Class _£jT_5S_ Book ^B3L^. GoppghtN COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. PRESENT-DAY CONSERVA TISM AND LIBERALISM WITHIN BIBLICAL LINES A Concise and Comprehensive Exhibit BY JAMES GLENTWORTH BUTLER, D.D. Author of " The Bible Work," 11 vols " The disturber is always active, and his audience is large . . . The world does not belong to the disturber and his excited victims, and men of sense should say so in the open." Ex. Gov. Black BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 1911 t^ 1 "Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again: The eternal years of God are hers !" Bryant Copyright, 1911 Sherman, French &* Company CI.A292532 FOREWORD The purpose of this book is to compare and contrast present-day Conservatism and Liberal- ism; in clear, concise detail comprehensively to unfold these earth- and heaven-wide, antago- nistic systems of thought, — to trace succinctly their origin, basis, methods, substance, personal effects, and final, abiding issues. It undertakes to show: First, that modern Conservatism has its basis and substance, and finds its vitality in Divinely revealed and verified facts, and points to its effective results in the existing world-wide Chris- tendom. At every step it accepts the estab- lished laws of thought, and deals with objective facts ; buttressing these with reasonings, corol- laries, and conclusions, with evidence and proof. It is a Positive system, founded upon and ex- pressly stated in the terms of the Bible record touching the Redemptive agency of the Triune Godhead. Thus, for a sanely thinking mind, conscious of responsibility to God and aware of His gracious intervention to save, this sys- tem has a practical starting point, a solid standing ground, and leads to consequent con- viction and acceptance. FOREWORD Next, that the system of Liberalism exactly reverses all these points. It baldly announces that its canons of interpretation and its doc- trines are wholly comprised in Negative terms. Denying and ignoring Divinely revealed facts it presents no objective basis and of course can offer neither evidence, argument, or proof. It coldly sets up its own fanciful conceptions and baseless theories, assumes and asserts their truth, without even a hint of reasoning. In making these vagrant and proofless assertions in place of an authoritative Revealer it substi- tutes a natively ignorant, finite man for the only All-Knower, the Infinite God. In its is- sues and effects it is a Destructive System, without effort, care, or thought of replacing it with even a visionary Constructive fabric. Upon the decision of this supremely vital issue every man's eternal condition is staked. In its consideration the influence of natural bias or prejudice, of the spirit of partisanship, or indulgence in casuistry, is simply and openly suicidal. " Respice Finem ! " was the counsel of a cul- tured Pagan moralist, expanded by Asaph in his reasonings and conclusions upon actual life conditions, clearly stated in the seventy-third Psalm. Sane reason, and clear, honest think- ing considers, estimates, and decides the great life-question from the standpoint of eternity. FOREWORD What do life's ultimate issues promise concern- ing the changeless future to my own ever exist- ing spirit? The only assured answer we read in the confessing words of Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life!" "This is life eternal," said the Eternal Son to the Father, "that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS CHURCH CREEDS AND CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE Two Misstatements Corrected, in Address of Pres. Brown at the Opening of Union Seminary: First, The notion that Creeds were first Formulated by a "For- tuitous Concourse" of Individuals, Each Qualified for Creed-making by a Mushroom Leap into a Matured Christian Experience; Shown to be Fanciful and Un- historic; Historic Facts disclose the true method of Creed Formation. Second, The Radical and Hurtful Error of the Address: An Explicit Reversal of the only possible Relation between Creed, or formed Belief, and Experience; The True Relation proved to be, Ab- solute Dependence of Experience upon Creed. Defini- tion of Christian Experience; Its needful and helpful Function in Confirmation of every Truth Revealed and Believed. Instructive Facts touching Creedal History. II UP-TO-DATENESS, DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE Desirable: Advanced Knowledge wisely Sought and Personal Influence rightly Gained if Founded upon clearly Ascertained Divine Truth and actually Expe- ienced Divine Guidance and Aid. Undesirable: When it takes the form of Ignorant, Unguided Self-Obtrusion, under the Pressure of Selfish Pride and Ambition, and is the Demeaning Product of an immensely exaggerated Native Conceit. Applied to SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS self-styled "Modernism," of which Excessive Inborn Con- ceit is the Generative Force; Particularly to the Theory of Sabatier and Ritschl, Attributing to the Natural Un- informed, Human Reason (in every man) an Inherent Power of Knowing and Adjudging all Truth. Closes with a Kindly Warning to all Believers respecting their Exposure to spiritual harm from Conceit. Ill CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM OF TO-DAY Introductory: Grounds of Knowledge and reasona- ble Certitude of Truth; Trustworthy Reports of Mental Faculties the Basis of Knowledge; Truth, or exact Knowledge results when the Mental View, or "Thought" corresponds to the "Tiling" or Object of Knowledge; i. e., when the Subjective Apprehension agrees with the Objective Reality. The Reason for Certitude is found in Evidence. Revealed Facts of God's Redemptive Dealing with Man embody all Religious Truth and are the sole Subject-matter of Investigation; Proof of these Facts Divinely Revealed. The terms "Doctrine" and "Dogma" ruled out of this Discussion. True Place and Meaning of Conservatism in Present- Day Use: How Applied in past generations; Cause of Transformation; Spirit of Modern Conservatism; Its Subject-matter of Belief, the Sovereign Facts of Divine Revelation; Full Synopsis of the Essentials of Christian Faith, Embodying and Defining the Living and Working Conservatism. Liberalism of To-day: 1. Its Underlying Root, the Theory of Evolution; Its History and Malign Effects Outlined. 2. First Emanation from the Evolutionary Root, The Denial and Elimination of The Supernatural; Its Wide Realm, Assured Reality, Solid Basis, and immeasurably Blessed Results; Fatal Effects of its Denial. 3. Next Evolutionary Outgrowth, The Theory of SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS Autonomous Mind; Its Meaning and Shallowness Ex- posed, and its Possibility Annihilated. 4. Next and most Tangible Emanation, The Self- Styled "Higher Criticism/' with its Abnormal and Impious Work of Disintegration and Mutilation of the Word of God; Its Tenets and Assumption of Superior Scholarship Exposed and Refuted. 5. The Crowning Product of its Evolutionary Emana- tions, The "New Theology"; A Double Misnomer, with- out Base or Support: Illustrative Citations ("Specimen" Denials) of Four Prominent Advocates: Dr. Lyman Abbott, R. J. Campbell, Dr. Charles Eliot, and Rev. Dr. Wm. Adams Brown. A Shadowy Plea in Support of Liberalism's Asserted Negations, the proud boast of Intellectual Freedom — Punctured. Closing Summary. I, II AND III FORTRESSED BY IV AND V IV THE GODHEAD AN ETERNAL TRINITY God in Three Persons; Relation of Three Persons; Fatherhood of God; Man's Sonship; Appeal of Three United Persons; Intercommunion Life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Attitude in Prayer to the Three Divine Persons; Scriptural Testimony to the Trinity; Three- fold Office-Work in Man's Redemption. PLACE AND WORK OF JESUS CHRIST Identified with O. T. Jehovah; O. and N. T. Texts Linked; Titles Applied to Christ; N. T. Disclosures of Christ Match Old Testament Revelations. Christ the Bevealer of All Truth in O. and N. Testaments, Both Subject and Author of O. Testament. Christ the Actor for the Godhead in Revelation, Crea- tion, Providence, and Redemption; Ignorance of this Transcendent Fact has produced Ritschlism and "New Theology." SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS Proof cited from Prof. B. W. Bacon's Mutilation of the Sermon on the Mount. Alleged Scriptural Support: 1. "Emptied Himself"; True Interpretation annihilates "Kenosis"; 2. "Neither the Son," reasonably interpreted proves the Liberal Inference to be baseless and impious. VI PERIL FROM "MODERN THOUGHT," GOD'S WARNING VOICE Class Exposed to Peril; Two Points of Peril: I. Deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit; 2. Integrity and Sufficiency of the Word of God; God's Words of En- lightenment and Warning. PRESENT DAY CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM CHURCH CREEDS AND CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE Personal Note. As a careful student of the Word of God and of many volumes of scholarly and devout exposition, with some thoughtful consideration of the few widely accepted Theological Sys- tems, for nearly seventy years, and as one who seeks "to contend earnestly for the Faith," the writer would make definite reply to the two basal misstatements in the address of President Brown at the opening of the new Home for Union Seminary. The apparent purpose of the address was to justify the existing open hostility of the Faculty (or its heterogeneous majority) toward the Presbyterian Church. We recall and note the fact that for many fruitful years that great Church, honored, and was honored by, the signally eminent Faculty of half century ago. Models of Christian courtesy, they were men of refined culture, of profound learning expressed with great clarity, grace and force, and were everywhere recog- nized as masterly teachers of Biblical Theology, 1 2 CHURCH CREEDS AND and of an Exegesis that included both the letter and the spirit. Their students have largely contributed to the progress of the Church and to the maintenance of its integrity to the Faith as God-given in His Word — Nomina Clara: Rev. Drs. William Adams, Henry Boyn- ton Smith, Roswell D. Hitchcock, Philip Schaff, Wm. G. P. Shedd, and Marvin R. Vincent. [I may be permitted to add, that all these friends freely offered their volumes, and three of them their MSS., by the use of which the pages of the "Bible Work" were greatly enriched.] Under the heading, "The Church and its Creeds" (N. Y. Observer, Nov. 10), President Brown undertakes to define their mutual rela- tions, and fills eight columns with what seems to logically thinking men, tenuous, specious, and fallacious reasoning. As his first misstatement, he bases all creeds upon "a process of choice" (testified solely by individual consciousness) "which we call Chris- tian experience." This is his starting point. These lightly expressed and somewhat enig- matic words carry a grave meaning and con- tain one of the most insidious and destructive root-errors of Liberalism, or New Theology. For "Christian experience" must have behind it a mature Christian believer, with knowledge of Christian truth. But there is here no hint of any source of objective truth or knowledge. CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 3 The men spoken of, and afterward referred to, spring at once to the knowledge and forces of Christian manhood. More than this, they are at once invested with inherent power of appre- hending and declaring what is truth. And these mushroom growths of experienced men are widely scattered over great breadths of ter- ritory. Without any known links of connec- tion, the product of experience is identical among them all. So the address goes on to trace the after "process" : "The Church is made up of persons with this common Chris- tian experience. And in order to unite in one body there must be some interchange of ex- pression indicating the experience which is the real bond. . . . They must tell each other." This theory of first thinking and feeling alike in an identical experience, evolved out of every man's own uninformed and uninfluenced native consciousness, seems airy and immature. But the further suggestion of a "fortuitous con- course" of many units, obsessed with like experi- ences, the getting of these individually sepa- rated and mentally diverse men into perfect agreement in opinion and feeling, bringing them simultaneously to think alike about a future organization, and then moving them by a com- mon impulse to start out, like the Three Kings in "Ben Hur," to meet together, each with a forethought of a formulated, uniting bond of 4 CHURCH CREEDS AND Church organization, all this without knowl- edge of place or time or fact of such meet- ing, and without a single illumining historic illustration, it would seem, to a matter of fact thinking man, as if the whole scheme, thus far, was woven out of a purely fanci- ful fabric. But the theory we are consider- ing goes further and, in the same simple way of thinking, affirms progress. It continues: "Then definition began to creep in. . . . By degrees, not only some definition, but also some explanation and inference crept into such avowals, which took on a more formal and stereotyped character. At length, what we know as the Apostles' Creed grew up — or was built up — and we see a few additional state- ments and some incentives to the Christian life included. Then the declaration of Nicaea, the decree of Chalcedon; long afterwards the arti- cles of Trent and the Protestant formularies." This is the visionary theory of the original method by which Creeds were introduced and formulated. (In the closing summary, the theory just unfolded holds no historic place. Nor could it attain such honor, since it is a pure product of Modernism.) It is in direct contradistinction from the actual facts, which facts these theorizers characterize as unmean- ing tradition and dismiss as unworthy of con- sideration. CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 5 Our direct denial and ample disproof of this entire theory is embodied in a single paragraph of incontrovertible historic facts: The differing creeds of Protestant churches were formulated by small groups of devout and scholarly men gathered in the schools founded and formed by the great leaders at the outset of the Reformation. The grounds of differ- ence in their formulas were twofold : the in- terpretation of Biblical texts and the philo- sophic conception of the nature and working of God and of man. With manifold complicated questions arising from these differing inter- pretations and philosophic views, increased and emphasized by wide diversities of mental ability and training and by temperamental idiosyn- crasies, reenforced by a common native bias, partisan spirit, and pride of opinion, it was inevitable that the several groups should be- come widely separated, and reach and formu- late opposing judgments upon many points of doctrine. Hence the birth and growth of manifold denominations in the visible Church. Hence, too, the prolonged and acrimonious dis- cussions in the schools and in innumerable volumes, which for three centuries have marred and weakened the body of Christ and delayed the onward march of His Kingdom. Happily, we may note one good result of this protracted controversy. As all attainment in 6 CHURCH CREEDS AND the sciences and practical arts has been gained and all advance of nations toward civilization has been reached through long-sustained con- flicts of thought, experiment, or warfare, so the centuries of embittered, painful, separating dis- putations of good men concerning the Bible teachings have at length brought into clearer light the apprehensible depths and grand sim- plicities of the Gospel of Christ and wrought a deeper, weightier conviction of their Divine source and immeasurable value. Before proceeding with the second point of arraignment of the address, we note some in- structive facts linked to our general theme: 1. No denominational creed has ever been able to match its formulas with Scripture texts. The Presbyterian Church (North) tried, not many years ago by a committee of its foremost scholars, to sustain its grand old "Confession,'' but failed at many points and wisely improved its creed by revision. 2. Only within the past decade — when, as the result of Christianity's leaven in the world's life, facilities of intercourse and community of interest have established the feeling of neigh- borhood among nations and brought in a fur- ther promise of brotherhood, and when, under these added influences which have reached and dominated the churches, theological differences CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 7 have been ignored and discussions of differing points of belief and practice have practically ceased between Christian denominations — only with the present-day permanent truce has the idea come to birth and found expression that there can be but one Biblical creed for all Chris- tians. Hence the great Federation movement has sprung at once into maturity, and has be- gun its effective, blessed work at home and in the mission field. 