem to be more feeble are 
 necessary : and those parts of the body, which we think to 
 be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant 
 honor ; and our uncomely parts have more abundant come- 
 liness; whereas our comely parts have no need : but God 
 
278 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 tempered the body together, giving more abundant honor 
 to that part which lacked ; that there should be no schism 
 in the body ; but that the members should have the same 
 care one for another. And whether one member suffereth, 
 all the members suffer with it ; or one member is honored, 
 all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of 
 Christ, and severally members thereof." This was Paul's 
 notion concerning the unity which ought to prevail among 
 believers. For this character of unity we ought to labor 
 and pray and hope. 
 
 At the present time, remember, we are seeking to discover 
 the attitude of mind sustained by inspired men toward divi- 
 sions among Christians, and we will see, as we rapidly turn 
 the pages of the New Testament, that always and every- 
 where they condemned, not merely as impolitic and im- 
 prudent, but as sinful before God, divisions among those 
 who have had the name of the Christ called on them in 
 holy baptism. 
 
 In the epistle to the saints in Rome, last chapter, the 
 subject comes up, and the Apostle says : " Now I beseech 
 you, brethren, mark them which are causing the divisions 
 and occasions of stumbling, contrary to the doctrine which 
 ye learned : and turn away from them. For they that are 
 such serve not our Lord Christ, but their own belly ; and 
 by their smooth and fair speech they beguile the hearts of 
 the innocent." Can there be any doubt as to the mind of 
 Paul concerning the evil of divisions among saints ? 
 
 Turn we now to his Epistle to the Ephesians. I ask per- 
 mission at this point to quote the language of the Rev. Dr. 
 John A. Broadus, president of the Southern Baptist Theo- 
 logical Seminary, as follows : " What is the key-note of the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians ? It is the unity of Christians. 
 The dispute of many years, whether Gentiles should be- 
 come Jews, is not ended, but the Apostle urges that the 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 279 
 
 Christians are one, Jew or Gentile. That was the widest 
 idea that ever existed among Christians in this world. 
 None of our divisions of sect, of country, or of race is half 
 so hard to overcome as was that question of the junction 
 of Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian, and the Apos- 
 tle's great thought in that epistle is that all are one in 
 Christ Jesus. The epistle was intended, apparently, to be 
 sent around as a sort of circular letter to many churches, 
 but that is the key-note." (" Sermons and Addresses," 
 p. 179.) 
 
 The heart of this epistle is found in the fourth chapter, 
 in which the Apostle says : " I therefore, the prisoner in the 
 Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling where- 
 with ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness, with 
 long-suffering, forbearing one another in love ; giving dili- 
 gence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 
 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were 
 called in one hope of your calling ; one Lord, one faith, 
 one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, 
 and through all, and in all." 
 
 The Apostle seems here to say to the saints in Ephesus, 
 and to all to whom this circular letter would come : " Since 
 you are members of one body ; since you are animated by 
 one Spirit ; since you are sustained by one hope ; since you 
 have over you one Lord ; since you cherish one faith ; since 
 you have submitted to one baptism; since you recognize 
 one God over all and as Father of all, you ought, having 
 so much in common, ' to walk worthily of the calling 
 wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness, 
 with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love ; giving 
 diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of 
 peace.' " The logic, if this be the logic, of this quotation 
 is quite as cogent, yea, more powerful, to-day and in these 
 ends of the earth than at that remote time and in that dis- 
 
280 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 tant part of the world. Believers here and now hold so 
 many things in common, and things of the greatest im- 
 portance, things that are fundamental and essential in our 
 religion, that they ought " to walk worthily of the calling 
 wherewith " they are " called, with all lowliness and meek- 
 ness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in lore." 
 
 May I pause here, beloved in the Lord, to enumerate a 
 number of items of the faith which are held in common by 
 all evangelical believers ? We all hold to the divine in- 
 spiration of the Old and New Testaments; to the revela- 
 tion of God in the tri-personality of Father, Son, and Holy 
 Spirit; to the alone-sufficiency and all- sufficiency of the 
 Bible as a revelation of the divine character and will, and 
 as a rule of faith and practice ; to the divine excellency 
 and worthiness of Jesus as the Son of God ; to the official 
 authority and glory of Jesus as the anointed Prophet to 
 teach us, Priest to intercede for us, and King to rule over 
 us ; to the personal and perpetual mission of the Holy 
 Spirit to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judg- 
 ment, and to dwell in believers as their Comforter, Strength- 
 ened and Sanctifier ; to the alienation of the race from God, 
 and their entire dependence on the truth, mercy, and grace 
 of God, as manifested in Jesus the Christ, and revealed 
 and confirmed to us by the Holy Spirit in the gospel, for 
 regeneration, sanctification, adoption, and life eternal; to 
 the necessity of faith and repentance in order to the pos- 
 session and enjoyment of salvation here and hereafter ; to 
 the perpetuity of baptism and the Lord's Supper as divine 
 ordinances to the end of time ; to the obligation to observe 
 the first day of the week as the Lord's Day ; to the church 
 of Christ as a divine institution, composed of such as by 
 faith and baptism have openly confessed the name of 
 Christ ; to the necessity of righteousness, benevolence, and 
 holiness on the part of professed Christians, alike in view 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 281 
 
 of their own final salvation and of their mission to turn the /' 
 world to God ; to the fullness and freeness of the salvation 
 offered in the gospel to all who accept it on the terms pro- 
 posed ; to the final punishment of the deliberately and per- 
 sistently ungodly by an everlasting destruction from the 
 presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. 
 Being united in the belief of these and many other facts 
 and truths fundamental and essential in our religion, we 
 ought, as Paul exhorted the saints in Ephesus, "to walk 
 worthily of the calling wherewith " we are " called, with 
 all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing 
 one another in love." 
 
 How anxious the Apostle was concerning the unity of 
 believers when he was a prisoner in Rome ! He wrote to 
 his brethren in Philippi, beseeching them : " Only let your 
 manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ : that, 
 whether I come and see you or be absent, I may hear of 
 your state, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one soul 
 striving for the faith of the gospel." He begs them to 
 "have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." 
 Farther along in the same epistle he exhorts : " Do all 
 things without murmurings and disputings ; that ye may be 
 blameless and harmless, children of God without blemish 
 in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among 
 whom ye are seen as lights in the world, holding forth the 
 word of life; that I may have whereof to glory in the 
 day of Christ, that I did not run in vain neither labor in 
 vain." 
 
 In the Epistle to the Galatians Paul is led to express his 
 conviction concerning heresies or sects. He regards sects 
 as of the flesh, not of the Spirit. In enumerating the 
 works of the flesh he mentions adultery, fornication, un- 
 cleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strifes, 
 jealousies, indignations, contentions, divisions, sects, envy- 
 
282 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 ings, murders, drunkenness, and revels. Over against the 
 works of the flesh he places the fruit of the Spirit. Enu- 
 merating the fruit of the Spirit he mentions love, joy, peace, 
 long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self- 
 control. He says that those who do the works of the flesh 
 "shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Having spoken 
 of the fruit of the Spirit, Paul says, " Against such there is 
 no law." 
 
 It is well, beloved in the Lord, with these facts before 
 us, that we should give not only attention, but especial at- 
 tention, to the problem of union. Do I exaggerate when 
 I say that, with the New Testament open before me, the 
 problem of the unity of God's people is of greater impor- 
 tance than that of any other topic to which we can now 
 give our attention ? Our divisions are sinful : Paul says 
 they are. Our divisions are out of harmony with the mind 
 of the Christ: of this there can be no reasonable doubt. 
 We ought to repent of this sin as of all sins. We ought to 
 turn away from it as speedily as possible. Having failed 
 to realize the mind of Christ, we ought, with all speed, to 
 place ourselves on the one foundation which he himself has 
 placed, and begin "to walk worthily of the calling where- 
 with " we are called. 
 
