Class Book CopyrightN°_ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. BAPTIST DOCTRINES Addresses Delivered at the North American Pre~Convention Conference DES MOINES, IOWA June 21, 1921 BAPTIST DOCTRINES Addresses Delivered at the North American Pre-Convention Conference DES MOINES, IOWA June 21, 1921 Copyrighted by J. C. MASSEE 1921 JUH 27 1921 CU617489 CONTENTS. ■ CHAPTER PAGE Foreword 5 By Curtis Lee Laws, D.D., Editor of "The Watch- man-Examiner." I. Opening Address 7 By Eev. J. C. Massee, D.D., President of the Des Moines Conference. II. Jesus and the Old Testament 25 By Rev. J. R. Sampey, D.D., LL.D., Professor in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louis- ville, Ky. III. The Authenticity and Authority of the New Testament 55 By Rev. Jacob Heinrich, D.D., Vice President, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Chicago, 111. IV. The Cross and the Critics 71 By Rev. T. T. Shields, D.D., Pastor, Jarvis Street Baptist Church, Toronto, Canada. V. The Proof of the Resurrection 85 By Rev. D. F. Rittenhouse, D.D., Pastor First Baptist Church, Columbus, Ohio. VI. The Return of the Lord '. . 105 By Rev. W. B. Hinson, D.D., LL.D., Pastor East Side Baptist Church, Portland, Ore. VII. The Supreme Passion of the Gospel 135 By Rev. Lee Scarborough, D.D., President South- western Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. FOREWORD The Movement represented by the Conferences on Baptist Fundamentals in giving new emphasis to Christian doctrine is seeking to put first things first. We would not concern ourselves too exclusively with the first principles of Chris- tianity but would the rather go on to perfection. It is well that we should remind ourselves however, that we are to leave these first principles only as a tree leaves its roots and as a house leaves its foundations. The greater the tree the more deeply the roots must sink into the soil. The greater the house the stronger the foundations must be. Thoughtful people will agree that in our day the roots of Christianity are being tampered with and the foundations of Christianity are being undermined. While realizing that roots are not trees and foundations are not super structures, we ought also to realize that to cut the roots and undermine the foundations of Christianity is master strategy upon the part of the devil. Such work is done underground and too often the Lord's husbandmen and the Lord's builders are un- aware of the purpose or even the presence of this hidden and powerful enemy.. It is the primary purpose of these Conferences on Fundamentals to raise the danger signal and to plead with our Baptist people everywhere to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. But after all does not such constantly reiterated insistence upon the fundamental doctrines distract our minds and di- vert our attention from the ever widening tasks of Chris- tianity? Exactly the contrary is true. A wide outlook de- mands a firm footing. It is only when the mountain climber has his feet on solid ground that he can afford to look up and around. But those interested in the preservation and forma- tion of the fundamentals of our holy faith must not abandon the implements of work for the weapons of war. If swords are to be found at our side, trowels must be found in our hands. It is essential that we safeguard the principles of Christianity but it is likewise essential that we carry the mes- sage of saving grace and redeeming power to the earth's re- motest bounds. Contenders for the faith of Christ who are not promoters of the cause of Christ are a dead weight to be carried by true evangelists and contenders for the faith who fail to manifest the spirit of their Lord are actually injuring the Cause for which they would willingly die. Baptist funda- mentalists must live close to Christ and prove themselves patterns of holiness and self-sacrifice. From time to time our Baptist fathers put forth confessions of faith, thus declaring and defining their principles. Not creeds to which they demanded allegiance, but standards about which they might rally. Has not the time come when Baptists once again should announce to the world their beliefs, when a standard should once again be raised? But are not all such confessions in some sense a violation of the principles of soul liberty, a principle dear to the hearts of our people? We de- sire here to declare that this matter of soul liberty is being tremendously overworked by some who reject the very princi- ples of those who died to make soul liberty the heritage of our age. Originally this principle guaranteed to men the right to worship God as they pleased. It emphasized the fact that in the Christian economy no man or group of men could exercise authority over the conscience of the humblest man on earth. Our Baptist fathers had a very clearly de- fined system of truth, and this was put forth in many noble confessions of faith. They knew no soul liberty which guar- anteed to members of Baptist churches the right to believe what they pleased. To reject fundamental Baptist principles and practices while remaining a member of a Baptist Church and to use the doctrine of soul liberty in extenuation of such a course is to pervert the doctrine and to make it a menace to the Church of Christ. The Movement for promoting the fundamentals of our holy faith is just beginning. It aims to be constructive rather than destructive. It seeks to unite our Denomination rather than to divide it. It calls upon Baptists everywhere to rally to our age-long and time-honored principles. The Movement will put forth a literature of its own. This volume contains the addresses delivered at the second of our general conferences. These ad- dresses manifest a fine, tolerant spirit while expressing in no uncertain way a genuine devotion to the Word of God. The Watchman-Examiner. Curtis Lee Laws. New York City. CHAPTER I OPENING ADDRESS BY REV. J. C. MASSEE, D.D. OPENING ADDRESS ?^j$INCE the first Pre-Convention Conference at ^>^\ Buffalo a year has passed. That this year has /ss-^ been in Baptist circles one of quickened de- nominational interest none would question. That new emphases have been placed upon doctrine, a new scru- tiny on denominational policies, a new sense of re- sponsibility concerning the denominational program and a serious realization of an urgent necessity to settle some of the things that have divided us in sentiment and threatened to divide us in service, we are all aware. The year has not only been rich in discussion, it has been fruitful in the clarifying of vision and in the analyzing of our denominational situation. It has become increasingly apparent that we are threatened with a threefold line of cleavage in the denominational life and that if we are to preserve the solidarity of our denominational structure and the co-operation of the denominational family through this Convention there must be a new welding undertaken along these three lines of cleavage. Ranking in importance these are First, the Doctrinal; Second, the Educational; Third, the Ecclesiastical. The Doctrinal It is feared by many that the Baptist churches have in some measure become freethinkers' clubs, the pas- tor, in some cases at least, being the apostle and high priest of creedal license. There is a wide-spread prop- 10 BAPTIST DOCTEINES aganda to the effect that we can have and must have no doctrinal test of fellowship, since so-called theo- logical differences are not vital. The great doctrines cherished by Baptists in the past are so far discred- ited by some that they are now declared to be the mere opinions of men ; the men who formulated them belonging to the past while we belong to the present. In the living present, we are told, if we do not actually discredit the doctrines of the past we must refuse them any authority in our lives and our denominational pol- icies or in determining our fellowship and co-opera- tion in service. We are gravely, seriously, constantly, earnestly urged to co-operation in service without regard to differences in doctrine. We are soberly in- formed that religious experiences are everywhere the same though religious explanations may be totally different. Too frequently religion is substituted for Christ. If we may credit some of our denominational spokesmen and leaders then it makes no difference at all whether Christ was the Son of God or the son of Joseph, whether He died as moral example or as sinner's substitute. Whether He arose from the dead bodily or only in idea. Whether He ascended bodily into the heaven or His spiritual remains live in the moral atmosphere of the world. Whether His return is to be a literal one in fulfillment of oft-repeated prophecies or a spiritual embodiment of His ideals in the mass of mankind. We are urged to believe that our conceptions of the nature, purpose and destiny of the church, though radically different, should make no difference in our co-operative service or in the program of that service. Men who believe that the church is a divine organ- ism, a living body of which Christ is the head, are OPENING ADDEESS 11 both expected and urged to unite in service with men who believe the church to be only a human organi- zation, one with other beneficent institutions set for the betterment of the world, who would make its pro- gram largely an educational and social betterment one. There are leaders among us who discredit all eschato- logical teachings. In some quarters it has come to be a moral disgrace to hold any doctrinal convictions about the future life and the prophetic Kingdom of Heaven. On the other hand there are some to whom doctrinal convictions are the very essence of life and to whom eschatological questions have a vital place in doctrine. These believe that Solomon knew and told the truth when he said "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he" and that Paul understood the seriousness of the thing declared when he wrote "We have believed therefore have we spoken." He surely believed that faith alone is the base and inspiration of the Christian message. The doctrine of the inspiration of God's Word would seem to be of vital concern. It has at last become a matter of division among us. Without doctrinal co- hesion there can be no denominational co-operation. Close and continued fellowship seems impossible be- tween those who on the one hand believe the Bible to be the very Word of God inspired, inerrant and authoritative, and those who consider it inspired only in the same measure as are other books, the result of evolutionary process of human thought, and for the most part a pollyglot combination of material ef- fected by some unknown compiler or compilers, thus giving us a book whose historical accuracy is untrust- worthy, whose authorship is unauthentic and whose authority in the church is altogether problematical. 12 BAPTIST DOCTEINES Baptists have through the ages boasted that they are men of the Book. A "thus saith the Lord" has ever been accepted as the final test of our faith, our duty and our polity. Are we ready to abandon that posi- tion? Baptists have ever refused to subscribe to a formal and an authoritative creed. But Baptists have per- sisted through the centuries in setting forth confes- sions. These confessions have taken the form of state- ments of belief. They have entered into the organiza- tion of our churches. They have become part and parcel of their constitutions, of their life, of their propaganda. And they have been in the past a basis for fellowship between the churches as between mem- bers in the churches. Shall we cut down all the ancient landmarks? Shall we refuse to hear any voice from the past? Must we assume that the tra- ditions of the leaders always make null the will of God? To the men who promote the Fundamentals Confer- ences on doctrines, this seems to be a vital matter. To them it is an axiom of history that what men think determines what men are. Great convictions have called into being and determined the direction of great movements. Men have ever united themselves in support of a cause because its principles were dear to them. It would seem that the cause which demands of men the surrender of a supreme love, the investment of all possessions, the sacrifice of all ease and personal self-seeking and the employment of all life energies and activities can only hope to achieve its purpose by binding together its adherants with convictions of truth sufficiently vital to make response seem worth while. OPENING ADDRESS 13 If it does not matter what we believe neither does it matter how we live. There is no inspiration for propaganda in doctrines that have no distinctive value or life producing qual- ity. The hope of success for the gospel lies in a conviction of the truth and the message of the Gos- pel so compelling as not only to demand but to produce the complete abandonment of men to its proclama- tion. If Baptists are to have no convictions then Baptists can have no future. If Baptist liberty is to be denned in terms of license for free-thinking, then is the Baptist cause already doomed in the world. There is nothing for man to accept, nothing for God to bless, and nothing for such a mongrel organization to do. It is imperative that somehow we settle our doc- trinal controversies. Is it possible for us to find com- mon base, without vital compromise, on which we can stand? Shall we return to the old confessions and reaffirm them? Shall we make new confessions and stand by them? Has the time not come for us to frankly face this question and act with firm hand seeking a solution for this most serious problem? The denominational family is now in the situation reported from the home of a famous Southern traveler, Mr. Jack Ross. Jack was a widower with four chil- dren who married a widow with three children. From this union were later born five children. One day when Jack and his wife were alone up-stairs in their home a very bedlam of noise and confusion broke out in the rooms below. Said Mrs. Jack to her husband, "For pity's sake, go down and see what is happening." Jack went down and after a while returned, a look of philosophic resignation on his face and with a similar 14 BAPTIST DOCTEINES tone of resignation in his voice he said to his wife, "My dear, it's all right, for your children and my children have jumped on our children and are 'rais- ing Cain.' That is all the trouble." Of course, you will understand there is a limit to such a disturbance. To-day in the denominational family the children of her conservative doctrines and the children of her radical doctrines are rather seriously bruising her children of service. A period must be put to these controversies. The Educational Lying at the root of our doctrinal differences are the teachings permitted in our denominational schools. Time was when Baptist schools stood for the defense of Baptist faith, whether those schools were secondary schools, colleges or theological seminaries. Devoted men and women of God gave of their money, their life interests and service to the establishing, maintaining and endowing of these schools. Gradually they have grown great and now entrenched behind increasing endowments, and under the direct control of self-per- petuating Boards of Trustees they have become inde- pendent of denominational control and would seem to be impatient of denominational confessions of faith. Indeed, leaders among school men go so far as to as- sert that the rule of the dead-hand is immoral and that we have no right to endow institutions of learning or to support them to teach any particular Christian creed. The place of the Bible in denominational schools has been reduced to a minimum, and the scramble for stu- dents has made us afraid to be enough sectarian to re- main denominational. There is a distressing story of a young girl who attended one of the schools listed OPENING ADDRESS 15 in the Northern Baptist Convention annual who, after her graduation, while preparing to return to her home, was packing her trunk. She discovered, as is fre- quently the case, that through the year an accumula- tion of things had swelled the proportions of her pos- sessions. She was unable to put all her impedimenta in the trunks. Casting about for some things to leave because of their minor importance, she discovered her Bible lying in the tray of the trunk. She picked it up, threw it into the corner of the room with the remark "I can leave that for I no longer believe it and it has no place in my life." I speak with some feeling when I recount the fact that no fewer than four young people committed to my pastoral care have returned from a Baptist school with their faith shaken, their convictions upset. They had been given instead of certitudes, question marks. We need also to make distinctions in our schools between the teaching of the Bible itself and the teach- ing of the critical theories and destructive commen- taries about it. Let the Bible be restored to the heart of the school. Let Baptist youth in Baptist schools be taught the contents of the Bible itself. Let them come forth knowing its contents, instructed in its study, able to analyze its books, to seize upon and present its salient message with a profound and deep conviction that they are dealing with the definitely inspired rev- elation of the living God. Only then will we have done our duty to them, to their generation, and to their God. Gradually, paralleling this growth of financial inde- pendence and moral impatience in many of our schools, has crept in a laxness of doctrinal belief and a broad- ness of evolutionary sympathies practically destroy- 16 BAPTIST DOCTEINES ing the usefulness of these schools as a denominational asset. This situation becomes a veritable menace to the whole denominational structure. Our youth are being taught false science, and false scientific methods and these are given a religious character while our youth are being called as crusaders to propagate and defend this science as a sacred commission in substitu- tion for the Gospel which they had before believed and upon which we still contend the hope of the world's salvation depends. The scientific method now much in vogue is to present the Bible "without prejudice" and to make the only method of approach to the Bi- ble the laboratory method. To thoughtful minds this can be seen at once to be the most damning prejudice. Any a priori assumption that the Bible is as other liter- ature, that it is not of divine origin, that if inspired at all, inspiration means no more in the case of the Bible than in that of other highly moral writings, is an assumption antagonistic to the very character of the Bible. Beginning with this point of view there are all grades and shades of agnostic, infidel, and rationalistic opinions concerning the Bible. Our young men are teaching in the churches now as they have been taught in our schools, that the Bible is not accurate ; that its moral conceptions are shocking to civilized moral consciousness ; that its history is legend ; that its great incidents are folk lore stories ; that its supreme revelations are the opinions of men growing out of their local settings and colorings; that the value of the Book does not depend upon historic accuracy and that the Christ whom it reveals is not necessarily the Christ whom we trust, love and follow and that the God of the Bible was originally only a tribal God of the Hebrews. OPENING ADDEESS 17 We are told that the business of the schools is not to make Christians, nor to train Christians as such, but to produce a fine type of Christian character and to fit men with right moral impulses to grapple with the problems of the world. The result has been the pro- jection into our Baptist ministry of many younger men who now deny almost in toto all the great fundamentals of the faith as held by the fathers and as still held by the majority of our churches. To leaders trained to regard doctrinal questions as of no importance and all doctrines as mere matters of opinion and of revela- tion as the natural result of evolutionary process, there can be little authority in the Bible, little consciousness of sin, little realization of God, and little demand for regenerating faith can be invoked by such preachers from their hearers. The result of this leadership has been disastrous in two directions. It has promoted a materialistic and worldly life in the people of the churches, and it has succeeded in fastening on the churches a program of social activities designed to better human conditions without changing man's re- lation to God. We have slipped by easy stages into a rather widely accepted belief in the universal father- hood of God, and brotherhood of man, with all the at- tendant evils of these pernicious doctrines. These doc- trines have been accepted in substitution for the Gos- pel of individual salvation and of a spiritual regen- eration. It would seem apparent to all that if the schools be permitted to continue their drift from the land- marks of the faith they are discounting and discredit- ing all Baptist doctrines. If they can continue their promulgation of a theory of liberty to believe and teach what they will without reference to the things com- 18 BAPTIST DOCTRINES monly accepted among us, soon the whole denomina- tion will be won over to the new theory, or we shall have been driven upon the rock which will divide our forces and make impossible our co-operation in Chris- tian service, if not our continuance in denominational conventional fellowship. Our youth are clamoring for education. Our church- es require trained leadership. Our duty to God and to man demands of us that we fit our children with a training adequate to the demands of the gospel in the coming generation. What are we to do ? How are we to carry on in the face of our present difficulty ? We are being wounded in the house of our friends. We have tried long enough to evade the issue. Some of us cannot escape the conviction that we must go forward to force this issue now lest the faith we hold be destroyed from the earth. We have had every sort of compromise proposed but the consideration of each one of them leaves us reminded anew of the story which came back from the war con- cerning the conversation of the negro private with his young captain on the eve of battle. Said the captain to the private, "George, what are you so afraid for?" "Yes sir, captain" said the boy, "I am not afraid, Sir, only when I goes over the top." Said the captain to him, "You need not be frightened, just remember that all these German bullets are dumdums and they come in a zig-zag course. All you have to do is to run zig-zag and you will miss the bullets and they will miss you." Some days later the captain passing through the field hospital found George rather severely wounded, bandaged and, of course, confined to his bed. He approached him and said, "What's the matter, George, how did all this happen?" "Well, Sir, captain," replied the boy, "the only trouble was that I zigged OPENING ADDRESS 19 when I ought to have zagged." We have reached the opinion that there is no use to zig any more, for we invariably zig when we ought to zag on the doc- trinal, the educational and ecclesiastical problems of our denomination. If the time is not now, it must soon come when by formal action we shall determine a basis of fellowship in faith and in service for our Bap- tist churches. Two proposals are made: First, that we divorce the educational apportionment from our New World Movement, put all the emphasis of our Convention endeavor on the missionary and evangelistic enter- prises purely and simply. That we make more drastic our examination of candidates for the mission field and leave the schools to their own devices and their in- dividual appeal to the denomination for support. We can then the better debate as to the merits of individ- ual schools for support. Our mission enterprises will not be hindered and our churches will be held together at least on this major program of co-operation as they cannot be held together while the educational program now involved holds the middle of the stage and the right of way. The second proposal is that we continue the educa- tional policy now in vogue but adopt a statement of belief to which all teachers in all Baptist educational institutions shall be required to give annual assent in writing, cutting off from denominational support and sponsorship all schools refusing such fellowship of faith. At Denver a curious thing happened. Up till the meeting of the Denver Convention the Educational Board of the Northern Baptist Convention had never received enough money from the churches to carry 20 BAPTIST DOCTKINES itself. Year after year it had invariably come back to the societies for payment of its deficits, but at Denver under the astute leadership of two or three men in- terested primarily in the educational program it success- fully induced the Convention to commit itself to turn over to the Board of Education and the schools under its influence and direction, thirty and two-tenth per cent, of all monies raised through the New World Movement. But this program over-reached itself. More than half of the churches in the Convention are refusing to co-operate. Only about 1800 of the church- es out of the 8000 in the Convention have as many as fifty per cent, of the members contributing at all in support of this movement. From reasons perhaps to- tally different from those impelling the Fundamentals Committee, Mr. Rockefeller has withdrawn from the $100,000,000. fund $15,000,000. reported by the Board of Promotion last year at Buffalo. It is understood that this action was taken because Mr. Rockefeller and those interested with him, believe that the schools should be dealt with separately. Whatever the reason, the action is not only justified, but is imperatively de- sirable. And if the Rockefeller interests may follow this course without losing cast with our denomination- al leaders why may not a Baptist minister or church have the same privilege? The Ecclesiastical Finally, there are anxieties about our ecclesiastical organization — not so much about the organization it- self as concerning the tendencies of the organization. There is a frequently expressed anxiety lest the Board of Promotion become a Board of Control undertaking coercive measures to force