3. Upon the essentials of the one Biblical creed there is complete agreement among all evangelical denominations. They find these essentials in the facts of God's Redemptive dealings with man as these are recorded in the Word Divinely revealed. Assuming God's crea- tive might and moral supremacy as asserted by Himself, the one creed of the universal Chris- tian Church includes as essential: (1) The three-fold office work of Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son, and the two-fold agency of the Eternal Spirit; (2) The corresponding condi- tioned action of the human spirit in "repent- ance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." These are the elements and this the substance of a living, productive Biblical creed. Whoever accepts and adopts these elements is a genuine disciple and follower of Christ. And the church that adopts these essential facts as its creed is a genuine Christian church. The 8 CHURCH CREEDS AND man or the church may hold many differing opinions upon other questions, but these can- not affect their Christian character or fellow- ship in worship or work. 4. It should be also noted in passing that while the old friction of feeling and discussion of doctrine have ceased between the denomina- tions, speculative notions of a revolutionary and destructive character, originating with open infidels, have been insidiously introduced by avowed Christian professors and ministers, who are now stirring up strife and hindering spiritual progress in many evangelical churches. The disturbers are few in number, but intensely active and aggressive, dealing in assertion with- out reasoning or proof. Their vantage ground for harm is found in the lack of Scriptural knowledge and mental training on the part of the lay membership, assisted by the natural am- bition for up-to-dateness in thought movements, which afflicts an inconsiderable number of the ministry. But God is in and for His Church, and in His own time will exert the inherent power of His truth to remove this with all other hindrances to the assured advance of His King- dom on earth. We return to our chief purpose as intimated at the outset. The Second misstatement of the Seminary CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 9 Address is the sole basis of the First. It con- sists in the square reversal of the only possible relation between experience and creed or belief. The grounds of support for this reversal have been exhausted in treating the ample citations from the Address embodied under the First mis- statement. We concentrate our straight de- nial of this fundamental misstatement as re- spects reasoning and argument in a single para- graph : TRUE RELATION OF EXPERIENCE TO CREED Many columns and pages of sinuous and specious reasoning have been recently written touching the relation of creed and experience, and in open advocacy of what is boastfully styled "New Theology." This unsustained reasoning is founded upon the supposition that experience is the source and basis, and so the arbiter and interpreter of the creed, as asserted by Ritschl. The fact is just the reverse. Of necessity the creed alone furnishes the ground and the means of the experience. The accepted creed, with its immediate results of regenera- tion and conversion, is the beginning of the new Christian life. Of this life experience is the continuance and development. The creed is actualized instantly upon its acceptance by the mind and heart. The experience is the after resultant of the continued force of the 10 CHURCH CREEDS AND heart belief reinforced by the forward endeavor of the consecrated will. 1 1 An extended review of President Adams's Address by Dr. Daniel S. Gregory (Bible Student and Teacber, Jan. 11), contains the following appreciation and en- dorsement : "The Rev. Dr. J. Glentworth Butler, author of the great 'Butler Bible Work,' who was Permanent Clerk of the New School General Assembly up to the merger of the New and Old School bodies in 1870, has lately given (in New York Observer for December 29, 1910), in a paper on 'Church Creeds and Christian Experience,' such an admirable and thoroughgoing exposure of the irrational, illogical and impossible qualities of this lat- est Ritschlian pronunciamento, that we venture to quote its statement of how the Modern View places 'the cart before the horse.' Dr. Butler says, and says incontro- vertibly on logical and rational grounds." (Citing above paragraph.) As a further exposure and refutation of this essential point in Pres. Brown's Address, we cite from the clos- ing portion of an exhaustive review by Dr. D. S. Greg- ory, in "the Bible Student and Teacher," March, 1910: "We all agree that our personal experience of the grace of Christ best qualifies us to confess Him, and that the work of His Spirit in our hearts alone enables us to set our seal to the doctrines of the Bible. But, is it true that our duty ends when we have confessed the little that we have learned by experience? Is every Christian limited in his profession to his own personal and private experience of the truth? If so, his con- fession will be meager indeed. Should we not confess together also what the Apostles and Prophets have taught, because they have taught it, even if we cannot say that we have fully, or perhaps at all, scaled the heights whereon they dwelt? May we not teach what Christ taught even before we 'verify' it, just because He taught it? Peter taught his converts to believe and CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 11 DEFINITION OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE AND ITS CONFIRMING EFFECTS AND BLESSED RETURNS The Christian believer's practical experience may be de-fined as the present-life fruitage of Christian faith and practice ; eminently the re- sulting effects of Christian duties and graces — of daily exercised faith and hope and love, corn- confess what Paul taught, though it was 'hard to be un- derstood.' If he had followed Dr. Brown's plan, he would have bidden them 'verify' it out of their own experience before they said anything about it. "It may be taken as axiomatic, that alike in the region of religious facts and truths, there are some things that ice can never 'verify.' The Church is surely under ob- ligations, when necessity arises, to confess the facts which the Scriptures teach. How can we 'verify' out of our own experience, for instance, the facts of the life of Christ, — that He was born of the Virgin Mary and wrought His mighty works, that He suffered under Pontius Pilate and was crucified, dead and buried, and that His body was raised from the grave? Here we reach the root of Dr. Brown's error. He plainly means that 'religious experience* may reject, or call in ques- tion, the facts alleged by the sacred writers. Therefore he would not have in the creeds of Christendom un- qualified assertions of such facts, if these creeds are made a test of entrance to the ministry. Nor can the fundamental truths involved in God's plan of salvation be evolved from, or verified by, the 'light of nature,' whether in man or in creation; but must be received (as the Standards teach) by God's revelation as their only authoritative basis. "The failure to 'postulate' the Bible, in this authorita- tive sense, as the foundation of the Evangelical faith, is, as we take it, the basal failure in the Address, and one that marks and mars it throughout." 12 CHURCH CREEDS AND bined with praise and thankfulness, meditation upon the Word and communion with the Spirit of God, and faithful service to man. And all these particulars proceed from heart accept- ance of the essential facts of the one Biblical creed. Since Christian experience is not an origi- nating source or force, since it is an effect and not a cause, it should not be appealed to in sane reasoning upon present-day questions as a source or a cause. Rut it should be counted as a means and condition that brings to the loyal-souled believer an abiding peace of mind, rest of heart and thankful joy — in God. For while there is no direct or causal connection, experience has a most impressive bearing upon the accepted creed — a wide and grateful func- tion that is both helpful and satisfying. While it cannot create, formulate, or interpret a single point of belief, it can and does confirm and establish, and that with ever cumulative force, the correctness and certitude of every point of faith asserted by the creed. This it does by reason and under the influence of its testing faculty continuously exercised through periods of months and years. Through this testing power of time a true experience deepens the conviction and strengthens the purpose of duty, it maintains steadfastness in forward progress, and by its ceaseless cheer augments the gains CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 13 and enlarges the fruitage of our active Chris- tian life. Furthermore, experience proves its own genu- ineness by a conscious indwelling and inworking of God, by fervency and free utterance in prayer, by vivid impressions of great truths of the Word and actual appropriation of its promises, and by the abiding peace of Christ imparting quietness of spirit in the daily en- counter with trial and change. Thus experi- ence alone testifies to the genuineness of our Christian profession. It alone can impart to the believer an absolute assurance that he is "accepted in the Beloved" — that Christ is truly enthroned in his heart and that He is actively engaged for His follower's present and ever- lasting welfare. And in the sphere of Chris- tian fellowship the experience of every indi- vidual believer operates blessedly upon all others associated in worship and work. II "UP-TO-DATE-NESS"— DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE The phrase, "up-to-date," is one of the minor products of the remarkable intellectual quicken- ing that has characterized the past half cen- tury. Because of its fitness its propriety has been sanctioned by general usage. It carries a plain and positive meaning ; in itself, express- ing the aim of a natural ambition to attain place among the foremost seekers and actors. But the spirit and aim of the seekers dis- closes and differentiates two widely diverse classes. These may be mildly distinguished as "desirable" and "undesirable." 1. DESIRABLE "UP-TO-DATENESs" as it bears upon the attainment of knowledge in the sphere of religious truth and life, and upon the personal influence it brings. To this point the present writing is limited. The knowledge wisely sought and the per- sonal influence rightly gained and used must be ♦ 14 DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE 15 based upon clearly certified truth originating in and drawn from Divine sources ascertained through the established laws of human thought, and assured by faithful acceptance of and just reasoning upon the vital facts of Divine Revela- tion. Upon this solid foundation both knowl- edge and personal influence will be intrinsically worthy and ennobling, adapted to be helpful and uplifting to the individual and to society as respects the brief life on earth and the eternal life that follows. As defined by these conditions and faithfully carried out, "up-to-dateness" is not only de- sirable but is obligatory upon every believer. Its meaning and practice is indicated by Paul in his ringing declaration: "One thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." £. UNDESIRABLE "UP-TO-DATENESS" To deal with this, solely with reference to thought and action pertaining to a religious life, is the writer's chief purpose. We seek to expose the underlying spirit of native conceit, with its malevolent and hurtful effects upon the individual obsessed by it, and upon all others subjected to his influence. And we boldly 16 "UP-TO-DATE-NESS" affirm that inborn conceit underlies and is the generative force of that self-styled "Modern- ism" now aggressively rampant, which origi- nated in disbelief in God and His Word, — dis- belief and rejection of the Divinely established relations between God and man bearing upon man's spiritual condition in this world, and in the eternity upon which he has already entered. This "Modernism," born of and deriving all its power from an all mastering conceit, has now insidiously obtruded its malign influence and is doing its destructive work within the Church of God. A recent English writer says: "Modernism stands for the spirit that pervades the litera- ture of the present day, and its strident note is the personal tone. So exaggerated and fanati- cal has the personal note shown itself in its re- bellion against authority that critics of the old school declare that the British public has lost its capacity of appreciation and its stand- ards. . . . The modern critic reminds him- self that everything has been said about a given subject that can be said; that there is nothing that remains unknown excepting one thing — how the subject happens to affect me" Applied to present-day religious discussion, the personal note is tersely expressed by the questions : "What / think upon the vital teach- ings of the Bible"? "What my conscious- DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE 17 ness reports as to their truth and value"? This note may be synonymed and paraphrased as a sharp accentuation of the truth of Arch- bishop Leighton's quaint saying: "There is naturally in all men a kind of fancied infalli- bility — in themselves. 9 * This proud self -judg- ment of the values of God-given truths finds its most notable type and radical expression in a basal principle of the so-called "New Theology," which is the focal point of "Modernism" as ap- plied to the Bible History and its fundamental teachings. This principle is plainly affirmed by its two French and German inventors : That every human mind, untouched by the light and life of the Divine Spirit, inherently possesses power fully to apprehend and conclusively de- termine what is truth. In the very spirit of Pilate these inventors uphold this baseless speculation in utter ignorance of and so wholly ignoring the settled laws of thought through which alone knowledge of truth is discerned and certified; also, utterly failing to recognize the revealed facts touching the Redemptive re- lations of God with man, — facts which include and disclose all truth that bears upon the char- acter and destiny of man's immortal spirit. Upon this point, Prof. F. Bettex of Stuttgart, writes: "The fundamental principle or axiom upon which the verdict of modern critics is based is upon the idea that, as Renan expresses 18 "UP-TO-DATENESS" it, reason is capable of judging all things, but is itself judged by nothing. This is surely a proud dictum, but an empty one. For reason, even as respects matters of this life, is not in ac- cord with itself. If it were so, whence comes all the strife and contention of men at home and abroad, in their places of business and their public assemblies, in art and science, in legisla- tion, religion and philosophy? Does it not all proceed from the conflicts of reason? The en- tire history of our race is the history of millions of men gifted with reason who have been in perpetual conflict one with another. Is it with such reason, then, that sentence is to be pronounced upon a Divinely given Book? . . . Reason alone has never in- spired men with great sublime conceptions of spiritual truth, whether in the way of dis- covery or invention ; but usually it has first rejected and ridiculed such matters. And just so it is with these rationalistic critics ; they have no appreciation or understanding of the high and sublime in God's Word. Moreover, they do not agree with one another. They unanimously deny the inspiration of the Bible, the Deity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, also prophecy and miracles, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, heaven and hell. But when it comes to pretendedly sure results, not any two of them affirm the same things; and their DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE 19 numerous publications create a flood of disputa- ble, self -contradictor j and mutually destructive hypotheses." Furthermore, this self-conceived principle, claiming for every man a subjective capacity of apprehending truth, squarely defies reason and common sense, since it ignores all objective facts, scouts all reasoning, and in its dicta re- verses essential truths. It can only be the product of wilful ignorance and intellectual pride.. Darkening counsel with its blinding speculations and proofless assumptions, it un- dermines the faith of seekers after the light and peace of God. And this immeasurable harm is deliberately enacted that the doer may stand notoriously in the lime-light, and enjoy an ephemeral influence for a brief day. This destructive work is largely done through the press. In its chief topic it strikes at the very center of all essential truth by dealing superficially and ignorantly with the nature, life, and teaching of Christ. Many Secular and Biblical Encyclopedias and Dictionaries are deeply tainted with Liberal Doctrines. Some University issues, monthlies and volumes, — notably those of our four largest Institutions — are saturated with skilfully woven sophistries, and a few religious periodicals and weekly jour- nals are marred and shorn of their helpful in- fluence by immature speculations from unfur- 20 "UP-TO-DATENESS" nished minds, — touching the mental processes of Christ, and the blended relation of His Di- vine and human nature. Some of these writers boldly claim the knowledge, by actual insight, of His infinite spirit. Others, under some cap- tion connected with the name of Jesus, super- ficially seek to exploit special characteristics of His human nature, utterly without regard to the hidden ties binding and coalescing the hu- man and divine, through the full knowledge of which alone His character, teaching, and life can be rightly apprehended and interpreted. In a word, these finite men assume and assert a partial or complete knowledge of the Infinite God, and openly deny His authority and His inspiration of the Word Revealed. Under the force of an exaggerated conceit one of these men has dared presumptuously to write : "Accepting the New Testament, Jesus evidently told us we are immortal. But two things rob this fact (sic) of all its influence. The first is that the traditional ideas of inspiration and author- ity have wholly perished with the thinking classes. . . . The second is that the age of authority is gone. Men insist on doing their own thinking on all subjects." Yet these writers must know their native impotence, dependence and accountability, — that from God's hands they come, by His power and goodness they re- tain their being, and to Him they must render DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE 21 account. This knowledge is assured by a double testimony within them, — the intense unbroken sense of powerless dependence, and the still but imperative voice of conscience. Yet they live on and achieve their work under the fearful propulsion of unresisted inborn conceit, without a thought or care of the fatal hurt that may be wrought in neighbor souls. And there are such imperiled neighbor souls! As every baseless religious doctrine of the past has had its adherents, so with these pernicious teachings. In the active sphere of every zeal- ous advocate there are a few souls afflicted with an abnormal ambition to stand abreast with a leader and to accept the newest thought. These followers are easily allured by the show of learning in the bald assertions or barren rhet- oric of self-posed leaders. Sometimes a fol- lower under the force of unchecked conceit and strong partisanship will outstrip the leader in extravagant assertion. Thus far we have called a halt for reflection, and sounded a note of warning for immature believers, who have been beguiled by this de- fiant present-day heresy. But the warning has broader application and suggests a gravely needed lesson to all true believers, touching the hurtful influence of native pride of intellect and self will. That the lesson calls for heed by 22 "UP-TO-DATE-NESS" men in the pulpit as well as occupants of the pew is frankly charged by a brave editorial of a recent year : "The adulteration of the love of God and the love of man with love of self in the hearts of the preachers of the gospel con- tinues to-day as in all ages of the church the gravest obstacle to the power of preaching." And the same thoughtful consideration is demanded and may be wisely given to this clear warning by every individual believer. For in every living soul intellect, heart, and will are natively dominated by conceit. In every hu- man life it has played a fearfully hindering part. In a few strong-willed men self-respect- ing intelligence has availed to weaken its influ- ence by a measurably successful struggle. But for effective resistance and actual release from its power no human force is adequate. Only the persistently entreated Spirit of God can so transform and energize the heart and sub- due the will as to evoke habitual meekness of mind, lowliness of heart and abasement of will. The Scripture counsel and injunction is clear and definite : "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." "Put on a heart of lowliness, meekness, longsuffering." "Yea, all of you gird yourselves