 Thus far we have attempted to discover the mind of 
 our Lord and of the Holy Spirit, as he spoke through the 
 apostles, concerning divisions among the children of God. 
 Sectarianism, we have seen, is a sin. But are sectarianism 
 and denominationalism synonymous ? I think not. An in- 
 quiry into the genesis of our great Protestant denominations 
 will show that they are so many efforts which have been 
 and are being made to realize, in experience and conduct, 
 Christianity according to Christ. The church was in the 
 beginning right in its faith, and in the observance of the 
 divinely appointed ordinances, baptism and the Supper of 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 283 
 
 the Lord. But at an early period it fell away from the 
 simplicity that is in Christ. It became corrupt alike in its 
 creed and in its conduct. The Reformation of the six- 
 teenth century was the beginning of a return in faith and 
 in life to the religion of Jesus as it was at the first. The 
 various denominations represent so many efforts to realize 
 in our individual lives and in our associated capacities 
 Christianity according to Christ. The fact ought to be 
 noted that the sects condemned in the New Testament 
 were composed of persons with their faces turned away 
 from the Captain of our salvation. They were departing 
 from Jesus in belief and in behavior. The denominations 
 to-day are composed of men and women whose faces are 
 turned toward the Master ; composed of persons who hun- 
 ger and thirst after righteousness ; composed of persons who 
 desire to realize in their experiences all that the Christ in 
 his holy gospel purposes in their behalf. A wonderful dif- 
 ference this between sectarianism and denominationalism ! 
 On one occasion during the personal ministry of the Son 
 of man, John, afterward known as " the beloved," came to 
 him with a complaint like this. He said, " Master, we saw 
 one casting out devils in thy name: and we forbade him, 
 because he followed not us." The spirit of John at that 
 time was essentially sectarian, and he was promptly re- 
 buked by Jesus, who said, "Forbid him not: for there is 
 no man which shall do a mighty work in my name, and be 
 able quickly to speak evil of me." On another occasion the 
 same spirit was manifested by John and his brother James. 
 It was the occasion of the Master's last journey to the 
 Holy City. " He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, 
 and sent messengers before his face: and they went, and 
 entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for 
 him. And they did not receive him." Why ? " Because 
 his face was as though he were going to Jerusalem. And 
 
284 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, 
 wilt thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven, and 
 consume them ? But he turned, and rebuked them." In 
 this there was not only a manifestation of the spirit of sec- 
 tarianism, but it was manifested in its most intense and un- 
 reasoning form. Sectarianism is a spirit. It may exist with 
 denominationalism. It does ; but it is not an essential part 
 of denominationalism. 
 
 I find in the Independent of June 21, 1894, an article 
 on " The Reunion of Christendom," by Percy L. Parker, 
 in which he refers to an address delivered by Dr. Clifford 
 in his church in Westbourne Park, London. In this dis- 
 course Dr. Clifford defines the difference between denomi- 
 nationalism and sectarianism substantially as follows : " De- 
 nominations were organizations for the purpose of securing 
 the presentation of particular truths which had either been 
 hidden or misrepresented. Sectarianism is exclusiveness. 
 Such a spirit is contrary to the spirit of Christ." These 
 words of Dr. Clifford present my thought. 
 
 The Protestant denominations, as has been remarked, 
 have their faces turned toward the Son of God. I think 
 that we can all say, with Paul: "Brethren, I count not 
 myself yet to have apprehended : but one thing I do, for- 
 getting the things which are behind, and stretching forward 
 to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal 
 unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 
 And what is true of us as individuals is quite true of the 
 aggregations of imperfect but aspiring men massed together 
 as denominations. Thus our denominations, as I conceive, 
 originated. This is their aim and their attitude. It is well 
 that we should note carefully the distinction between sec- 
 tarianism and denominationalism. It is quite probable that 
 denominationalism, more or less marked, will continue in 
 the church of Christ to the end of time. But is it not pos- 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 2S5 
 
 sible to exorcise the sect spirit ? I believe that it is, and 
 for this I pray. 
 
 Another distinction which it is important to note is the 
 difference between Christian unity and church union. There 
 is not a word in the New Testament, that I have been able 
 to discover, on the subject of church union ; but there are 
 many words on the subject of Christian unity, or the unity 
 of those who believe in Christ. Jesus prayed for the unity 
 of believers; he prayed only inferentially, if at all, for 
 church union. Do we not err, therefore, when in our at- 
 tempted solution of the confessedly difficult problem we 
 place emphasis on church organization and order ? We 
 have in the New Testament the model of unity to which 
 we should aspire ; and from that model we can learn but 
 little — very little — on these topics which to some of us 
 seem to be subjects of prime importance. 
 
 Dr. Shields, in his book on " The Historic Episcopate," 
 says (p. 3), referring to the -church as it was "in the first 
 century," that " in that one Catholic Apostolic Church we 
 have an example, a model of church unity, not only as 
 consistent with Christian unity, but as expressing and main- 
 taining it." Looking at this model, we learn but little on 
 the subject of organization. The life of the church was 
 benevolent. The poor were cared for. The gospel was 
 preached to those dead in sin. The organization of the 
 church which is " a model of church unity " was simply 
 congregational. The character of the unity " in- that one 
 Catholic Apostolic Church " was a simple and hearty devo- 
 tion to the Son of God. 
 
 Dr. Henry M. Field well says, in his paper, the Evan- 
 gelist, for March 15, 1894, speaking on the text, "They 
 were all with one accord in one place " : " How came they 
 there ? They needed no compulsion nor persuasion. It 
 was not a pressure from without, but the attraction within. 
 
286 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 They were drawn, not driven. It was because there was 
 one love in every heart that they rushed together as 
 brothers rush into each other's arms. 
 
 " That is the whole story. One overmastering devotion 
 molded all hearts into one. This was not the power of 
 a man. Here and there at intervals in the ages there had 
 been men whose genius gave them a peculiar fascination 
 over their fellows, so that they seemed to have a natural 
 power of command that others must obey. But the love 
 of the disciples for their Master cannot be explained by 
 any intellectual superiority, nor even by moral greatness. 
 It was the wonderful Personality of a Being who had ap- 
 peared among men, and suffered and died and ascended 
 to heaven. He was no longer among his disciples, but the 
 impression of his life was so increased by his death that he 
 was even more in their minds and hearts than when he was 
 yet with them. While he was living those of his own house- 
 hold had their jealousies and rivalries and petty ambitions ; 
 but all these were hushed when they sat with him at the 
 table for the last time. And now, as they came together, 
 he seemed to be in the midst of them ; they caught his eye ; 
 they heard his voice asking, ' Will ye go away ? ' The spell 
 of his mighty presence was on them still." 
 
 It is clear that the unity of " that one Catholic Apostolic 
 Church," which, as Professor Shields says, furnishes "an 
 example, a model of church unity," was Christian unity, 
 that is, unity on Christ, in Christ, under Christ, in obedi- 
 ence to Christ, in fellowship with Christ ; a unity of which 
 the man Christ Jesus was the Alpha and Omega, the be- 
 ginning and the end, the center and the circumference. I 
 see no more in it than this, but this is more than we have 
 yet attained unto. 
 
 If we will only permit him, the Master, in a single sen- 
 tence, will solve this problem for us. He said, " And I, if 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 287 
 
 I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto my- 
 self." If men are drawn toward Christ they are necessarily 
 drawn toward one another. The more intimate their connec- 
 tion with the Lord Jesus the more closely they come into 
 fellowship. Alexander Campbell said, in 1837, that "it is 
 the image of the Christ the Christian looks for and loves, 
 and this does not consist in being exact in a few items, but 
 in general devotion to the whole truth as far as known." 
 ("Millennial Harbinger," 1837, p. 412.) 
 
 The practical solution of the problem now before us is 
 to be found, in the first place, in a more intimate fellow- 
 ship on the part of individual believers with the Lord Jesus. 
 Having attained this, the form of our organization for wor- 
 ship and work will take care of itself. What I insist upon 
 is, that we shall take our stand close to the Teacher, and 
 looking up into his face receive from his lips right doctrine, 
 and drinking in his spirit learn to order our lives according 
 to the perfect pattern which he himself furnished. This is 
 the first thing to do. 
 
 Permit me again to quote Professor Shields. He says, 
 in " The Historic Episcopate " (p. 8) : " Absolute uni- 
 formity is not possible either in the world of nature or of 
 grace. According to the chosen metaphors of Scripture, 
 the church is one vine, but with different branches; one 
 body, but with various members ; one building, but of com- 
 posite structure. In political society we see the greatest 
 variety of classes, parties, and opinions : aristocratic, dem- 
 ocratic, republican, socialist, populist ; no one of them ab- 
 sorbing or exterminating the rest. As little in religious 
 society may we hope to find all Christians at once becom- 
 ing Baptists or Congregationalists or Methodists or Presby- 
 terians or Episcopalians or Romanists." But can we not, 
 for the sake of the cause which cost the Son of God his life, 
 agree that we will cease to be Baptists, Methodists, Congre- 
 
288 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 gationalists ; Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Romanists, and 
 that we will be always and everywhere simply Christians ? 
 This was sufficient for Paul. It satisfied the early disciples. 
 Ought this not to be sufficient for us ? 
 
 Let us again hear Professor Shields. He says : " Much 
 less could they be made alike by any civil or ecclesiastical 
 process. The experiment of enforced uniformity has been 
 tried for several hundred years in Episcopal England and 
 Presbyterian Scotland, with only a brood of nonconform- 
 ing sects growing up around both establishments. The 
 same lesson is taught us here by the conflict of usage with 
 rubrics, by the disuse of directories, and by the rise of 
 heresy under the strictest creeds and confessions. All ex- 
 perience shows that a rigid uniformity in doctrine and ritual 
 could only breed dissent and schism, and issue in renewed 
 failure." 
 