co-operation in its pro- OPENING ADDRESS 21 gram and obedience to its mandate. Some have suf- fered, or have imagined they have suffered, in this re- spect. It is charged that denominational secretaries and officers refuse recognition and endorsement of ministers who have not been able to co-operate in full. There is a noticeable pernicious activity on the part of the same secretaries and officers to keep brethren out of Baptist pastorates on account of their conservative doctrinal views so that men are intimidated in their ministry and are led to compromise their message. It should be remembered that Baptist churches are inde- pendent each of the other save in so far as they vol- untarily co-operate. Any coercive measures are antag- onistic to the Baptist principles and obnoxious to the Baptist constituency. Any program presented to the churches which cannot win its way by its inherent reasonableness and righteousness must not be put forward by any coercive measures whatever. There is a grave anxiety lest we entrench a denominational pow- er behind great endowments, established precendents, conventional authority and the prestige of patronage coupled with activities and influences of an army of agents supported by the denomination. We may eas- ily erect an ecclesiastical machine which will by sheer weight of its machinery and educational program so far dominate the ministers of the denomination as to put in jeopardy the freedom of the Gospel itself. We would not cry wolf either too soon or needlessly. But the liberties of no people have ever been lost sudden- ly. The gradual building of the organization, the grad- ual establishment of precedent, the gradual creation of influence, the gradual assumption of authority have preceded the moment when bureaucracy ascended the throne of democracy and liberty sang her swan song. 22 BAPTIST DOCTRINES The tendency of the present day, the insistent views of many leaders in the religious world is toward the coercion of individualism by the sheer weight of mass movements under the leadership of a centralized au- thority. Of this tendency we may well beware. The association of Baptist churches is at best a confederacy. Baptists have ever maintained the right of self-deter- mination. They have ever been the spokesman of in- dividualism. The denominational leaders in office need to be warned that any effort or any indication of an effort toward a centralization of authority or the use of coercion will at once not only arouse resentment but provoke revolt from their leadership. To this end they also need to be advised that men of every phase of theological views within the denomination must be given recognition on denominational programs and in denominational conventions. We still pray for a basis of fraternity, for that pur- ity of heart and clarity of vision that will enable us to see eye to eye, for that oneness of relation to Jesus Christ our Lord which will enable us to work togeth- er in the extension not of our program but of His pro- gram in the world. An increasing materialism, a degenerating immo- rality, a pernicious rationalism are putting a spiritual blight upon the world. Antichristian organizations and movements, pseudo-Christian doctrines are being made the bases of wide-spread propaganda. Rapidly growing anti-christian religious cults are deceiving the guileless. Spiritism, pantheism, socialism, occult- ism, the vain deceits of many philosophies, the mani- fold wisdom of this world, are all in an unholy alliance to spread a spiritual blight over the souls of men unto their destruction the world over. To assuage this OPENING ADDRESS 23 rising tide of death and destruction, the church has but one recourse. She must repent of her apostasy. She must return to the Lord. She must bring forth works meet for repentance and demonstrate once again her first love for the Saviour. The Word of God must be reinstated in the hearts and homes of His peo- ple. The gospel "which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes," must be sound- ed forth with a new clarion note of an inspired au- thority. The person of the Lord Jesus Christ must be exalted as in ancient days. The Christian world must learn again and frequent the path to the secret place of prayer. Family altars must be rebuild'ed. We must tear down the altars dedicated to the worship of a false science in our schools and train our youth of to-day for a spiritual leadership to-morrow. Your brethren on the Committee on Conferences on the Fundamentals earnestly and affectionately voice to you the wish that a new stimulation of in- terest in right doctrine, a new devotion to the preach- ing of the old gospel, a new yielding of authority and reverence to the Word of the revealing God, may promote among us throughout the whole world a re- vival, in which both the churches and the world shall realize anew the presence and the favor of God and the redeeming and sanctifying power of His Chris* and ours. CHAPTER II JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT BY REV. J. R. SAMPEY, D.D., LL.D. JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT ^wT|jHO was Jesus? A hundred answers are pos- (i iQ 1/ sible, every one containing an element of 4J££sl» truth. He was the Prophet of Nazareth, the son of Mary. He was the Son of Man, a title He chose for Himself, indicating His thorough human- ity and at the same time pointing to His Messiah- ship. He was the Son of God in a unique sense, the Only Begotten, entitled to call God His Father as no other man could properly claim sonship to Deity. I am happy to agree perfectly with every one of the New Testament writers in his estimate of our Lord Jesus. It is a beautiful picture of His activities which Mark has given to the world. In this Gospel our Lord is the strong Son of God who goes about doing good and delivering those who are oppressed by the devil. He was acclaimed as God's Beloved Son at His bap- tism. He affirmed that He had authority on earth to forgive sins, and that He is Lord even of the Sabbath day. Mark represents Jesus as saying that the Son of Man would come in clouds, with great power and glory. The story of our Lord's life in the Gospel of Mark is carried forward to the hour of His victory in the resurrection from the dead. If we had only the Gospel of Mark, we could gather from its record of the deeds and words of Jesus enough to establish His Lordship over all creation. As to the first Gospel, it will be sufficient to recall two passages, Matthew 11: 28 BAPTIST DOCTRINES 25-29; 28:18-20. In the first of these passages we are reminded of the Gospel of John. Jesus claims an in- timacy with the Father similar to that described so perfectly in the Gospel of John. He offers Himself as the Teacher of men, and promises rest for the soul. No mere man could properly use words like these. In the Great Commission, Jesus says, "All authority both in heaven and in earth has been given to me," and He links Himself with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the baptismal formula. He also affirms that He will be with all His followers to the end of the age as they go forth to disciple the nations. Luke's Gospel opens with the virgin birth and closes with the ascen- sion of our Lord through the clouds to His seat on high. The patience and grace and gentleness of our Lord are wonderfully portrayed in Luke's story. To him Jesus was the Saviour of mankind, infinitely com- passionate unto sinners, especially outcasts like the publicans and harlots. James, author of the Epistle, and probably the brother of Jesus, called himself a "bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ." James thus lifts Jesus to the rank of Deity, and confesses himself a slave of the Lord Jesus. Jude also introduces himself as a bondservant of Jesus Christ. For Peter the resurrec- tion of Jesus from the dead meant everything. While Jesus lay in the tomb Peter was in despair ; but when he met Jesus face to face after the resurrection he came into an experience of life and hope and victory that could only be likened to a resurrection from death to life. He speaks of our Lord Jesus as being "on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made sub- ject to Him" (I Peter 3:22). It is perfectly manifest JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 29 that the author of II Peter regarded Jesus as God, "Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained an equally precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you, in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord" (II Peter 1:1,2). Paul thus describes the Redeemer of men : "Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature ; because in Him were all things created, in the heavens, and on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities ; all things have been created through Him, and for Him ; and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the Head of the Body, the Church ; who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead ; in order that He may become in all things pre-eminent. Because it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell ; and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross ; through Him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the heavens" (Col. 1:15-20). Paul's esti- mate of our Lord Jesus in Philippians 2:5-11, guaran- tees His deity as well as His humanity. "Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus ; who, existing in the form of God, accounted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped ; but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, becom- ing in the likeness of men ; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave Him the name which is above every name ; that in the name of Je- 30 BAPTIST DOCTEINES sus every knee should bow, of beings in heaven, and of beings on earth, and of beings under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." The author of the letter to the Hebrews gives us at the outset his conception of our Lord. "God, hav- ing in many parts and in many ways spoken of old to the fathers in the prophets, in these last days spoke to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the ages ; who, being the brightness of His glory and the impress of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had made a purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high ; having become so much superior to the angels as He has inherited a more excellent name than they" (Heb. 1:1-4). The transition to the Gospel of John is quite easy. The doctrine of the Logos may sound somewhat phil- osophical, but the conception of the nature and dignity of the Lord Jesus is substantially the same as that of Paul and the other New Testament writers. Let us refresh our memory of the prologue of John's Gospel : "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him ; and apart from Him was nothing made that has been made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth ; and we beheld His glory, a glory as of the only begotten from the Father. John testifies of Him; and cries, saying, This was He of whom I said, He that comes after me has become before me, because He was JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 31 before me. Because out of His fullness we all re- ceived, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses ; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God ; God only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, He declared Him" (John 1:1-4, 14-18). If we may sum up in plain words the substance of the New Testament teaching as to the person of our Lord Jesus, it would run about as follows : The Son of God, existing in the form of God and in perfect fellowship with the Father, freely sur- rendered Himself to the task of redeeming men from sin. Though He was rich in His heavenly state, He freely emptied Himself of His heavenly glory, and became flesh, being born of the virgin Mary and brought up in comparative poverty in the home of the carpenter of Nazareth. He became man in the fullest sense of the word, possessing a human body and a human mind. He was subject to temptation like all other men, and won a complete victory over the tempter throughout every period of His earthly career. He died on the cross as our Redeemer, suffer- ing in our stead and' purchasing our redemption by His blood. He rose from the dead on the third morn- ing, and after forty days ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high. He describes Himself as the Son of Man, the Messiah of the Jews, the Saviour of mankind. He is in possession of all authority in Heav- en and in earth, and is winning men back to fellowship with the Father. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit was sent down to carry forward in the hearts of His fol- lowers the work of human redemption. The mission- ary program which He projected continues to the present day and will continue until His return the 32 BAPTIST DOCTEINES second time on clouds of glory. This is the person whose attitude to the Old Testament we wish to in- vestigate. If we can discover what He thought of the Old Testament and what He taught concerning it, it would seem that for all Christians some questions would be settled. But an objector may suggest that the knowledge of Jesus in the days of His flesh was limited : might He not therefore be mistaken in His estimate of the He- brew Scriptures? If in so fundamental a matter our Lord could make mistakes, surely His authority as a religious teacher would be seriously undermined. He could not be all that the New Testament writers think Him to be, if it could be proved that He was mistaken in His teaching concerning the Scriptures which foretold His death and resurrection. We might readily grant that our Lord Jesus, during His earthly min- istry, did not have in His human mind knowledge concerning all the scientific achievements of recent centuries and many other matters that had nothing to do with His mission to earth. But it would be a serious thing indeed for Him not to know the truth about the Old Testament Scriptures. In this connec- tion, three passages of Scripture require brief consid- eration, inasmuch as each of them has been quoted in favor of the theory that the man Jesus might have been ignorant as to the authorship of the Pentateuch and other Old Testament writings. We invite attention first to Luke 2:52: "And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men." Just as the body of the boy Jesus grew and became strong, so also His human mind ad- vanced in wisdom. Surely we have no reason here to put the emphasis on the limitation of His knowledge, JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 33 but rather on His marvelous progress in wisdom. Luke describes the child Jesus as "filled with wisdom." He enjoyed the divine favor as no other child in history ever enjoyed the divine blessing. His progress in wisdom was rapid and unusual. He was precocious, in the best sense of the word. There is no hint here of ignorance, and the language is a thousand miles from intimating that He would venture to pose as a teacher of things He did not fully understand. Perhaps the most frequently quoted passage in fa- vor of the theory that Jesus possessed no exceptional knowledge in the realm of the higher criticism of the Old Testament and in other departments of inquiry is His own language as found in Mark 13 :32 and Mat- thew 24:36: "But concerning that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in Heaven, nor the Son, but the Father." Our Lord Jesus here confesses ig- norance of the exact hour of the end of the Messianic age. He affirms the fact of His return in clouds of glory, but frankly states that He does not know the exact hour. The notable thing about this passage of Scripture is the fact that our Lord places His knowl- edge above that of men and of angels. Even here He gives Himself a unique dignity in the realm of knowl- edge. His words have a value so great that they can not possibly pass away or fail of fulfillment. The three Synoptic Gospels agree in His startling claim, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away." Surely we are brought face to face here with a person who claims supernatural knowledge. Please let us not forget that this striking statement immediately preceded His confession of ig- norance of the exact hour of His return. Human frailty tempts us to speak in realms in which our 34 BAPTIST DOCTEINES knowledge is imperfect: our Lord Jesus expressly avoids an affirmation in that exalted realm of knowl- edge over which the Father alone presides. Jesus was sure of what He knew, and He was equally aware of the one thing, or possibly the few things, in the re- ligious realm to which His knowledge in the days of His earthly life did not attain. Taken in the light of the context our Lord's confession of ignorance of one thing really lifts Him into a class all by Himself in the height and depth and width of His knowledge of all things pertaining to religion. The third passage adduced to bring the knowledge of Jesus strictly within the confines possible to a hu- man teacher in the days of Tiberius Caesar is found in Philippians 2:5-11. It is contended by many that the Son of God emptied Himself of all His divine at- tributes, including omniscience, and that He knew no more than any other diligent student in religion could know in the time in which He lived. Let us observe that nothing is expressly said concerning the matter of knowledge in this context. Paul affirms that Christ Jesus existed in the form of God, and that He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant, became in the likeness of men, and that He humbled Himself even to the death on the cross. We may not read into this account of our Lord's voluntary humiliation of Him- self the idea that He was filled with human ignorance. The fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily. He was filled' with wisdom from His childhood up. In every stage of His life on earth He had ample wis- dom for all practical needs. He was at no time left to grope in ignorance. He freely gave up His heav- enly riches and honors, in order that He might lift us out of our poverty into His glorious wealth. During JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 35 the period of His preparation for His public ministry He grew in wisdom, but at no time was He caught in the meshes of ignorance. His knowledge and wis- dom were ample for all His needs as His life-work unfolded. We call attention to the fact that this great passage in Philippians affirms the pre-existence of our Lord Jesus in the form of God, and that after His voluntary humiliation of Himself, He is highly exalted by God, and given the name which is above every name. There is not the slightest hint in the language of the apostle that human ignorance ever interfered with the truth of any statement of fact or doctrine by our Lord. If with confidence we may accept the teaching of our Lord Jesus in all matters on which He chooses to speak, let us turn our attention to His attitude to the Old Testament. It would be a matter of great in- terest, if we might know positively whether the boy Jesus had access to a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures. Of one thing we may be sure ; He was a constant at- tendant on the worship of the synagogue. Even de- spised Nazareth had a house of worship in which on the Sabbath day the people would assemble to hear the Law and the Prophets read and to offer prayer to the God' of Abraham. We know that it was the habit of Jesus to attend worship in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. Throughout His boyhood and young manhood He listened attentively every week to the reading of the Law and the Prophets. Possibly the rabbi at Nazareth taught the reverent boy how to read the Hebrew Scriptures. He may have had ac- cess to a copy of the Greek translation of the He- brew Bible. No one can doubt that He would seek eve- ry opportunity to learn more perfectly the Holy Scrip- 36 BAPTIST DOCTEINES tures. When as a boy of twelve He was found among the doctors of the law in the Temple at Jerusalem, He was asking questions about the meaning of the Scriptures. Men marveled at His wonderful insight, as displayed by His questions and His answers. He let no opportunity of learning more of the Scriptures go by unimproved. From His mother's lips He no doubt heard many of the Bible stories and reflected on their meaning. Even at twelve years of age He is al- ready conscious of a unique relation with God. He speaks of "My Father's house," or "My Father's busi- ness." In whatever ways Jesus may have acquired His knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures, we know that when He came to Nazareth to speak to His neighbors and friends, He read from the roll of Isaiah the description of the prophet of consolation, and claimed that the words were fulfilled that day in Him. He was never at a loss as to the facts of the Old Testa- ment or their significance. He was conscious of being an authoritative interpreter of the Law and the Prophets. Our Lord gave sweeping endorsement of the He- brew Scriptures in the Sermon on the Mount. He expressly states that He did not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets, but the rather to complete them. He affirms with positiveness, "Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the Law until all things come to pass" (Matt. 5:18). In John 10:35 our Lord makes an in- cidental and parenthetical reference to the authority of the Old Testament. It is evident that His own at- titude toward the Hebrew Scriptures here crops out incidentally, in connection with the quotation from JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 37 Psalm 82 :6, "The Scriptures can not be broken," said Jesus. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus exalts the value and power of the Old Testament by affirming, "If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if one rise from the dead" (Luke 16:31). This is a remarkable testimony to the sufficiency of Moses and the Prophets as God's means of winning men to faith in Himself. As Jesus drew near to the cross He interpreted to His disciples the Scriptures which foretold His death and resurrection. He constantly affirmed that the Scriptures must be fulfilled. Thus Jesus submitted Himself to the authority and power of the Scriptures which foretold His sufferings and death. He com- manded Peter in Gethsemane to return his sword into its place, asserting that He could call upon His Fa- ther, and He would send Him more than twelve le- gions of angels ; but in that event the Scriptures could not be fulfilled, and so Jesus refuses to ask the Fa- ther for angelic deliverers. In two particulars our Lord Jesus seems to have as- sisted in the fulfillment of specific Old Testament pre- dictions. He sent two disciples to bring the ass on which He rode in triumph into Jerusalem. This was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, "Say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King comes to thee, Meek, and riding on an ass, And on a eolt, the foal of a beast of burden" (Matt. 21:1-5; Zech. 9:9). Again, in the agony toward the close of the cruci- fixion, Jesus exclaims, "I thirst." Some one put a 38 BAPTIST DOCTEINES sponge on hyssop and brought it to His mouth. Thus was fulfilled the language of Psalm 69:21. But did Jesus find no fault with the Old Testament? Does He endorse all the ceremonial law and all the ethical standards of all the leaders in Israel's history? In reply, one thinks readily of the criticism of the lav/ of Moses in the matter of divorce. In reply to the question why Moses commanded to give a bill of di- vorcement, Jesus says, "Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it has not been so" (Matt. 19:8). Mark relates that our Lord appealed from the law of Moses to God's original plan for a permanent union between husband and wife. It is evident that our Lord Jesus recognized imperfection in the law of Moses. God allowed Moses to lower the standard in the matter of divorce, because of the hardness of men's hearts and their inability to rise to a perfect standard. Our Lord Jesus restores marriage to God's original purpose, and forbids divorce for any cause other than impurity of life. It is remarkable that Jesus gave such unqualified endorsement to the Hebrew Scriptures. We know that modern critics of the Old Testament inveigh bit- terly against many deeds in Old Testament times that are said to have received divine approval. Many critics speak of Old Testament ethical standards with scant respect. Is it not remarkable that the Teacher of teachers, frank and outspoken as He was, did not ex- press Himself on such topics as the slaughter of the Canaanites, the frequent use of the death penalty in the law of Moses, the extensive slaughter of their enemies by the Jews in the story of Esther, etc. Jesus studied the Old Testament for His own per- JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 39 sonal use. He was not only born of a woman but also born under the law ; and He studied the Scriptures in order that He might submit Himself to the will of God therein revealed. Hence His intense interest in the discussion with the teachers in the Temple on His first visit to Jerusalem. When the great temptation assailed Him just after His baptism He parried the blows of the adversary with words drawn from Deu- teronomy. I have been told by a great Jewish lawyer that his children regarded the repeated exhortations in Deuteronomy as tiresome; but here was a young man who hid the words of this great book in His heart, that He might not sin against the loving God. Three times over He defeated the devil by apt quota- tions from the earnest words of the great lawgiver. The Messianic element in the Hebrew Scriptures engaged the earnest attention of the Christ through- out His earthly life. He meditated long and earnestly on the pictures of the innocent sufferer in Psalm 22 and in Isaiah 53. He found in them and other pas- sages the prediction of His own sufferings on the cross. He was not content with a superficial survey of the Messianic passages : they were His meditation when alone with the Father in midnight vigil. He felt in His soul that these Scriptures must be