with humility; for God giveth grace to the humble." In reinforce- ment of this Divine counsel and command let the believer ever remember that humility is the DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE 23 basal and essential grace underlying faith and hope and love and peace and joy, and with these coronal graces abides forever in the ulti- mate heavenly life. Ill CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM OF TO-DAY Our purpose is, introductorily to refer to the grounds of the knowledge and reasonable certitude of truth, and to present Revealed Facts of God's Redemptive dealings with man as embodying the essentials of all religious truth, and as furnishing the sole subject-matter of investigation; then to use these points in a full development of our theme; — buttressing the whole with careful definitions and sound reasonings. The acquisition and use of knowledge is the designed purpose and inherent function of the intellect. The reports of our mental facul- ties must be trustworthy and the evidence ac- quired through them must provide the basis of all knowledge. "Truth, or exact knowledge," writes a profound and accurate thinker, "is reached whenever the mental view, or 'thought' clearly corresponds to the 'thing,' or object of knowledge. Knowledge comes with the agreement of subjective apprehension with ob- jective reality. . . . The reason for certi- 24, OF TO-DAY £5 tude in knowledge is to be found, in all cases, in evidence, or something that makes clear the correspondence between the mental apprehen- sion and the objective reality, the thought and the thing." The knowledge of truth, there- fore, is conditioned upon both an observing mind and an object or fact to be observed. For the knowledge of religious truth there must be a subjective human thinker and appropriate, worthy objective facts to be thought upon. On one side a natively sinful, immortal spirit facing a coming judgment and an eternal destiny, and on the other certain momentous facts tell- ing of a provided Redemption from the con- demning guilt and might of sin, and a restora- tion to righteousness and childship with God. That these vital facts are Divinely Revealed appears from the certainty that God is the only authenticated and authoritative Revealer, since He is the only All-Knower, and from the fur- ther fact that human consciousness can neither generate nor formulate any particular of truth or any form of belief, because the human mind is finite and natively uninformed and the heart is averse to any form of belief that unpleasantly affects its own selfish enjoyments. Further- more, in our ascertainment of these Divinely Revealed truths "we have got to recognize the fact that there are settled laws of thought, valid for all rational beings in all ages and all 26 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM worlds. To ignore them is to destroy the very possibility of thought. . . . Hence no man has a right to his opinion unless it is right; i. e., unless his conclusion has been reached in conformity to these universally and eternally valid laws of thought." With these conditional points in thought, we proceed with the affirmation that these Re- vealed Facts touching man's Divine Redemp- tion include the entire sphere of religious truth. And it should be sharply remembered that this sphere of truth has bounds, and is limited and made exclusive by them. From that sphere all error, even the least that antagonizes truth, is of necessity excluded. The failure to recog- nize the imperative exclusiveness of truth has been and is the source and cause of vital mis- reading and hurtful misstatement of the funda- mental elements of true Christian character, belief, and life. And this chiefly as these ele- ments are related to and affected by the esti- mate and treatment of Jesus Christ. The supreme truth and fact of Divine Revelation is His full Deity and assigned Agency for the Godhead in the disclosure of all truth, and in His Redemptive office work for man. The one chief test of orthodoxy, or right thinking and believing, is found in the answer to the Mas- ter's own question, "What think ye of Christ?" The very term, "Christian," is limited, accord- OF TO-DAY n ing to the Scriptures, to those who accept His Divine Messiahship. In both Testaments Mes- siah (or Anointed) is the identical equivalent of Christ, and refers to His Divine anointment as Prophet, Priest and King. It clearly fol- lows that only the man and the organization that recognizes and receives Christ in these three Offices — that accepts Him as the only Re- vealer of God and Teacher of Truth, as the only Offerer and Offering for the forgiveness of sin and bestowal of righteousness, and as the Supreme, Eternal Sovereign of the human spirit; in a word, that recognizes and acknowl- edges Christ, the Eternal Son, as the Repre- sentative Actor for the Triune Godhead in man's redemption, — only that man and that organized institution can justly claim to be called Christian. At this point we distinctly note, that it is the attitude assumed in reference to these su- preme truths of Revelation that discriminates and divides the multitude of avowed disciples that are denominated "Conservative," from the few who array themselves under the title of "Liberal." Our subject-matter, then, we find in the Revealed Truths of the Word of God. In past discussions prominent use has been made of the words "doctrine" and "dogma." Because of this prominence and the sharp an- 28 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM tagonisms connected with their use by the war- ring schools a bitter distate has been generated in many minds; and as these terms are not synonymous with "truth" they may wisely be eliminated from present-day discussion. We therefore use the definitely descriptive word "truth." Furthermore, it will greatly help our consideration to realize that all revealed truths are actual facts, or bases of fact, each truth charged with vital potency. To us, as re- spects our spiritual condition, more than truths they are vital facts. As such they are believed and rested upon, or denied and helplessly re- jected. The immeasurable value of these Revealed Facts is confirmed by many Divine promises and commands : E. G. — / Tim. ii, J^, "God our Saviour, who would have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." Jw. xvi, 13, "The Spirit of truth shall guide you into all the truth." II Tim. i, 13, "Hold fast the pattern of sound words which thou hast heard from me." II Thess. ii, 15, "Stand fast and hold the traditions which ye were taught." Knowledge of "the truth as it is in Jesus," i. e., knowledge of revealed facts pertaining to His Redemptive work, is the supreme aim and endeavor of all honest search and discussion. Every spiritual truth is an objective fact of pure Revelation, and must be so studied and OF TO-DAY £9 interpreted. Its interpretation cannot be thought of subjectively, by a natively ignorant finite mind. It must be studied and can only be interpreted in accordance with established laws of thought, under the guidance and with the aid of the Spirit of truth. With these preliminary considerations as es- sential conditions, and holding their organic connections and bearing clearly in our thought, we reach the direct exposition of our theme. First, we seek to define and find the true place of Conservatism in its proper present-day use, as distinguished from its meaning and use in past periods. The term has been applied to all generations since the Reformation. Its reference has been first to the great pioneer Reformers, and then to the successive scholars who have given their lives to Bible study and exposition. The world's debt to these giants of stalwart brain and immovable purpose cannot be measured by human computation. But these world reform- ing teachers were imperfect men, differing greatly in mental gifts, in fullness of training, in temperamental characteristics, in natural and acquired bias and partisan spirit. And these differences naturally led to diverse and antago- nistic interpretations of Scripture, and to the formulation of opposing doctrines and philo- 30 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM sophic theories. The unavoidable result was conflict, and the establishment of antagonistic schools of thought and creed, with accompany- ing bitterness and estrangement. This con- troversy was maintained through successive gen- erations. In the course of time there were evolved not only diverse essential doctrines, but differences in matters of church polity and in trivial points of belief and conduct. This brings us to our own time and accounts for the hundreds of church names, forms of organiza- tion, and crudities of belief. Instinctively repelling, unproven, and rea- sonably questionable points of doctrine em- bodied in the early creeds naturally and rightly call for revision and restatement. And the process of such revision has been carried on through the conflicts of the schools until in this wiser day of larger knowledge and clearer thinking a consensus of belief has been reached by the Evangelical Churches, and is expressed in the Present-day Conservatism. This in- cludes every essential truth of the one almost universally accepted Biblical Creed. From this Creed no vital doctrine has been omitted, or shorn of its Divine force. As a result of this revision and consensus, the long mooted and unproven points justly ac- credited to the Old Conservatism have been re- tired and have become almost unheard, except OF TO-DAY 31 when cited as a blind to enforce a specious argu- ment by the wakeful opponents of the true, Biblical present-day Conservatism. A prominent cause of the transformation of the Old into the New Conservatism is the swift advance, during the last decade, in the spirit of unity in Christian fellowship and service on the part of all Evangelical Churches. This wonderful, Divinely wrought fact has brought rejoicing into the hearts of all God's true chil- dren. In this land the effective Churches have entered organically into Federative service for their common Lord. And they have subordi- nated all minor matters of belief and polity, and virtually accepted one and the same Bibli- cal Creed as the basis of united ministry. This creed distinguishes and fully describes the New, Present-day, Conservatism. This pure, heavenly "form of sound words" imparts to it spirit, breadth, strength, and joyous free- dom. So it gladly welcomes this day of larger knowledge and clearer, broader thinking, with the cumulative sources of subject-matter that have been added and carefully searched by suc- cessive generations of scholars. It willingly (accepts all conclusions that have borne the test of unbiased and thorough investigation in accordance with the laws of thought and the canons of just and sound reasoning, and as these conclusions are sustained by adequate evi- 3£ CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM dence. This conscious freedom and largeness of thought and this conviction of truthful be- lief based upon correct reasoning and conclusive evidence has been unwrought by the intrinsic greatness, the assured certitude, and the exact fitness to man's need of its Scriptural beliefs and their accompanying rich and satisfying experiences. In its subject-matter of belief modern Con- servatism holds unreservedly and unwaveringly to the vital facts of the Christian religion as set forth in the Bible. As the sole source of its beliefs it accepts the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments exactly as these have been preserved to us, un- diminished and unchanged, as a Revelation from God, in itself forever complete, ("The Spirit does not add a single truth to the Bible." — Chalmers.) — "a communication of truths concerning the Divine nature and the Kingdom of God, which could not otherwise be known, an unveiling of that which already exists in the world of unseen realities and in the Divine will and purpose, which man could only know as God is pleased to disclose it." It receives these Scriptures as "given by inspiration of God" — God-breathed — as Paul declares. By inspiration is meant that "the Bible is infallibly authoritative only on that single and definite line where authoritative OF TO-DAY 33 guidance was needed, that it authoritatively teaches us, what God is, what God has done to save us, and what we must do to be saved." We condense the sovereign, vital facts of this Divine Revelation — the Essentials of a genuine Christian faith, — under the comprehensive cap- tion: THE GODHEAD AND DIVINE REDEMPTION 1. The Nature of God: a Personal Spirit; Living and Life-giving; Self-Existent, Self- Moved, and Self-Sufficient ; the only true God. Possessing Unbounded Duration ; Unlimited Knowledge and Wisdom; Infinite Power; Om- nipresence; Unchangeableness. In whom in- heres in absolute perfection : Holiness ; Right- eousness in Dealing; Justice in Administering Law and Grace ; Truth and Faithfulness ; Good- ness in Providence; Grace to undeserving and mercy to ill-deserving; All, save Holiness, sum- med up in Love, infinite and everlasting. £. The Godhead an Eternal Trinity, with Intercommunion Life. Only disclosed in the Threefold Office-Work of the Divine Persons in Human Redemption. 3. Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God. In both Testaments disclosed as the Revealer of God, and Agent of the Godhead in Revelation, Creation, Providence and Redemption. 34 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM His Incarnation as the God-Man. Luke (i, 30-35) and Matthew (i, 18-21) distinctly affirm His conception by the Holy Ghost and birth of the Virgin Mary. And both facts thus affirmed by two inspired writers plainly and signally stand out as essential points of Chris- tian faith since they underlie and are founda- tion facts upon which rest all other truths and facts that give existence and virility to that faith. His Threefold Office-Work as Messiah (Anointed) i. e., Christ. In both Testaments He is disclosed as Prophet, Priest and King. As Prophet He is affirmed and claims to be the source and Teacher of all truth. Jn. ocvi, H. As Priest, both offerer and offering. "Christ died for our sins." "He laid down His life." "Enduring the cross," "despising the shame" "for the joy set before Him" in "saving the lost" ; thus fulfilling the Father's will, and at- testing the Father's love for an estranged world, and endowing every believer with eternal life. So each of us trusting in Him, may be assured, that "there is therefore now no con- demnation," and may rejoicingly say with Paul, "who loved me and gave Himself up for me." As Priest, too, "He ever liveth to make intercession for us." As King, He is the Eter- nal Sovereign of an ever abiding Kingdom of grace and glory, into which He is pledged to OF TO-DAY 35 bring us that we may be forever with our Re- deeming Lord. His superhuman Words and Deeds, incon- testibly attesting His supernatural Wisdom and Might, and manifesting a Divine love, and a marvellous mastery over His own natural laws, in the healing of incurable diseases, in restoring life to the dead, in subduing by a word the tempests of air and sea, and in forgiving sins and imparting peace and hope to penitent souls. In the crowning miracles of His Resurrec- tion and Ascension, with their ample historical proof through the testimony of many credible witnesses. In His Heavenly Enthronement as revealed by "the disciple whom Jesus loved" and most intimately communed with on earth. And in His final office as Kingly Judge af- firmed and outlined by Himself. Mat. xxv. 4. The Eternal Spirit of God, and His Agency in Man's Divine Redemption. His preliminary and needful work in unfold- ing a complete Divine Revelation through the agency of human writers — a work which was finished with the "Revelation" of John. His supreme Office-Work upon and within the human spirit. In His approach to and action upon the soul of man the Holy Spirit invaria- bly uses as means the truths or facts of Christ's Redeeming work. These saving truths He un- 36 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM folds, impresses, makes vivid and convincing, and this without a breath of compulsion. Em- ploying only the motive power of these sublime and momentous facts, He seeks to draw the soul to appropriate self-action. And when by the impulsive force of a vividly impressed infinite Divine love He has won the yielding soul to penitence and self-surrender, and to the plight of faith and love and service to the inviting Christ, then it is that the Spirit's crowning work of new-creating and life-giving is silently wrought within the faintly trusting soul. There takes place a spiritual quickening from death to life, a radical transformation of char- acter, a restoration of the lost likeness of God, and a renewed childship and fellowship with Him. Following this act of regeneration and spirit- ual transformation is the process of sanctifica- tion by the Holy Spirit, the progressive com- pletion of His work by daily renewal and in- vigoration of the inwrought spiritual life. In this "renewing day by day" the Spirit uses the same truths with ever increasing emphasis, together with the added power of inspired prayer and sympathetic Christian fellowship. And He is pledged to "perfect that which He has begun until the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." With these primary vital functions of the OF TO-DAY 37 Hoi}- Spirit bearing upon the believer's experi- ence, we complete our compact summary of the revealed facts of the Bible that are essential to Christian faith and experience. And these supremely momentous facts, held with more or less completeness and fullness of belief as meas- ured by the individual's knowledge and experi- ence, are embodied in the views and beliefs of the modern Conservative. Standing upon these vital disclosures of Divine Revelation he is "steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work" of his Lord and Saviour. Under the influence of these assured, eternal truths he is ever looking and longing for broader views and fuller knowledge of his relations with God and the issues of his daily life on earth in their bearing upon his changeless destiny in the heavenly abiding. And we may add, that these high, sustain- ing and fruit-bearing beliefs constitute the substance and heart of the one Biblical creed that is now uniting in spirit and engaging in common service Evangelical believers of every Church name. We proceed to consider PRESENT-DAY LIBERALISM — in its relation to Bible history and teach- ing — as now aggressively active inside of Church lines. We seek fairly to exhibit its 38 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM basal principles and theories, generated long ago outside these lines, but adopted and ac- tively propagated by avowed Christian teach- ers and writers. A prominent New York pas- tor and effective writer has said: "To-day the only infidelity worth reckoning is that which masquerades in the livery of heaven. The deniers are ministers of Christ, under oath to preach the very doctrines which they deny." Foremost of all, itself the underlying root of all the rest, stands the comparatively This had its birth and initiation in specula- 1 "The doctrine of Evolution as it is now current in popular literature is one-tenth bad Science and nine- tenths bad Philosophy." — Geo. Fred. Wright. "Pushed to its logical outcome it comprises ethics and all the sentiments from which our Christian civilization starts. It destroys the self-conscious agent, and sub- stitutes for it blind materialism. Its logical outcome is mechanical atheism, unsettled morals, and denial of im- mortality or personality to man or God." — Pres. Noah Porter. "In evolution, as an orderly development and advance, every intelligent man believes. But as a process of un- interrupted differentiation of being, under natural laws and from inherent forces, it is an unproved theory, with all the evidence squarely against it. There is one force in literature and history, of which evolution takes no account, and which it cannot explain. It is person- ality — strong, self-poised, determined personality. It is a dominating force in literature and history, and per- sonality is the absolute antithesis of evolution. Un- OF TO-DAY 39 tive interpretation of the method of Creation. The true story is plainly given in the Bible. Its first sentence attests the entire record as a Divine Revelation, and itself proves its su- pernatural source and superhuman authorship, and therefore the truth of its contents. For the stupendous fact it asserts is impossible of conception, much less of invention, by a created, finite mind. This self-attested Record declares that at the fiat of God "the earth brought forth grass, herbs and fruit trees, each bearing fruit after its kind"; also "living creatures for the water, the air, and the earth, each multiplying after its kind." This was the Divinely directed and empowered method of the production and con- tinuance of the animate products of the fertile earth and the animal creation, each produced through the generative power imparted by God acording to its kind. This was God's way of development — the extent and limit of the term Evolution in its only true definition. proved in science, demonstrably false in literature, art and history, the theory of evolution cannot be accepted as a canon of criticism." — A. T. F. Behrends. "By the evolutionary conception the very idea of sin, in the Christian sense, is essentialy altered. Sin is no longer the voluntary defection of a creature who had the power to remain sinless. The very possibility of sinless development is excluded. Sin becomes a natural necessity of man's ascent: a something unavoidable in his history." — Borden P. Bowne. 