 Dr. Parkhurst well says, in a sermon delivered in the 
 Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New York, March 4, 
 1894, concerning the disciples who ''were abiding with 
 such perfection of accord on the eve of Pentecost," that 
 " individual tastes, particular ways of looking at things, dis- 
 tinctive modes of apprehending Christ, and characteristic 
 methods of interpreting his words, were felt to be so far off 
 the main line of concern that they had no effect to divide 
 or disintegrate. The relations of Christian fellowship were 
 founded in that which was distinctly and essentially per- 
 sonal, and with that personal basis nothing of a foreign 
 nature was allowed to interfere or to intermix. Of course 
 they did not all look at things in the same way, and of 
 course they could not all express themselves in the same 
 way, but that was not a fact that touched upon the accord 
 with which they continued to labor, wait, and pray together. 
 There was to them just one engrossing reality, and that 
 was their individual vital relation to Jesus Christ ; and so 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 289 
 
 engrossing was that that no other consideration was able 
 to count or signify. 
 
 "There was no suggestion of having one church for the 
 gifted disciples and another for the unschooled ; one for the 
 rich and another for the impecunious ; one for the Peters 
 who could put their loyalty to Jesus in one form of confes- 
 sion, and another for the Thomases who found it a little 
 difficult to phrase their loyalty to Jesus in quite the Petrine 
 form of declaration. It was with them all purely a matter 
 of personal fellowship, founded exclusively in the common 
 commitment of themselves to their risen and ascended 
 Lord." 
 
 It must be apparent that, as I see the problem of union 
 among believers, it is essential in order to its solution that 
 the divine Man, Jesus of Nazareth, shall be made the cen- 
 ter of authority in all things appertaining to our spiritual 
 life. In all things the Christ should have the preeminence. 
 This is the starting-point. He, and he alone, is to be 
 heard in all that relates to doctrine and deed. 
 
 It appears to me that believers ought to be able to unite 
 on the primitive creed, the primitive ordinances, and the 
 primitive life. If any inquires, What do you mean by the 
 primitive creed, the primitive ordinances, and the primitive 
 life ? I reply : 
 
 By the primitive creed is meant a belief in the heart that 
 Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and the only 
 and all-sufficient Saviour of men. This was the creed of 
 the apostolic church. This creed received the sanction of 
 our Lord Jesus. All evangelical believers can subscribe to 
 it. It is simple, clear, definite, comprehensive. It declares 
 the nature and the official character of the author and the 
 finisher of the faith in words with which the Head of the 
 body which is the church is entirely satisfied. As to nature 
 it declares that Jesus is the Son of God. As to his official 
 
290 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 character it declares that he is the Christ, that is to say, the 
 Anointed. Jesus was anointed, as Simon Peter affirmed 
 at the house of Cornelius, with the Holy Spirit and with 
 power. In Nazareth, in the synagogue, he claimed this 
 anointing. He is our anointed Prophet, Priest, and King. 
 As Prophet he has authority to teach; as Priest it is his 
 prerogative to act as mediator between God and man ; as 
 King it is his right to rule in and to reign over men. To 
 subscribe to this primitive creed intelligently is to surrender 
 intellect, heart, will, and life to Jesus. 
 
 By the primitive ordinances is meant baptism and the 
 Supper of the Lord. If you ask me to define baptism I 
 say in the beginning it was an immersion in water of be- 
 lievers in Christ, in obedience to our Lord's command, and 
 into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
 Holy Spirit. It was such a surrender, open, formal, to him 
 who possesses all authority in heaven and in earth, as carried 
 with it, by the word of the Lord, an assurance of accep- 
 tance with God ; and so in the New Testament obedience 
 to the command " Be baptized " is connected with " shall 
 be saved." It is said to be, when preceded by genuine 
 repentance, "for the remission of sins." It is not a regen- 
 erating ordinance. Persons who under the ministry of the 
 apostles were baptized were so far regenerated by the Word 
 and Spirit of God that their intellects were convinced con- 
 cerning the claims of the Messiah, their hearts were stirred 
 by the relation which he assumed to sustain toward men, 
 their wills were subdued by his dominating love, and they 
 were willing to give themselves to him in an everlasting 
 covenant. So, precisely, baptism ought to be regarded and 
 used to-day : not as a regenerating ordinance, as it was not 
 in the beginning, but as a command to which obedience is 
 rendered from the heart, and in which the person says, 
 " Here, Lord, I give myself to thee." There is no dispute 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 291 
 
 about this being baptism. On this ground we are out of 
 the region of controversy. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to attempt a definition of the 
 Lord's Supper. This is a feast of love. It is for those 
 whose hearts are drawn toward the Christ by his infinite 
 love, manifested toward them in his life, but especially in 
 his atoning death. The Lord's Supper is to be observed 
 by the use of bread and the fruit of the vine, with the use 
 of the words of institution employed in the beginning by 
 the Master of the feast. It is a sweet and solemn memorial 
 service, dear to every truly Christian heart. 
 
 These seem to be the only ordinances which belonged 
 to the Christian communities in the beginning, and so far 
 as I know they are the only ordinances to which the Christ 
 requires now that we shall give devout attention. 
 
 By the primitive life is meant a life patterned after the 
 life of Him " who did no sin, neither was guile found in his 
 mouth " ; a life patterned after the example furnished by 
 Him who was "tempted in all points like as we are, yet 
 without sin " ; a life after the pattern presented by the Man 
 of Nazareth, who, having been anointed with the Holy 
 Ghost and with power, "went about doing good." It is 
 not a life lived according to inflexible rules, in which there 
 is a " Thou shalt " and " Thou shalt not " at every step. 
 The rule of the Christian life may be expressed in one 
 word — " love." Love toward God and love toward man, 
 expressing itself in word and deed, is the love to which I 
 refer. 
 
 There are probably objections in the minds of some to 
 this simple basis of union. The first, doubtless, will be that 
 " this is well as far as it goes, but what have you to say," 
 says some one, " concerning organization ? " In reply I 
 have to say simply this: that the life generated and nur- 
 tured as above indicated may be trusted to assume a form 
 
292 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 that will be most befitting. We are not far enough along 
 in the study of the problem of union to enter upon a serious 
 discussion, so it appears to me, of these comparatively un- 
 important matters. 
 
 A second objection will, it is probable, relate to what I 
 have said on the subject of baptism. Upon this point I 
 wish to speak very deliberately, with a judicial fairness, and 
 with unswerving loyalty to Jesus my Lord. The subject 
 of baptism may be treated in one of three ways : 
 
 1 . It may be discarded altogether. The passages of the 
 New Testament which speak of baptism may, practically, 
 be expunged. This we dare not do. A solemn and awful 
 curse is pronounced on the man who takes from the Word 
 of the Lord. 
 
 2. We may treat baptism as a thing indifferent. We 
 may say, in effect, to inquirers, "You may be baptized or 
 not, as you prefer. True, our Lord commanded penitent 
 believers to be baptized, but that makes no difference. It 
 is a matter of no importance." But this course we cannot 
 take with the New Testament open before our eyes. Jesus 
 said, " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." 
 Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of the Lord Jesus, 
 said, " Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the 
 name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins." The 
 same ambassador for Christ, on another occasion, said, 
 "Baptism doth also now save us." The devout Ananias 
 said to believing, penitent Saul, "Arise, and be baptized, 
 and wash away thy sins." Whatever may be the exact 
 meaning of these words it is certain that fidelity to the 
 Son of God is not compatible with a careless, not to say 
 contemptuous, treatment of this ordinance of Jesus Christ. 
 The utterances of the creeds of Christendom are in har- 
 mony with this idea of the dignity and importance of bap- 
 tism. The Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A DISCIPLE 293 
 
 says, for instance, that it is "a great sin to contemn or 
 neglect this ordinance." 
 
 3. Or we may seek to understand the mind of Christ 
 concerning baptism, and in faith and humility conform to 
 his expressed will. The immersion of penitent, believing 
 souls in water, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and into the 
 name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, 
 is recognized by all evangelical Christians as valid baptism. 
 This practice is not now, and never has been, in debate. 
 Affusion is in dispute. The baptism of infants is now, and 
 has been from the beginning, a subject of controversy. 
 The Disciples, then, on this subject occupy a position out- 
 side the field of controversy, and at the same time maintain 
 their allegiance to the Lord Jesus. 
 
 Excuse me for speaking at so great a length. I do not 
 see how I could have presented " The Reunion of Chris- 
 tendom as it Appears to a Disciple " in briefer space than 
 I have employed on this occasion. 
 