ful- filled in His own experiences, and He courageously faced persecution and death. On the cross He voiced His sense of loneliness in the opening outcry of Psalm 22, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" A few moments later He surrendered His spirit in words drawn from Psalm 31 :5, "Into Thy hands I commend My spirit" (Luke 23:46). The Old Testa- ment was the Bible of our Lord' Jesus, to which He turned for guidance and comfort, and He loved it as 40 BAPTIST DOCTBINES much as did the author of Ps&lm 119. He had no dis- position to point out defects in it, though indicating when it became necessary that Moses made a conces- sion to human weakness in the matter of divorce. If the occasion had arisen, He might have spoken similarly of the laws concerning slavery. The Old Testament did not attain finality in its social legisla- tion. Jesus completed and carried to perfection the ethical precepts and standards of the Old Testament. Much of the ceremonial law was fulfilled in Christ, and the Christian, even though a Jew, is no longer required to observe the ceremonial and ritual laws of the Pentateuch. The whole dietary system of the Pentateuch was set aside as no longer binding when Jesus announced the principle that nothing from with- out can defile a man, but only what proceeds out of an evil heart (Mark 7:14-23). The evangelist's com- ment on this striking statement of Jesus indicates its revolutionary character. "This He said making all foods clean." The teaching of Paul that circumcision avails nothing was already implicit in the teaching of our Lord. The ethical standards of the Old Testament were distinctly elevated and thus completed by our Lord by the internality of His ethical demands. Jesus for- bade the lustful look, anger, envy, pride and the whole brood of evil thoughts nesting in the souls of men who imagined that they were keeping the command- ments of God, because not guilty of overt acts of sin. Our Lord made extensive use of the Old Testament in His teaching, whether addressing the multitudes or teaching His disciples in private. At Nazareth He read a passage from Isaiah as a text for His discourse on the gracious ministry of the Messiah (Luke 4:16- JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 41 21 ). He frequently referred to the events of the Old Testament history for illustration and argument, and He made many quotations from the poetical and prophetical books. He was at home in the Bible, and delighted to draw on it for illustrations in His public teaching. It may be worth while to indicate the wide range of allusion to events in the Old Testament nar- ratives. He tells the hypocritical scribes and Phari- sees that all the righteous blood shed on the earth shall come on them, "from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar" (Matt. 23:35). It seems reasonably clear that Jesus thought of the blood of Abel as actually shed by his wicked brother. He also refers to the story of Noah and the flood as illustrating the manner of His own coming. "And as it came to pass in the days of Noah, so will it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating, were drinking, were marrying, were giv- ing in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all" (Luke 17:26,27; comp. Matt. 24:37-39). There is not the slightest hint that He was merely using the incident as story material, without meaning to ac- cept it as historical. In our Lord's discourse as re- ported in Luke another illustration is drawn from the miracles of Genesis. "Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of Lot ; they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded ; but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all: af- ter the same manner shall it be in the day that the Son of Man is revealed" (Luke 17:28-30). The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is often used by Jesus as a 42 BAPTIST DOCTRINES warning to His contemporaries (Matt. 10:15; 11:21-24; Luke 10:12-14). He even calls attention to the singu- lar fate of Lot's wife (Luke 17:32). He accepts the story of the giving of the manna in the wilderness (John 6:32,48). He implies approval of the view cur- rent in His time that Moses gave the law (John 7:10). He expressly says of Moses, "He wrote concerning Me" (John 5:46). He makes allusion to the law for the cleans- ing of a man suspected of being a leper (Leviticus, chapter 14; Matt. 8:4). He also reminds His hearers that the law in Numbers 28 :9, 10 required of the priests work on the Sabbath day (Matt. 12:5). He likened His own elevation on the cross to the elevation of the brazen serpent by Moses in the wilderness : just as faith in God's appointed means of salvation brought healing to Israelites bitten by the fiery serpents so would faith in the crucified Christ confer the bless- ing of eternal life (John 3:14, 15). Jesus calls atten- tion to the law in Deuteronomy 19:15 requiring two witnesses to establish any matter in court (John 8:17). He reminds the critics of His disciples of the eating of the shewbread by David when he had need and was hungry (Mark 2:25,26). He says that the lilies of the field surpass Solomon in all his glory (Matt. 6:20). He remembers that the Queen of the South came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon (Luke 11:31). He reminds his neighbors at Naz- areth of the stories of Elijah and Elisha, how the heavens were shut up for three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land, and how Elisha cleansed Naaman the Syrian of his leprosy (Luke 4:24-27). If any story of the super- natural were needed to fill to overflowing the cup of wrath of the modern rationalistic interpreter of the JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 43 Bible, surely the narrative of Jonah would suffice. Both Matthew and Luke report our Lord as referring to the sign of Jonah (Matt. 12:39-41; 16:4; Luke 11:29- 32). Matthew quotes Jesus as explaining the sign: "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster ; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Both evangelists report our Lord as saying, "The men of Nineveh will stand up in the judgment with this generation, and will condemn it; because they repent- ed at the preaching of Jonah ; and behold, One great- er than Jonah is here." It is evident that Jesus called attention to the physical miracle of the prophet in the belly of the great fish and the moral miracle of the conversion of the men of wicked Nineveh. He brings these wonderful incidents into relation with his own approaching death and resurrection and the unbelief of his contemporaries. Our Lord seems to have accepted the historicity of supernatural events without the slightest difficulty. Being Himself a miracle, and possessing the power to work miracles, He did not call in question the miracles of the Old Testament. Through Moses God gave the manna, and through the same great prophet God provided a remedy for the people who were bitten by fiery ser- pents ; through Elijah came the long drought and the raising of the widow's son ; through Elisha cleansing came to Naaman, the Syrian leper. He who was one with the Father, and who had voluntarily become flesh and dwelt among men, who was both the Son of God and the Son of Man, had no difficulty with the wonders of the Old Testament. The unbelief of men was a matter that made Him marvel time and again. Inasmuch as all things were made by Him, 44 BAPTIST DOCTRINES He never became enmeshed in the physical universe and the laws governing its action. Through faith and prayer and unbroken fellowship with the Father He kept all things subject to His holy will. Wherever He found faith in men there was no limit to what He could do for them. Nothing but unbelief in others limited the outgoing of His power to heal and to help. Jesus made frequent quotation from the Old Testa- ment. Of all the evangelists, Matthew has most fully preserved for us the sayings of our Lord Jesus. He has also given special attention to preserving the quotations made by our Lord from the Old Testa- ment. Possibly he made notes during our Lord's min- istry; at any rate he has taken great delight in hand- ing on to after generations the very words of Jesus. He was also greatly interested in the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in the experiences of Jesus. Mark has a keen interest in the deeds of Jesus, and reports scarcely any sayings not found in Matthew. Luke and John preserved several quotations not found in Matthew. It might be helpful to make a rough classification of our Lord's quotations from the Old Testament. 1. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus quotes pas- sages from the Old Testament as texts for the differ- ent sections of His discourse. He first gives an Old Testament quotation, sometimes with the rabbinic ad- ditions, and then proceeds to give His own higher ethical teaching. Thus He quotes the sixth and sev- enth commandments as texts from which He preach- es on murder and adultery. He completes or fills full the Law by insisting that anger or a lustful look makes one guilty in the eyes of God (Matt. 5:21-31). He then proceeds to quote from Deuteronomy 24:1-3; JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 45 but at this point He criticises the lower social standard of the Mosaic Law. He has no room for divorce in His kingdom, unless it be for the one cause of per- sonal impurity. Thus our Lord claims to be superior to Moses. It is worthy of note however that He is merely going back to God's original thought for the family when He forbids divorce. Jesus states the essence of the teaching in Leviticus 19:12 against false swearing, and then proceeds to enjoin His followers from the foolish habit of taking oaths. We may in- fer from His own example in answering the high priest on oath that it is not wrong to take an oath in a court of justice. Jesus quotes the "lex talionis," found in codes of laws from the days of Hammurabi down to the present. This law of retaliation is found in Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:20; Deuteronomy 19:21. In op- position to this attitude of mind, Jesus preaches the doctrine of non-resistance. He tells us that it is bet- ter to turn the other cheek than to strike back. At this point the teaching of our Lord is so high that His followers have scarcely had the courage of faith to put in practice what they believe He really meant to teach. Our Lord quotes from Leviticus 19:18 the com- mandment which He regarded as second only to the commandment to love God with the whole heart. He puts alongside the command to love our neighbor the rabbinic addition to hate our enemy. This gives Him the opportunity to make a most exalted demand of His followers when He says, "Love your enemies, pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven ; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." Throughout the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks 46 BAPTIST DOCTEINES with a note of authority, putting His teaching in op- position to that of the ancients. He is conscious of superiority even over Moses the lawgiver. Rabbinic additions to the Mosaic Law are brushed aside with scant courtesy ; but it is evident that He regards with respect the precepts of the Mosaic Law. He express- ly disclaims any intention of destroying the Law or the Prophets. It is His purpose rather to complete and perfect the ancient revelation. We may be sure that the language of the opening- verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews correctly repre- sent the attitude of Jesus toward the Old Testament. He knew full well that this ancient revelation was giv- en in many parts or fragments and in many styles, and that it did not attain finality; but He also knew that God spoke to the fathers through the prophets. Be- cause of this divine element throughout the Old Testament, Jesus always treated the Hebrew Scrip- tures with great respect. 2. Let us turn next to passages quoted by our Lord for the purpose of correcting current evils. When the Pharisees found fault with the disciples for eating without ceremonial cleansing of their hands, Jesus re- plied, "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God, for the sake of your tradition? For God said, Honor thy father and thy mother, and he that speaks evil of father or mother let him surely die. But ye say, Whoever says to his father or his mother, It is a gift to God', whatever thou mightest be profited with from me, shall not honor his father; and ye made void the Word of God, for the sake of your tra- dition" (Matt. 15:3-6). Jesus gives a summary of the commandments found in Exodus 20:12; 21:17; Leviticus 20:9. Selfishness usually finds some way to JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 47 evade the divine requirement. The scribes imagined that the duty to provide for parents in old age would be subordinate to the claims of religion; hence a son could evade the necessity of aiding a needy father by merely stating that his property had been dedicated to God. This Rabbinic custom of Corban thus gave opportunity for evading the divine commandment. When the question of divorce was presented to Je- sus by the Pharisees, He appealed to the story of cre- ation recorded in Genesis 1:27; 2:24. God meant for the marriage relation to be permanent : "What there- fore God joined together let no man put asunder" (Matt. 19:4-6). W r hen our Lord chased the money-changers from the temple He quoted Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. "My house shall be called a house of prayer ; but ye are making it a den of robbers" (Matt. 21:13). The example of our Lord in using Scripture for correcting current evils, and for rebuking evil doers, is worthy of imitation by all who preach and teach in His name. 3. Passages were quoted by our Lord in debate with His foes to show the error of their position. When the Jews accused Him of blasphemy because He made Himself God, Jesus replied, "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If He called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture can not be broken, do ye say of Him, whom the Father sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphem- est because I said, I am God's Son?" (John 10:34-36). Jesus here quotes from Psalm 82 :6. We do not un- derstand Him to mean that He disclaims for Himself deity, but that His accusers are without excuse, be- cause in their own Scriptures mere men had been de- scribed as gods. How much more right, then, had God's Son to claim absolute unity with the Father! 48 BAPTIST DOCTBINES When the chief priests and the scribes wished Jesus to rebuke the children for crying in the temple "Ho- sanna to the Son of David," Jesus replied, "Did ye never read, From the mouth of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise?" (Matt. 21:16). Jesus here gives the substance of Psalm 8:2. When the Sadducees came to Jesus with their question about the woman who had been married to seven brothers in succession, Jesus replied, "Ye err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken to you by God, say- ing, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ? God is not the God of dead men, but of living men" (Matt. 22:29-32). No wonder the multitudes were astonished at words like these. Never before had they heard a religious teacher who could bring out in such striking fashion the very heart of a passage of Scripture. If the patriarchs had ceased to be at their death, Jehovah would not have pro- claimed Himself centuries later as the God of men who had long since crumbled to dust. The resurrection and immortality were implicit in such a statement on the part of the loving God. In order to correct the low estimate of the Messiah as a mere earthly king on David's throne, Jesus asked the Pharisees, "What think ye concerning the Christ? Whose son is He? They say to Him, David's. He says to them, How then does David in the Spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on my right hand, Until I put thine enemies under thy feet? JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 49 If then David calls Him Lord, how is He His Son?" (Matt. 22:42-45). There has been much debate among modern scholars as to the validity of our Lord's argu- ment on the basis of the quotation from Psalm 110:1. Of course Jesus might have used the argument "ad hominem." Arguing on premises accepted by the Phar- isees, namely that David was the author of Psalm 110, he could have proved that their conception of the Mes- siah as merely David's Son needed revision, in view of the alleged fact that David called Him Lord. I have always risen from a study of our Lord's use of Psalm 110 with the conviction that Jesus Himself ac- cepted the Davidic authorship of this great prophetic Psalm. The arguments against the Davidic author- ship have always seemed to me inconclusive. In language, style and thought it is in every way worthy of Israel's great King. 4. Passages quoted' for the purpose of guiding in- quirers. When asked by the rich young ruler to in- dicate which commandments he must keep in order to enter into life, Jesus quoted the commandments from the fifth to the ninth inclusive and added, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matt. 19:18, 19). Jesus did not indicate in His summary of the com- mandments the tenth ; but when asked by the young man, "What lack I yet?" Jesus told him to sell all his proper- ty and give it to the poor. This was perhaps going beyond the confines of the commandment against cov- eting. But for the command of Jesus, the young man might have retained all his property without having broken the tenth commandment ; but evidently he was in love with his wealth. Jesus had a right to ask him to renounce all his wealth and to join the inner circle of His disciples, in order that he might invest his life 50 BAPTIST DOCTRINES wholly in the Kingdom of God. Unfortunately the young man could not stand the test. When a lawyer asked Jesus to name the great com- mandment in the Law, Jesus replied, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. A second is like it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matt. 22:37-39). The first great commandment is found in Deuteronomy 6:5, and the second in Leviticus 19:18. With spirit- ual intuition, Jesus brought together these two widely- separated precepts and made them the foundation of all His religious and ethical teaching. 5. The largest class of passages remains to be con- sidered, viz., those foreshadowing the Messiah and His times. Speaking of John the Baptist, Jesus identifies him with the messenger who was to prepare the way before the Messiah (Matt. 11:10). Compare Malachi 3 : 1. In explaining why He spoke to the multitudes in parables, our Lord quoted Isaiah 6:9,10, softening somewhat the dramatic imperatives in the Hebrew text. Our Lord and the apostles naturally used the Septuagint, the common Greek translation of the Scriptures current in their day. In His debate with the Jews in Jerusalem, Jesus quotes substantially from Isaiah 54:13, to prove that only those who had been taught of God can really become His disciples (John 6:45). Denouncing the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocritical evasion of God's laws, Jesus quotes in a rather free manner, from Isaiah 29:13: "This people honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. But in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines precepts of men." (Matt. 15:8,9). JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 51 In His discussions with the Pharisees during the last week of His earthly ministry Jesus quoted Psalm 118: 22, 23. He evidently meant to teach that He Himself was the stone which the builders had rejected. But the Lord would yet make Him the head of the corner (Matt. 21:42). In His apocalyptic discourse in Mat- thew 24, Jesus refers to the abomination of desola- tion, spoken of in Daniel 11:31 and 12:11. He indi- cates that this abomination of desolation will be seen in connection with the disasters preceding the destruc- tion of Jerusalem. In the treachery of Judas, one of the twelve, Jesus saw the fulfillment of Psalm 41 :9 : "He that eats the loaf with Me lifted up his heel against Me" (John 13:18). In the unnatural hatred of Jesus by His enemies He saw a fulfillment of Psalms 35:19 and 69:4. "They hated Me without a cause" (John 15:25). Our Lord saw in the scattering of the disciples on the night of His arrest a fulfillment of Zechariah 13:7: "I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered abroad" (Matt. 26:31). As in other quo- tations, there are slight verbal variations between the language in the Old Testament prophets, and the quotation in the New Testament. Perhaps the great- est single chapter in the Old Testament describing the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow, is Isaiah 53. According to Luke 22:37, Jesus recognized His approaching death on the cross be- tween malefactors as a fulfillment of the prophecy, "And He was reckoned with the lawless" (Is. 53:12). Just before He expired on the cross, Jesus cried out in the words of Psalm 22:1, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Matt. 27:46). A few mo- ments later He surrendered His soul to God in the 52 BAPTIST DOCTRINES words of Psalm 31 :5, "Into Thy hands I commend My spirit." From the use made of the Old Testament by our Lord Jesus we may learn to prize the Hebrew Scrip- tures more highly than most modern scholars seem inclined to do. One rises from the study of certain modern critical commentaries with the feeling that the writer has fouled his own nest, and that the game was hardly worth the candle. If the critic's conclusions are correct, why waste so much time on the study of literature of such inferior type? Jesus always treated the Old Testament with great respect. To Him it was the sword of the Spirit, with which He overcame the tempter. The Spirit of revelation in the Old Testament prophets foretold His coming and many of the experiences through which He would pass in redeeming men from sin. The divine element in the Hebrew Scriptures appealed to Jesus powerful- ly. Whatever of imperfection He may have found in the Old Testament, he refrained from any sweeping criticism that would discredit it for His followers. His own teachings tower above those of Old Testa- ment prophets and wise men. A supreme revelation of the Father's will was made in the life and teach- ing of the Son of God. The Christian must try all things by Christ. Whatever is found in the pages of the Old Testament that has been made inoperative by the example or teaching of our Lord Jesus and His apostles, is no longer to be accepted as an author- itative guide to one's conduct. If we imitate the great men of the Old Testament, it must be in the elements of character which received the approval of our Lord Jesus. If they move on a lower plane, we are not permitted to descend from the example and JESUS AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 53 teaching of Jesus, to keep company with any ancient worthy, no matter how great he may have been in his day and generation. The Bible slopes upward, reach- ing its culmination in our Lord Jesus. The apostles whose minds were opened by Him that they might understand the Scriptures carried forward His method of interpretation. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit these men have given us, in the Gospels and the Epistles, the interpretation of the Messianic ele- ment in the Old Testament, substantially as Jesus interpreted it to them in the period between His resurrection and His ascension. Jesus would no doubt approve the judgment of Paul as to the value of the Old Testament: "All Scripture is inspired of God, and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correc- tion, for instruction in righteousness ; that the man of God may be complete, completely furnished to eve- ry good work (II Tim. 3:16,17). CHAPTER III THE AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT BY REV. JACOB HEINRICH, D.D. THE AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT tfV^LATO lamented that he was adrift on a raft up- 7 WJ. on a sea with no rudder, no star to guide him ; £J2^ yet he, pagan though he was, ventured the hope that in good time "the gods would give us a staunch boat to sail in." This was but the expression of a universal instinct. If there is a God He must reveal Himself to His children. Intuition and reason unite in demanding that somewhere in the world there be a clear and authoritative word of God. The absolute uniqueness and divine authority of the Bible are not based on the fact of its being one of the most ancient sources of history, or a treasure-house of literature, or a matchless code of ethics, but on the fact that it is the Word of God and a revelation of God. Its essence is a record of God drawing near to man in the way of grace and encouraging him to hope in His mercy through a mediator. The achieve- ment of unity in Christ between man and' God is the most stupendously significant event in the history of the universe, and it is with this the Bible is pre- eminently concerned. Man's intellectual and moral nature has become alienated from God, enfeebled and depraved. It therefore needs an authoritative and helpful revelation of moral and religious truth of a higher sort than that to which it can attain by the use of its unaided powers. Such a revelation is contained in the Old and New Testaments, which accordingly 58 BAPTIST DOCTBINES move in the moral and religious realm rather than in the scientific, historical or social spheres. The facts involved in inspiration are these as sug- gested by Garvie : "Nature, history, conscience, rea- son are so constituted that they show what God is; but man has not received this knowledge in its com- pleteness, for he does not know God as He makes Himself known. His receptivity of the divine revela- tion must be restored. God must, on the one hand, so act on him as to make him capable of this purified consciousness ; and on the other hand, that there may be continuity in his spiritual development. This con- sciousness of God must be mediated by a progressive purifying of his consciousness of self and the world. This action of God on the nature of man we call in- spiration." In our present attempt to speak mainly regarding the authenticity and authority of the New Testa- ment no disparagement is intended of the Old Testa- ment writings. Both Testaments belong together. They form one complete unit and they stand and fall together. What Augustine said fifteen centuries ago is still true to-day: "The New Testament is in the Old contained and the Old Testament is by the New explained." The Old Testament is not perfect with- out the New and the New Testament is incompre- hensible without the Old. We do not recognize dif- ferent degrees of inspiration, though there may be different degrees of value. Each part in its connection with the rest is made completely true, and complete- ness has no degrees. Christ, Paul, and the evangel- ists agree in regarding the Old Testament as the fruit- ful soil in which the New had its roots ; but the fruit has a value above that of the chemical elements of AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORITY OF N. T. 59 which it is composed. Both the Saviour and His apos- tles attest in superabundant measure the divine au- thority of the Old Testament by directly adopting the views current at the time as to the sacredness of the Old Testament Scripture, by repeatedly making various portions of it their final appeal in argument, by direct assertions that it was the word of God, or was spoken by the Holy Spirit, and by refraining from attempts to correct or criticize any portion of the Scripture then held sacred, though freely crit- icizing the traditional views of their times. This estab- lishes the divine authority of the Old Testament as the foundation for the New. "God having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets of diverse portions and in diverse manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son." Thus Christ the incarnate Word of God is also the author and medium of the written Word of God. Modern criticism has largely centered around the genuineness, historicity, credibility, and consequent- ly around the authority of the New Testament writ- ings. Hence their authenticity and divine author- ity need special emphasis and reaffirmation at the present time. Without fear of contradiction it can be said that although the twenty-seven books consti- tuting the New Testament were diverse in origin and purpose, and although small sections of the Church, or individual writers, have had their doubts as to the canonical authority of some of them, yet the Church as a whole has never recognized as authoritative Scrip- ture any other books than those now found in the New Testament. From a very early date in the second cen- tury the New Testament Canon has been a fixed quantity, even though the formal recognition of the CO BAPTIST DOCTRINES twenty-seven books as a distinct and definite collec- tion cannot be found until the time of the Council of Laodicea, 363 A. D. Westcott in his "Canon of the New Testament" shows how "the formal declaration of the Canon was not by any means an immediate and necessary consequence of its practical settle- ment." The books of the New Testament natural- ly, (or may we not say supernaturally ?) gravitated to- gether. The Church, while allowing an ecclesiastical use of some of the so-called apocryphal books, such as the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, and others, never allowed a canonical authority to any others than those now in the New Testament. The Canon grew by virtue of the inherent divine authority of those books that came to constitute it, and it be- came fixed rather by the superintending power of its divine Inspirer than by any formal edict of the church. As Prof. Salmon writes, "It is a remarkable fact that we have no early interference of church-au- thority in the making of a Canon; no Council discussed this subject; no formal decisions were made. The Canon seems to have shaped itself." The early councils sim- ply recognized the books which bore in themselves the marks of their authoritativeness. The doubts entertained regarding the so-called anti- legomena had their grounds either in the scrupulous care which the early Christians exercised under the guidance of that Spirit who first inspired the books and who enabled them to separate the genuine writ- ings from the spurious, or in the prejudices of heretics who found their contents contrary to their false views. While there is practical unanimity regarding the authenticity of the Synoptic Gospels, the authorship of John has been hotly contested. In ancient times AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORITY OF N. T. 61 the "Alogi," which is a nickname with the double meaning of "deniers of the doctrine of the Logos," and "men without reason" cast doubt upon its author- ship, and in modern days those who regard its testi- mony to the deity of Christ as objectionable reject it as unauthentic. Dr. Carl Hase in his "Life of Jesus" frankly stated that his aim was to represent a purely human life, founded upon purely human writings. Har- nack in his book on the "Essence of Christianity" brushes the testimony of John's Gospel aside as un- essential. Mr. Norton, however, in his richly sugges- tive work on the "Genuineness of the Gospels" says : "About the end of the second century the four Gos- pels were reverenced as sacred books by a commun- ity diffused over the world, composed of men of dif- ferent nations and languages. There were, to say the least sixty thousand copies of them in existence; they were read in the churches of Christians ; they were continually quoted and appealed to as of the highest authority; their reputation was as well estab- lished among believers from one end of the Christian community to the other as it is at the present day among Christians in any country." Regarding the Acts of the Apostles it is satisfactory to note in the modern critical school a disposition large- ly to modify if not to reject the theory of Baur, and accordingly to discredit some of the chief critical con- clusions of this school. Thus Schenkel, one of the boldest of critics says : "Having never been able to convince myself of the sheer opposition between Pe- trinism and Paulinism, it has also never been possible for me to get a credible conception of a reconciliation effected by means of a literature sailing between the contending parties under false colors. In respect to 62 BAPTIST DOCTEINES the Acts of the Apostles in particular I have been led in part to different results from those represented by the modern critical school. I have been forced to the conclusion that it is a far more trustworthy source of information than is commonly allowed on the part of modern criticism." Of the thirteen epistles which explicitly claim to be Paul's the first four and most important have nev- er been questioned by any great representative schol- ar in ancient or modern times. The doubts of some modern objectors to the smaller and Pastoral Epis- tles as Pauline have been dissipated by such scholars as Weiss and Godet, who have proved that the condition described in them is rather that of a soil prepared for Gnosticism than that of an already developed heresy, and that the danger here pointed out is of substitut- ing intellectualism in religion for piety of heart and life. Had the writer been a Christian of the second century trying, under the name of Paul, to stigmatize the Gnostic systems, he would certainly have used stronger expressions to describe their character and influence. Besides we find in these epistles precisely what was characteristic of apostolic times and not of the second century — the plurality and equality of pres- byters in each church. There is no trace of the mon- archical episcopate elevating itself above the presby- terial administration. With reference to II Peter, Jude, II and III John and the Revelation, the books most frequently held to be spurious, Dr. Strong maintains that, "Al- though we have no conclusive external evidence earli- er than A. D. 160, and in the case of II Peter none earlier than A. D. 230 — 250, we may fairly urge in fa- vor of their genuineness not only their internal charac- AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHOEITY OF N. T. 63 teristics of literary style and moral value, but also the general acceptance of them all since the third century as the actual productions of the men whose names they bear." The genuineness of the Epistle to the Hebrews was at first questioned simply because its internal char- acteristics were inconsistent with the tradition of a Pauline authorship. At the end of the fourth century however, Jerome examined the evidence and decided in its favor ; Augustine did the same ; the third Coun- cil of Carthage formally recognized it (397) ; from that time the Latin churches united with the East in re- ceiving it, and the doubt was finally and forever re- moved. Modern critics are united in assigning He- brews a secure place in the New Testament canon. It is to be remembered that the inspiration of the writers who composed the Bible does not involve those, who at a later time, copied and translated the vol- ume. Textual criticism is a recognized science. By it we ascertain with a remarkable degree of accuracy the form of our sacred literature as it came from the hands of the inspired writers, and as it was received and approved by the primitive churches. The results of reverent and legitimate criticism go to prove that the text of the New Testament as we now have it, in the main, is established beyond all controversy. As is to be expected in books made by hand, no two cop- ies exactly agree. This does not, however, detract, but rather establish their accuracy in all essentials. For in a multitude of manuscripts as in a multitude of counsellors there is safety. The variations in one manuscript offset those in another; and out of the whole the original text emerges with a surprisingly small range of uncertainty. According to the best au- (34 BAPTIST DOCTEINES thorities seven-eighths of the words of the New Testa- ment have passed the ordeal of textual criticism with- out question ; and of the remaining one-eighth, only a small fraction are subject to reasonable doubt; so that fifty-nine sixtieths of the word's of the New Testament, as they came from the original authors, are known with practical certainty. And even of the one-sixtieth open to question the larger part of the doubt pertains to changes of order in the words, and other compara- tive trivialities. To quote from Westcott and Hort "the amount of what can in any sense be called sub- stantial variation is but a small fraction of the whole residuary variation, and can hardly form more than one-thousandth part of the entire text." I am bold to say that these variations together will not seriously affect a single vital doctrine of the Bible. Attempts are being made at the present time either to co-ordinate with or substitute for that of the Bible other standards of religious authority. Reason, ethico- consciousness, value-judgments, experience, and the social gospel are some of the more recent criteria by which the sacred Scriptures are tried and found want- ing. With reference to reason or ethico-consciousness it suffices to say that they stand condemned by the history and judgment of mankind. If such standards were permitted to obtain in the realm of jurisprudence there would soon be an end of all law and order in society, and as many different standards of authority would exist as there are private opinions or individual reasoners. The difference between the interpreter who acknowledges the Scripture as supreme authority and the one who exalts his own ethico-consciousness to that place of authority is about the same as between the sea-captain who lakes his bearings from the stars AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORITY OF N. T. 65 and the one who guides his course by the light upon his own masthead. Although as Baptists we stand for the right of private opinion and interpretation of the Scriptures, we do not exalt reason above or grant it a co-ordinate place with the Scriptures as authorita- tive in religious matters. For a Baptist minister or teacher to hide his unbelief in the Scriptures and in its fundamental doctrines behind the smoke-screen of the right of private judgment is to become a traitor to "the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints." One of the most specious forms of current heresy is held by those who either consciously or uncon- sciously follow Ritschl, who affirmed that truth ex- presses itself only in "value judgments." According to this theory "it is quite immaterial whether there be a God or not, so long as one believes that way ; since one's belief, as a value judgment, answers all the prac- tical purposes of a God." A like attitude is assumed toward the deity of Christ, the atonement, justifica- tion by faith, and other vital doctrines. All truth is thus reduced to a matter of judgment and only so far as it has any value or utility ; the foundations of au- thority are removed and practically nothing is left of the religion of Christ. Now that the rationalism and materialistic philosophy of Germany have become so generally discredited as among the main causes of the war, one cannot but wonder why they are still followed and taught in the schools of our country. They can- not but be as destructive and fatal here as there. Prof. Harnack the foremost New Testament critic of Prot- estantism confessed recently, with tears in his eyes, to a Chicago Baptist, that Germany had failed because of her lifeless dogmatism and that it needed the vital 66 BAPTIST DOCTKINES and Biblical faith of American Christianity to enable it to rise again. Not so very long ago a professor in one of our Bap- tist theolog'ical seminaries made the statement on the same platform on which the writer spoke that "ex- ternal standard's no longer suffice as our guides in re- ligious matters and can be accepted only in so far as they are verified by our own experience." It is a common place in these days that religion is a life and not a creed. Its reality depends on present experience and not on memories of the past. But experience sure- ly must be of something. It must have its foundation in fact. Otherwise it remains suspended in mid-air and there is no guarantee of its uniformity or per- manence. The tendency to divorce religious experience and thought from fact and history is one that has to be combated at every point. Experience is useful as a process of verification. It can never be an independent source of authority. Christian character apart from Christ is an impossibility. By experience men give practical effect to the faith that is in them, and are able to discover its value for life and conduct. But it does not give them the content of their belief. Nor must it be forgotten that religious experience itself has a history. The experience of the individual is only valuable as it is part of the collective experience of the race and as it adds to the volume of the testimony which that wider experience provides. That the ex- perience of Christendom says yea and amen to the spiritual claim of Jesus Christ is undoubtedly an im- portant fact. But it loses all force and meaning if it is once dissociated from the history of the life and teaching of Jesus. That men studying this life and teaching to-day find in it the same solace and inspira- AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORITY OF N. T. 67 tion as were found by the men in the first centuries is a striking confirmation of the force of Christ's per- sonality and of the universal nature of His appeal. Apart from the records of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, no real experience of His power is pos- sible. The great need of religion at the present time is for more not less historic reality. Nothing is gained by telling us that we have the spirit of Jesus even if we lose the historical Jesus. To the plain man this means that you have reduced his religion to the "base- less fabric of a dream." Quite recently the writer heard from another Bap- tist professor of theology in a Ministers' Conference the "social gospel" extolled to the disparagement of the evangelistic message. It was said, for instance, that a more effective way of saving the drunkard was to abolish the saloon than to give him the Gospel. Modernism believes in the reformation of society by human means rather than in the regeneration of the individual. It seems to have forgotten that the Gos- pel of Jesus Christ alone "is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." The New Testament challenges the socialists as well as the rest of us to remember that underneath what is called the social problem there is a moral and spiritual prob- lem. Men come to Christ maimed, palsied, and help- less human beings, and He says to them all, "Son, thy sins are forgiven thee." That comes first. And our social reformers should learn to take things in their proper order. Those who have ever tried to reform a sunken human being or some miserable drunkard by tinkering with the outside, have grown weary and have failed. What is needed is a new man, as well as a new environment. The duty of the moment is not 68 BAPTIST DOCTEINES to suppress any of the varied manifestations of the intellectual ferment of our day, but rather to return to the Gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, to preach it in all its fullness, to live it out in our own experience, and to apply it to the needs of the world. Only by such experimental process shall we be able to discover that the foundation of God standeth sure. The Scripture does not only claim to be divinely authoritative but there are several facts which sub- stantiate this claim. The gospel is so simple and uni- versal that it awakens kindred experiences in men of all times and conditions. It has proved to be a re- generating, transforming and comforting influence, through many centuries, with millions of persons and in behalf of individuals of diverse characteristics and needs ; which indicates that it possesses a power be- yond the human. It is universally acceded that the moral system of the New Testament surpasses any other system among men. It represents moral and religious ideas greatly in advance of the age in which it was written and these ideas still lead the world. No heathen sacred book shows us a personal Saviour from sin, or a way of reconciliation with God and of everlasting life. Principles which heathenism ig- nored, such as the importance of the individual, the law of mutual love, the sacredness of human life, the doctrine of internal holiness, the sanctity of the home, monogamy, the religious equality of the sexes, identi- fication of belief and practice, are all found in the New Testament with a perfect harmonization and develop- ment of all other truths essential to our temporal and eternal welfare ; which implies the presence and pow- er of the supernatural. Its predictions have often anticipated shorter and longer periods of the future, AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORITY OF N. T. 69 and' a multiplicity of events, and its utterances have never yet failed, nor been once discredited; which manifests elements of foreknowledge and omniscience which are nothing less than divine. The Roman Catholic Church, in order to establish its false claims to divine authority, has erred in adding to "the words of the prophecy of this book." Prot- estantism, in its revolt against these Catholic claims, has gone to the other extreme and has "taken away from the words of the book of this prophecy." Both procedures are equally dangerous and condemnable (Rev. 22:18, 10). There has been produced no new principle or doctrine acceptable to the general church since the period of historic revelation closed. The revelation culminating in Christ was complete in all essentials. There will and must be a fuller understanding and interpretation of many of its statements and doctrines, but the New Testament as we now have it is a sufficient guide for the individual and the world to God and to salvation. This leads me to say a final word in regard to the permanence of Scripture authority. Its permanence is relative to the fundamental elements in human na- ture. As long as human needs, aspirations and long- ings remain as they have always been, the Scriptures cannot be superseded. Its authors did what Plato hoped for. Those who accept the Scripture as divine, need not be adrift on a raft upon an open sea with no rudder and no star to guide them. With the Psalmist they may exclaim "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path" (Ps. 119:105). All past and present confusion has arisen, not from it, but only from man's failure to understand and interpret it aright ; which shows that the Book is a light shining in a dark place, a voice which has a divinely certain 70 BAPTIST DOCTEINES sound, a sacred dictum, an ultimate dogma, the very Word of the Living God. Here faith may rest, for here is final authority. Age-long tempests rage about it, but the Word of our God abides forever. CHAPTER IV THE CROSS AND THE CRITICS BY REV. T. T. SHIELDS, D.D. THE CROSS AND THE CRITICS "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it." sf/p^UT the incarnate Word was crucified, and His ? \$% vo * ce was temporarily silenced, notwithstanding 'rs2;< Pilate's assumed neutrality. And still the cause of evangelical truth suffers more from Pilate's wash- bowl, than from all the open assaults launched from the palace of the high priests of the Higher Criticism. The church has more to fear from the hand-washing of politic Pilate, than from all the hand-writing of Pro- fessor Caiaphas and President Annas. The spirit of compromise which, while acknowledging the baseless- ness of the charges against God's Word, proposes first, to "chastise Him and let Him go ;" and then, failing thus to placate the enemy, washes the hand which signs the death warrant, is one of the deadliest foes of the truth. There are men who once boldly avowed their allegiance to the Word of God and the gospel of our salvation, who warm themselves by the critic's fire, and have no courage to withstand even the taunt of the critics' fashion-following maid-servant. In profes- sors' chairs, in denominational offices, in pulpits, and in pews, there are men who, having examined the Bible for themselves "have found no fault" in it, but who yet have no word of protest to offer when they see the Holy Book given over to the mockers, the nails, and the spear of the critics, because it makes itself the Word of God. 74 BAPTIST DOCTEINES In the hope of stirring to action, and to courageous defense of the gospel some who are essaying the im- possible role of the innocent neutral in relation to the battle for revealed truth, I venture to attempt to show how Modernism crucifies the Son of God afresh, and puts him to an open shame. And when I employ the term "Modernism" I use it merely as a convenient name for that dogmatic assumption and assertion of critical certitude which denies the plenary divine in- spiration and consequent unity of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. I. And I begin with the observation that MODERN- ISM FINDS ITS CHIEF OPPONENT IN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. Of those who have boasted "the assured results" of modern Biblical Criticism, as of those who gloried in the works of the law, it may be said, "They stumbled at that stumbling stone." There are no defenders of the Old Testament Scriptures, like the writers of the New Testament. The New Testament attests the historicity of the record of Creation, of the Fall of Man, of Cain and Abel, of Enoch and Noah, of Abraham and all the patriarchs, of Melchisedec, of Moses, and of those who followed after. The only record we have of Jesus Christ represents Him, implicitly or explicitly, as accepting the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and the authenticity of the stories of Creation and the Deluge, of Abraham and Jonah; it represents Him as fulfilling the Scrip- tures by His birth of a virgin; as deliberately reading a passage from Isaiah's prophecy at the beginning of His public ministry and declaring it to be fulfilled in THE CROSS AND THE CRITICS 75 Himself; as fulfilling to the minutest detail prophe- cies relating to His death; and as assuming always in all His teaching the inspiration and authority of the Old Testament Scriptures ; and, while finding His whole ministry predicted therein, as being so sure of its trustworthiness as to quote it as His final answer to the devil himself. It would seem, indeed, that every possible point of attack upon the Bible has been anticipated by the in- spiring and directing Spirit of God, to the extent of recording our Lord's approval of practically every part of the Old Testament which has been subject to the critics' assaults. For it is impossible for the critic to escape the necessity of arguing his case at last before Christ as the supreme Judge. However petty the critics' complaint respecting this word, he finds his case carried, whether he will or no, to the Supreme Court where Jesus Christ presides ; so that it would appear that God has said of this City of Truth, as of ancient Zion, "Behold, I lay therein a stumbling stone and a rock of offence." Jesus Christ is the Rock upon which Modernism splits : "A stone of stumbling, and a rock of ofTence, even to them which stumble at the Word, being disobedient." II. MODERNISM CANNOT PREVAIL AGAINST AN INFALLIBLE CHRIST. In Canada the oppo- nents of prohibition avow their allegiance to temper- ance principles. They are opposed to the "tyranny" of prohibition because they believe in "personal lib- erty." And we have Baptists who object to the "tyranny" of those who are resolved to control their own institutions, and to see that the money they give 76 BAPTIST DOCTRINES is used for the propagation of principles in which they believe. And when objection is taken to the use of Baptist money and Baptist institutions for the dis- semination of views which would destroy the Baptist denomination, these theological revolutionaries de- mand exemption from all restriction in the sacred name of Baptist "liberty." The truth is, standards of any kind are irksome to the man who would be a law unto himself. And this seems to be emphatically true of the