40 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM The first form and application of the modern theory openly denied and rejected these plain averments of the Divine Word. It directly antagonized them by its claim that original life-germs came into existence by natural processes, and that through these life-germs lower species of plants and animals may be and have been transmuted into higher. It thus affirmed the existence of productive life force without any conceivable cause or agency in its production. And this is the sole root principle, the colossal, impossible, speculative notion, that defines and constitutes the entire structure of the modern theory of Evolution — a theory that is instantaneously rejected by sane reason, and unsustained by a shred of evidence. Its sole supporting assertion that "the human race began low down and through countless ages worked itself up to its present civilized state" has been overwhelmingly si- lenced by biologists, geologists, and archae- ologists. These scientists confirm the state- ment of the Divine Record: "God made man in His own image." This first introductory form and applica- tion of the Theory naturally led to the substi- tution of human speculation for Divine affirma- tion in the investigation of spiritual truth and experience. It devitalized the Scriptural mean- ing of regeneration and sanctification, substi- OF TO-DAY 41 tuting for these essentials of Christian experi- ence mere ethical improvement in personal character. It deprived its blinded adherent of the capacity to apprehend and the sensi- bility to respond to the supreme needs and de- mands of his immortal spirit, thus producing a heart-hardening unfaith toward God and ulti- mate soul loss. As the Evolution theory is baseless and there- fore false, as applied to Creation, it is equally false and even more effectively harmful in its further application to the essential truths and historic statements of the Bible. This will be made clear as we proceed to consider the definite points of such further application. The first, most bitter and fatal product of this Evolutionary root we find in the DENIAL AND ELIMINATION OP THE SUPER- NATURAL The realm of the Supernatural reaches and includes the vast time-range of human History, the entire Bible product, the existence and na- ture of God and His Working in Creation, Providence and Redemption. As inclusive prominent facts connected with man's Redemp- tion we distinguish the Deity, Incarnation, su- perhuman words and deeds, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ; the agency of the Holy 42 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM Spirit in regeneration and sanctification ; and man's corresponding consciousness of the for- giveness and peace of God, and his realized ex- perience of reversed judgments, desires, affec- tions, aims, and life purposes, from self to God. The basis of the Supernatural is found in its absolute necessity as an imperial condition for this revelation of God and His redeeming action toward men and for the corresponding spiritual experience of men. Without the su- pernatural working of God the disclosure of His just and loving rule over men, and His Incarnate entrance among men for their salvation could not possibly have been ac- complished. More than this from our own standpoint: The sense of the Supernatural permeates the atmosphere we breathe. We acknowledge and feel it in the consciousness of utter dependence with which we are confronted in hours of weak- ness, ignorance, doubt and darkness which overshadow and pain our spirits in life's try- ing changes, its sicknesses and losses. These hours of unrest press upon us the subconscious conviction that there is an unseen Supreme Con- troller of all beings and events. That this Controller is also our ever present Overseer and Judge of our moral acting we know by the persistent, convincing testimony of our in- OF TO-DAY 43 hering conscience. And this consciousness of an ever wakeful supernatural presence and power imparts a higher value and greater dig- nity to our life as it brings us closer to God and into truer affinity with His revealed thoughts and designs. Denial of the Supernatural in its broadest phase, means the deliberate casting out of the area of the Universe the conception of God as Creator, Sustainer and Ruler, and the substi- tution of a blind, heartless Fate, with an aim- less adamant will in control of worlds and ani- mate creatures, achieving for all a destiny of annihilation or of unlighted, hopeless, and abid- ing doom. Even when modified by speculative admissions this denial means the extermination of all true satisfying religious aspiration and hope. For it blots out every essential truth of the New Testament Gospel, every teaching of the Christian system of faith, and so utterly extinguishes the very conception of Chris- tianity. And these deniers of the Supernatural have never attempted to formulate an iota of evi- dence in support of their impious denial. Their entire evidential fabric is made up of their own empirical assumptions. As the next emanation from the Evolutionary root came a European invention: 44 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM THEORY OF AUTONOMOUS MIND The Root Theory, with its effective co-agent, Pure Naturalism, has brought us a God — or an impersonal, nameless Energy — credited with simple creative power at the outset, but ever since caged and inert within His own world — machine; displacing Him by another creative force — whence derived no one knows — inhering to the machine, whereby members of the ani- mate creation are subjected to transmutation and advance of species. By its co-agent it empties religious truth of its vitality by elimi- nating the Spirit of God from all connection with His own inspired disclosures. Now the basal Theory takes a natural for- ward step by putting man — every man — in the place of the Spirit of God as an interpreter of His own revealed spiritual truth — making a finite, ignorant man's consciousness together with his native inclinations and tastes, the de- termining authority and judge of the inmost meaning of the Divinely revealed vital realities that bind man to God and decide his eternal destiny. This further step fully defines and exposes the significance of the phrase coined by one of its inventors, "Autonomous Mind." Ex- pressing it in his own philosophic terms, Sabatier wrote: "To say that the mind is OF TO-DAY 45 autonomous is to say that it finds the su- preme norm of its ideas and acts not out- side of itself, but within itself, in its very constitution. It is to say that the consent of the mind itself is the prime condition and foundation of all certitude." "So," comments an acute writer, "by virtue of the autonomy of mind truth becomes mere matter of opinion. As a man thinks it, so it is — to him at least. Of course it can have no validity for the other man, or for another day." And he adds : "The question, whether there are any external objec- tive realities corresponding to the truths of theology and answering to the needs of the soul, is a question of fact. The response to it is to be found, not in the dicta of the autonomous mind, but through the investigation of matters of fact. The method is inductive, and it must take in dll the facts." For the differing form of Ritschl's statement and fuller refutation of the theory we refer to page 104 ff. We only repeat the estimate of Dr. W. C. Gray (Interior, Dec, '97) : "The peculiarity of the Impressionist School, of which Ritschl was the founder, is that it makes nothing of historic or scientific facts or re- alities. It is not things as they are or were that have value, but the impression which the whole makes upon the imagination or feeling. It is a sort of idealism which denies the reality 46 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM of anything. . . . There are two sources of knowledge; the external or objective, and the internal or subjective. The old theology ac- cepts an external standard in the infallible Word of God, while the new accepts only an internal standard found in the subjective judg- ments of the individual. It asserts a new doc- trine of infallibility to be found in the inner consciousness of the believer." We add: To a sane mind, rightly regarding all religious truths as merely formulated statements of facts relating to God and man, and therefore demanding objective treatment, this purely subjective theory seems to exclude itself from the region of reason and common sense as it has neither practical starting point nor solid resting place. As the next, most tangible, development in its Evolutionary progress, Liberalism assails the integrity and vitality of the Bible. Its sole teaching aim is to show men what there is to be doubted and believed. Under its assumed title of "Higher" Criticism, it has been putting in and aggressively pushing for- ward its abnormal work of Disintegration, In- terpolation, Mutilation, and destructive Rever- sal of the historic statements and spiritual teachings of the Word of God. This is a natural forward step from the theory of self- OF TO-DAY 47 determination by a finite mind of the meaning of truths affirmed by an infinite mind. From the right of interpreting particular truths its advocates easily expanded their claim to a com- plete revision of the entire Biblical contents. In their endeavor to fill so large a contract, applying human measures to the apprehension of God and His Word, they constructed new literary canons out of their own necessities and sympathies, by which to interpret the breadth and depth, and determine the genuine authority of the Word of God. Then, rating the Word as a human production, they proceeded to take it to pieces, to analyze its make-up, authorship, and contents, to displace and mutilate its parts, to elide clauses, verses, and whole sections and Books, and reset the dislocated remnants to accord with their own notions, inclinations and tastes. As instruments to give seeming sup- port to their devastating work upon Old Testa- ment History and Prophecy, these shrewd in- ventors introduced to mature birth many hypo- thetical redactors, of ghostly presence, but gifted with magical editorial discernment of genuine original text. And this preposterous, colossal claim — of human right and authority to displace, muti- late and reverse the historic facts and spiritual truths given through Divine inspiration by Divine love to bring to men eternal life — this 48 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM astounding claim rests to-day, as it has from its initiation by the infidel and profligate Astruc, upon assertion buttressed in later years by an utterly unsustained assumption of superior scholarship. This, their arrogant boast, filing the place of reasoning and proof, always prominent in every advertisement and writing, has been and is even more obtrusively to-day, the only ground or plea upon which they accentuate their claim for a wide and general following. They have never presented other evidence than their own unaided conclu- sions. And upon every point in these conclu- sions there is disagreement and antagonism among themselves. They only agree in the com- mon act of mutilating and reversing the only enlightening and saving truth from Heaven. Their claim of exclusive "Higher" scholarship is equally unfounded, for to-day the number of eminent conservative scholars greatly ex- ceeds that of really learned and able advocates of the disintegrating criticism, while the aver- age scholars who hold the Bible intact and all of God exceed the denying critics by many tens of thousands in the world-area of Christendom. Furthermore, the Literary method of the Radical theorists is arbitrary, sophistical and delusive. Its supreme and vital defect lies in the patent fact that it is purely subjective. Its subject-matter is mainly made up of hypo- OF TO-DAY 49 thetical suggestion and conjecture, modified by literary taste, without a shred of external data of fact as foundation and proof. Its conceits and extravagances are "without check or limit beyond the prepossessions and caprice of the critics." And the "process of literary analysis is absolutely unprecedented. Nothing in all literature, ancient or modern, presents a parallel to the critics proposed reconstruction." Prof. Schodde says of its basal Documentary theory : "It is undeniably a purely subjective produc- tion, without a scintilla of external evidence, being founded solely upon subjective analysis and combination." The crowning product of the combined Evo- lutionary emanations, surely resulting in an undermined faith and an imperiled soul appears in a self-styled "new theology" An able writer has just now described this final product of Liberalism as "the system of thought of those — so far as they have any sys- tem — who accept the results of the Radical Criticism and the Evolutionary Philosophy as applied to the Bible and Theology." He adds : "The Evolutionary Philosophy yields the Radi- cal Criticism, and both have begotten the New Theology." 50 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM The title, "New Theology," is a double mis- nomer, as the system it propounds is Old, and ignores God. With greater consistency and courtesy to the world-transforming efficacy of a past Christianity, Dr. Eliot calls the identi- cal system "The Religion of the Future." But it is exclusively a system of incomplete morals. for the guidance of men in their personal and social relations during this life only; and it is all borrowed from the Bible teachings. Since there is no God in its alliance, it is no religion. For the term, "religion," is properly defined as "a belief binding the spiritual nature of man to a supernatural being on whom he is con- scious that he is dependent" ; and it must in- clude man's entire life, present and eternal, in his relations to God and to man. The "New Theology" is amply defined in the negatives employed by its advocates, and it has never constructed any positives. There is a seeming difference in the form and force of its expressions, but all have an identical mean- ing. Dr. Lyman Abbott, whose contributions to the cause of humanity and social progress have been greatly helpful, as an open advocate of the New Theology, endorses the extreme ap- plications of the Evolutionary Philosophy. Concerning the supernatural he writes : "The fundamental basis of the old theology is ex- pressed by the word supernatural. . . . The OF TO-DAY 51 New Theology denies absolutely the old as- sumed distinction between the natural and the supernatural." He further says: "The New Theology questions the basis of authority, and questions so effectually that neither the Bible nor the Church speaks to even the Church- man with the authority with which they spoke a century ago." And again: "Jesus Christ is not the source of religion. Religion existed among peoples who never heard of Jesus Christ. He did not come to found a religion, nor to found a special form of religion." And the British heresiarch, R. J. Campbell, affirms the same system of unfaith in terse par- ticulars when he says : "We believe that Jesus was divine ; so are we. Every man is a po- tential Christ." "The belief that Jesus suf- fered some mysterious penalty and took away sin is a moral mischief." "Sin itself is a quest after God." A noted London editor (the Clarion) boasting himself as an "agnostic so- cialist" and affiliating himself with Mr. Camp- bell, declared that "the New Theology em- braced nothing that he denied and denied noth- ing that he believed." For a third "specimen" denial of a Self- Revealed Triune, Redeeming God we refer to the already forgotten scheme of so-called "New Religion" evolved by Dr. Charles Eliot. The scheme, for we cannot call it a system of 5£ CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM thought, is as old as Cain, who rejected the merciful intervention of God. It is only one of the recent manifestos of the multitudes that have appeared in all human generations. Nor is it a religion, since, instead of re-binding man to his Divine Creator and Moral Ruler, it severs him from God. The New York Times "fears that no martyr will ever give his blood as the seed of Dr. Eliot's new religion" ; while to the New York Tribune, "it seems like a re- ligion of aristocracy, one for the few superior men, the supermen." In substance, detail, and effects, it is identical with the New The- ology. Both alike hold to the fatal limitation of human life to the present-time existence, to an exclusive theory of negations of all Re- vealed Facts. And both never even hint at any rational constructive system to replace