 If any should think that I have spoken too plainly, es- 
 pecially on the matter of baptism — that I have almost ex- 
 hibited the spirit of the polemic or the dogmatist in what 
 I have just uttered — I beg to remind you that in the early 
 part of this address I said, " I have accepted the invitation 
 to speak upon this occasion with the understanding that our 
 utterances are to be characterized by the utmost candor." 
 I have simply spoken as an honest man to honest men. 
 So far from a desire to maintain stubbornly the positions 
 set forth in this address, particularly on the subject of the 
 basis of union, I wish to be distinctly understood that what 
 has here been said is tentative. I will be more than pleased 
 to surrender the position I now occupy, and to a frank ex- 
 pression of which you have just listened, when I see that 
 another is more in harmony with the mind of our blessed 
 Lord as expressed in the New Testament. The problem 
 
294 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 before us has not yet been solved, neither by Episcopalians, 
 Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Disciples, nor any other. 
 We are respectively contributing what we can to its solu- 
 tion. Doubtless many things are to be learned before we 
 " grow up in all things into him, which is the Head, even 
 Christ." It is simply certain that before we realize in our 
 experience the answer of our Lord's prayer for unity much 
 remains to be said. 
 
 May the God of all goodness so use the words spoken 
 in this conference that the cause of unity among believers 
 may be promoted, the turning of the world to Christ be 
 hastened, and the name of our Father be glorified among 
 men ! Amen. 
 
XII 
 
 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM AS IT APPEARS 
 TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 
 
 Missionary to the Higher Classes of China. 
 
 295 
 
XII 
 
 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM AS IT APPEARS TO 
 A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 
 
 It is with extreme regret that our discussions here on the 
 reunion of Christendom are to be deprived of the presence 
 of the dean of the Cambridge Episcopal Divinity School, 
 one whose ability to discuss the question from an Episcopal 
 point of view is fully recognized by this gathering. As an 
 old college friend, and as one who has studied the question 
 for years from amid the demands of the missionary work in 
 China, I gladly accept this opportunity to argue for the re- 
 union of Christendom on the basis of episcopacy, or, more 
 strictly, the Historic Episcopate. Though a minister of the 
 Presbyterian Church, it will be my purpose, in arguing for 
 theories, to be true to facts and just to the views of others. 
 
 In the reunion of Christendom there are many who sim- 
 ply seek and desire a union which is spiritual and internal, 
 without form or organization. Others go a step forward 
 and desire a union that is external as well as internal, or- 
 ganic as well as spiritual, an embodiment as well as a feel- 
 ing. In this class there are those who simply believe that 
 the only form of union is an agreement on the book, each 
 Christian alike accepting the Holy Scriptures as authority 
 and teacher ; and this was the first proposition of agreement 
 in church union as proposed in 1888 by the Lambeth Con- 
 ference of one hundred and forty-five Pan- Anglican bishops. 
 Others in this class seek for an agreement not only on the 
 
 297 
 
2y8 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 book, but on the creeds expressing the main doctrines of 
 that book ; and so the Lambeth Conference makes for its 
 second proposition the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds as the 
 doctrinal basis of agreement. Some might desire an agree- 
 ment on other doctrines and a fuller creed, but the Epis- 
 copal body is content in its scheme for union with these 
 two creeds, at least so far as any doctrinal expression is con- 
 cerned. Going one step farther, many Christians desire an 
 agreement not only on the book and the creed, but on the 
 sacred rites to be observed ; and so this same conference 
 proposes as its third point of organic agreement the two 
 sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Roman 
 Catholics might desire more sacraments, but these two are 
 here proposed as the number to be first agreed upon. 
 Finally, there is with many a desire to agree not only on 
 the book, the creed, and the rites, but on the organization ; 
 and so the fourth proposition of the Lambeth Conference 
 is the Historic Episcopate. It is merely a question as to 
 how much shall be required in the proposed agreement. 
 Some desire even more agreement and others less ; but 
 these four are the clear, logical, consistent, and even gen- 
 erous propositions of agreement — " a basis," as they call it, 
 "on which approach may be, by God's blessing, made 
 toward home reunion," and, we would add, toward the re- 
 union of all Christendom. 
 
 In the discussions which have followed since 1888 it is 
 the fourth essential — the Historic Episcopate — which, in 
 the language of Bishop Huntington, is "the crux" in the 
 declaration. Therefore, in the present paper, we will limit 
 ourselves to the point of agreement on which there is most 
 disagreement. Agreeing, all of us, on the necessity of spirit- 
 ual union, and agreeing, most of us, on the other features 
 of the spiritual embodiment — the one organic visible church 
 — it remains to see if we cannot also agree on the form of 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 299 
 
 the church as represented, not by the Presbyterian Church 
 or the Congregational churches or even the Episcopal 
 Church, but by what is called, though needing explanation, 
 the Historic Episcopate. Those who laugh at the proposi- 
 tion are generally those who, not only by preconception, but 
 by preadoption, adhere to some other ecclesiastical form, 
 and so much so that if others will not yield to them then 
 the present divisions of Christendom must be preferred to 
 the proposed unification. It is organizations which rival 
 and clash with each other that cause the division, rather 
 than any individual unwillingness to cultivate socially and 
 emotionally a broad and indefinite kind of fellowship. 
 Therefore any union which deals only with the individual, 
 and not with individuals combined in a society ; which con- 
 siders merely " the kingdom of God within you," and not 
 the actual, visible, tangible organization, can never secure 
 the reunion of Christendom in just that place where there 
 is most disunion, namely, in the diverse, competing organ- 
 izations known as denominations. The proposition of the 
 Anglican communion is real church union, not by all other 
 denominations joining the Episcopal Church, but by all of 
 them together agreeing to accept, first of all, the episcopate, 
 and then the episcopate which is historic. 
 
 History is the key-word to Christian doctrine, and so 
 equally to the Christian ministry and the Christian church. 
 Anything not based on facts, on history, is not needed to- 
 day amid the uncertainty, the vagueness, and the doubts 
 which permeate all our social and religious life. The only 
 truth which has won through all the ages the admiration 
 and loyal service of mankind has been not so much the 
 truth of speculation and dogma as the truth of history, the 
 truth of actual facts. 
 
 Here, then, is our reason for defending in the cause of 
 union the Historic Episcopate. It is something historical 
 
300 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 and real, rather than something merely speculative. The 
 only thing to be sure of is the actual facts, the true history. 
 Therefore most of our examination must deal with the his- 
 tory : first the facts and then the theory ; first true history 
 and then true ecclesiastics. 
 
 In Christendom at the present time the episcopate exists 
 in a portion of the Protestant churches, in the Latin Church, 
 and in eight Oriental churches. It is as a system in over- 
 whelming majority, while less than four hundred years ago 
 it was the only church system in existence. Trace the line 
 back for eighteen centuries, and throughout all this time, 
 under varying conditions, the only church system steadfastly 
 maintained has been the episcopate ; while at the outset of 
 this long period, at the close of the second century, it was 
 in strong and growing power. Even if we should fail to 
 find it before, it yet has the only worthy claim of all the 
 ecclesiastical systems to be termed historic. 
 
 As various questions of biblical criticism, such as genuine- 
 ness, authenticity, and canonicity, depend on the testimony 
 of the fathers, so we may equally rely on their testimony 
 for the actual facts concerning the organization of the early 
 church, though we are by no means bound to accept their 
 personal opinions on this or any other question. Though 
 the episcopacy of their day may afterward have been modi- 
 fied and expanded, yet the existence of the principle of epis- 
 copacy is all that concerns us in the present discussion. 
 
 The evidence at the close of the second century centers 
 around three names, representing different sections of the 
 church. Tertullian of Carthage, about 200 a.d., clearly 
 distinguishes between the bishop and presbyter, and de- 
 mands that all heretical teachers should show that "their 
 first bishop had for his ordainer and predecessor some one 
 of the apostles or of the apostolic men " ; and he adds, " For 
 in this way do the apostolic churches reckon their origin." 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 3° l 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, about 190 a.d., though dealing 
 mainly with other questions, yet says : " The Apostle John, 
 when he settled at Ephesus, went about the neighboring 
 regions ordaining bishops." Superior to these two is the 
 testimony of Irenaeus, about 180 a.d. He was a disciple of 
 Polycarp ; was born and reared in Asia Minor ; he taught 
 in Rome and became bishop in Gaul. " We are," he says, 
 " in a position to reckon up those who were by the apos- 
 tles instituted bishops in the churches, and the successions 
 of these men to our own times." As Bishop Lightfoot, in 
 his exhaustive essay on " The Christian Ministry," has said : 
 " Episcopacy is so inseparably interwoven with all the tra- 
 ditions and beliefs of men like Irenaeus and Tertullian that 
 they betray no knowledge of a time when it was not ;" and 
 as Professor George Salmond has said : " From the absence 
 of opposing evidence this may be concluded with certainty : 
 that there never had been any violent or abrupt change in 
 the form of church government." 
 