destructive critic. He finds that Jesus Christ stands in the way of his theories. The great Teacher contradicts him at every turn. The critic's only hope of success is in proving the fallibility of Christ. It seems to me that it is logically impossible to evade the issue. Choice must be made between Christ and the critics. It is unnecessary for me to deal with the attempts which are made to prove the fallibility of Christ, while seeking to escape, or, rather, to avoid acknowledging, the logical implications of the denial of His infallibility. The "assured results" of modern criticism are a Babel tower, which, when an infallible Christ has pronounced upon it, becomes but a heap of confusion. The true disciple of Jesus Christ will not demand "liberty" to differ from, or contradict his Lord. He will glory in being the bond-slave of Christ whom he delights to honor in all realms of life. He will crown Him Lord of his intellectual life, rejoicing in the use of those weapons of warfare which are not carnal, but which are "mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds ; casting down imaginations, and every high thing which exalteth itself against the knowl- edge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." No Christian, and no THE CROSS AND THE CRITICS 77 Baptist, has "liberty," to entertain a view of the Scriptures which is contrary to Christ. III. THE INFALLIBILITY OF CHRIST, IN THE NATURE OF THINGS, IS INVOLVED IN HIS DEITY; you cannot disprove the one without the other. I shall not argue that which is self-evident. It is enough to say that the only record we have of Him never represents Him as expressing a mere opin- ion, or as uttering a doubtful word. His questions were always the questions of a teacher, put, not to elicit, but to impart information. "He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." He said, "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen ; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" As He claimed to have power in heaven and on earth, so He claimed a full knowledge both of earthly and heavenly things. To surrender to Modernism in- volves not only the denial, but the betrayal, of the impeccable Man, the infallible Teacher, and the in- carnate God. Respecting the resurrection, Paul said, "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false wit- nesses of God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ; whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not." It is still more emphatical- ly true, that if Christ Himself be found a false witness of God, our faith is vain, and we are yet in our sins. 78 BAPTIST DOCTRINES IV. Let us now consider THE RELATION OF MOD- ERNISM TO THE DEATH OF CHRIST. What construction does "modern scholarship" put upon the death of Christ? That must depend upon the view it takes of His person. Does it content itself with taking a sandal from His feet, or with cutting a piece from the skirt of His robe, or with roughening His hand, or with plucking but one laurel leaf from His brow? Has it discerned an astigmatism in His spirit- ual vision, a defect in His intelligence, or a lisping uncertainty in His speech? Is it engaged in the re- moval of a rank growth of tradition which has grown up about the Castle of Truth, so as to afford the eye of faith an unobstructed view of its perfection? Does it concern itself with cleaning the glasses, or even with putting new lenses in the lighthouse of Revela- tion that it may more clearly direct the mariner on the pathless sea of life? Let us see. The charge against Jesus was that, "He made Himself the Son of God." It was for this He was crucified. It may be said that He died by His own testimony ; for when the council had heard Him, they said, "What need we any farther witnesses? for we ourselves have heard of His own mouth." And to precisely the same conclusion does the reasoning of Modernism lead us to-day. Only by a logic that is as. lame as Mephibosheth, and which cannot limp be- yond the boundaries of Lodebar, can the higher crit- ical view of the Scriptures escape the necessity of de- nying the deity of Christ. And when driven along that road, what find we in the cross? In the first place, it loses its redeeming power. THE CROSS AND THE CRITICS 79 If the Sufferer of Golgotha was not God, "manifest in the flesh," the cross can have no atoning value. If God was not in Christ, He cannot through Him have reconciled the world unto Himself. If in Christ we have a mistaken dreamer who, by such knowl- edge as He then possessed, being ignorant of "the as- sured results" of modern criticism, could not have qualified for a professorship in divinity in some of our advanced theological seminaries, He must have been without capacity to bear our sins in His own body on the tree. Unless in nature and essence He was one with God, unless "His Godhead gave Him an in- finite capacity, and infused a boundless degree of com- pensation into all the pangs He bore," there can have been no vicariousness in His suffering, and no ex- piatory value in His death : that being true, there is no "fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins, Where sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains." The modernist is as blind to the spiritual signifi- cance of the death of Christ as was the neutral Pilate who signed the death warrant, or the soldiers who nailed Him to the tree. Indeed, I venture to believe it is no exaggeration to say, that the logic of the critical view of the Person of Jesus puts into the lips of Modernism the sentiments, if not the very words, of the Pharisees of ancient time as they contemplated the death of Christ: "Sir, we remember that that de- ceiver said while He was yet alive, After three days I will rise again: command therefore that the sep- ulchre be made sure until the third day, lest His dis- ciples come by night, and steal Him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead. So the last error shall be worse than the first." Modernism has 80 BAPTIST DOCTEINES done its best to follow Pilate's suggestion; the logic of its reasoning would make the sepulcher sure, seal- ing the stone, and setting a watch. But to return to the cross. To the "advanced" critic the loss of the "Fountain filled with Blood" is no loss at all ; for his reasoning would lead us serious- ly to question whether we have any "guilty stains" to lose. For this strange and "strong delusion" which seems to have fallen upon so large a part of the pro- fessed Church of Christ would not only rob us of a Redeemer, but would rob us also of any trustworthy revelation from God. If Christ be fallible, and the Scriptures untrust- worthy, who shall tell us of our state? or who shall show us the path of life? The doctrines of the fall of man ; of sin and its punishment ; of the new birth ; of justification by faith; of the ministry of the Holy Spirit ; of the resurrection of the dead ; of the second advent, of judgment to come; all these doctrines fail, and the whole historic evangelical position crumbles, with the surrender of the infallibility and eternal Son- ship of Jesus Christ. I met one not long since, whom I knew in years gone by as a worshiper of Jesus the incarnate God. But he had turned at the forked roads, and when I met him recently he had traveled far along the road of rationalism ; and apparently, his logic gave him a through ticket to the end of the way. When I op- posed his rationalism with the word of divine Rev- elation, he smiled at my simplicity. I said, "I sup- pose you don't believe in revelation?" He replied, "If you mean by that, any sort of extramundane rev- elation, no." And it appears to me impossible to stop short of THE CROSS AND THE CRITICS 81 that conclusion if once the fallibility of Christ be postulated. Is it therefore necessary to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints? Can the ship we know as the Church weather the storm with this Jonah of Modernism on board? Can we lighten the ship or calm the sea by casting our doctrinal wares into the sea? Or must we take the modernist who will neither preach the preaching which God bids him Himself, nor let any one else do it, and heave him overboard ? Once in the ancient time Ben-hadad the King of Syria gathered all his host together, and went up and besieged Samaria. And he sent messengers to Ahab king of Israel saying, "Thus saith Ben-hadad, thy sil- ver and thy gold is mine ; thy wives also and thy chil- dren, even the goodliest are mine. And the king of Israel answered and said, My lord, O king, according to thy saying I am thine, and all that I have. And messengers came again and said, Thus speaketh Ben- hadad, saying, Although I have sent unto thee, say- ing, Thou shalt deliver me thy silver, and thy gold, and thy wives and thy children; yet I will send my servants unto thee to-morrow about this time, and they shall search thine house, and the houses of thy servants ; and it shall be that whosoever is pleasant in thine eyes, they shall put it in their hand and take it away. Then the King of Israel called all the elders of the land, and said, Mark, I pray you, and see how this man seeketh mischief : for he sent unto me for my wives, and for my children, and for my silver, and for my gold, and I denied him not. "And all the elders and all the people said unto him, Hearken not unto him, nor consent." 82 BAPTIST DOCTEINES And this Ben-hadad of Modernism is equally in- satiable. Trembling Israelites have surrendered the early chapters of Genesis, the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the historicity of Jonah, and many of "the goodliest" of the treasures of Holy Writ ; but this Ben-hadad will not be appeased. He will send his servants to search the whole house of revelation, and whatsoever is desirable in our eyes, "they shall put it in their hands, and take it away." What will all the elders and all the people say to this demand? What limits shall be put to the predatory "liberty" which this Modernism claims for itself? The wise man said, "There are three things that are never sat- isfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough ; the grave, and the barren womb ; the earth that is not rilled with water; and the fire that saith not, It is enough." To- day there is a fifth. The insatiable mania of "modern scholarship" would devour the whole Bible. I believe that if once the issue can be fairly faced, and the people can be made to see the implications of this deadly movement, the great multitude who have a personal experience of the saving grace of God, and of the sovereign Saviourhood of Jesus Christ, will thunderously reply, "Hearken not unto him nor consent." V. And now let me speak this heartening word in con- clusion. The cross was no accident. Dark as was the day, fearful as was the agony, wicked as were the hands which nailed to a cross of wood the Son of God, His absolute sovereignty never shone more clear- ly than at the place called Golgotha. By wicked hands they crucified and slew the One who was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of THE CROSS AND THE CRITICS 83 God. By their denial of His every claim, they only proved the truth of that which they denied: "Because they knew Him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning Him. And though they found no cause of death in Him, yet desired they Pilate that He should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of Him, they took Him down from the tree, and laid Him in a sepulchre. But God raised Him from the dead." And the critics are fulfilling the Scriptures in con- demning them ; for "the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils." To the believer in the Scriptures the "peril- ous times" when so many are "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth," are no surprise. For they who are "mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandments of the apostles of the Lord and Saviour, know this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His com- ing? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things con- tinue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." My brethren, let us take courage ! As there was 84 BAPTIST DOCTKINES no sepulcher which could hold the Incarnate Word, so there are no means by which this Bible can be de- stroyed. The original is kept where the alleged "as- sured results" of the critics have no weight: forever God's word is settled in heaven ! And when heaven shall be opened, and the Rider of the White Horse shall come down the skies, He shall be clothed in a vesture dipped in blood : and His name is called the Word of God. And He hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, "King of Kings, and Lord of Lords/' ■ CHAPTER V "PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION AND ITS MEANING TO THE MINISTRY" BY REV. D. F. RITTENHOUSE, D.D. "PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION AND ITS MEANING TO THE MINISTRY" Y Fellow-laborers and Brethren: I am very happy to present to this audience the subject Ci announced. We can't keep our hands off this matter of the resurrection because death won't keep his hands off of us. Nobody has ever doubted that Christ died and that He was actually placed in a tomb. Mark 15:46,47 plainly tells us that Joseph of Arimathsea "Laid Him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulchre. And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where He was laid." This much is generally accepted as fact. Everybody ac- cepts the fact that people die. Every person expects sooner or later to breathe his last. He hopes this dreaded' experience will be long delayed but he knows his last day will some day be at hand. We are told that upward of thirty millions of people fall victims of death annually. Upon slight reflection the earth seems to be one vast human burying ground. As the poet Bryant puts it "All that tread the earth are but a handful to the tribes that slumber in its bosom. The hills rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, the veils stretching in pensive quietness between, the venerable woods, rivers that move in majesty, and the com- plaining brooks that make the meadows green, and poured round all old ocean's grey and melancholy waste are but the solemn decorations of the great tomb of man." 88 BAPTIST DOCTRINES You know the dreadful pangs of seeing death snatch from your very arms those you love. You know the pain and horror of seeing your loved one grow pale and rigid and repulsive right before your own eyes. Alas! you have not only witnessed the ugly sight of others dying but the process of disintegration is work- ing this very minute in your own body. It is only by wise selection of bread and meat and potatoes coupled with rest and re-creation that you are kept on your feet. Skilled doctors stand ready to make re- pairs as they are needed. Yet, despite all sustaining agencies, loathsome corruption is eating its way into the life and beauty of these very human faces to whom I speak these words. The hollow darkness of the cold grave is yearning after these warm loving hearts right in this auditorium. Every flying hour is hastening you toward a day of weakness, sickness, de- cay and one last awful gasp for breath. You are bound for the cemetery. Your very heart is but a muffled drum beating your funeral march to the grave. O hideous, horrible, heart-breaking, cruel fact of death ! O where may comfort and cheer and hope be found ! O where can we get some light to break in on our darkness ! I will tell you. The Holy Scripture has an abundance and to spare. The Bible promises us more than does any other book. It makes no faint guess. It is no bit of wild speculation about this mysterious doctrine. It is solid proof. "According to the Scripture" ought to be proof enough. If you are not prepared to accept the teaching of the authorita- tive revelation of God to man on this great subject you must grope on hopelessly toward the deep, black, cold, bitter night of the grave. At this point I am reminded of a story of a man PEOOF OF THE RESURRECTION 89 who renounced his faith and refused to believe in the hereafter. To him there was no heaven and no hell. Finally the man died. His family took him to the church for the funeral services. While the friends were marching by the casket viewing the remains, one of the old neighbors broke out in laughter. "Be quiet man," said the undertaker, "don't you know folks don't laugh at funerals?" He quieted for a moment and broke out laughing again. Again he was reproved for his rudeness. But the neighbor said he couldn't help but laugh. "Why can't you help laughing?" "Well" said he "it is this way. John renounced his religion. Said he did not believe in heaven or hell, and now here he is ; all dressed up and no place to go." Now let us examine the foundations on which we stand. Let us try to imagine ourselves just as ig- norant of the doctrine of the resurrection as were the incredulous people surrounding Jesus who were "slow of heart to believe." Let us gather up the available evidence in support of the claim, First, That Jesus rose from the dead. Second, That we shall rise. Third, Observe how a sound belief in the doctrine of the resurrection is fundamental to an efficient min- istry. I. DID JESUS RISE? Let me assure you I shall not bother you with questions touching the precise mode of the resurrec- tion of Jesus. I am not concerned about whether in the resurrection Jesus recovered every atom and particle of His flesh, hair, teeth, nails and other or- gans of His body. I am not interested in learning 90 BAPTIST DOCTEINES or speculating upon how Jesus ate and drank in His risen body nor where He got the clothes He wore after He got out of the grave. Nor shall I trouble you with a presentation of the denials of skeptics and infidels on this question. Renan, Strauss, Bauer, Paulus, Keim and others have denied the plain truth of the resurrection by such mysterious arguments that it requires greater faith to accept their miraculous proofs of infidelity than is required to accept the original Scriptural proof of this great super-natural event. You can find the warped and twisted theories of the infidels recited in theological books. I want to get a foundation under the modern thoughtful man who is well aware of the uniformity of nature in concluding life with death. I want to get a substantial footing under the man who is well versed in the teachings of other religions about trances and visions and appari- tions. I covet the power to convince his head and heart that the story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is unique and stands impregnable; that it can't be dis- lodged by scientific assault, nor can it be relegated to the limbo of myth and legend. Yes, I want to get beneath every one of you, my hearers, the foundation of a well-reasoned faith in this wonderful doctrine. Now, did my Lord rise from the dead? The same identical authority for the fact of His death and burial tells us that when the women returned to the same place where they had seen Jesus laid, they found the stone rolled away from the door of the sepulcher. They were filled with excitement. A young man sit- ting by clothed in white sought to calm their fears : "Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified : He is risen: He is not here: Behold the place where they laid Him." The Master had given His disciples an PEOOF OF THE EESUEKECTION 91 inkling of the fact that He would rise. "From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto His disciples, how that He must go to Jerusalem * * and be killed and rise again the third day." But this thought was so unreal that it could not be easily grasped. Indeed some of the disciples could hardly believe their own eyes on this point. Such stubborn unbelievers as Thomas and the shrewd Jewish tax-gatherer Mat- thew both had to be shown on this matter, but they finally accepted the proof that was offered. The four Gospels give a natural, straightforward, simple account in perfect accord and leave no room for doubt that all the writers believed Jesus rose from the dead just as truly and actually as He made water into wine or walked on the sea of Galilee or ate when He was hungry or rested when He was weary or prayed when in need of heavenly guidance. Peter's preaching was an astounding proclamation of the resurrection. Paul by word and pen preached the great doctrine of the resurrection as the foundation beneath the whole structure of Christian doctrine. It was the basic and fundamental truth and hope of the world. This Master-theologian offers more abun- dant proof and more conclusive proof of the resurrec- tion than any New Testament writer. Let us look for it. Right at the outset he boldly proclaims, "I deliv- ered unto you that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried and that He rose again the third day." To a people who had never dreamed such things were possible this declaration was rash in the extreme. Socrates, the wisest and most acceptable religious teacher of his time had never ventured to 92 BAPTIST DOCTEINES suggest the possibility of anybody dead coming back to life. lean imagine Paul's hearers pressing him for more details. With prompt and definite courage he comes forth with further proof that one person who has actually gone into the darkness of the grave had come to life. "According to the Scriptures:" Yes. "He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve : after that, he was seen of about five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this day, but some have fallen asleep. After that, He was seen of James. Then of all the apostles. And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time." Do you catch the cumulative power of this proof? Here are six separate appearances. If this is insufficient proof of the resurrection of Jesus, sufficient evidence could hardly be addressed to human reason. Let us suppose that Elihu Root, Secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt should come into this audi- torium with the startling announcement that Roosevelt has risen from the dead. Can you imagine what your first impression would be? I can. You would not be half so much impressed with the fact that Roosevelt was actually alive as you would be with the fact that Secretary Root was suffering from a strange and pe- culiar seizure of mental irregularity. We would have small concern about Roosevelt's post-resurrection career but we would be tremendously concerned about getting Mr. Root out of this auditorium and taken to a sanitarium for skilful treatment. But wait a minute. Here stand all the members of Roosevelt's Cabinet and they enthusiastically affirm that Mr. Root is of a sound mind and that Theodore Roosevelt has actually risen from the dead. But these are not all. PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION 93 Here come the heads of the departments at Washing- ton and they say also Roosevelt has risen from the dead. But these are not all. Just outside the door is a crowd of nearly five hundred who shout forth : "We are witnesses to the fact that Roosevelt has risen from the dead: WE HAVE SEEN HIM OUR- SELVES." Just as the cheering dies out and order is restored there comes to this platform a gentleman of broad culture, serious experiences and with an air of cautious seriousness says : "Yes, and last of all he was seen of me also." My brethren, can any reason- able, candid person deny the weight of such convinc- ing evidence? Isn't this proof sufficient? Can we not all join in one grand hallelujah chorus in which we shout the one great mysterious, abiding, significant fact of the Christian faith: "HE AROSE." He was, He is and is to be for evermore in the realm of life. He is the risen, reigning, triumphant Christ. Another revolutionizing fact looks us straight in the face : The change of the worship-day. The early Church was founded among a people who had from the beginning of the ages worshiped on the seventh day of the week. About the most difficult thing to change is a well-established Holy Day. It is therefore a matter of singular significance that the early Chris- tians actually changed the worship day from the last day of the week to the first day of the week. Also the change was made without any sort of legislative au- thority but by general consent. To effect such a change must have been the result of some revolutionary oc- currence. Can you imagine an event so striking in its reaction upon the world that our worship-day would be changed from Sunday to some other day of the week? I doubt whether so great an event as the 94 BAPTIST DOCTRINES actual landing of Jesus on this planet could effect such a change. But the event that did effect such a change was nothing other than the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week. II. SHALL WE RISE FROM THE DEAD? Now that we are assured of the Resurrection of Jesus we have still to repeat another question of Paul's when he said "HOW SAY SOME OF YOU THERE IS NO RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD?" That is still the question of the modern skeptic, but Paul is ready with reason. He really says, "How dare you count as incredible that that which has once taken place may take place again. One dead form has come to life and walked and talked with men and certainly it is possible that others may also come from the slumber of death. However mysterious or ap- parently incomprehensible it may seem, it is not in- credible." It was a bold undertaking to prove to people who had been saying farewell to the dying and mourning for the dead', that the dead should come forth to post-mortem life. But Paul offers this sweet and blessed hope to a dying race. The light of the resurrection Paul hangs over every grave that holds a human form. The longing of the human heart will some day be satisfied on this point of the resurrec- tion. Yea, the world believes that Joseph's tomb is empty, that Mary's son has risen, that there has been at least one grave robbed of its victory, thus render- ing the fact of the resurrection seriously credible. But Paul rushes boldly beyond mere credibility and with- out controversy declares that this new living person, this Lord of heaven and earth has come into the world to destroy all of man's enemies and to lead man PROOF OF THE INSURRECTION 95 forth into a new and higher