their own destructive theories. To the great grief of all Evangelical writers, especially to the lovers of the Union Seminary as it was, the Rev. Dr. William Adams Brown, the Professor of Systematic Theology, has now openly avowed to the world, through the Har- vard Theological Review (Jan. 1911), in a summarized statement, his entire sympathy with and acceptance of the System of Lib- eralism, or "New Theology," in its whole length and breadth and depth. The issue, in all its momentous magnitude, is between the old, long OF TO-DAY 53 established, impregnably based and fortressed upon the Revealed Word of God, and held to- day by the immense multitude of learned and straight thinking scholars, and the baseless, reasonless and proofless system of unfaith, a product of solely human origin, with a fruit- age of widely malign influence upon untrained lay minds. With fitting comment we cite Dr. Brown's own words in defense of the "New Theology" and depreciation of the Old: Page 1. "By the new theology we mean the type of theology whose method is determined by the modern scientific movement. By the modern scientific movement is meant the move- ment of thought whose chief marks on the out- ward side are the acceptance of development as the law of the physical universe, and on the inward side the recognition of the contribution of mind to the content of knowledge." Page 12. (Repeating page 1.) "By the new theology we mean the theology whose method is determined by the results of the modern scientific movement, both on the ob- jective side in the acceptance of develop- ment" (evolution) "as the law of the physical universe, and on the subjective side by the recognition of the contribution which the mind itself" (the Autonomous Mind) "makes to the content of its own knowledge. It is a theology 54 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM which has come into existence as a result of the intellectual revolution through which thought has passed during the last century, and it expresses the reaction of that revolution within the realm of religion." Concerning this recent "intellectual revolu- tion of thought," also referred to as "the modern scientific movement," and here affirmed to be the generator of the new theology, we submit brief but sufficing comment: Every Christian scholar gladly and grate- fully recognizes the remarkable intellectual quickening that has characterized the past half century. Its main producing causes may be read in the swift and signal advance in scien- tific knowledge and inventive art, leading to an immense increase in means and facilities for intellectual and industrial intercourse, and ex- changes of commercial products between civi- lized nations. The crowning results, as re- spects religious truth, appear in a clearer, keener insight, a profounder search, a wider vision, more definite knowledge, and a simpler, more direct and effective expression of Divinely revealed truths. As respects the above cited assertion that the New Theology was begotten by the recent "intellectual revolution of thought," a little rudimentary reasoning will show that the no- tion of truth-creating force existing in and OF TO-DAY 55 operative by mere human thought is a fanciful chimera. For the human mind is simply a fabricating machine. Like all manufacturing machines it needs to be supplied with appro- priate material upon which to work, and pro- duce a definite fabric. As the manufacturing machine is incapable of producing the material upon which it works, so the human mentality is utterly unable to originate and create a single conception of either truth or fact. It can only be exercised in the consideration of such truths and facts as are set before it by an au- thentic and authoritative Divine disclosure. Furthermore, all enlarged and advanced intel- lectual progress is purely subjective, — i. e„ proceeds from the mind's own action — and it is made possible only by the mind's con- tact with objective truth and fact. Here is the root error of the above cited asser- tion ascribing creative force to "the intel- lectual movement of thought." Such move- ment cannot exist or be operative except it is solidly based upon truth or fact from a Divine source Divinely revealed. Much less can it masquerade as "scientific," and begetter of a Theology, or Science of God. Page 1. "The new theology is a matter of principles." Only two "principles" are indicated thus far : 1. The acceptance of the Evolutionary The- 56 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM ory, which affirms the existence and actual work- ing of a productive life-force in a mere natural process of events, without any conceivable cause or agent in production. Even Goldwin Smith bids "the Evolutionist to remember that Evolution cannot have evolved itself." 2. A similar acceptance of the Theory of "Au- tonomous Mind," i. e., the utterly impossible notion that the discerning and determining power as to questions of truth and duty is natively inherent and fully possessed by the mind of every man. Akin to these two asserted "principles," a third crops out in the further pages. It is the like baseless notion that experience is the source and basis and so the arbiter and interpreter of the creed or things to be believed. The simplest analysis shows that the fact is just the reverse. (See p. 9.) With visionary "principles" as its substance and body, instead of solid, immovable Facts of Divine Revelation, it naturally follows that Page 1. "The new theology has no formal creed in which its beliefs are embodied. It is a spirit and a method rather than a body of definite opinions." If we read these citations together, we have a definite creed, although negative in terms, vague and visionary in substance, barren as to results, and, as certified by the writer's closing word, uncertain as to correctness and perma- OF TO-DAY 57 nence. From the acceptance of such a creed every sane mind would be instinctively repelled. ITS POINTS OF NEGATION AND DENIAL OF ESSENTIAL TRUTHS Page 9. "Doctrines such as election, re- generation, justification, perseverance, assur- ance, to many (Christians) in our day have lost their meaning and become empty words." Page H. (Denial of the Supernatural.) "The contrast between nature and the super- natural, which was fundamental for the old theology, has disappeared. . . . The same law which holds the planets in their orbits is matched by a corresponding law within. The mind has its uniform processes in which cause follows effect in irrevocable sequence. It is a law of development." Page 15. "The Bible . . . can no longer be isolated from other books, as was the habit of the old theology. Considered as literature, the Bible is a book like other books. We can trace its origin, follow its history, analyze and explain the processes by which its different elements were brought into the form in which we have them." P. 18. "When we turn to our Bible, we do not have to abandon the methods which we use when we study Shakes- peare or Homer." 58 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM Page 15. "What is true of God's revela- tion without, in nature and in the Bible, is true also of his activity in the spirit of man. Here too the abrupt contrasts of the old theology have disappeared from the new. Sin is not a foreign intruder making its appearance in the universe suddenly at a moment of time, and bringing about an abrupt transformation in human nature as a whole. Sin is the inevita- ble result of certain tendencies inwrought into the structure of human nature. It is the sur- vival of the animal in man, his failure to rise to the higher capacities within him. So, salva- tion is not an act wrought once for all in some transcendent realm. It is a process going on through the ages, and rooted as truly as sin itself in the nature of man. Atonement is not the great exception, it is the universal law of all true living. Calvary is a principle as well as an event. . . . So, under other names, justification and sanctification are experiences found outside of Christianity. The church is not composed of exiles from the world, it is the first-fruits of the society that is to be. Jesus is not God and man, he is God in man, the first-born among many brethren, but the type to which all mankind is ultimately destined to conform." (Every Revealed truth is here explicitly or implicitly denied, and every sentence, with every OF TO-DAY 59 other citation before and after should be em- phatically underscored.) Page 16. "God is not thought of as sepa- rate from the universe, but rather as its im- manent law. He is not a transcendent being living in a distant heaven whence from time to time he intervenes in the affairs of earth. He is an ever-present spirit guiding all that hap- pens to a wise and holy end. We meet him in nature. We meet him in history. We meet him in the Bible. We meet him in the lives of great men, and supremely in Jesus, the ideal man, through whom he has given us the clear- est revelation of his character and purpose. He has but one purpose, which animates him in all that he does, and that is to make indi- viduals like Jesus, and to unite them through brotherly service in the ideal society." Page 16. "The old theology provided a clear-cut, invariable standard, valid everywhere, always, and for everybody. The new theology knows no such standard. It deals with prin- ciples rather than laws, and when conditions change, the application of principles has to be modified to suit the changing environment. Right and wrong are determined for us not so much by a standard established in the past as by a purpose affecting the future. As Chris- tians it is our ultimate aim to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, but what particular 60 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM kind of conduct that purpose may involve un- der any particular set of circumstances can only be determined by a study of the factors of the problem as they arise." Page 17. "The consciousness of the im- mediate presence of God, which was so char- acteristic a feature of the older piety, is not so prominent in the new. It is not that the be- lief in the divine presence is lacking, but it is spread over so wide a territory that it is not as palpable to the emotions." (An attenuated "experience.") Page 19. "If the new theology owes its origin to curiosity, it finds its verification in experience." Page 19. "The advocates of the new the- ology are called critical, destructive, sceptical, pullers-down rather than builders-up, and it must be confessed that there is truth in the charge. How can it be otherwise? The new theology is the outgrowth of a rational (?) movement, and thought is necessarily critical, destructive, sceptical. The old view of the world which served for a thousand years has broken down, and countless builders are at work on the framework of the new philosophy which is to house our enlarged universe." Against this distempered conception of the rational origin of the new theology, and the insensate prophecy of the world's stability and OF TO-DAY 61 progress under the mere movement of unaided human thought, we need only the cheering as- surance of the clear Word of the Living God: "Wherefore, receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God, with rever- ence and awe." Page 24. (The closing sentences confess the writer's remaining doubt and abiding un- certainty.) "We have to show that with the intellectual resources which the new knowledge puts at our disposal we can give to the old convictions a surer and more satisfying expression than they have ever received before. If the new theology can do this, it will last; if not, it will have to give place to a newer" The writer's personal attitude is worthy of note. By definitely classifying himself with the "advocates of the new theology," p. 22; by his use of the words "we" and "our" in the above closing sentence; by deliberately, of his own motion, without assigned request or provo- cation, assuming the task of exploiting the New Theology in disparagement of the Old; and by his choice, for making his position known, of a magazine that has been and is the foremost antagonist of Evangelical orthodoxy, Professor Adams virtually announces himself 62 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM as a champion advocate of the modern system of Liberal Thought, of which the ultimate fruits and fullest expression appears in the so-called "New Theology." To an intelligent Christian reader the above citations are informing and utterly condem- natory of the New Theology which they dis- close and interpret. It explicitly ignores both the natural and moral Supremacy of God, en- slaves and chains Him to His own Nature- machine. It has no thought or word of a Di- vine Redemption of sinful, condemned men. It ignores and denies the Divine Sonship and Mediatorship of Jesus Christ, — the only men- tion of His name being to point a denial of His Godhood. The very name of the Holy Spirit does not appear, and in its whole fabric it implicitly rejects both His Godhood and His Redemptive agency in the renewal and sanc- tification of the man "justified by faith." And as an incontrovertible consequence it obliter- ates the Cardinal Fact of inspired Revelation, — The Divine Trinity — upon which hangs the very Being of God, and depends the sole hope of man's restoration to the likeness and engage- ment in the eternal fellowship and service of the Almighty, Infinitely Perfect and Loving God. It is not a Theology, or science of God, since it denies His Transcendency, and thrusts Him OF TO-DAY 63 aside from His own Creation and from His Moral Rule over the race He has made in His own image and whom He will adjudge at "the great Day." Without a hint of man's possi- ble Divine call to "repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ," it rules out of the Bible the hope and joy of such ringing affirmations, promises and invitations as these: "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world!" "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." "Christ died for our sins, and was raised for our justification." "Come unto Me, all that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!" In place of these Holy Scriptures, abound- ing in "exceeding great and precious promises," which include earth and heaven, time and eter- nity, and overwhelmingly meet and match man's supreme needs for an eternal existence, this trivial system of "Modern Thought" presents a bare ethical scheme, at most aiming at a better ordering of this earthly, ephemeral life. With this temporary scheme it subverts and empties human life of its vital significance, eliminates its high and holy purposes in its only abiding relation to its Divine Maker, Ruler, and loving Redeemer. In its experiential is- sue, it cannot fail to realize the awful vision of 64* CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM Jean Paul, of a world without light, life, or hope. And this, from his high official place as The- ological Instructor, is the final, summary belief and teaching of a scholar, greatly gifted, finely cultured, and withal, considerate and courteous ; of whom to his honor it may be said, "He has the courage of his convictions." In contrast with these teachings of the present Theological Professor, — and elsewhere (p. 2) — with those of the incumbent of the Presidency of Union, we offer brief extracts from the Professor of Theology and from the Seminary President of half a century ago, in the period of its glory. And we ask the reader to linger upon the thought conveyed in these paragraphs, — to note its depth of meaning and high purpose, and to appreciate the simplicity, beauty, tenderness, and strength of its ex- pression. PROFESSOR HENRY BOYNTON SMITH, D. D. THE THEOLOGY FOR OUR TIMES "The theology which is preeminently needed in our times is that whose substance and man- ner have met the needs of men in all times. This, in its essential principles, is the old, time- honored theology of the Christian Church, with OF TO-DAY 65 its two foci of sin and redemption, all viewed as dependent on God. It is based upon the solid granite rock (the only true petra) and built up of living stones in massive proportions, rising ever upward until its aspiring lines fade away in the bosom of the infinite, whither it leads us that there we may rest. That old theology — older than our schools, older than the earth and the stars — coeval with the Godhead; al- way yet never old, never yet ever new; it is dateless and deathless as the Divine decree, yet fresh as the dawning light of a new day in every new-born soul ; it has been known from the beginning to all penitent and believing souls ; it is uttered in every humble prayer ; it has been sung in such melodious and rap- turous strains as have nowhere else found voice. Someone has said that it is a theology which can never be sung; but it is the only theology which has called forth the tenderest and lofti- est tones of human feeling; which finds its full expression equally in that saddest of human music, the woful miserere which recalls the sacred, awful passion of our dying Lord, and the jubilant and triumphant anthem which celebrates His accomplished victory. That old theology, the living essence of our sacred Scrip- tures, abiding substance of our creed, the sense of our confessions, and the consensus of our schools, has been held and taught by the most 66 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM piercing and soaring intellects of our Chris- tian times — Athanasius and Augustine, An- selm and Aquinas, Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin, Turretine and Edwards ; and through them it has taught and fashioned the most vigorous and advancing churches and nations of modern time." Bib. Work, viii, 429. PRESIDENT WILLIAM ADAMS, D. D. THE POST-RESURRECTION QUESTION OF CHRIST "Lovest thou me? All down through time, the question, in various ways, is presented to living souls. The human race is, and will be, divided by that one test. It will be uttered again from the throne of judgment, that throne high and white, before which a disparted world shall pass to his right hand and his left. That throne will be occupied by the resplendent form of incarnate Love, and the destiny of every man will be — must be — as are his affini- ties in regard to Him. He that loveth is of God; and they who are like God shall be gath- ered to his bosom." Bible Work, N. T. I., p. 576. THE OPEN TOMB OF CHRIST "Come to the vacant sepulchre of Christ, and sing for joy. Death is abolished; let us rejoice and be glad. Angels, those spirits of purity and love, hasten to meet us here with OF TO-DAY 67 their message of joy. They too are interested in the redemption of Christ ; for they sung on the night of his advent ; they ministered to the sufferer in the garden of agony; they rejoice over every sinner that repenteth ; and they bear the spirits of the righteous to the bosom of God. Heaven and earth, angels and men, meet happily together at the open tomb of Christ. Sorrow may be for a night; joy cometh in the morning. With grateful hearts, with a head lifted up, and with a full-toned voice should we ever repeat the great articles of our faith: 6 I believe in Jesus