 Worthy of being associated with this trio of eminent wit- 
 nesses are three names of a still earlier period. Hegesippus, 
 who died about the time Irenaeus wrote, and really is the 
 father of church history, gives a valuable testimony at the 
 middle of the second century. As quoted by Eusebius, 
 he mentions a visit to Corinth and having intercourse with 
 Primus, the bishop of that church, and later on a visit to 
 Rome, when Anicetus was the bishop. He also states that 
 he had prepared a list of the Roman bishops up to his own 
 time, and that in the church at Jerusalem James the bishop 
 had been succeeded by Symeon the bishop ; and in all 
 these cases he evidently uses the term " bishop " only in the 
 strict sense. 
 
 Polycarp, who was martyred about 155 a.d., was a 
 teacher of Irenaeus between 133 and 140 a.d. ; was a per- 
 sonal friend of Ignatius and a disciple of the Apostle 
 
302 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 John ; was born about 69 a.d., near the close of the life of 
 St. Paul ; and wrote a letter about 115 a.d. to the church at 
 Philippi, in which he makes a noticeable distinction : " Poly- 
 carp and the presbyters with him." He likewise went to 
 Rome to specially arrange with Anicetus the bishop con- 
 cerning the paschal controversy. On the one side Tertul- 
 lian and Irenseus, and on the other Ignatius, mention him 
 as bishop of Smyrna, and so the church was accustomed 
 to speak of him. If such were not the rightful appellation 
 it is presumable that such a devout Christian would have 
 disclaimed it, and that in his letter to the Philippians he 
 would have refrained from distinguishing himself from his 
 presbtyers. To quote again from Bishop Lightfoot : " As 
 Polycarp survived the middle of the second century, dying 
 at a very advanced age, the possibility of error on this point 
 seems to be excluded ; and, indeed, all historical evidence 
 must be thrown aside as worthless if testimony so strong 
 can be disregarded." 
 
 The third name which we have selected is Ignatius, a 
 bishop of Antioch, a martyr to the faith probably about 
 115 a.d., and who wrote during the beginning of the second 
 century. The genuineness of his Epistles, as contained in 
 the shorter Greek recension, is now accepted by the great 
 preponderance of scholars ; and the great work of Bishop 
 Lightfoot on Ignatius in 1885 may be regarded, in the lan- 
 guage of Dr. Philip Schaff, as " a full and final settlement 
 of the Ignatian problem." A denial of their genuineness 
 is stated by another Presbyterian, Professor Benjamin War- 
 field, of Princeton Seminary, as " unreasonable in the pres- 
 ent state of the evidence." In these letters he makes men- 
 tion of Polycarp as bishop at Smyrna and Onesimus as 
 bishop at Ephesus, and also of " the bishops settled in the 
 farthest parts of the world." He exalts the dignity and 
 authority of the bishop as superior to those of presbyters 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 3°3 
 
 and deacons, speaking of " the presbyters fitted to the 
 bishop as the strings are to the harp." In pleading for 
 episcopacy it is not so much as something that is new as 
 something that is taken for granted, though needing a 
 broader application. 
 
 Moving backward a little farther, we come to the close 
 of the apostolic age, at the end of the first century. This 
 period, as affording any direct evidence on this ecclesias- 
 tical problem, may well be called an "historical blank." 
 Using a figure suggested by Professor Salmond, this portion 
 of church history may be represented as a tunnel, dim and 
 uncertain, while at either end there shines a good and clear 
 light, which by a true scientific process may be made to 
 flash through the darkness of the tunnel, and so reveal one 
 regular and unbroken course of ecclesiastical development. 
 To understand this period aright it is necessary to make a 
 few specifications : 
 
 First, the apostolate lasted until the close of the first 
 century in the person of the Apostle John, and, at least in 
 Asia Minor, he is the connecting-link between the earlier 
 apostles and the subsequent bishops. 
 
 Secondly, if in the writings of Ignatius, at the beginning 
 of the second century, episcopacy is taken for granted, then 
 reasonably it must have existed for a few decades before, 
 and, in fact, before the death of the Apostle John. The 
 first time we hear of a particular thing is not necessarily 
 the first time of its existence. 
 
 Thirdly, there is substantial evidence from subsequent 
 writers, as those already cited, that during this period, in 
 certain places at least, there existed bishops, as superior 
 in certain respects to presbyters, and that some of these 
 had been set apart by the Apostle John. However un- 
 defined as yet was the bishop's office, or however limited 
 was the application of the episcopal principle, the episco- 
 
304 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 pate during this period must still be regarded as historic. 
 Dr. Hatch, in his Bampton Lectures, acknowledges that the 
 recorded facts "show that in a large majority of cases a 
 bishop, presbyters, and deacons existed for every commu- 
 nity " ; and Professor Samuel M. Hopkins, a Presbyterian 
 instructor in Auburn Theological Seminary, says : " When 
 the fact is once fairly appreciated that all the believers in 
 a place, large or small, made up the church of that place, 
 and that for one church (no matter whether consisting of 
 one congregation or many) there must be but one bishop, 
 the whole matter becomes perfectly plain." The episcopacy 
 of that period looks much like modern Presbyterianism, if 
 not merely in every church, but in every community, one 
 man directed all the religious affairs. 
 
 Fourthly, the fact that certain churches were lacking in 
 the supervision of a higher order or office called bishops 
 only proves that the episcopate as a distinct and regular 
 form was not universal, and that the young and extending 
 church was not yet thoroughly equipped or fully organized, 
 but was still in a state of transition. Twenty or thirty 
 years in an organization is hardly sufficient to reach ma- 
 turity. Even to-day certain persons, though believing in 
 the episcopal system, may be so situated as for the time 
 being to be without either episcopal or presbyterial over- 
 sight; and yet this hardly tends to prove the absence of 
 episcopacy as a fact of history. There was a time when 
 the Episcopal Church of America was deprived of the im- 
 mediate and local oversight of the bishops ; but the church 
 none the less was episcopal in theory and aspiration, and 
 still maintained a connection with the regular Historic Epis- 
 copate of the mother-country. Though unable to show 
 how widely the episcopal principle extended at the close of 
 the first century, we yet should not deny the predominance 
 of the principle, still less its existence in toto. 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 3°5 
 
 Fifthly, not only did it require time to organize the 
 growing and persecuted churches, scattered throughout 
 Asia, Africa, and Europe, and to ordain in the chief centers 
 superintending bishops, but it also required time to estab- 
 lish a definite and harmonious terminology. If, in the 
 writings of the apostles, the terms for bishop and presbyter, 
 though different in origin and suggesting different ideas, 
 had yet been used interchangeably of the same persons, it 
 can hardly be expected that in twenty or thirty years the 
 term " bishop " could everywhere have been elevated into 
 a distinct usage with largely a new meaning. The Epistles 
 of Barnabas and Clement of Rome, the " Shepherd " of 
 Hermas, "The Teaching of the Apostles," and the books 
 of the canon, did not distinguish clearly between the terms 
 " bishop " and " presbyter," but we should not construe this 
 into a proof that practically all bishops and presbyters had 
 the same duties, power, and authority. A precise term was 
 not yet fully established, but the fact of a general oversight 
 of and superiority to the presbyterate seems from the evi- 
 dence to have always existed somewhere in the church. 
 Clement of Rome, in the Epistle to the church at Corinth, 
 assumes the substantial identity of bishops and presbyters, 
 and yet Irenaeus and other writers represent him as a bishop 
 at Rome in the later usage of that word. So Hermas 
 makes mention of only presbyters in the church at Rome, 
 or of bishops in probably the same sense, and yet he repre- 
 sents Clement as having a special oversight in relation to 
 foreign churches. The struggle was not so much to gain 
 recognition and authority for an order or rule in some re- 
 spects superior to the body of presbyters, as in elevating and 
 limiting the term " episcopus " to that order or rule. Every 
 bishop, whatever the meaning included in the term, may 
 have been a presbyter, but not, as the commentator Hilary 
 afterward said, every presbyter a bishop, " for he is bishop 
 
306 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 who is first among the presbyters." So Jerome also, of the 
 fourth century, while speaking of bishops and presbyters 
 in the apostolic times as practically the same in kind, yet 
 adds that "gradually all the responsibility was deferred to 
 a single person." 
 