form of being in which death shall be swallowed up in victory. That life shall be too much for death, "For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection from the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be abolished is death. And when all things have been subjected unto Him then shall the Son of Man also be subjected unto Him that did put all things under Him, that God may be all in all." Paul clear- ly shows that sin has deranged this beautiful human creature and the Son of God has undertaken its restora- tion. He will get all of man's enemies under His feet some day and of all things that have made man suffer and blasted his hopes and spoiled his happi- ness, death stands at the head of the list. Death has been man's most dreaded enemy. Death an enemy? Yes, behold fair forms, writhing in pain, light and beauty fading from their face, gasping for one final breath and then cold and unresponsive as marble. Oh how people everywhere dread death! We have built great schools of science ; we have studied every nerve and muscle and bone and cell of the human anatomy; men have analyzed every herb of the field, the bark and leaves of the trees for chemical ingredi- ents ; organized' bureaus of meat, cereal, fruit, milk and water inspections ; they have studied the problems of sanitation and housing, mill and mine and factory conditions, yea, they have invented electrical machin- ery, concocted chemical combinations, discovered new forms of chiropractic manipulations, all for the pur- pose of keeping death a little farther from our precious bodies. Death our dreaded enemy that takes one half 96 BAPTIST DOCTEINES of the human race into its cold repulsive embrace be- fore it reaches the short age of only twenty-two years. Oh death ! robbing our homes, crushing our hearts, the archenemy of God the ever living, and of man the ever dying one. How can death be defeated? Can it be defeated at all? Oh fellow-sufferer, Paul has a wonderfully heartening word for us on this point. Paul says "This enemy shall Christ destroy. " No not at one strong blast of His Omnipotence shall this en- emy be destroyed. Slavery, ignorance, despotism, su- perstition, heathenism are great and dreaded enemies, but don't you see they are being gradually conquered? One by one, little by little each is being disarmed, dis- abled, weakened, yea, on the road to sure defeat and death. But DEATH still holds his ground; still swal- lows down its millions of victims every year. Yes, but not forever. Under the light and power of this great strong Son of God the battle against death thun- ders on and the enemy is on the run. He is already sorely wounded, he will die hard but die he surely must. Redeeming mercy is already shouting victory. The hand that bears the nail prints has already torn the sting out of death. Death has so long been a victor. I see him sitting by Joseph's tomb as they bear the body of my Lord toward the grave and death seems to sneeringly say, "I thought He claimed to be Eternal Life and would never fall victim of my power, but you see I have Him now. I am conquer- or. I still hold sway. Put Him deep in the grave and be gone." Heart-broken and hopeless His disci- ples turn away. They have buried the world's Sa- viour out of sight. He has gone the way of all mor- tals. But three days and three nights brings the battle to an end. Jesus has yielded to the power of PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION 97 death just long enough to give everybody time to know He was dead and death had Him in its ugly grip. Then with the omnipotent power of an endless life He broke death's grip, a heavenly messenger rolls the stone away and Jesus Christ walks forth the first-fruits of them that slept. Then He seems to turn for one last look at death and laughs "Oh death where is thy sting? Oh grave where is thy victory?" and to His faint-hearted, hopeless followers I seem to hear Him shout the promise of theirs and our deliverance when He said, "Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me though he were dead, yet shall he live." "Because I live ye shall live also." That "Whosoever" includes you and me, my brethren. As of old "Come see the place where the Lord lay." Verily it is an empty place and by the emptiness of that new tomb, my tomb, your tomb shall also be empty. WE SHALL LIVE AGAIN. As of old, that perversity of human nature, we all understand insists upon asking "how" we shall come forth. Death destroys the very atoms of our bodies. "Paul, what has divine inspiration whispered into your heart and head on this matter?" He replies "Open your eyes. The resurrection finds a most il- luminating analogy right in nature around you. Haven't you observed that death is the pre-requisite of life, and not the end of life?" "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." Any seed you sow in the soil is at once set upon by the powers of disintegration. The process of death begins at once but right out of this decaying, dying dead seed comes forth this beautiful green life of waving wheat or corn. Right out of the dust and ashes of that dis- 98 BAPTIST DOCTRINES solved grain of wheat the green stocks grow tall and fruitful. Right out of the dark nothingness of the grave of apparent defeat comes the shout of victory. "Except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone/' "Death is swallowed up of life." The death of the seed is the pre-requisite of this new, beautiful, rich life of living grain. "Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption." Out of its death comes the body of a new and glorious life by the power of the Son of God. We are all a part of God's created universe. What God is doing daily through the centuries right out in the grain fields, He is perfectly competent to do, yea has promised He will certainly do in our own very bodies. Right out of the dissolving particles of this corruptible body our God will bring forth our new body incorruptible and glo- rious. Blessed be God ! Our own resurrection though full of glorious mystery is a rational and reasonable hope. But Paul has more light for us. He points for us that this new life that comes out of the dissolution of the old is quite different. "There is a natural and there is a spiritual." "These are different." "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body which shall be, but a bare grain, it may chance of wheat or some other grain." Out in the field the farmer does not put little corn plants into the ground but puts into the ground bare, hard dry corn kernels. In the flower garden you do not plant little carnations to grow big. A flower is exquisite in form, matchless in color, sweet of odor but the seed is a dry, hard, dead form. I would not go far to see a bag of car- nation seed — the natural body — but I once rode eighty miles to see a hundred acres of carnations in full PEOOF OF THE EESUEEECTION 99 bloom. On Sunday morning- the decorating commit- tee does not place a cup of flower seeds on the pul- pit; the natural inferior corruptible seeds would in- terest no one. But carry them to the garden. Bury them in the soil. Let dissolution and death get at them and in a little while they shall be raised incor- ruptible and glorious bodies to delight our nostrils and eyes, and inspire our hearts. "Sown in weakness, raised in power." "Sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body." In like manner, we are sown in cor- ruption, raised in incorruption, sown in weakness, raised in power. Sown an inferior body, raised a glo- rious body, sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of heaven — but we shall be changed, corruption must put on immortality." So let our bodies die in the likeness of His death that we might come forth with Him in the likeness of His resurrection and travel onward and upward by the power of a glorious and endless life. Paul also makes clear another very comforting and beautiful fact. We retain our individuality. "Thou sowest a bare grain — but God giveth it a body as pleaseth Him and TO EVERY SEED ITS OWN BODY." A wheat seed will grow a short slender stock and crown it with fruit that tastes like flour. A corn kernel will grow a tall, strong stalk with fruit only half way to the top and tastes like meal. But no power beneath the stars can change the stalk of wheat into a stalk of corn. Each will be marked by its own peculiar form, size, color and flavor. Its own indi- viduality will be retained. Human identity is not so much a matter of difference in atomic material. It is the distinct principle of life that dwells inside your material com- bination of atoms that marks your identity. Our bod- 100 BAPTIST DOCTEINES ' ies change with the passing years, but our identity remains the same. Here is a man burning with fever, wasted by long illness that leaves only a skeleton but with the curing of the disease the man once a skele- ton rises to health and strength. The new look on his face is very different from the thin, pale, furrowed, look of illness. The one hundred and eighty pounds of health is very different from the one hundred pound skeleton, yet the big strong man is exactly the same identical person that once lay on the bed of pain. So out of the corruption that lay in the tomb shall finally come forth the same identical person, revived, in- corruptible and glorious. Now we have seen clearly that Jesus Christ rose. That His resurrection is proof and promise of our res- urrection. That confident belief in His resurrection is fundamental to our resurrection, that we rise to new- ness of life, but retain our personality. III. NOW LET ME SHOW HOW THIS GREAT DOCTRINE POURS A NEW AND GLORIOUS POWER INTO THE MINISTRY. Jesus repeatedly told His disciples He must go to Jerusalem, be betrayed unto the chief priests and un- to the scribes and they would condemn Him to death ; they would deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, to scourge and to crucify : and on the third day He should rise again. The disciples could not consent to such a suggestion of His death. "Be it far from Thee Lord," one of them said. It was a decided shock to their spiritual outlook. It seemed to darken their vi- sion. Selfish, worldly, conceited', covetous Judas turned traitor. Peter got so far wrong that he was not above swearing, lying and denying. * Eight of the PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION 101 disciples went to the edge of the garden to keep watch while Jesus drank the bitter cup of sorrow but instead of watching they went to sleep. Peter, James, and John were taken into the inner circle of privilege and urged to watch and pray as a matter of support to Jesus while He wrestled with His su- preme duty. But when He went to His death not one single disciple could be found. The few days and nights that followed found the dead Christ and His disciples worlds apart. But note the effect of their post-resurrection experiences. Every one of those disciples was convinced that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead. They were so thoroughly aroused in moral and spiritual passion because they had seen Him themselves that rather than give up their faith in the resurrected Saviour they laid down their very lives to constantly proclaim Him to the world. How marvelous was their spiritual transformation ! Look at Peter. Swearing, lying, denying his Lord but, just a few days later this very same man is leading the apostolic band with a confidence that nothing on earth could shake. In Acts the 1st chapter Peter in- sists a successor to Judas must be "ordained to be a witness with us of His resurrection." Acts the 2d chapter pictures Peter on Solomon's porch deliver- ing his mighty Pentecostal sermon and when he be- gins to reach for his all-convincing climax he pours forth a mighty torrent of eloquence about the glori- ous fact that an empty grave in their midst witnesses an unanswerable proof of a new-found gladness and hope. That the prophets had written it down, that God had pledged the resurrection of Christ. "This JESUS HATH GOD RAISED UP WHEREOF WE ARE ALL. WITNESSES;." "Therefore -being, by the right hand of God,- exalted and having received of the 102 BAPTIST DOCTEINES Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear" — "Therefore let all the House of Israel now know assuredly that God hath made that same JESUS WHOM YE HAVE CRUCIFIED, both Lord and Christ." The big throng began to ask what they should do. Peter shouted the way of deliverance "Repent and be bap- tized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins/' and three thousand people came trooping into the Kingdom. Listen to him over there in the room of that coun- cil that had so lately condemned Jesus. "Be it known unto you all and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus of Nazareth whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man stand before you whole." A little later when that same council told Peter to keep his mouth still and say no more in the name of Jesus, both Peter and John replied "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, Judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:19). Some time later after being arrested and jailed and in peril of death, arraigned by the council and com- manded to keep still about their Lord, Peter and the apostles replied courageously "We ought to obey God rather than man. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and Saviour for to give repentance to Israel and for- giveness of sins and we are witnesses of these things" (Acts 5:29). I tell you my brethren when those dis- ciples got it soundly into their souls that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead ; when they appreciated the magnitude and scope of that wonderful hope they PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION 103 could not be run off from their position and all the councils of hell could not stop their mouths. On the basis of their belief in the resurrection they believed Jesus was both Lord and Christ; they believed that God had exalted Him to be a Saviour and they shouted it to the tops of their voices that every blessed man and woman should repent and be baptized in the name of this risen, exalted Saviour and they would receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. The resurrection of Jesus proved that He had made ample atonement for sin and since He had come from the dead He was an all-powerful Saviour. When Peter and John were in the temple for prayer and they healed a man lame from his birth the people marveled at the power of Peter and John. Peter jumped upon the porch and said, "You people look on us as though by our own power of holiness we have made this man to walk. Let me explain it to you." "The God of our fathers has lately glorified His Son Jesus. The man you delivered up and denied before Pilate — the Prince of Life that you killed, God hath lately raised from the dead whereof we are witnesses; through faith in His name hath this man been made strong, whom ye see and know." Acts 3d chapter. When the message of those disciples was shot through with conviction about the sovereign Lordship and Saviourhood of Jesus Christ attested by the res- urrection they were ministers of power. "And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrec- tion of the Lord Jesus : and great grace was upon them all" (Acts 4:33). We clearly see how sound belief in the resurrected Saviour transformed mere weaklings who "trusted that it had been He who should redeem Israel." Trans- formed them, I say, into young giants. These d'e- 104 BAPTIST DOCTEINES spondent pessimists whose hopes were dead and buried in Joseph's tomb became sturdy triumphant apostles by a living faith in a resurrected Lord. There is no other way to account for this transformation and spir- itual infilling of power except the solid veritable fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and removed all doubts by a living personal appearance to them. For centuries there have been belabored efforts of industrious men to show that Jesus did not actual- ly rise from the dead. Look at those who have occu- pied a negative position on this or any other funda- mental doctrine. What is the strength of their follow- ing? Feeble indeed. Those who believe not in the resurrection of Jesus Christ are as devoid of spiritual power as are people who have not believed on Jesus Christ at all. I tell you, my brethren, moral passion, spiritual energy, heroic self-sacrifice in the cause of righteousness are found in the heart and life of the man who heroically believes and faithfully preaches a risen, reigning, sovereign Saviour. Yea, the conscience of the world is on the side of orthodox faith. I know that my Redeemer lives; He lives, who once was dead; To me in grief He comfort gives; With peace He crowns my head. He lives, triumphant o'er the grave, At God's right hand on high, My ransomed soul to keep and save, To bless and glorify. He lives, that I may also live, And now His grace proclaim; He lives, that I may honor give To His most holy name. Let strains of heavenly music rise, While all their anthems sing To Christ, my precious sacrifice, And ever-living King. CHAPTER VI THE RETURN OF THE LORD BY REV. W. B. HINSON, D.D., LLD. THE RETURN OF THE LORD [HEN my grey hair was brown, and I an eager- hearted boy wandered about the dreary house 4->^tj that only needed mother's presence to make it a home again, no fact thrilled me more than the quiet announcement by father, "Your mother is coming back to-morrow." And so whether we call ourselves Pre-millennialist, or Post-millennialist, or Pro-millennialist, our hearts, loyal ever to the great King, will beat high with rapture and loving desire at the mention of the Lord's return ; even the return of the Saviour who for us went through Gethsemane to Golgotha, and who is to us at this hour the Lover of our souls and the Lord of our lives. Therefore whatever our distinguishing views re- garding the future may be, I can allow no man to place his fellow outside the circle of sympathetic de- votion to the Lord Jesus ; or to be regarded unfriendly in this hour when the coming back of Him we love is the central thought of our meditation. Now I have never argued a single five minutes about the return of the Lord, except on the New Testament basis. For the Scriptures tell us all we authoritatively know about it, and they are the common property of the whole family of God, and belong to no single school of thought, and must not be subjected to any private interpretation, nor be profaned by any repudiation. And as I claim for my brother the right to approach 108 BAPTIST DOCTRINES for himself to these perennial springs of living water, even so I assert it to be my own privileged right to approach the sacred writings, and for myself receive the truth that enriches my mind, soul and life. And because any statement about this glad fact of the Master's return must be rooted in the teaching of the inspired Word, I but impatiently listen, and then with an unresponsive heart, to any one who from sources of information external to the Bible treats of the com- ing again of the Lord Jesus. For it must be ever borne in mind that the Lord's Word is the Book of the Lord's return. Therefore I shall now place before you the fact of the coming back to the earth of Jesus Christ as the New Testament discloses it: grouping some of its major statements in the way they stand related to my mind and heart and life. And while so doing, I wish for myself and for you the consciousness of the Holy Spirit's presence, and the realized love of the Lord in our souls, that whether our heads keep in close touch or not, our hearts may assuredly burn within us dur- ing the brief minutes of our remaining together. Now the certainty of our Lord's return is one of the clearest revelations of the New Testament. Seven times in the twenty-four chapters of the first Gospel does Jesus Himself affirm "The coming of the Son of Man." And thrice in the fourteenth chapter of John does the same Master assert, "I will come again." And in each of the four Gospels, it is affirmed over and over and over again, that the Lord will return to the earth. And the seven writers of the New Testament, and if the authorship of Paul concerning the Book of Hebrews is questioned, then the eight men who gave us the entire New Testament, all declare the fact THE EETURN OF THE LOED 109 of His return concerning whom the angel at His ascension said, "This Jesus who was received up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld Him going into heaven." And the Apos- tle Paul in eleven of his epistles gives striking prom- inence to this great truth ; even in his letter to the Romans ; the First and Second to the Corinthians ; the Ephesians ; the Philippians and the Colossians ; the First and Second Thessalonians ; the First and Second of Timothy and the Epistle to Titus. And a brief glance at the uses to which this doctrine is put as an urge to right speech and conduct and attitude of life, attests the permeating influence of this sure fact throughout the entire New Testament. For in Mat- thew 25, the parable of the Ten Virgins is followed by the counsel, "Watch therefore, for ye know not the day nor the hour;" while in Mark 8 and verse 38 men are warned against being ashamed of the Christ, by the declaration of Jesus that of all such the Son of Man shall be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of His Father and the holy angels ; in Luke at the 21st chapter and in the 36th verse Christ says, "Watch ye at every season, making supplication, that ye may prevail to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man ;" and in John 14, among the great facts of God and Christ and heaven is placed the statement of Jesus, I will come again. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter urged the people to repent that their sins might be blotted out, and to trust in the Jesus whom the heav- en must receive until the times of restoration of all things ; while Paul in Romans 8 affirms the groaning creation is ever awaiting the redemption of our body ; in the First of Corinthians, chapter 1 and the 7th 110 BAPTIST DOCTEINES verse he advises, See that ye come behind in no gift, waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ; and in his second letter to them, he, in chapter 4 and verse 14, knows that He who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also with Jesus and shall pre- sent us with you; to the Ephesians in chapter 1, veres 10, he announces that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times God might gather together in one all things in Christ; the Philippians he urges in chapter 1, verse 10, to approve things that are excel- lent that they may be sincere and void of offence unto the day of Christ; the Colossians he cheers in chap- ter 3 and the 4th verse by the fact that when Christ who is our life shall be manifested, then shall ye also with Him be manifested in glory; for the Thes- salonians in chapter 3, verse 13 he prays to the end He may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints ; while in the second letter to them in chapter 3 and verse 5, he tenderly trusts that the Lord may direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ ; to his own son in the faith Timothy, he counsels in the first epistle and the 14th verse of the 6th chapter, to keep this com- mandment without spot, without reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ; and he adds in his second epistle to Timothy the loving admonition, "I charge thee in the sight of God and' of Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His Kingdom, preach the word, be urgent in season, out of season;" while to Titus, an- other son in the faith, he affirms in the 2d chapter and the 11th verse that the grace of God hath appeared, instructing us that we should live soberly, righteous- THE EETUEN OF THE LOED 111 ly, and Godly in this present world, looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the Great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. And if advising regarding the collection for the saints, in First Co- rinthians 16 and 1, which immediately follows the great chapter on the resurrection of the righteous, which fact synchronizes as we shall soon see with the return of the Lord ; or if furnishing a motive for church attendance as in Hebrews 10 and verse 25, not forsaking the assembling of yourselves togeth- er, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as ye see the day drawing nigh ; right up to the weight- ier matters of keeping the spirit rightly adjusted to God that so the entire life may be attuned to the In- finite, the continuous persuasive and urgent constraint is the appeal to and argument of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Also concerning the times or the descriptive char- acterization of the age when our Lord will return, we have some determining Scriptures that are perti- nent and plainly perceived. In Matthew 24 and 37, Jesus Himself says, "But as were the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man, for as in those days which were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in mar- riage until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man." Then in Luke 17 and verse 28, the Master gives an other illustrative description of the times of His ap- pearing. "Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of Lot : they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded, but in the days that Lot went out from Soxiom it rained fire and brimstone from 112 BAPTIST DOGTKINES heaven and destroyed them all, after the same man- ner shall it be in the day that the Son of Man is re- vealed," and after thus clearly defining and describing the kind of world that would await Christ at His re- turn, He in the next chapter, the 18th of Luke and verse 8 asks the illuminative and deeply suggestive question, When the Son of Man cometh shall He find faith on the earth ; while in Matthew 24 and verse 7 in close proximity to the end of the age, the Saviour asserts, Nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there shall be famines and pesti- lences and earthquakes, and many shall be offended and false prophets shall arise, and iniquity shall abound and the love of many shall wax cold ere the end comes. The