Christ, who was crucified, who died, and was buried ; who rose again from the dead; and who is now at the right hand of God: I believe in the forgiveness of sins, in the resurrection of the body, and the life ever- lasting.' " Bib. Work, N. T. I., p. 558. The ultimate aim and life-purpose of the New Theologians and the Future Religionists are summed up in an absolute independence of God's supremacy, and a present passing life abounding in gainfulness and creature comfort. They do indeed present definite features which to a limited extent are just and true. The grounds, valid as far as rightly applied, upon which they rest their appeal for a wide and general following, consist in the humanities of neighbor help to the poor, the ignorant, the 68 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM wretched, and the depraved, and in the pro- prieties, refinements and culture of social inter- course. But they owe to the widespread teach- ings of a Bible Christianity alone all their humanizing and elevating influences and ef- fects. And in the very use of these influences they are prompted solely by the ultimate mo- tive of self-pleasing, through the inwardly im- pelling demands of natural sympathy, senti- ment or taste, or instinctive generous desire to remove unjust, lawless, and repulsive social conditions. While these natural sympathies and generous instincts, and innate demands for social order, decency and dignity evince a su- perior character and place the individual upon a comparatively high level, they fail to reach the higher standard of true philanthropy. This is defined and fully expressed in the Sec- ond Commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And this Second can only be fulfilled under the impelling force of obedience to the First and "Great" Command- ment of Supreme and all-mastering Love to God — heart obedience by the renewed believer whose life-constraining motive is the infinite, everlasting love of the God-man Christ Jesus. Upon this illumining testimony it would seem that the New Theology may be substan- tially summed up in the denial of every state- OF TO-DAY 69 ment that distinguishes Christ from the ordi- nary man; in the flouting of His Redemptive Office-Work as the God-Man, His Resurrec- tion and Eternal Enthronement; in the rejec- tion of the Deity of the Holy Spirit ; of His re- creating agency in the spirit of man, and the elimination of His inspiring influence from the writers of the Bible, thus reducing it to the level of human production. Not only does it ignore and scorn God and His Word, but as subsidiary points that appeal to every man's deepest life-experience the system has no word or thought in the recognition of human sor- row or human sin. It makes no mention of life-burdening human guilt, "that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart." It only thinks and writes of progress in personal and social amenities, forgetting that such progress is not advance, since advance is only possible when the motive-ideal of the life is perfect holiness. As abundantly evidenced in these pages Lib- eral writers wilfully ignore the laws of thought, the premises of logic with all demands of dia- lectic, and the canons of reasoning and criti- cism. In their ambition to stand in the lime- light they prefer the mental excitement of so- phistical hypotheses, and incredible assump- tions. For support or defense of their posi- tions they present neither reasoning nor proof. 70 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM Their sole, shadowy plea of ground and motive for their bold negations of God's truth is found in a proud boast of INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM True- liberty has its base and finds its pure wing of gladness in unwavering loyalty, or whole-hearted obedience to the Law of life, material or spiritual. And every intelligent, reasonable, and clear thinker knows that genu- ine freedom, wise and just liberty, in every rela- tion among men — in citizenship, and in business and social organizations — is limited and con- trolled by appropriate authoritative laws through which orderly and progressive results are obtained. Lawless license is the antonym of true liberty. Unhappily, in the domain of thought as expressed in literature, the present age is largely dominated by lawless laxity mas- querading in the name of liberty. Speaking of "the great, free, progressive, modem intel- lect," Chesterton says : "Our age has been superficially chattering about change and free- dom." Religious liberty, or freedom in the holding and expression of religious truth, is of neces- sity bounded by and finds its very freedom and life in obedience to the law of God. The Psalmist said: "I shall observe thy laws con- tinually: and I shall walk in liberty." Paul OF TO-DAY 71 affirms : "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." James calls it "the perfect law, the law of liberty." And the Master sums up in His plain declaration: "The truth shall make you free" ; "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." It would seem, then, that the claim of in- tellectual freedom by Liberal writers when set against their system of negations and their unfaith toward God and His Word, means de- termined and unrestricted license, and extin- guishes all rightful law and authority in the universe of God. In fine, Liberalism is condemned by all sane thinking for its utter lack of sound rea- soning and appropriate evidence. It is dis- proved and rejected by the logical outcome of its basal Evolutionary Philosophy: — in its de- nial of Supernaturalism ; in its claim of deter- mining and interpreting Scripture truths by every man's own consciousness and inclination; in its destructive Criticism of the historic facts and spiritual teachings of the Bible; and in the system of thought and unfaith embodied in the New Theology. At its weakest it doubts and questions, at its boldest it defiantly denies, the Deity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, and so obliterates the crowning fact of inspired Revelation, the Trin- 72 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM ity of the Godhead. It leaves the race of sin- ful men without an intervening God, under the ban of self-condemnation, helpless, hopeless, despairing, in the face of an eternal existence. For the deepest penitence it presents no merci- ful, forgiving Sovereign and Father; for the yearning after sympathetic fellowship with and joyful abiding service to a loving and com- muning God, the sensitive, responsive, undying spirit is forever barred out. FAILURE OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY IN GERMANY Rev. Dr. Rittelmeyer, of Nuremberg, a pro- nounced liberal, in the Christliche Welt, a lib- eral organ, makes this open confession: "All the public discussions and populariza- tion of modern critical views have not found any echo or sympathy among the ranks of the laboring people, and there are whole classes of society among the educated who are an- tagonistic to liberal tendencies in religion. Among these are the officers in the army and the navy, practitioners of the technical arts and of engineering, and almost to a man the whole world of business. It is foolish to close our eyes to these facts." He makes this frank admission and confes- sion: "One trouble is that modern theology has OF TO-DAY 73 entirely grown out of criticism. Its weakness is intellectualism ; it is a negative movement. We can understand the cry of the orthodox, that advanced theology is eliminating one thing after the other from our religious thought, and then asks, What is left? True, we answer, God is left. But is it not the case that the modern God-Father faith is generally a very weak and attenuated faith in a Providence and nothing more? And on this subject too we quarrel among ourselves, whether a God-Father troubles himself about little things only or about great things too, such as the forgiveness of sins. We do the same thing with Jesus. We speak of him as of a unique personality, as the highest revelation of the Father, and the like, but always connected with a certain skep- tical undercurrent of thought; but we do not appreciate him in his deepest soul and in the great motives of his life. He is not for mod- ern theology what he is for orthodoxy, the Saviour of the world and the Redeemer of man- kind." A CLEARER, FULLER, PROFOTTNDER TESTIMONY Dr. Wilhelm von Schneten in a work entitled "The Modern Jesus Cult," himself a pro- nounced radical of the modern school in Ger- many, affirms that the modern picture of Jesus is a false deduction from its premises. We cite 74* CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM his words from the "Literary Digest" transla- tion: "The modern Jesus cult is a romantic rev- erence for the 'human' or the 'historical' Jesus, the way for which was prepared by Herder, and was put into distinct theological formulas by Schleiermacher, was then fully developed by Ritschl, and in recent years, in hundreds of variant forms, has become popular through thousands of publications, by the lectures of 'critical' theologians and the preaching of 'liberal' pulpits. In fact the Jesus problem has become the great religious question of the day, around which all other religious convic- tions and life in modern times seem to circle. It is on this recognition of Jesus as their Mas- ter that liberal theologians base their claim that what they teach is 'Christianity.' When they appeal to the authority of Jesus they think they can prove the purity and greatness of any doctrine. They insist that by search- ing for the 'original sense' of the teachings of Jesus they can serve the religious needs of the present day best. In every sphere of discus- sion, including the practical problems of so- ciology, an appeal is made to Jesus. The dan- gerous tendencies of Social Democracy are to be overcome by leading the people back to the primitive moral teachings of the 'historical' Christ. In the praise of the Master's virtues OF TO-DAY 75 as a man the skeptical scholar of scientific re- search thinks he has found a real Christianity. Jesus is 'the purest, the greatest of all human personalities' ; 'he alone gives to life a real pur- pose and aim'; 'he is the ideal of the human race,' 'the ideal perfect man, the example for human conduct and life;' 'one in whose free and sacred person we find a recompense for all that which we otherwise have lost.' In one word, the entire religion of the modern man, as Naumann expressly declares, is a cult or worship of the ideal human being Jesus, 'the religious and ethical model.' The veneration for his human personality, faith in the 'eter- nal' significance of his words, and pious imita- tion of his love for others is represented to be 'the essence of Christianity,' the one and only thing that constitutes true religion." In direct denial of the claim of the modern Jesus cult of liberal theology to be called "Christian" Dr. von Schneten continues : "It must not be forgotten that Christianity is, as the name implies, not faith in Jesus, but faith in Christ, and faith in Jesus only in so far as Jesus is regarded, as Christ is, as the Redeemer and the son of God ; moreover, a 'son of God' and a 'Redeemer' in the real historical sense of the term, and not in a modernized em- phasizing of these expressions into general and meaningless terms. In a word, Christianity 76 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM is a Christ-religion, is faith in redemption solely and alone through the true son of God, Jesus Christ. Whether this faith is one that now is out of date or not, whether it be a true or a false faith, everybody must decide for him- self; but that in him, and in him alone, the 'essence of true Christianity' is to be found can not be doubted for a moment. Not Jesus the man, not the revered preacher and teacher of morals, who sealed his convictions, as is claimed, by his death, is the person who has conquered the hearts of mankind and overcome the decaying civilization of the old Greco- Roman world and brought to his feet the bar- baric hordes of Europe; but he who accom- plished this was the Christ, who suffered, who died as the divine Saviour on the cross, which thereby has become the grand symbol of the sacrifice of a God for the welfare of man. It is this faith in the divine redemption that has been reechoed in the hymns and prayers of Christianity and that has revolutionized the world. The joys of Christmas, of Easter, the majestic hopes of the martyrs, the sublime faith of true Christianity can be explained only on this ground, but never on the basis of a 'his- torical' Christ, a great moral teacher or a model moralist. And to the present day it is this faith that upholds and develops the church and makes Christianity the greatest power in OF TO-DAY 77 the thoughts and lives of men and of nations. Even the non-Christian philosophy, that does not agree with the church's conception of Christ, must recognize historically and in the present life of the church the Christ as the son of God as the center and heart of Chris- tianity in its world mission and work. A philosophy can not change facts. "Of this great central thought and power the modern conceptions of Jesus as the 'great man' deprives the gospel; and, what is more, is directly contrary to what the gospels intend to teach, and do teach when taken in the sense of their promulgators. The Jesus of the gos- pels, even of the Synoptics, is not a mere man, not even the best of men, but on the whole the Christ of the traditional teachings of the church. In this respect there is no substantial difference between John and the other three gospels ; and it is incorrect to reconstruct a kind of a hu- man 'historical' Christ out of the Synoptics. This can be done only by doing violence, e. g., to the narratives of Matthew and Luke con- cerning the virgin birth of Jesus. We may not believe these things, but the gospels certainly want to teach them, and the elimination of these elements by liberal theology does violence to the sources for the life of Jesus. "Even Professor Bousset, the author of 'Jesus,' declares that the oldest of our gospel 78 CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM records, that of Mark, already depicts Jesus not only as the Messiah of the Jewish people, but also as the eternal son of God. "In view of these facts it must be maintained that the modern Jesus cult of liberal theology is practically an empty thing and little more than a mountain of words, but of no religious value, and can not even claim to be 'Chris- tian.' " IV THE GODHEAD AN ETERNAL TRIN- ITY; THREE-FOLD OFFICE-WORK IN MAN'S REDEMPTION 1. GOD TRIUNE According to His own assertion there is One, and only One, God; but, as disclosed in His own Self Revelation, there are Three Distinc- tions in the Godhead, revealed most clearly and fully in the New Testament, under the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To these Three we apply the term Persons as the best that human language affords. But the fact of an inseparable unity must always be borne in mind. We add the illumining words of Bishop Huntington: "In the transcendent, re- moved, and awful depth of His absolute infini- tude, which no understanding can pierce, the Everlasting and Almighty God lives in an ex- istence of which our only possible knowledge is gained by lights thrown back from Revelation. Out of that ineffable and veiled Godhead there emerge to us in Revelation the three whom we call Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; 79 80 THE GODHEAD with their several individual offices, mutual re- lations, operations toward men, and perfect unity together. Holding fast the prime and positive fact of this unity, we have given us, as an equal matter of faith, the threeness. We know of no priority to that threeness; of no epoch when it was not; of no Deity independ- ent of that threefold distinction. No hint is given that there is any difference of nature, dignity, duration, power, or glory between them. Each of them is referred to in the Scriptures as God. Each of them is distin- guished from the others by the personal pro- nouns. To each of them Divine attributes and acts are ascribed, and to each Divine worship is offered." 2. RELATION OF THE THREE PERSONS "In the language of the old theologians, the Father is the original Fountain-Head of the Godhead; therefore in Scripture is frequently called God absolutely. The Son is spoken of as 'begotten' ; this with the view, first, of dis- tinguishing the mode of His origin from 'cre- ation' (the Son Himself is the Creator of all) ; and next, of indicating that He is of the Fath- er's own substance — 'very God of very God.' And the Spirit is described as 'proceeding' from the Father and the Son (Jn. xv, 26) 'breathed forth' as the name indicates. — The AN ETERNAL TRINITY 81 doctrine of the Trinity is obtained by observ- ing and collating what is declared in Scripture, and discerned in the process of human salva- tion, regarding these Divine Persons." — Prof. James Orr. S. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD "The Fatherhood of God in the New Testa- ment is never revealed as a thing by itself; it is revealed always in relation with the Son and the Spirit. . . . The Fatherhood of God, in the full Christian idea of it, does not origi- nate with God's relation to the world or to man; or even with God's relation to believers. If you wish to find the ultimate spring of Fatherhood in the heart of God, you must seek it, not in relation to humanity or to believers, but in the relation to the Eternal and 'only be- gotten' Son. It is with this Fatherly love, of which the primal object is the Son, that God turns to the world, and seeks to draw men in to be sharers of it." — Prof. Orr. 4. man's sonship (childship) to god "When God created man it was to a destiny of Sonship. But man by sin turned his back on that destiny. He took another spirit into his heart; passed into another relation to God than that of a Son to a Father. If this des- tiny of sonship was to be realized, it could no 82 THE GODHEAD longer be on the basis of Creation, but only on the basis of Redemption. Hence the restric- tion of sonship in the Gospel to those who are actually partakers of the grace of Christ's sal- vation. Sonship, in grace, becomes ours by regeneration and a Divine act of Adoption." —Prof, Orr. 5. FORCEFUL APPEAL OF THE THREE DIVINE PERSONS The complete Self-Revelation of God in- cludes, on one side, all elemental and spiritual attributes as equally possessed and alike ex- ercised by each Person of the Triune Godhead. On the other side, in its disclosure of the Di- vine Working in Redemption the Revelation discriminates peculiar relations and acts em- bodied in the definite Office-Work of each Divine Person. Both sides of the Godhead as thus revealed — the infinite wisdom, might, holiness and love manifest and exercised in common, and all spe- cial relations and acts of the Three in the achievement of man's Redemption — combine to exert a mighty force of appeal to arouse the attention, attract the confidence, and win the responsive love and reverent thankful obedience of the sensitive human spirit. Then will fol- low submission and penitence, filial trust and loyal consecration to service. And this won- AN ETERNAL TRINITY 83 der-work of grace on the part of the interven- ing God is the supreme motive power that con- strains the self-serving man to bow beneath the Cross of the Self-sacrificing Son of God. 6. INTERCOMMUNION LIFE OF THE TRINITY As an eminent part of a full interpretation of the Divine Trinity there stands forth a fact of the highest moment and most intense per- sonal interest and relief to the fervent seeker after God : There is and ever has been Fellow- ship in the Life of the Godhead, a social Inter- communion between the Three Divine Persons ; and this perfectly harmonious Fellowship ex- ists without break or change from everlasting to everlasting. "This is My beloved Son," said the Father, "in whom I am well pleased." "Thou lovedst me," responds the Son, "before the foundation of the world." "Glorify Thou Me with the glory I had with Thee before the world was !" And to the Pharisees He said, "I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me." "Only through the Trinitarian distinction," writes Prof. Orr, "are we brought into com- munion with a Being who has within Himself a life of communion. R. H. Hutton says, 'If Christ is the Eternal Son of God, God is in deed and in essence a Father ; the social nature, the spring of love, is of the very essence of the 84 THE GODHEAD Eternal Being: the communication of His life, the reciprocation of His affection dates beyond time — belongs, in other words, to the very Being of God.' " For unknown ages, we may believe, this Life of Fellowship in the Divine Trinity has been a glorious and conscious reality and source of sympathetic joy to the multitude, of angelic intelligences who "kept their first estate." And assuredly this intercommunion of life and love between the essentially united Persons of the Godhead must deeply affect and add im- measurably to the blessedness of the vaster hosts of redeemed and purified human spirits — who forever dwell in the presence, enjoy the fellowship, and engage in the service of the Al- mighty and changelessly loving God — since it brings into that holy and harmonious life of Creator and creature the presence and activ- ity of the whole Deity, the Father and the Holy Spirit in vital conjunction and ceaseless coop- eration with the visibly enthroned Son of God and Man, "the King in His beauty." Alike impressive, inspiring, and sustaining to the living believer's thought of God is the fact that, instead of a single companionless Being existing eternally alone without possi- bility of exercising sympathy, love, and fel- lowship which in an infinite measure must be possessed by an Infinite Spirit, there is dis- AN ETERNAL TRINITY 85 closed to us a Triune Godhead which compasses and includes an Intercommunion Life between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit eternally existing. Here, indeed, is a great and precious truth for present consideration; a sublime far reaching fact that demands and rewards our deepest thought and realization. For it re- veals the Counsels of the Triune Godhead planning and achieving the history and des- tiny of the race to be created, and leads us naturally to the apprehension and personal glad acceptance of the Office-Work of each Divine Person in the Redemption of the new but fallen creature. 7. ATTITUDE IN PRAYER TOWARD THE THREE DIVINE PERSONS This is definitely stated by Paul (Eph. ii, 18) : "For through Him (Christ) we have our access in one Spirit unto the Father." Christ's Name and Mediation provide the basis of our approach, and the Holy Spirit is our efficient Inspirer and Helper in thought, feel- ing, and expression. Christ reveals the Father, and through His Self-Offering becomes our as- sured Advocate and Intercessor. The Holy Spirit reveals Christ in His mediating and sav- ing offices, shows all our needs supplied by Him, and so illumines, inspires, and aids our utterance in prayer. Thus in intelligent, 86 THE GODHEAD heartfelt, and acceptable prayer, we listen for the voice, heed the prompting, and welcome the influence of the Spirit, we plead the name and mediatorial work of Christ, and we ask the Father. Yet are we privileged to address our prayer alike to the Father, to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Spirit, according to the nat- ural play of thought and feeling respecting the things desired, and the special relation of the Persons to the particular objects of our aspiration or need. But even in such specific forms of address no thought of severance be- tween the Three Persons may be allowed. For the prayer addressed to each is equally heard and the response of blessing equally accorded by the Three in their absolute harmony and inseparable unity of Being and Action. 8. SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY TO THE TRINITY Old Testament intimations of plurality in the Godhead are distinctly read in the plural name of God and the connected idea of converse, Gen. i, £6, and elsewhere; in the Theophanies to individual patriarchs and leaders ; in the Trine "Holy" of Isa. vi, and in many Psalms. As for the New Testament, almost innumer- able expressions in the Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Revelation plainly distinguish and dis- criminate each of the Persons of the Godhead, AN ETERNAL TRINITY 87 noting a peculiar relation subsisting between them and a special office and mission of each in carrying out the Eternal Purpose and Plan of man's Redemption. The distinction between the Father and the Son is vitally woven into almost every utterance of Christ and into every chapter of the Epistles of Paul, Peter, and John, and it underlies every doctrinal truth contained in those Epistles. The Three Per- sons are explicitly mentioned, Gal. iv, 6; Eph. ii, 18 ; I Pet. i, % ; and elsewhere. 9. THREE-FOLD OFFICE-WORK IN MAN'S RE- DEMPTION First Announced by Christ to Nicodemus, John iii: Dr. Wm. Hanna writes: "Standing in time the first, this discourse stands in char- acter alone. You search in vain through all the subsequent discourses of our Lord for any such clear, compendious, comprehensive develop- ment of the Christian salvation ; of its source in the love of the Father; of its channel in the death of His only begotten Son; and of the great Agent, the Holy Spirit, by whom it is appropriated and applied. You search in vain for any instance in which the Three Persons of the Trinity were spoken of by our Lord con- secutively and conjointly; to each being as- signed His proper part in the economy of our Redemption." 88 THE GODHEAD The Formula of Baptism. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Dr. J. J. Owen writes: "Literally into the name. It is a profession of subjec- tion, in a new and special sense, to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; a profession of being God's peculiar property, and of entire devo- tion to His service. The use of the word name in the singular emphatically expresses the unity of the Godhead, as the words Father, Son and Holy Spirit, denote the tri-personality. The names Father, Son and Holy Spirit refer to the Offices which the Sacred Three sustain in the work of man's Redemption; and in which Offices the only revelation of the Trinity which we have is made: One Person, in consequence of official superiority, is called Father; the Person who stooped to the condition of inferiority is correlatively styled Son; while the other Person of the Trinity, from His office as Regenerator and Sanctifier by His communicated influence, is called Spirit. These are the relations brought to view in the Word of God. In no instance is the term Son applied to the second Person in the Trinity except in His office-work of Medi- ator and King. And baptism into the covenant of grace is here designated baptism into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, i. e., into the duties and privileges of that covenant of Redemption, which was founded on the pro- AN ETERNAL TRINITY 89 visions of grace, denoted by these official names of the Persons of the Trinity. Beyond this we cannot go. The mode of the Divine Existence we cannot fathom." The Apostolic Benediction. " 'The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ ' is the beginning and foundation of Christian experience. Only through the grace of the Son men come to the full experience of the Father's compassion. Therefor 'the love of God 9 is mentioned in the second place. The name of Father is si- lently understood, and in the most absolute sense the name of God is given inclusively to the Father, because in the Divinity of the Father that of the Son and of the Spirit has its immovable basis. Only after men have per- sonally experienced the grace of the Lord Jesus, can they be certain of the love of God. We continue in the permanent possession of both only in the fellowship or * communion of the Holy Spirit, 9 which forms the crown and cope- stone of the apostolic blessing. Only through the Son do we become children of the Father, and temples of the Holy Spirit. Only through the Holy Spirit do we become partakers of the grace of the Son and the love of the Father." — Van Oosterzee. "The truth of God's nature, as one God in Trinity, becomes better understood and de- lighted in as ministering a solid foundation of 90 THE GODHEAD trust to a sinful man. As far as the believer can see, the very possibility of salvation rests on this distinction of Persons in the one blessed God; so that the Father could give His only begotten Son, the Son could offer Himself with- out spot to God, and the Spirit of the Father and the Son could go forth to apply this sal- vation by testifying of Jesus, quickening the believer's soul 'together with Christ, and fitting him for the service and enjoyment of God.' " — Goode. "To those who have gone most deeply into this subject, the Trinity, so far from being a bare speculative doctrine, is one of the utmost practical value in our Christian thinking. If anyone once comes to realize what is involved in it, he will never part with it, or be able to feel that he has the right conception of God without it." — Prof. Orr. "We can wish the reader nothing more beatific in this life than to have found and fully brought into feeling the practical significance of this Eternal act or fact of God, which we call the Christian Trinity. Nowhere else do the bonds of limitation burst away as here. Nowhere else does the soul launch upon im- mensity as here ; nowhere fill her burning censer with the eternal fires of God, as when she sings : " One inexplicably three, One in simplest unity. AN ETERNAL TRINITY 91 Who that has been able, in some frame of holy longing after God, to commit his soul up freely to the inspiring impulse of this Divine mystery as it is celebrated in some grand doxology of Christian worship, and has so been lifted into conscious fellowship with the great celestial minds, in their higher ranges of beatitude and their shining tiers of glory, has not known it as being at once the deepest, highest, widest, most enkindling, and most practical of all prac- tical truth?" — Bushnell. THE PLACE AND WORK OF JESUS CHRIST: SCRIPTURALLY IDENTI- FIED WITH JEHOVAH; IN BOTH TESTAMENTS THE IMMEDIATE RE- VEALER AND ACTOR FOR THE GOD- HEAD IDENTIFIED WITH THE OLD TESTAMENT JEHOVAH The name "Jehovah" explicitly affirms God's Eternal Being, and expresses His covenant re- lation with His people as their Redeemer. "His essential name," says Delitzsch, "is Jehovah, and consists in this, that He is the God of sal- vation who in the might of free grace pervades and overrules all history. This name is for His people a fountain of exultation." [The earlier scholars interpreted the He- brew word Jehovah as asserting an Eternal and Changeless Being. Impliedly accepting this, recent investigators affirm the added meaning of Infinite Power in Supreme Control of all creatures and events. They express this vital meaning in the prase : "He shall cause it to be," or "He shall cause it to come to pass." The 92 OF JESUS CHRIST 93 eminent scholar, John Urquhart, presents this interpretation with great fullness and force, and sustains it by many convincing reasons. — The Biblical Guide, vol. iv, pp. 98-101.'] 1. EVIDENTIAL POINTS FROM NEW TESTAMENT USE OF OLD TESTAMENT STATEMENTS (1) Compare Isa. vi, 3, with John xii, 41. Isaiah sees the glory of Jehovah ; John affirms that it was the glory of Christ. (2) John xix, 37, declares that the word of Jehovah spoken by Zechariah xii, 10, "They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced," was fulfilled in the piercing of the side of Christ. (3) Hebrews i, 10-12, citing Ps. cii, 25-27, "assumes that this passage ascribes Creator- ship to the Son of God. This obviously im- plies that God as revealed to His people under the name Jehovah, the great 'I am,' was really the Eternal Son" (Cowles). (4) Moses declares that Jehovah led Israel through the wilderness. In I Cor. i, 4, 9, Paul affirms this of Christ. And Stephen (Acts vii, 38) declares that Christ was with His "Church in the wilderness." (5) "The Psalmist, lxxviii, 17, affirms, 'They tempted and rebelled against the Most High God.' With reference to the same events Paul writes, I Cor. x, 9, 'Neither let us tempt 94 THE PLACE AND WORK Christ, as some of them also tempted Him. Therefore Christ is the Most High God"' (Jones of Nayland). % EVIDENCES FROM TITLES APPLIED TO CHRIST (1) Messiah, meaning Anointed, referred to, Ps. ii, 2, and Dan. ix, 25, has Christos as its Greek equivalent. Both refer to the long prom- ised Divine Redeemer, denoting His Prophetic office, Kingly authority, and Mediatorial char- acter. Christ distinctly claimed to be the Mes- siah, Son of God, John iv, 26, Mat. xvi, 16, 17, and xxvi, 63, 64. (2) Furthermore, the expression "Son of of Man," which Christ appropriated to Him- self, is taken from Daniel third and seventh chapters. Of this expression Meyer says : "Its simple meaning is, The Messiah, Christ, inas- much as in Him the Messiah was come, was, in the realization, that Son of Man whose form was seen in Daniel's vision." (3) In the histories of Abraham, Jacob, and some of the Judges we read of God as manifested in the form of man. In many in- terviews He is referred to as "the Angel of Je- hovah." In some, as with Moses at the bush, He explicitly identifies Himself with Jehovah. Those to whom He makes His presence known recognize and offer worship to Him as God. And the Biblical writers unreservedly call Him OF JESUS CHRIST 95 Jehovah. "The peculiarity of the angel is that, while distinguishing Himself from Jehovah, He is yet, in some mysterious way, identified with Jehovah, speaks in His name, nay, is declared to be Jehovah Himself."— Prof. Orr. "Now," writes Dr. Barry, "since 'no man hath seen God' (the Father) 'at any time,' and 'the only be- gotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father hath revealed Him,' the 'Angel of the Lord' in such passages must be He who is from the be- ginning the 'Word,' i. e., the Manifester or Revealer of God, and those appearances must be 'foreshadowings of the Incarnation.' " We add Gerlaeh's clear and compact sum- mary on this point: "Throughout the Old Testament there runs the distinction between the hidden God and the Revealer of God, Himself equal with God, who most frequently is called 'the Messenger, the Angel of the Lord,' 'Malachi-Jehovah,' — one with Him, and yet distinct from Him. This Messenger of the Lord is the Guide of the patri- archs ; the Caller of Moses ; the Leader of the people through the wilderness ; the Champion of the Israelites in Canaan ; and also, yet fur- ther, the Guide and Ruler of the people of the covenant; or, as He is called (Isa. lxiii, 9), 'the Angel of His Presence' ; by Malachi, as the Messenger of the Covenant. This Angel of the Lord often in the Old Testament speaks as 96 THE PLACE AND WORK Jehovah, and His appearing is regarded as that of the Most High God Himself. Nay, God says expressly of this Angel, 'My name — i. e., My revealed Being — is in Him.' In the New Testament the expressions, 'The Word,' 'Son,' 'Express Image,' 'Brightness,' betoken the same, viz., the countenance turned to man, the Revealer of the invisible God. The future appearance on earth of the God-man is gradu- ally prepared for in the Old Testament in two ways : on the one hand, there is promised a mighty and glorious human Ruler over all (in later times called 'Messiah' — the Anointed of the Lord), to whom at the same time in His human nature, Divine names, attributes and works are ascribed ; on the other hand, the per- sonal distinction in the Godhead, the Revealer of the invisible God as a separate person, is more and more clearly made known." 3. EVIDENTIAL POINTS FROM THE DISCLOSURES OF CHRIST (1) In exact correspondence with these mani- fold Old Testament manifestations of the "An- gel of Jehovah," distinct from yet one with Him, is the disclosure of Christ in the Gospel and Epistles of John. The discourses and ex- tended colloquies of the Gospel to the end of Chapter 17 are studded with explicit affirma- OF JESUS CHRIST 97 tions of His distinction from the Father yet perfect equality and oneness with Him in na- ture, in power, and in working, and of His ex- clusive office work as the Revealer of all truth respecting the Father and the Holy Spirit, each one of which stands forth as proof of His Je- hovahship. (2) Indirectly but distinctly, by word and act, Christ claims the place and work of Je- hovah. Echoing the O. T. demand "Trust ye in Jehovah forever," He demands "Believe upon me." "With calm, simple, profound dignity," writes Maclaren, "He lays His hand upon all consecrated words, upon all the ancient and hal- lowed emotions that are centered in the unseen God between the Cherubim, throned above judg- ment and resting upon mercy ; and He says, 'They are all Mine ! That ancient trust I claim the right to hold. I am He upon whom in all time the loving hearts of them that love God are set. I am the Angel of the Covenant to whom whosoever trusteth shall never be con- founded.' " (3) "The word Lord, equivalent to the Je- hovah of the Old Testament, and correspond- ent to it in the Septuagint version, is constantly applied to Christ in the Acts, where it is found nearly a hundred times, and is like a sacred key-note of the whole, ever sounding for His divine Lordship in the ear of the world. It is 98 THE PLACE AND WORK 'the Lord Jesus' who is said by Peter to have come in and gone out among them. It is He who chooses Matthias ; He who sends the Holy Ghost; He who adds believers daily to the Church; He who works miracles by the hands of His apostles. To the Lord Jesus, Stephen, the first martyr, looks up and prays at the hour of death. It is He who calls to the persecuting Saul from heaven." — Bp. Wordsworth. "The Lord of Glory," an able work of Pro- fessor Warfield, of Princeton Theological Semi- nary, is devoted to the exhaustive presentation of this New Testament usage. CHRIST THE REVEALER OF ALL TRUTH At the close of His ministry when announcing the coming of the Holy Spirit in the fullness of His manifestation and power, Christ dis- tinctly claimed to be the source of all spiritual truth, while He as distinctly disclosed the office- work of the Spirit in the complete unfolding and expression of that truth by inspired reve- lation to the New Testament writers. His words on this point are clear and plain: "The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, shall teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said unto you. He shall guide you into all the truth : for He shall not speak from himself ; but OF JESUS CHRIST 99 what things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak. He shall glorify me, for He shall take of mine and declare it unto you." And in His prayer: "I have given unto them the words that Thou gavest me." Hence Ber- nard says : "The teaching of the Lord includes the substance of all Christian doctrine. It would be easy to show that the intimation of every truth revealed to the apostles by the Spirit came first from the lips of the Son of man." And the Revelation itself closes with a Book in which Christ from the throne is the speaker. From all the words of Christ the fact appears that the Father has given to the Son and the Son has conveyed by the Spirit the words of truth and life. To these truths the Spirit adds nothing, but takes, opens, and applies them in their fullness of meaning and power, and so is the immediate author of the God-breathed, written Word of Revelation. If Christ be Jehovah ? assuredly the Son and Spirit of God must sustain the same relation to the spiritual truths of the Old Testament. As God, Christ asserts Himself to be the im- mediate Revealer of all truth received from the Father. Since He is the sole Revealer of truth to men, Old Testament truths must be included in His New Testament assertions and the Holy Spirit must alike inspire both Old and New 100 THE PLACE AND WORK Testament writers. Thus^ Christ's Office-work as Prophet is manifest and proven in the Rec- ords of both Testaments, unfolded and ex- panded by the commissioned Spirit of God. Christ's two-fold relation to the Old Testa- ment is clearly expressed by Principal Shera- ton: "He declared Himself to be the Supreme Subject of the Old Testament. He expounded 'in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.' 