 Sixthly, the principle of episcopacy — the fact of an over- 
 sight superior to that of the presbyters, but not necessarily 
 independent thereof — should be carefully distinguished 
 from all theories intended to explain the nature of that 
 episcopacy, its origin, and its growth. Of the particular 
 theory there may be dispute, but of the general principle 
 there is abundant evidence. The theory of Rothe, that 
 a special council was called after the fall of Jerusalem 
 to establish the regulations of the future episcopacy, is 
 interesting, but not incontrovertible ; and yet the very exis- 
 tence of such a theory, so elaborately wrought out by a 
 non-Episcopalian, indicates a substratum of truth requir- 
 ing explanation. The theory advocated by Mosheim and 
 Neander, Bishop Lightfoot and Dean Stanley, Dr. Hatch, 
 Professor Roswell D. Hitchcock, and others, that "the 
 episcopate was created out of the presbytery," has much 
 in its favor, and gives forth a light to one side of the ques- 
 tion ; but to complete the explanation and make clearer 
 the prevalence of episcopacy, another " circumstantial evi- 
 dence " should be duly noted. The episcopal principle 
 was not merely embodied in a particular member of the 
 presbyterate, such as its senior, president, or other promi- 
 nent person, but also for a while, and originally, in men 
 outside of the presbyterate, such as apostles, prophets, and 
 teachers — a theory ably advocated in the Expositor by 
 Professors Harnack, Sanday, and Gore, and especially by 
 the latter in a valuable work, " The Ministry of the Chris- 
 tian Church." In " The Teaching of the Apostles," which 
 represents the transitional state of the last thirty years of 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 307 
 
 the first century, the position of preeminence and general 
 direction seems to be accorded this class of apostolic men, 
 while at the same time concerning the local ministry — 
 called bishops and deacons — it is said : "They, too, perform 
 for you the service of the prophets and teachers ; therefore 
 neglect them not, for they are your honored ones together 
 with the prophets and teachers." So Clement of Rome 
 lays special stress on the fact that the presbyters and dea- 
 cons had been first set apart by the apostles with the intent 
 of a perpetual line of succession ; and he also makes men- 
 tion of others after the apostolic age not appointed by the 
 apostles, but by " other men of distinction," thus indicating 
 a class in some sense superior to the presbyters and dea- 
 cons, substantially the bishops of a later age. While the 
 bishops of the primitive church were elevated from the 
 presbyterate — as all bishops were once presbyters — yet in 
 principle, in unity, oversight, and continuity, they were 
 more naturally the successors of an apostolate, including 
 not merely the original twelve apostles, but also their special 
 delegates and those men known as prophets and teachers. 
 If there was no connection whatever between bishops in 
 the strict sense of the term and the apostles, it seems un- 
 accountable, as Dean Milman has shown in his " History 
 of Christianity," that in the various scattered churches 
 there came to be a spontaneous, pacific, and general " sub- 
 mission to the authority of one religious chief magistrate." 
 Dr. Schaff, in the new edition of his " History of the Chris- 
 tian Church," fairly sums up the question : " The only satis- 
 factory conclusion seems to be that the episcopate pro- 
 ceeded, both in the descending and ascending scale, from 
 the apostolate and the original presbyterate conjointly, as a 
 contraction of the former and an expansion of the latter." 
 What now can we find in the apostolic or New Testa- 
 ment period ? Must the episcopate cease to be historic as 
 
308 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 soon as it draws nigh to Christ and the apostles ? Must 
 the principle that has predominated in the church for at 
 least eighteen hundred years be absent from the church 
 during the fifty or sixty years of her beginning ? To an- 
 swer these questions it seems to us only necessary to note 
 the distinctions already drawn and to apply the principle, 
 though not the precise terminology, that has been shown 
 to be historic through all these centuries. As Rev. Mr. 
 Sadler, in his " Church Doctrine — Bible Truth," has said, 
 " The dispute is from beginning to end a matter of things, 
 not of words ;" and if of things, we may add, the dispute is 
 more than half settled at the outset. " Supposing," as the 
 same author says, " that in every case the name ' bishop ' is 
 synonymous with ' elder,' you still have the fact that these 
 men are throughout the New Testament assumed to be 
 under the control of the apostle and of his vicar or dele- 
 gate." In the New Testament we find that local churches, 
 with local duties and authority, were organized ; and so far 
 there is illustrated an element of independency. Likewise 
 it was the aim as soon as possible to establish in these local 
 churches a board of presbyters or elders, also at times 
 called bishops, possessed of special duties and power ; and 
 so far there is illustrated the principle of presbyterianism. 
 Beyond these two important features there likewise existed 
 a body of men known as the apostolate, charged with the 
 instruction, guidance, stimulus, organization, and supervi- 
 sion of these various local churches ; and so far there is 
 illustrated the principle of episcopacy. In the bishop of 
 the New Testament we find the essence of presbyterianism, 
 not of episcopacy ; but in the apostles and prophets, with 
 their delegates and companions, we find certainly not pres- 
 byterianism or independency, but episcopacy. As a matter 
 of history, there was at that time something more and higher 
 than the power and office of the presbyters and deacons, 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 3°9 
 
 and to be true to history we must recognize and appre- 
 ciate it, if not in the letter, at least in the spirit. Finding 
 the episcopal principle to completion in one body of men, 
 it is hardly reasonable to insist that such a body of men 
 should always be called bishops, and nothing else. If the 
 essence existed at all, it is sufficient for our argument ; and 
 if it existed to perfection — as in the apostolate — then our 
 argument is established beyond all contradiction. It is 
 not that the apostleship has been a permanent institution, 
 but that the episcopate has, it being only the continuation 
 of particular elements originally belonging to the apostle- 
 ship. " It is to be said," says Professor Salmond, " that it 
 does not appear from the New Testament that the presby- 
 ters were at any time the supreme authority in the church ;" 
 and, as Dr. Richard Hooker has aptly expressed it, " In 
 some things every presbyter, in some things only bishops, 
 in some things neither the one nor the other, are the apos- 
 tles' successors." 
 
 For these views a few proofs may be briefly stated. 
 When a successor to one of the Twelve was to be chosen, 
 it was quoted, "His bishopric let another take." What- 
 ever the precise work of this office, there may reasonably 
 be implied, as the facts would guarantee, that oversight — 
 episcopacy — was one function of the twelve apostles. 
 Hence after the ascension of Christ it is recorded : " Then 
 the Twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, 
 and said, We will give ourselves continually to prayer, and 
 to the ministry of the Word." In fact, the high authority 
 of the chosen Twelve is probably no cause of dispute, but 
 is acknowledged by all. The references needed are con- 
 cerning others outside the Twelve, but possessing, like them, 
 a general ministry superior to that of the local presbyters. 
 
 In the church of Jerusalem mention is made of the 
 ''brethren," of the "elders," and also of one superior to 
 
310 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 all and recognized by all — James, the Lord's brother. At 
 the first general council held at Jerusalem he it was who 
 presided and gave his sentence along with the apostles and 
 Paul and Barnabas. In the decree, "The apostles and elders 
 and brethren send greeting," James, Paul, and Barnabas 
 seemed to be classed among the " apostles " as distinct 
 from the " elders " or presbyters. If we adopt the view 
 now generally supported, that this James was not one of 
 the Twelve, then we have a bishop in the strict sense, and 
 one who was thus called by Hegesippus and others in the 
 following century. 
 
 The Apostle to the Gentiles — also outside the Twelve — 
 not only appointed worthy presbyters in every church to 
 exercise a local oversight, but he regarded that " the care 
 of all the churches " rested preeminently with himself. As 
 his life drew near to a close he realized the importance of 
 his trust, and therefore addressed special instructions on 
 the government of the church to Timothy and Titus, and 
 committed to them, at least for a time, a special authority 
 in the churches of Ephesus and Crete. The instructions 
 were addressed neither to the local churches nor the local 
 presbyters, but to particular persons higher than the pres- 
 byters, and the direct representatives, in this higher sense, 
 of the Apostle himself. " O Timothy," he says, " keep 
 that which is committed to thy trust;" "Lay hands sud- 
 denly on no man ;" "Against an elder receive not an ac- 
 cusation, but before two or three witnesses." And to Titus 
 he says : " For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou 
 shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and or- 
 dain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee ;" " These 
 things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority." 
 In fact, these men "were delegated by St. Paul," as Dr. 
 Jacob says, " to perform for him what we might call epis- 
 copal functions in ordaining, superintending, reproving, or 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 3 11 
 
 encouraging the ministers of these churches, as well as en- 
 deavoring to promote the general well-being of the Chris- 
 tian communities there." They, like the apostles and their 
 other companions, were not of necessity to be permanently 
 located, as are the bishops of to-day; but this only illus- 
 trates the capacity of episcopacy for modification. The 
 essence of episcopacy is not the size of a diocese or the 
 fact of a permanent residence, but merely the principle of 
 a higher oversight and authority, and, as some would say, 
 that principle deduced directly from the apostles. The 
 commission of all the companions of Paul "inhered not," 
 as Professor Warfield has said, " in any local organization, 
 not even in the church at large, but in the Apostle; and 
 their center of authority was wherever he was." All this 
 certainly looks more like an original episcopacy than de- 
 ducing an episcopacy from merely a presbytery, evolved 
 from above as well as from below. 
 