Apostle Paul connects with the coming again of the Saviour a clearly defined forecast of the times of His appearing as in Second Thessalonians, chapter 2 he writes, Now we beseech you touching the com- ing of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering to- gether unto Him, to the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled either by spirit or by word or by epistle as from us as that the day of the Lord is just at hand. Let no man beguile you in any wise, for it will not be, except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed the son of perdition, he that opposeth himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped : so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to naught by the manifesta- tion of His coming. And the same Apostle writing in Second Timo-thy, chapter 3, adds, But know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For THE RETURN OF THE LORD 113 men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slander- ers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding a form of Godliness but having denied the power thereof; and he adds in verse 13, evil men shall wax worse and worse, deceiv- ing and being deceived. And then again in the 4th chapter of this same epistle he charges Timothy by the Lord Jesus who shall judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom, to be a faithful minister of Jesus, for He says the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine, but having itching ears, will heap to themselves teach- ers after their own lusts, and will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside unto fables; and a confirmation to these utterances of Paul is Peter's statement in the 3d chapter of his second epistle, where in the 2d verse he bids his readers be mind- ful of the words which were spoken by the holy proph- ets and of the commandments of the apostles of the Lord, knowing this first, that in the last days mock- ers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His com- ing? for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation, for this they wilfully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and the earth com- pacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God, by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water perished, but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of 114 BAPTIST DOCTEINES judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up, nevertheless we according to His promise look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwell- eth righteousness ; in the light of which truth he asks, Seeing then that these things are thus all to be dis- solved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and Godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God. It would seem fitting at this stage of our inquiry to place before our minds the clear presentation of the coming from heaven of our Lord, given the church at Thessalonica by the Apostle Paul. In the 4th chapter of his first letter to that church he says, I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that fall asleep, that ye sorrow not even as the rest, who have no hope, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him, for this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep, for the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first ; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Now this Scripture affirms three facts which bring us within view of our objective in this study. And those facts are these, The resurrection of our THE RETURN OF THE LORD 115 Lord; and that of all the righteous dead who fall asleep in Him ; and the transforming and transferring of all the saints who are awaiting His appearing when the Lord returns. Over against the hesitancy manifested in some quar- ters regarding the literal and actual and physical res- urrection of our Lord, it were well to place the arrest- ing truth that the Apostle to the Gentiles hazarded the entire Christian faith on the sure fact of Christ having risen from the dead. If Christ hath not been raised, he exclaims in First Corinthians 15:14, If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain, and ye are yet in your sins, and we are found false witnesses of God, and the dead are perished. And the logic of our apostle bears upon our present study, inasmuch as Christ in His resurrection life is the first-fruits, and afterward they that are Christ's at His coming are raised, at which time the faithful waiting saints are caught up to be with Jesus Christ. So in the chapter from which we last quoted he defines his gospel in most notable terms, as being the declaration that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again. But passing from the demonstrable and demonstrated fact of Christ's resurrection, we proceed upon it as an immovable fountain, to look in the second place upon the truth that at His coming the bodies of the righteous and of them alone are raised from the dead. And our think- ing in this connection will instantly and naturally re- vert to the 20th chapter of the Revelation with its plain statement of a resurrection which is called First, which is to be followed after a thousand years have passed, by another resurrection which it mentions as being the Second. Perhaps we had better refresh 11G BAPTIST DOCTRINES our memories by hearing the entire quotation ere we proceed to ascertain that the passage contains no truth either new or foreign to New Testament Scrip- ture. "They lived and reigned with Christ a thou- sand years. But the rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection ; over these the second death hath no power ; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years." Now it is unwise to state that this is the only intimation of a resurrection peculiar to believers, and in which the unregenerate have neither part nor lot. For as we may remember the Apostle Paul ever- more emphasizes the suggestive fact that the dead in Christ rise first, as in that great resurrection chap- ter, the 15th of First Corinthians; which is conspicu- ously out of place at the burial of an unbeliever in Jesus, and should never be so profaned, inasmuch as it concerns no soul save the dead in Christ, which will easily be ascertained and must inevitably be con- ceded when the' words of the apostle fall upon our ears, or rest beneath our eyes, and we come to observe that all the dead mentioned in this chapter are raised in incorruption, in glory, in power, and in possession of the spiritual body, while of them all it is declared they demonstrate that death and the grave had over them no hurting power, but they rejoiced in the vic- tory given them by Jesus Christ as they bear the im- age of the heavenly, and so make evident the fact as the 23d verse affirms, that they are Christ's at His coming. But Paul is not alone in the enunciation of a resurrection impossible to any save the redeemed', for in Luke 14:14, the Saviour Himself speaks of a THE RETUEN OF THE LOED 117 compensation rendered to the charitable at the res- urrection of the just ; while in the 20th chapter of Luke in checking the craftiness of the Sadducees in their little conundrum of the woman who had seven hus- bands, he said they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead die no more, for they are equal unto the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. Hence ac- cording to Jesus, there is a resurrection of the just, in which they only participate who are worthy, and who die no more, but who are equal unto the angels and who are the children of God by virtue of being partici- pants in the first resurrection, or are participants in the first resurrection because they are the children of God, and therefore have their place among ail those favored ones to whom His words to His disciples in John 14:18 apply, where He says, "I will come for you." In the letter to the Philippians after the apos- tle has exhorted the Christians of Philippi, he of him- self says in chapter 3, verse 10, That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fel- lowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death, if by any means I may attain unto the res- urrection from the dead. Now there can be no need of seeking to attain along such heroic spiritual lines as those mentioned by the apostle a resurrection that is consequent on natural immortality. But the apostle is mentioning a resurrection which as Christ affirmed necessitated all its children being the children of God, and of those alone who as stated in Colossians 3 and verse 4 appear with Christ in glory, w r hen Christ who is our life shall appear. And that we may all have part in this resurrection unto life and glory may well cause us to pray each for the other, the great 118 BAPTIST DOCTEINES prayer of Paul in Second Thessalonians 3 and 5, The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ, for assuredly the an- swer to this prayer will insure us participation in what Hebrews 11 :35, terms the better resurrection, and give us to be partakers in what Peter in his first epistle, chapter 1, verse 13, charges believers to strive for, when he bids them set their hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revela- tion of Jesus Christ, and that which John desires for his little children when in his first epistle 2 :28, he says tenderly, Abide in Him, that when He shall be manifested we may have boldness and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. The effect of the appearance of the returning Lord upon those who are alive when He comes is conveyed to us in the Scripture which we have studied concern- ing "the Rapture" as it has been termed. Then we who are alive and remain, says the apostle, shall be caught up. We who remain ! I recall how in First Co- rinthians 15:6, Paul says, "After that He was seen of over five hundred brethren at once of whom the great- er part remain, but some are fallen asleep." So that those mentioned in Corinthians were characterized as men who remain, and these mentioned in Thessaloni- ans are we who remain. Well what will happen to the remaining ones for such there will be, even a gen- eration of saints that shall not see death, but who shall escape the tomb as did Enoch of old, and shall have no experience of the seeming victory of either death of the grave. Clearly the change wrought in these spectators of the Lord's appearing and the synchroniz- ing resurrection of the just, has been expressed ade- quately enough for this meditation already by the THE RETURN OF THE LORD 119 phrase, They will be transformed and transferred at the same time. For the corruptible, the weakness, with all of dishonor, and all included in Paul's phrase, "The body of our humiliation," then will disappear ; and they will be clothed upon with the changed and glorified and spiritual body, so that they also can rise with those upon whom has been wrought the mighty miracle of the first resurrection, and thus they shall pass to be forever with the Lord. Now that Christ taught the duty of a constant watching for His return and the resultant prepared- ness for the great event, can be determined by a glance at the language He used while upon the earth, and the counsels He gave after ascending to the glo- ry, as well as from the utterances of the apostles who companioned with and were inspired by His life, teaching, and Spirit. In Matthew 24 and verse 42 we find the Lord saying to His disciples, "Watch there- fore, for ye know not on what day your Lord cometh. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have suffered his house to be broken through. Therefore be ye also ready ; for in an hour that ye think not, the Son of Man cometh. Blessed is that servant whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing." "Watch ye therefore," He says again in Mark 13, verse 34, "for ye know not when the Master of the house cometh, whether at even, or at midnight, or at cock-crowing, or in the morning; lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch." "Let your loins be girded about." He adds in Luke 12, verse 35, "and your lamps burning, and be ye your- selves like unto men looking for their Lord, when He 120 BAPTIST DOCTEINES shall return from the marriage feast, that when He cometh and knocketh they may straightway open un- to Him. Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching. Verily I say unto you, that if He shall come in the second watch and if in the third watch and find them so, blessed are those servants." And in John 16 and verse 16, He further says, "A little while, and ye behold me no more, and again a little while and ye shall see me, and because I go to the Father. And ye therefore now have sorrow ; but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice and' your joy no one taketh away from you." And then from the heaven above, the risen Lord in Revelation 3 and verse 3, admonishes the Sardis church to, "Remember therefore how thou hast received and didst hear; and keep it and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee." While in the 11th verse he adds, "I come quickly ; hold fast that which thou hast that no one take thy crown." And on the last page of the New Testament, the same glorified Saviour in Revelation 22, verse 7, affirms, "Behold I come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy of this book." "And behold," He continues in verse 12, "I come quickly and My reward is with Me to render to each man according as his work is." That the apostles of Jesus had learned this great lesson in the school of the Master Himself is readily seen. For Paul in Ro- mans 13, verse 11, says, "And this, knowing the season, that already it is time for you to awake out of sleep; for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed. The night is far spent, and the day is at hand ; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, THE RETURN OF THE LORD 121 and let us put on the armor of light." And when he writes to the Philippians in chapter 3, verse 20 he says, "For our citizenship is in heaven ; whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory." And in Colossians 3 and verse 4, he simply says, "For ye died and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life shall be manifested, then shall ye also with Him be manifested in glory." For he continues in First Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 2, Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. But ye brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. And in Second Thessalonians the 2d chap- ter, after he has assured them that the return of the Lord will follow the falling away, and the revealing of the wicked one, he significantly says, That wicked, whom the Lord shall consume with the brightness of His appearing; and then he goes on to pray in chapter 3 and the 5th verse that the Lord may direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ. The writer to the Hebrews in chapter 10 and verse 37 in the same strain affirms, For yet a very little while, "He that cometh shall come and shall not tarry." And following in this same path Peter in his first epistle chapter 4, verse 7 says, "But the end of all things is at hand, be ye therefore of sound mind, and be sober unto prayer." And in the 4th verse of the 5th chapter he continues, And when the Chief Shep- herd shall be manifested, ye shall receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away. And in his second epis- tle in chapter 3 after declaring that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as 122 BAPTIST DOCTEINES one day, he continues in verse 10, But the day of the Lord will come as a thief. ''Wherefore beloved," he adds in verse 14, "seeing that ye look for such things, give diligence that ye may be found in peace, without spot and blameless in His sight." Now it is most regrettable that ever believers in the Lord's return should be charged by any with slothful- ness in the Lord's work or inattention to the large affairs of the Kingdom of God. For in the charge lies not only a slander against the fellow-members of Christ's body, but an evidenced ignorance of the en- tire meaning and scope and purpose of this fact of the Lord's return. For whoso thinks expectancy regarding the coming of Jesus begets indifference to the com- mands of Jesus, knows not what an urgent dynamic is supplied by this looking for the glorious appearing of our Lord. For surely this ill effect of the doctrine and truth of the Lord's return would be a startling surprise to the Apostle Paul, who when he would constrain the church at Corinth to increased diligence in the service of God, could find no more powerful appeal than that in First Corinthians 1 :7, See that ye come behind in no gift, waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be unreprovable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ; and to whom in his solemn judgment parable in the 3d of First Corinthians he solemnly declares each man's work shall be made manifest, because it is revealed in fire, and the fire it- self shall prove each man's work of what sort it is, so that if any man's work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a reward: if any man's work shall be burned he shall suffer loss; and to whom he again in the 4th chapter of the same epistle, 5th THE RETURN OF THE LORD 123 verse, advises to judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, Who will both bring to light the hid- den things of darkness, and make manifest the coun- sels of the hearts, and then shall each man have his praise from God; from all which Scriptures we can- not but see how no truce sounded in the ears of those same men to whom at the close of his wonderful res- urrection argument he cries in First Corinthians 15: 58, "Wherefore my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." And to the church in Philippi, he in Philippians 1 :6 declares, Being confident of this very thing that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ; and in the 10th verse he prays that they may approve the things that are excellent, that they may be sincere and void of offence unto the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness. To the saints in Thessa- lonica he affirms in First Thessalonians 5:10 that the purpose for which salvation is imparted by Je- sus, indeed the very reason why He died for us is that whether we wake or sleep we should live togeth- er with Him ; and after bidding his son Timothy fight the good fight of faith and lay hold on eternal life, he gives him charge in the sight of God in First Timothy 6:14, That thou keep the commandment without spot, without reproach, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ ; while in Second Timothy chap- ter 4: and verse 1 he uses the impassioned clarion call that may profitably ring in the heart of every pastor among us, "I charge thee in the sight of God and of Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and the dead and by His appearing and His Kingdom, Preach 124 BAPTIST DOCTEINES the Word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and teaching, and so make full proof of thy ministry." And to all this we may add as we have already hinted that it is not the members of our churches who are looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the Lord as Peter remarks in his second epistle chapter 3 and verse 12, who are likely to absent themselves from our Sunday night services and our prayer meetings, for these faithful souls will be found heeding the admo- nition of Hebrews 10, verse 25, "Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as ye see the day drawing nigh." Now Peter and John and Jude are at one with Paul in using the dynamic of the return of the Lord as a quickening fact for all who hold this blessed hope. For Peter in his first epistle, the 1st chapter, verse 13, energetically cries, Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revela- tion of Jesus Christ, as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in the time of your ignorance, but like as He who called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living; and he adds in the second letter chapter 3, verse 14, Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, give diligence that ye may be found in peace without spot and blameless in His sight; while in the 11th verse of that same chapter he asks the question pertinent to our present study, See- ing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and Godliness. And we shall doubtless recall how the THE RETURN OF THE LORD 125 Apostle John in his first epistle chapter 3 and verse 3, after affirming that we are the sons of God, and as- suring us that we know when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him even as He is, goes on to declare the essential effect of which this glowing hope is the potent cause as he says, And every one that hath this hope set on Him, that is the soon appearing Lord, purifieth himself even as He is pure; while in the 28th verse of the preceding- chapter he, the disciple, who heard Christ describe the fruitfulness of life consequent on abiding in Christ uses the Lord's own phrase as he says, Abide in Him that if He shall be manifested, we may have boldness and not be ashamed before Him at His coming; and in the 17th verse of the 4th chapter he writes, Herein is our love made perfect that we may have boldness in the day of judgment because as He is even so are we in this world. In his short Epistle of 25 verses Jude tells of Enoch the seventh from Adam who prophe- sied saying, "Behold the Lord cometh with ten thou- sand of His saints, to execute judgment upon all," then bids those to whom he wrote remember how the apostles of Jesus Christ told how there should be mockers in the last times. But, he adds, Ye, beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, pray- ing in the Holy Spirit, be looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we only turn the page from Jud'e's Epistle to find in the last book of the New Testament the charge twice repeated within the space of seven verses to, "Hold fast till I come." Yet it may be that the most outstanding use of this great constraint to holy living and earnest purpose, and cer- tainly the one which most frequently occurs to my own heart is the sentence written by Paul to Titus, at 126 BAPTIST DOCTRINES which we have already hastily glanced, but at which we now do well to gaze with high resolve and holy intent to profit thereby. In the 11th verse of the 2d chapter of his letter to Titus, the Apostle says, "For the grace of God hath appeared, bringing sal- vation to all men, instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and Godly in this present world." Now that would seem to cover the entire life of man. For my duty to myself is to live soberly, seriously, thoughtfully, earnestly, and not to play the fool or to lose myself in flippancy or to be unaware of right estimate of values, or to be unable to distinguish mag- nitudes, or to fail to see the crown of gold because absorbed in the aggregated refuse within the grip of the muckrake ; this I say is the thing I owe to myself, to live soberly. And my duty to my fellowman is to live righteously, not to be selfish until I become dis- honest, either in act, word, will, or coveting intention, to provide things honest in the sight of all men, to be a man of honorableness, living above the fog of per- sonal gain-seeking, to live righteously, that is what I owe to my brother, even to live the righteousness that reminds of the all round rectitude of God Himself. And my duty toward my God, is to live Godly, and not as an enthusiastic fool, or a trifling agnostic, but to earnestly endeavor to practice the Golden Rule God- ward, and to be fair and right towards God, this it is that I owe to God. But where is it to be found and what is the name of the persuasion, the constraint, the urge, the propulsion, the dynamic that can enable one to so live as to fulfil this whole duty of man? Well, Paul places it before Titus as he says, Live soberly, righteously and Godly, looking for that bless- THE RETURN OF THE LORD 127 ed hope and appearing of the glory of the Great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. Now I fear that we are accustomed to hear that phrase, "The blessed hope," used only in connection with death, and ap- plied to those who have passed through the gates of death into life led by the pole star of a hope whose blessedness is disclosed to them in the presence of death. But Paul in true and more helpful fashion tells us that a hope which in its effect upon the threefold and seemingly all-embracing life of man is eminently and gloriously blessed in this same truth of our Lord's return. And so it is brought before us that whoso rightly realizes the imminency of the Lord in the sense of being at the door, so that, by virtue of that consciousness, he becomes — as Christ bade — like unto men that wait, has received a power that will enable him to be sober and righteous and Godly to- ward himself, his neighbor, and his God. And I pause to remark that as a man, who desires whatever of spiritual impetus and power the good Lord may be willing in His grace to impart, I do not wish to de- prive my life of so mighty a force as this hope that can so blessedly empower my relation towards self, my fellows, and my God. And this leads us in logical order to ponder, ere we close, the rich personal and relative value of this blessed hope of our Lord's Return. For not even to those with whom thought is in its infancy need any one apologize for calling attention to the applica- tion of this great truth upon that outlying world we call Nature. And surely the profoundest word con- cerning this aspect of our study to the Christian man, is Paul's wonderful analysis of its past, present, and future of creation, in the 8th chapter of the Romans. 