 Associated with the regular apostles in the general min- 
 istry, and generally classed with what is termed the apos- 
 tolate, are also prophets and teachers, men who exercised 
 much, if not more, of the same authority and supervision 
 that bishops ultimately came to possess. The duties and 
 powers of these men were so important that two chap- 
 ters in one Epistle particularly relate to them. As Pro- 
 fessor Gore has said: "The relation of presbyters and 
 deacons to the diocesan bishop was not fundamentally 
 different from their earlier relation to the ' apostolic man ' 
 or prophet, the Timothy or Titus, when he was present." 
 For reasons plain to God, if not to man, there were for a 
 time men possessed of extraordinary gifts from the Holy 
 Ghost ; and while it was not essential that this extraordi- 
 nary power should remain, it was essential to the edifica- 
 tion of the church that the real soul of this power should 
 exist, at least in an ordinary degree. The word of wisdom 
 
312 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 and the word of knowledge, the gifts of healing and the 
 gifts of tongues, have always been needed, though not 
 necessarily granted in the same degree as in the earliest 
 days. The presbyters, therefore, were to be men apt to 
 teach, able by sound doctrine to exhort and convince, and 
 were to be summoned to the bedside of the sick. And it 
 also soon became necessary that, in addition to the local 
 element, the element of general supervision, authority, 
 guidance, and instruction, as found to an extraordinary de- 
 gree among the apostles and prophets, should be carefully 
 perpetuated, though in an ordinary degree, by passing first 
 into the hands of the immediate delegates of the apostles, 
 and then in a few years into the hands of those who were 
 called distinctively bishops. The extraordinary ceased 
 and the ordinary began ; but certain elements have always 
 existed, and to many have seemed both wise, important, 
 and expedient. 
 
 Thus it is that the church, and likewise the Christian minis- 
 try, is built "upon the foundation of the apostles and pro- 
 phets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone." In 
 the early labors of these men there was given, so far as we 
 know, no complete system of iron-clad rules to guide the 
 church of the future, but only certain essential principles, 
 which were left to germinate amid the varied conditions of 
 coming ages. One of these principles, undying through 
 all these centuries, permeated with sound logic and a broad 
 catholicity, a scriptural vitality and the growing force of a 
 veritable history, is the principle of episcopacy, one in its 
 essence, but possessed of a commendable elasticity and 
 capable of various modifications. Indeed, the episcopate 
 in its essence has been historic for as long a period as the 
 Christian church — a worthy, though not the only, basis for 
 organic union. 
 
 The proposition, therefore, to unite on an episcopate, 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 3 l 3 
 
 not invented for the sake of convenience in these modern 
 days, but one which is historic, and in essence and as a 
 principle not only in historic continuity, but in historic 
 continuity with our divine Lord and his apostles, is a 
 proposition not merely reasonable and deserving respectful 
 consideration, but coming to us to-day with all the weight 
 of universal adaptation, and supported by great minds, 
 such as no other proposition has yet been honored with. 
 
 The proposition first of all is the voice of the conserva- 
 tive Established Church of England and the growing and 
 active Episcopal Church of the United States, of Brit- 
 ish America, and of the British colonies. It rests not in 
 the private opinion of one individual, but comes to us with 
 all the commanding force of formal action and of an 
 organized body of high representative and official men. 
 Any system of organic union that practically excludes the 
 Episcopal churches must be viewed with more or less of 
 distrust, while a system that not only includes them, but is 
 supported by them, may reasonably be accepted as some- 
 thing that is desirable and beneficial. 
 
 The Historic Episcopate, moreover, is not pressed with 
 any disdainful, repellent, or inflexible spirit, but with the 
 advance of fraternal kindness and in terms that are liberal 
 and concessive. While the essence of the Historic Epis- 
 copate is maintained, the fourth article of the Declaration 
 refers to it as " locally adapted in the methods of its ad- 
 ministration to the varying needs of the nations and peo- 
 ples called of God into the unity of his church." The 
 constituted authorities of the Anglican communion are 
 also requested "to make it known that they hold them- 
 selves in readiness to enter into brotherly conference with 
 representatives of other Christian communions in the Eng- 
 lish-speaking races, in order to consider what steps can 
 be taken, either toward corporate reunion or toward such 
 
3H THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 relations as may prepare the way for fuller organic unity 
 hereafter." No particular form of the Historic Episcopate 
 is insisted on ; neither is it claimed that all other com- 
 munions must be absorbed into the Established Church of 
 England or the Protestant Episcopal Church of America; 
 but it is merely earnestly desired that "brotherly confer- 
 ence " should be begun, and the aim expressed is either a 
 " corporate reunion " or a " fuller organic unity hereafter." 
 If such a result should ever be consummated it seems 
 plain that the new organism would differ in certain respects 
 from the existing communions, be they Anglican or Presby- 
 terian, Methodist or Baptist, Congregational or Lutheran, 
 and yet would adopt that feature of the Anglican Church 
 called the Historic Episcopate, "locally adapted" "to the 
 varying needs." Countless disputed questions, such as 
 liturgy and establishment, sacerdotalism and sacramen- 
 tarianism, are not necessarily included in such an essential, 
 and neither are they intolerantly excluded therefrom. Not 
 a dead uniformity, but a practical living unity — this, and 
 this only, is organic union. 
 
 The breadth allowed in the reunion of various com- 
 munions is already exemplified in the breadth of the Angli- 
 can Church as at present constituted. In the bosom of 
 the one church different and even antagonistic views are 
 held ; but the unity of the church is not destroyed if toler- 
 ation and charity, mutual respect and mutual helpfulness, 
 are still maintained. Not even is a particular theory of 
 the episcopate required — only that it be taken as historic. 
 
 Professor Briggs, in speaking of the four resolutions, 
 says : " These four terms proposed by the Anglican bishops 
 are entirely satisfactory, provided they mean nothing more 
 than their face value. If I understand them aright, they 
 are not to be interpreted in the special sense of any partic- 
 ular party in the Anglican communion, but are to be taken 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 315 
 
 in that sense that is common to all these parties in the 
 Church of England and in the American Episcopal 
 Church." In another place he adds these words: "It is 
 certain that if the English bishops had offered these terms 
 to the Westminster divines, there would have been no sep- 
 aration." In the seventeenth century a strong spirit of 
 union existed, and concessions were made by such men as 
 Archbishops Cranmer, Lee, Abbot, and Usher ; but from a 
 variety of reasons the majority of the bishops were opposed, 
 and union was delayed, and separation took place. To-day 
 the case is again renewed, and let us hope with better suc- 
 cess. Dean Perowne states the case in a late address: 
 " I take the ground of our Reformers, I take the ground 
 of our great Anglican divines, and I affirm that episcopacy 
 is of the bene esse, but not of the esse, of a church. I be- 
 lieve it to be the best form of government, but I dare not 
 say that without it there is neither church nor sacrament. 
 I believe its origin may be traced back to apostolic times. 
 I do not see that it is of divine command." 
 
 The Historic Episcopate, as thus capable of various modi- 
 fications, is supported by the commanding and venerable 
 witness of over nineteen centuries of steady continuity and 
 growing expansion. No other ecclesiastical system, how- 
 ever possessed of commendable characteristics, can present 
 such an historical reason for world-wide acceptance. It 
 existed in the apostolate, endowed with extraordinary gifts, 
 possessed of an undeniable authority, and exercising the 
 widest supervision ; but defining as yet no limit to each 
 man's territory, and confined to no one locality, but each 
 man moving to and fro in the church at large as the Spirit 
 seemed to direct. Then, by an inevitable transition, the 
 high and wide bishopric of the apostles, and the undefined 
 control and guidance of the prophets and evangelists, nar- 
 rowed for a few decades into the episcopacy of a parochial 
 
316 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 bishop or congregational bishop — all, indeed, designated 
 still as presbyters, but one in particular possessed of the 
 general oversight either of a church or a city. As Pro- 
 fessor W. Sanday has said : " Every town of any size had 
 its bishop ; and if there were several churches they were 
 served by the clergy whom the bishop kept about him. 
 The whole position of the bishop was very similar to that 
 of the incumbent of the parish church in one of our smaller 
 towns." Later on, with the growth of the church and by 
 the force of events, the more limited episcopacy expanded 
 into that of a diocesan bishop, indicating, indeed, a greater 
 control than that of the bishops of the transitional period, 
 but less than that of the " apostles and prophets " of the 
 foundation period. This form of episcopacy has continued 
 until the present, though likewise presenting in itself various 
 modifications. The Established Church of England and 
 the Episcopal Church of America alike possess in regular 
 order the Historic Episcopate ; but the system of the two 
 churches is differently constituted. The one is an estab- 
 lishment of the state ; the other, like every other form of 
 religion, is separate from the state. The one culminates 
 in the throne and the Archbishop of Canterbury, while in 
 the other there is nothing higher than the bishops. In the 
 one the bishops are largely independent of the laity — un- 
 less as a part of the government — but in the other there is 
 a triennial General Convention, composed of two houses — 
 the House of Bishops and the House of Clerical and Lay 
 Deputies — and every question decided or bishop elected 
 is by the majority of both clergy and laity. Speaking in 
 general, " the diocesan system as it now exists is," in the 
 language of Dr. Hatch, "the effect of a series of histor- 
 ical circumstances. It is impossible to defend every 
 part of it as being primitive, nor is it necessary to do so. 
 It is sufficient to show that it is the result of successive 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 3*7 
 
 readaptations of the church's framework to the needs of 
 the times." 
 