128 BAPTIST DOCTKINES The creation, he says in the 20th verse, was made sub- ject to vanity. It was brought — he says of the natural world — under subjection to hostile forces and an un- favorable environment such as it had not previously known. And it underwent change, and that of an in- jurious kind, by becoming subject to vanity, and so the Garden of Eden is not so far removed from which Tennyson wrote, "For Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal, The May fly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow speared by the shrike, And the whole little world where I sit is a world of plunder and prey." But the creation, continues the apostle, was not sub- jected to vanity willingly, or wittingly, or of its own accord and choice, or through its own fault, or of its own volition, but it was subjected to vanity through the fault of another, even the sin of man to whom was given the fair heritage of a world fresh from its in- finite Creator's fashioning, and unflecked by a single stain, and so, absolutely faultless. And the creation, in the bold and realistic phrase of Paul, groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. It was not sub- jected wittingly; it does not submit to subjection wil- lingly, so audaciously affirms the apostle in his startling boldness, speaking as though the conscious heart of the world itself was burdened with the pent- up pain of a humiliation, which it ever unsuccessful- ly, yet still vehemently sought to cast ofif and out. Yet he says in a realism of language that would surely suggest inspiration, it still retains an earnest expecta- tion of deliverance from its subjugation to a power that is unwelcome and unfriendly and foreign and ab- horred. And further, . so continues the apostle, the creation shall be delivered from the bondage of cor- THE RETURN OF THE LORD 129 mption thrust upon it from without, and burdening it so grievously and long. And the time of its deliv- erance he does not merely suggest or hint at, or proph- ecy, but he clearly and challengingly asserts the cre- ation shall be delivered into the glorious liberty of the children of God, in the great day of the mani- festation of the sons of God, the day of the redemp- tion of the body of the saved children of God. And so he says the creation cursed by sin ever waiteth for the manifestation of the children of God. And while I have charged myself to keep within the limits of the New Testament in this present analysis, yet perhaps as one has referred to Tennyson for illustra- tion's sake, the privilege might be accorded of recall- ing how a Jewish seer, who is claimed by some of us as being a prophet as well as a poet, has pictured and foretold a coming day when instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree, and the wilderness shall be a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water, and there shall be streams in the desert, and when the mountains and the hills, no longer lava bur- dened and storm scarred, shall break forth into sing ing, and the trees of the fields shall clap their hand's, and there shall be no more curse, for the new heav- en shall have lost the baneful lightnings of the old beclouded firmament, and the new earth shall by the second Adam's power be brought back into its old time beauty of blessedness, and to an eternal security from breath of evil or shadow of disappointment or distress or sin. And also for the sake of the chosen people of God I find delight in pondering the Return of the Lord. That the Lord loveth Zion is good news for a people 130 BAPTIST DOCTEINES who have for millenniums been in the furnace of per- secution, and the by-word of the peoples of the entire earth. A minister in my city sometime ago declared that God had finished with the Jews when Christ died on Calvary. Finished! I recall how in his poem "In the Children's Hospital," the singer of England in re- ply to the surgeon's taunt, "All very well, but the good Lord Jesus has had His day," makes the nurse answer back, "Had, has it come, it has only dawned, it will come by and by." Finished with the Jews ! I refrain from passing backward beyond the first page of the New Testament, yet I remember how in Luke 13, I read of the lament of Jesus over Jerusalem doom, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gath- ered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her own brood under her wings, and ye would not! Be- hold your house is left unto you desolate," but in the punctuation of God's program there is no full stop there, for the divine Lord goes on to say, "Ye shall not see Me, until ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." And this sentence from the lips of great David's greater Son, may have trembled upon the tongue of Paul when he cried in Romans 11, Hath God cast off His people? God forbid. God did not cast off His people. For if the casting away of them is the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? And it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not My people, there shall they be called the children of the Living God. Now I sincerely trust we are interested in God's chosen people, whose are the fathers; and who gave us the seers and singers, those poet-prophets of the Old Testament whose distant footsteps echo THE EETUEN OF THE LOKD 131 through Hebrews 11 that Westminster Abbey of the earlier aristocracy of God, to which listening, our hearts thrill as we hear the passing of Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses and Gideon and Barak and Sam- son and Jephthah and David and Samuel and the prophets, and so come into the apprehension that the Old Testament Scriptures come to us from the Jews ; and when the realization also arrests us that the New Testament is of Jewish origin; and when to that Paul adds concerning those same Jews, "of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever;" what Christian heart, I ask, can fail to rejoice that the great day is ever nearing, when there shall come to Zion the Deliverer, who shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob, and whose feet shall again stand upon the Mount of Olives, and to whom as the angel affirms in Luke 1, verse 32, The Lord God shall give the throne of his father David, and He shall reign over the House of Jacob forever, and of His Kingdom there shall be no end. And so because of this I say, I wait with keen anticipation for the day of His appearing, when the time will be ripe for the fulfillment of this wonderful word in Hebrews 8th chapter and 8th verse, When saith the Lord, I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the old covenant that I made with their fathers, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Is- rael after those days saith the Lord. I will put My laws into their mind and write them in their hearts, and I will be to them a God and they shall be to Me a people. And if a distinctly personal word might be spoken 132 BAPTIST DOCTEINES in the confidence natural to this gathering of Christian men, I should like to say my derived gain resulting from the contemplation of the Return of the Lord, is beyond my expression, though not, thank God, outside my gratitude. For so much of the Bible was to me a sealed book until I learned to allow this great truth to occupy its rightful place in the inspired volume ; and so much that was incoherent because of improper adjustment, has been made plain by the Spirit of God, that I am constrained to glorify Him because He opened my eyes to this truth regarding His ap- pearing the second time without sin unto salvation. And when I ever remember, how, when the last of His chosen has joined the called out ones, even the Ecclesia, the chosen Church which is His Body, then the Bridegroom will come for His Bride, and the coming One will appear; why then with an increased devotion, with renewed energy, and with an empha- sized earnestness do I proclaim to men the unsearch- able riches of Christ, while the consciousness that for aught I to the contrary know, while I proclaim the cross, the cleansing blood, and the saving Christ, the final trophy of His grace ere the Rapture may be won by the truth and Spirit, is as the shining of a bright light before my eyes, as well as a most gracious restraint and constraint upon mind and heart and lip. And so because of personal blessing; the comfort, cheer, sustentation, and uplift flowing to my own soul and illumining and anchoring my own life ; I find my- self praying that my preaching brethren everywhere may come into the charm and cheer of what I love to call — after Paul's example — the blessed Hope. And so now when my hair that once was brown is grey, I should become eagerhearted as a boy again if THE RETURN OF THE LORD 133 some authoritative voice concerning my mother long- since gone into the heavens, should affirm, "Your mother is coming back to-morrow." Even so I trust, and more also I humbly pray, does my heart leap up with joyful anticipation when Christ says in His last word to man, "Behold I come quickly," and from my glad soul there springs the swift reply, "Even so, come Lord Jesus." CHAPTER VII THE SUPREME PASSION OF THE GOSPEL BY REV. LEE SCARBOROUGH. D.D. THE SUPREME PASSION OF THE GOSPEL >HERE seems to run through the entire character \Sp\ and program of God, as revealed in His Word ^^ and manifested in His people, an unspeakable passion for the salvation of lost men everywhere in the world. Especially is this divine energy exhibited in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ Himself throughout His entire history, as shown in prophe- cy, in His earthly ministry and transmuted into the lives of His people, was the embodiment of this un- speakable passion. To this He devoted His entire nature, and has by His Holy Spirit combined all of the energies of the redeemed powers of His people throughout twenty centuries. What is meant by this supreme passion of the gospel is that spiritual long- ing manifested everywhere in the gospel of Christ to save men from sin and redeem them to God and a life of holiness and service in Christ's Kingdom. It is proposed in this discussion to approach the subject from several points of view. I. This Passion As Experienced in God, the Father. It is seen not only in His character, but exhibited in His works and providences. 1. As seen in His merciful attributes. The Father is everywhere in the Old Testament and in the New revealed as a benevolent, merciful and loving Father. This compassionate nature, long- ing for the salvation and uplift of humanity, seems to 138 BAPTIST DOCTRINES be one of the supreme attributes of the nature and character of God. It is true that He has the attri- butes of wrath and power, but probably His supreme attribute is that that manifests itself in mercy and love. 2. As seen in His benevolent creation. God has made the world as a lap of beautiful lux- ury. The flowers, the birds, the gentle zephyrs, the kindliness shown everywhere in His creative power is but the manifestation of this loving attitude to a sin- ning and unsaved world. 3. This merciful disposition is shown also in God's loving providences — His patience with men, His provi- sion for their bodies, their intellectual and spiritual beings. His visitation of sun and rain, of providential protection, is but the exposition of His loving at- tribute towards the spiritual and moral uplift of man, redeeming him from sin and its consequences every- where. 4. This experience of compassion for a lost world is manifested also in the perfect holiness of God's nature. The high standards of righteousness and purity of character looking toward the best in humanity is but another form of God's message of compassion to a lost world. So we see that this supreme passion shown in the gospel of Jesus Christ is but the outgrowth and experience of the Father God in His nature and rela- tionship with man. THE SUPEEME PASSION OF THE GOSPEL 139 II. This Supreme Passion of the Gospel Is Especially Revealed by God in His Holy Word. The fact of this great truth in one form or another is revealed in almost every book of the Bible in such a fashion that it is the one supreme theme and cen- tral subject around which all revelation gathers. 1. The history of man in the Garden of Eden; in Noah's flood; in God's dealings with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and the other leaders of His specially chosen race, is but the long history of God's merciful compassion, seeking the salvation of man. 2. This burning, consuming compassion for the salvation of men is revealed in Isaiah 58:10ff, John 3: 16, and in many, many other places in the Word of God. The four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of Paul and Peter are but the continuous revelations and manifestations of this mighty passion which breathes and beats and burns through God's revelation. III. As Manifested through God. This compassionate concern for the salvation of men is not only experienced in the Father and revealed by Him in His Word, but it is manifested through Him as exhibited in the life of Christ and in the revelation of the Holy Spirit and His dealings with men. 1. As seen in Christ Jesus. He is revealed as a loving Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world for the salvation of men. His earthly career of thirty-three years is but the exhibi- tion of this character in the Father. His three years of ministry among men was that of healing, soothing, 140 BAPTIST DOCTKINES saving, uplifting, redeeming fallen humanity. His works everywhere and' in every place of these three years of glorious mercy and redemption are explained only by His unspeakably supreme passion for the salvation of men. His sufferings because of the cruel- ties of sinning humanity, especially shown in the garden of Gethsemane, on the cruel cross of Cal- vary, and in the immortal tomb of Joseph of Arima- thea, also exhibit the extremes to which He was wil- ling to go to give the world an exhibition of this su- preme compassion in the world's salvation. 2. This compassionate concern for the salvation of men as the supreme subject in God's dealing with men is shown also in the history of the Holy Spirit as the third member of the Trinity. His constant and persistent patience and merciful dealings with men in their sin and rebellion, as the One who calls, con- victs, applies the gospel of salvation, regenerates, comforts and leads forth into the service of God the lost of the earth, He shows forth this same char- acteristic of the divine heart. He intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. He patient- ly deals with the impenitent, persistently follows the penitent and works in their hearts the graces of the gospel, issuing in their salvation and service. Without any limit of divine sacrifice, God thus through the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit follows man un- til his salvation is complete. The greatest exhibition of this compassionate con- cern of God for man is seen in the cross of Calvary on which the only begotten Son of God gave Himself freely for the salvation of men, and also in the per- sistent and patient call and benevolent working of the Holy Spirit in the behalf of men. THE SUPEEME PASSION OF THE GOSPEL 141 IV. This Passion of God thus Experienced, Revealed and Manifested Is Transplanted in the Heart of Man through the Regenerating Work of Jesus Christ and the Compassionate Dealings of the Holy Spirit. God not only has this profound, spiritual longing for the eternal welfare of men and has not only re- vealed it in His divinely-inspired Book and manifested it in the person of His only begotten Son and the operations of the Holy Spirit, but He also has the power through regeneration and spiritual impact to show forth this same supreme concern for the salva- tion of men in the life and ministry of His disciples. 1. As seen in the early disciples. The wonderful ministry of John the Baptist, giving up all and dying a cruel death for the love he had for the Saviour under His call for service among men, is but God manifesting Himself in this com- passionate concern for the salvation of men. The story of the Apostle Peter under burning persecu- tion, sacrificially turning away from the appeal of the world to give himself to the service of Christ in saving men, is but the transplantation of this same passion found in the heart of the Father, in the ministry of the Saviour and the Holy Spirit. 2. Nowhere else in history is there such a manifesta- tion of this transplantation of spirit as seen in the life, ministry and death of the Apostle Paul. In Romans 9:1-3 and 10:1 is found the deepest expression of this divine passion in the heart of the great apostle. From the day he surrendered his soul in obedient service to Jesus Christ in Damascus until the day of his execution under the cruel ax of Roman persecu- tion, in perils, prisons, punishments of the most ex- 142 BAPTIST DOCTRINES treme and cruel nature, Paul showed forth the spirit which he caught from Jesus Christ, a longing that counted no cost too dear for its manifestation in the salvation of men. 3. The spiritual passion for man's salvation is shown as an ingredient part and parcel of regeneration. Personal salvation comes wrapped up with the loving folds of this garment of compassion. Everywhere regeneration of the individual spirit seeks to propagate itself in the salvation of others through this loving compassion. Immediately on being saved Andrew thought of his brother Simon and went for him; and Phillip thought of his friend Nathaniel and sought his salvation. Each of these and all of their successors in personal soul-winning have but manifested this wonderful spiritual germ transplanted in the heart of man by Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. 4. This truth is manifested in the early stages of salvation in all lands and climes and ages. The testimony is almost universal that immediately when one is saved a mighty mission passion burns for the salvation of others — the mother for her child, the child for its mother, the brother for the sister, the companion for the companion, the friend for the friend, the disciple even for the most outcast among humanity's fallen race; there burns the same flame of compassion seeking their salvation. From these various points of view it seems the logic is overwhelming and the argument irresistible that there breathes through the whole character, revela- tion and manifestation of God, in creation, providence and revelation this masterful passion to save men from their sins and bring them back to God. THE SUPREME PASSION OF THE GOSPEL 143 V. The Need and Value of This Compassion. It is believed that the universal exhibition of this supreme passion of the gospel is the secret and suc- cess of all mission enterprise and evangelistic effort. The prevalence of this spirit pervading all the life of Christian people, their labors and institutions, is the only hope of the world's speedy redemption. 1. The need of this masterful passion is universal. Every pulpit in Christendom should feel its mighty throb until the pew of every church and the uttermost mission field should burn with this passion. The Gos- pel ministry of to-day needs to go back to catch the sympathetic compassion which burned in a consum- ing flame in the heart of John the Baptist, the Apos- tles Peter and Paul, and the other early disciples. We should go back and have sympathetic and soul touch with the sufferings of Jesus Christ in the garden and on the cross. We should stand with Him overlook- ing Jerusalem on Mount Olivet and see what He saw when with a burst of tears He commiserated fallen and rebellious Jerusalem. In many places to-day the pul- pits of Christendom do not weep and burn and throb with this unspeakable passion of the gospel. There are many signs of revival both in pulpit and pew, hopeful and encouraging in this line. 2. There is great need for this supreme passion to show itself in the homelife of our people, where moth- er and father shall have that parental, longing com- passion of soul for their offspring, in which the do- mestic atmosphere gives birth to the salvation of the children. This passion should burn in all of our institutional life, schools, seminaries, orphanages, hospitals, Sun- 144 BAPTIST DOCTEINES day schools, young people's organizations, and in all the literature which we send forth for the spiritual up- lift of our people. There should be special manifesta- tion of this heart-yearning for the lost in all of the social and business and personal heart-touches which we have with each other in every phase of life. We cannot win this world with a compassionate pulpit un- less the pew manifests this spiritual concern in the daily and domestic life of the people. There is a great need for a recreation and a remanifestation of this spir- itual concern for a lost world. 3. The exhibition of this spirit shown in the supreme passion of the gospel is the hope of the ministry and the institutions of our churches The ministry cannot preserve itself by its scholar- ship, by its eloquence, by its personal purity, nor by- its organizations. It can only do it through the power of God in its consuming and burning passion for the sal- vation of men. This same spirit is the hope- of our entire institutional life. Our churches howsoever rich in worldly goods, -howsoever conformable to the styles and fashions of the world, howsoever wise in its schol- arship, howsoever well organized and informed, how- soever well led by an inspired leadership, cannot func- tion and save themselves from the^ d'estituti-on of spirit- ual death except as our wealth, our organization, bur leadership, are impassioned "by this supreme hunger, {or the salvation of men.. ' "... .4. It is in this mighty, supreme passion that is con- served and preserved our theology. Scholarship how- soever fortified by learned leaders and endowed, and equipped institutions, cannot preserve the theology of Christianity and cause it .to function in the. salvation and constructive sanctification of the human race. It THE SUPBEME PASSION OF THE GOSPEL 145 takes something more than learning and organization. It must be shot through and through with this compas- sionate concern for the salvation of men. It is in the centers of spiritual unconcern for men where the drift in theology is found. Wherever soul-winning and compassionate evangelism are found there the old truth revealed in God's Word stands forth as a mighty fac- tor. When the soul ceases to yearn for the salvation of men it cares less and less for the authority of God and the truth revealed in His book; it clings less and less to the eternals revealed in His book and vouch- safe in Christ's salvation. If we would guard the truth in our schools and their loyalty to the authority of God's Word, we should keep warm the fires of soul- winning and the compassionate hunger of evangelism. 5. It is this spirit of compassion for a lost world on which we are to depend for our missionaries, our min- isters, and our gospel workers of all lines. It was this spirit in the heart of the Father God and His Son, our Saviour, that caused Jesus to leave heav- en and take up the cross and all of its contumely and cruelty. It is this spirit that has supplied the heroic ministries of the past with men and women. It is in the folds of this wonderful garment of life and salva- tion in which we find "the motives that have led and backed and pushed forward all the heroic missionaries of Jesus Christ in all lands and in all times. And upon this we are to depend for the supplies and re- cruits in the coming great day of conquest for our Saviour. 146 BAPTIST DOCTRINES VI. What Feeds This Compassion? I close this discussion with some thoughts about the sources of supply for this compassionate concern for lost men. How may one's heart be encouraged and fed in this matter? How may we find fellowship with Jesus Christ in His strong crying over a lost world? This is a pertinent and important question. I would answer in several ways. 1. By close companionship with Jesus Christ, study- ing His words, catching His spirit, being moved by the motives that moved Him, putting one's self under absolute surrender to all of His commands, and seek- ing in Him the spiritual sources of life. 2. By a constant study of the Word of God, seek- ing its hidden resources, spiritually interpreting its truth, honestly recognizing all the pressure of its inspired authority, filling the soul with its promises, revelling in its riches, bringing from its hidden depths the spiritual juices that fatten life. It will be found especially helpful to study the Word of God on the nature, perils, dangers, punishments and awful extremes of sin, seeing what sin does in and through and by and with the sinner. 3. By prayer — constant, secret and soulful importun- ity to God. No man can find this compassion of soul who neg- lects secret prayer. God will transplant into the soul of the secret supplicator this burning passion for the salvation of men. It is in supplication that we find the closest communion with God and the best and most helpful climate in which to grow into His like- ness, find His spirit. THE SUPREME PASSION OF THE GOSPEL 147 4. By a revaluation of the souls of men. One of our sins to-day is that we care so little for the immortal spirits of men. We should seek their value by studying the estimates put on them by God. We should see to what length He has gone in creation, in providence, and in salvation for the souls of men. The best estimate we can find of the value of the immortal soul of man is in the agonies of Gethsemane and on the two arms of the cross of Calvary. We should behold the Saviour in His sufferings and re- member that it was all for the sake of lost men. 5. The flame of this compassion is fed by a con- stant and persistent effort in the salvation of men. It matters not how much we study the Word of God and find there the condition and peril and destiny of lost men, it matters not how much we pray and seek com- munion with God, it matters not how much we may value the souls of men, if we do not personally seek to give time and energy and spiritual effort in their redemp- tion our hearts will not glow and burn for their salva- tion. It is in the fields of activity in soul-winning where we will find the most glowing examples of this supreme passion of the gospel. My prayer and purpose in this message is to help my brethren in Christ everywhere to catch this com- passion so wonderfully wrought out and ghten to us in the ministry of Jesus Christ and under the leadership of the divine Spirit, and carry- with burning zeal the gospel message in the power of the divine Spirit to a lost humanity everywhere. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: April 2006 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111