 The Historic Episcopate, furthermore, has already been 
 adopted for the sake of union. The different parties of the 
 Church of England to-day would long since have split into 
 different branches if the system of control had not been 
 episcopal. Jerome, to whom non-Episcopalians so often 
 appeal, speaking of the rise of the particular class called 
 bishops, says : " When afterward one presbyter was elected, 
 that he might be placed over the rest, this was done as a 
 remedy against schism, that each man might not drag to 
 himself and thus break up the church of Christ;" and 
 again, in even stronger language, he says : " The well-being 
 of the church depends upon the dignity of the bishop ; for 
 if some extraordinary power were not conceded to him by 
 general consent there would be as many schisms in the 
 church as there were presbyters." So to Ignatius "the 
 chief value of episcopacy " was, in the language of Bishop 
 Lightfoot, as " a visible center of unity in the congrega- 
 tion." The destruction of Jerusalem, the growing hostility 
 of heathenism and the Roman rulers, and the appearance of 
 dissension, schism, and heresy, compelled all the churches 
 to seek for a unifying basis and a compact organization, 
 and to find them, moreover, in the principle of episcopacy, 
 which had already existed in the catholic oversight, broad 
 spirit, and comprehensive organization of the Apostle Paul, 
 the venerable John, the brave Peter, and their faithful 
 compeers. At first the union was merely local, but as the 
 church grew the episcopal jurisdiction necessarily expanded 
 into the broader diocesan form, with its vital idea of a 
 church that is catholic and one. As Dr. Jacob has said, 
 " The establishment of episcopacy saved the church." 
 
 The Historic Episcopate, thus supported and thus pre- 
 sented, is now before the churches of Great Britain and 
 
3i8 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 America. The attitude toward the proposal of the Angli- 
 can communion seems to be less favorable in England and 
 Wales than in the United States and Canada. If the root 
 of the difficulty should be examined it would be found to 
 be in many cases a prejudice of individuals rather than of 
 a system ; a disagreement concerning endowment, titles, 
 and patronage rather than of episcopacy ; and the un- 
 pleasant remembrance of past wars, tyranny, and suffering 
 rather than the glad expectancy of forces consolidated, 
 ranks reunited, "made perfect in one." In all the various 
 communions of Protestantism — so lamentably dissevered 
 and so far from the spirit of the Master's prayer — there 
 are practically only three church polities : Independency, 
 Presbyterianism, and Episcopacy. It is harder for all the 
 existing denominations to unite than for the three polities 
 to unite, but in neither case is the difficulty insuperable. 
 Considering merely the three polities it seems to us that the 
 polity most easy of acceptance by all, and best fitted for 
 all, is the episcopal polity. In matters of polity it is easier 
 to add on than take off. For the Episcopalian to discard 
 the order of bishops would mean a relinquishment of one 
 of his principles ; a principle, moreover, historic in line from 
 the time of the apostles, and for many a century accepted 
 by the universal church. On the other hand, for the In- 
 dependent or Presbyterian to accept the order of bishops 
 would not necessarily ignore the independency of the one 
 or the presbyterianism of the other. The Independent in 
 theory is further removed from the Episcopalian than is 
 the Presbyterian, but in practice and in heart there is still 
 a bond of union. If to be independent means total sepa- 
 ration from all others and the recognition of no power be- 
 yond the local church, then it is useless to talk of union 
 that is organic and visible. If, however, there is felt a 
 duty or desirability to more fully unite, whether in the 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 3 I 9 
 
 form of association, conference, committee, or union, then 
 there is something more than mere Independency, and 
 which could easily be transferred to the consolidating and 
 supervising body of bishops; a body, moreover, which 
 would still respect the rights and utility of a local church. 
 As to the Presbyterian, what in reality is he but an Epis- 
 copalian of a short time of the primitive church ? The 
 pastor of a church is surrounded by a body of elders or 
 presbyters, and though equal in certain particulars he is 
 plainly the recognized head, guide, and superior. He is, 
 in fact, a congregational bishop, and were it not for the 
 multitude of sects would also, in certain cases, be a paro- 
 chial bishop. If in the Episcopal system there are three 
 orders in the ministry, in the Presbyterian there are three 
 orders of officers. "The ordinary and perpetual officers 
 of the church," says the Presbyterian Form of Govern- 
 ment, " are bishops or pastors, and the representatives of 
 the people, usually styled ruling elders and deacons." In 
 fact, the essence of presbyterianism and episcopacy is the 
 same. Why, then, should the congregational episcopacy 
 be exchanged for the diocesan? modern presbyterianism 
 for modern episcopacy? First, because in adopting the 
 latter the former would still be allowed so far as the pastor 
 or teaching presbyter is concerned, and might also be 
 allowed, if deemed necessary, in the case of the ruling 
 presbyters or elders ; secondly, because the limited or pres- 
 byterian form of episcopacy existed only for a short time 
 in the primitive church, but was quickly expanded into the 
 diocesan form, whether large or small, and thus the better 
 illustrating the episcopal authority of the apostolate and 
 the better adapted to the needs of the growing church; 
 thirdly, because the diocesan episcopacy being originally 
 adopted in the extending church for the greater union, har- 
 mony, and solidity of the one church, it may reasonably 
 
320 THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 be again adopted for the same end ; and fourthly, as the 
 presbyters find it advisable to establish a power superior to 
 themselves as individual office-bearers, by means of a Pres- 
 bytery, Synod, and General Assembly, so this higher power 
 can easily be concentrated in a certain order called dis- 
 tinctively bishops. Concerning those who adopt for one 
 reason or another the episcopal system, but separated from 
 the Historic Episcopate, it is only requisite that terms of 
 agreement should be so made that the regular episcopate 
 may be secured by the irregular, and not the regular dis- 
 carded for the sake of recognizing the irregular. In cer- 
 tain cases, as with the Moravians and the Lutheran Church 
 of Scandinavia, the regular historical connection may 
 already be found to be satisfactory. 
 
 Any system of union among the Protestant churches 
 should also aim to assimilate to, rather than recede from, a 
 possible reunion or friendly cooperation with Latin, Greek, 
 and Oriental churches. In all these the Historic Episcopate 
 is an essential element, and the Historic Episcopate of a 
 one reformed church would be a natural means of fraternal 
 approach. The schism, however we attach the blame 
 thereof, is wide and deep ; but the true reformer is not he 
 who intensifies that schism, but he who seeks to heal it 
 by even the most insignificant endeavor. In the line of 
 church polity, episcopacy must be the end, as it was the 
 beginning. A system that can show such unity, strength, 
 and continuity, and at the same time such variety and 
 adaptation, is surely a fitting system for a wider organic 
 reunion of the one church of Christ. We may all agree to 
 go back together to Christ and the apostles, and to recite 
 anew, " I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church." 
 
 An episcopate thus adapted to all the countries and 
 races of the earth, aiming at some of the perfection of 
 universal adaptation belonging to Christianity, and never 
 
AS IT APPEARS TO A FOREIGN MISSIONARY 3 21 
 
 forgetting that inner fellowship of love which the divine 
 Spirit can alone produce ; an episcopate adapted to the 
 Occident and the Orient, to the Semitic and Aryan, to the 
 Mongolian and Slavonic, to the Latin and Hellenic, to the 
 Celtic and Teutonic; adapted to all forms of political 
 organization — the monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and 
 theocracy ; adapted alike to the mighty Roman empire, 
 stretching from the Euphrates to the rolling waves of the 
 Atlantic, and to the little state struggling for indepen- 
 dence ; to the colony and to the islands of the sea ; adapted 
 to every age of the church — to the apostolic of the first 
 century, the primitive parochial of the second, the diocesan 
 of the third, the metropolitan of the fourth, the patriarchal 
 of the fifth, the papal of the middle ages, and to well-nigh 
 all these forms and phases in modern times: surely such 
 an episcopate, adapted, as the Lambeth Declaration reads, 
 *' to the ranging needs of the nations and peoples," is com- 
 plete and inspiring in its essential worth — a living factor to- 
 day and a safe criterion for the future ; a desirable method 
 and a powerful aid for the reunion of Christendom. 
 
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