'They were all,' He says, 'written concerning me.' 'They are they,' He affirms, 'which bear witness of me.' He declared Himself to be the object of all the promises and predictions of the Old Testament; the fulfilment and consummation of all its revela- tions. "He was not only the Subject but the Author of the Old Testament. God has given no reve- lation of Himself except through the Eternal Son. God reveals His power and wisdom in His works; and that revelation was given through the Son, for 'all things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made that has been made.' God spake by the Prophets, but 'it was the spirit of Christ which was in them.' — / Pet. i. 11. Our Lord declares that 'He is the light of the world.' . . . There never was, there never could be, any revelation of the Father except through the Son. The office of Revealer belongs to Him OF JESUS CHRIST 101 as Son. It is inherent in His Person." — Shera- ton. 1 CHRIST THE ACTOR FOR THE GODHEAD IN CREA- TION, PROVIDENCE, AND REDEMPTION Thus far the conclusion is reached that both Testaments disclose Christ, the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, to be the Speaker and Revealer of all truth for the Godhead. Fur- thermore, explicitly or by clear implication throughout both Testaments the Speaker and Revealer is also affirmed to be the immediate Actor and Agent of the Godhead in all Divine Agency: — in Creation, in the Ordering of Hu- man History, and in Man's Redemption. This is abundantly proven in the explicit statements of John and Paul, in the declarations and deeds of Christ, and in the Offices, qualifications and purposes attributed throughout the early and later Records to Jesus Christ, the God-Man, as i Failing to consider the all-inclusive character and reach of His Office-work as Prophet, some able and de- vout students of the Word express astonishment at Christ's exact and exhaustive knowledge of the Old Testament. Others have incautiously affirmed that Christ Himself, derived His knowledge and the subject- matter of His teachings from the study of the O. T. Scriptures, and this in forgetfulness of His manifold, majestic assertions of original and unlimited knowl- edge and authority: "I say unto you!" "The words that I speak are spirit and life!" "I am the way, the truth, and the life!" 102 THE PLACE AND WORK Messiah, God-Anointed and Appointed to be man's Prophet or Teacher, Priest or mediating, interceding and Atoning Sacrifice, and King, or Sovereign Controller of man's life in all its events and conditions for time and the after changeless destiny. If the above Scriptural assurances, reasonings and inferences are correctly stated, and if they are just, and solidly based, there flows from them — as the central, fundamental and all- comprehensive disclosure of the entire Divine Revelation — this transcendent fact: That both Testaments incontrovertibly affirm that Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God, the "Word who was with God and was God," was assigned by the original counsels of the Divine Trinity to be the immediate A\ctor for the Godhead in Revelation, in Creation (John i, 3; Col. i, 16), in Human History, and in Redemption. In this transcendent fact of His Assigned Representative Agency we find the distinctive Place and Work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the Son of Mary. 1 In the light of this central, vital disclosure, i This Scripturally proven fact would seem to have been so deeply fixed upon the mind of Swedenborgh as to form a basis for the supreme place assigned to Christ in his Unitarian scheme of the nature of God, and the subordinate, mystical functions, attributed to the Father and the Holy Spirit. OF JESUS CHRIST 103 and as corollaries to it, a double inference is imperatively affirmed: First. No human thinker who has deliberately ignored these Scriptural assurances, or failed to consider the deep significance and wide bearing of this transcendent fact can possibly form an intel- ligent estimate or write rationally of the Per- son and place of Jesus Christ in human His- tory. Second. No avowedly Christian thinker who has not profoundly considered and con- vincingly appreciated the marvellous breadth, fullness and preciousness of the meaning in- volved in this fundamental and momentous fact is prepared to deal fairly, much less instruc- tively and helpfully, with the nature, the char- acter, the teaching and the work of Jesus Christ, and with His Divinely assigned place in the Christian system of faith. From lack of thorough consideration and ap- preciation of this vital fact as the supreme and central theme of both Testaments, and from the resultant lack of spiritual insight and dis- crimination, we find among professedly Chris- tian present-day writers much that is fanciful, baseless, and irreverent in their dealing with the nature and teaching of Jesus Christ. The root error of their treatment lies in their defective viewpoint of Christ Himself. They are so ab- sorbed in the thought and study of His human nature and relations that they interpret His 104* THE PLACE AND WORK teaching and work exclusively from their own imagined estimate of His human character and capacity. Thus they forget and ignore the cardinal fact that His Godhood dominates His manhood in His every word and act. This foundation error, under the controlling force of inborn conceit, has led to vagrant and demeaning estimates, involving essential rejec- tion, of the Person, Supremacy and Redemp- tive Work of the Divine Christ. In its present- day form this radical error is a chief basis of the self-styled "New Thought," and is obtru- sively pushed to the front by its few but clamorous and energetic advocates scattered throughout our Colleges and Seminaries, with here and there an ambitious, would-be up-to- date preacher and writer. Its main support is found in a speculative theory evolved a half- century ago by a German professor of The- ology. A master thinker explains and refutes this theory: "Ritschl denies the possibility of anything except 'judgments of value,' in the religious sphere. In science there is such a thing as judgments of matters of fact, i. e„ judgments based on facts, and so in accord with the principles of logic and philosophy. On these rest exact Knowledge and assured truth; but there is nothing of this kind in re- ligion. According to Ritschl, man is left to his own judgments of value or worthy judg- OF JESUS CHRIST 105 merits not based upon fact nor amenable to logic or philosophy, but rather selected or ac- cepted 'on the basis of volitional and affective dispositions/ A man's theological furnishing is to be the result of his own choices ('voli- tional dispositions') and to come out of his own wishes ( 'affective dispositions'). The whole region of religion thus becomes a region of mere opinion, in which it is literally true that 'one man's opinion is just as good as another's,' and in which any man's opinion is liable to constant change with the shifty winds of inclination. Of course, the natural man's 'volitional and affective dispositions' do not incline him to agreement with the great truths of the Bible concerning man's sinful and lost condition and the way of salvation through atonement by Christ. . . . Ritschl's view ignores all tests of right thinking and knowl- edge. The chief count against it is that it ignores the eternal objective realities of which the truths of theology are the interpretation and expression, and rejects the only way of becoming acquainted with them." "The peculiarity of the Impressionist School founded by Ritschl," wrote Dr. Wm. C. Gray in the Interior, December, '97, is that it makes nothing of historic or scientific facts or re- alities. It is not things as they are or were that have value but the impression which the 106 THE PLACE AND WORK whole makes upon the imagination of feeling. It is a sort of idealism which denies the reality of anything. There are two sources of knowl- edge; the external or objective, and the internal or subjective. The old theology accepts an external standard in the infallible Word of God, while the new accepts only an internal standard found in the subjective judgments of the individual. It asserts a new doctrine of infallibility, to be found in the inner conscious- ness of the believer." "The Consciousness Theory," says another acute thinker, "tests the truthfulness of the Sacred Word, not by any criteria on the God-ward side, but by its accord with Christian consciousness, as it is called; that is to say, what one's consciousness certifies to be true, to him it is true, and what his consciousness rejects as false is false, — the inspiration being really in the reader or hearer, and not in the writer or author." It thus appears that the reliance of the Modern Theorists for knowledge and certitude of truth is solely upon individual conscious- ness — ever shifting impressions of opinion, im- agination, or feeling, making up what they call experience — to the utter exclusion of reasoned processes upon the only fixed basis of Revealed Facts. Assumption based upon assertion, with- out assignment of reason or proof is the method pursued by the advocates of the "New The- OF JESUS CHRIST 107 ology" and of their closely allied comrades of the Disintegrating Criticism. The genesis and natural connection of these two aggressive allies has recently been tersely stated: "The Evolutionary Philosophy, 1 as applied to the Bible and theology, produces the Radical Criti- cism and both have begotten the "New The- ology." And a prominent adherent has un- blushingly avowed the purpose of this unified system of destructive unfaith: "We intend, First, to reconstruct the Bible history in har- mony with the theory of evolution. Second, to eliminate by this process all that is super- natural in the record. Third, to unite schol- ars in support of sweeping changes in the ortho- dox view of the Holy Scriptures." The ulti- mate resultant of their efforts we find: 1st. In i The writer refers to the radical theory of Evolution — a comparatively recent infidel invention — which is the basic factor in the structural scheme of "Modernism"; a theory which ignores and dethrones God by putting Him aside from His own Creation, and making Him helplessly subject to His own established natural laws; thus eliminating the supernatural from Revealed His- tory, and annihilating man's hope of recovery from sin's effects through a Divine Redemption. The term, evolution, has another reasonable use when interpreted as a synonym or equivalent of development, and denned as a method of action by a God whose con- trolling energy pervades every atom and permeates every point of space, and who inherently possesses per- sonal omnipotence to achieve events and processes "be- yond the natural order," as His inspired Revelation abundantly testifies. 108 THE PLACE AND WORK a virtual denial of the Godhood of Christ by the claim of more than equal knowledge with Him. 2d. In the usurpation by every adherent of the sphere and work of the Holy Spirit by the claim of equal inspiration with Him. The evidence or proof of these startling con- clusions may be read in manifold pages of cur- rent volumes and reviews. We can only refer to a long ago published book (with many since) by a professor of Biblical Theology in Yale University. Prof. Bacon here claims the ability and the right to revise and restate the very words of Christ's Sermon on the Mount, select- ing, manipulating and rejecting as his own judgment determines. A single sentence, touching his method, furnishes overwhelming evidence to every rightly thinking mind: "The method of the Higher Critic in applying his principles must be to think himself into the atmosphere and circumstances, yes, above all into the spirit, ideals, and feelings of Jesus/' Upon this a learned judge, in an exhaustive refutation of the book's absurdities, naturally comments: "Man thinking himself into Deity — that is, a finite being thinking him- self into the spirit, ideals and feelings of the Infinite Being! The claim that a mere man can think himself into anything more than a mere man and the conceptions of a mere man is preposterous!" And Dr. Leitch writes: OF JESUS CHRIST 109 "At the back of the minds of all the critics lies the conviction that they know better what Christ said and did and was, than any of the writers of the New Testament." ALLEGED SCRIPTURAL SUPPORT Only two brief clauses in the New Testa- ment are suggested in support of these amazing assumptions and denials touching the Godhood of Christ. 1. Paul's statement that Christ emptied him- self.''' — Phil, ii, 7. The meaning of this clause is exhausted by the facts embodied in the entire sentence, verses 6-8. It can only refer to, as it simply affirms, that Christ, "existing in the form of God," took on the added form of man, that, possessing both natures, He might be qualified to mediate between God and man, and by His Self-Offering unto death upon the cross, the just God might be justified in re- mitting the law's condemnation, in imparting righteousness and restoring childship to the penitent, believing man forever. "Wherefor," sums up the Apostle, "every tongue shall con- fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." In the place of this only possible meaning there has been evolved the vitally destructive theory of Kenosis or utter abdication and surrender of His Deity. 110 THE PLACE AND WORK 2. This baseless and impious notion is re- inforced by an inferential assumption of a con- fessed limitation of His Omniscience by Christ Himself in His own single, brief utterance recorded by Mark (xiii, 32) and by Matthew in like connection: "Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." Concerning this utterance Sir Robert Ander- son writes : "Two facts which are strangely overlooked claim prominent notice. The first is that the antithesis is not all between man and God, but between the Son of God and the Father. And the second is that He had been reinvested with all that, according to Phil, ii., He had laid aside in coming into the world. 'All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father,' He declared; and this at a time when the proofs that 'He was despised and rejected of men' were pressing on Him. His resuming the glory awaited His return to heaven, but here on earth the all things were already His. Should any still doubt or cavil another answer to the Kenosis figment is complete and crush- ing. Whatever may have been the limitations under which He rested during His ministry on earth, He was released from them when He rose from the dead. And it was in His post-resur- rection teaching that He gave the fullest and clearest testimony to the Hebrew Scriptures. OF JESUS CHRIST 111 Then it was that 'beginning at Moses, and all the prophets, He expounded unto them, in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.' And again, confirming all His previous teach- ing about those Scriptures, 'He said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.' And the record adds : 'Then opened He their minds that they might under- stand the Scriptures.' And the rest of the New Testament is the fruit of that ministry, enlarged and unfolded by the Holy Spirit given to lead them into all truth." We add some salient points from an exhaus- tive study of this clause and its connections by Dr. Howard Osgood: "Christ does not say that He did not know that day and hour, but He says that He did not know 'of,' 'concerning,' 'about' that day and hour. And yet the plain fact is that in all this discourse — Mat. xxiv, 4, xxv, 46; Mk. xiii, 5-37; Lu. xx, 8-36— Christ is tell- ing His disciples only 'of,' 'concerning,' 'about' that day and hour. He tells them what shall precede that day to the very instant it shall appear. He tells them what shall be done on that momentous day. So that Christ's not knowing of that day must, in some way, 112 THE PLACE AND WORK be consistent with His knowledge and telling of that day, unless one would find here a clear contradiction, against all sanity and truth. Surrounding the verse that contains Christ's not knowing we have His assurances that He knew, what He had often told before, that be- lief or unbelief in Him and in His words was the supreme test of man's eternal welfare or eternal loss. He knew, as He had before taught His dis- ciples (Mat. xvi, 27; Mk. viii, 38; Lu. ix, 26), that He would, on that day, be possessed of and accompanied with all the evidence of the great power and the great glory of God. He knew that He would be the Lord of all the angels, 'His angels,' who would do His bidding and gather His elect from the uttermost part of earth to the uttermost part of heaven. He had told His disciples previously as He tells them now, that He knew that He knew that He was to be on that day King of the Kingdom of heaven, holding its keys (Mat. xvi, 19), and distributing its thrones (Mat. xix, 28). He had constantly foretold and He knew that He was to be the final judge of all men of all na- tions, and would decide the state of their hearts and enforce His decisions as to their eternal condition. "So that Christ's 'not knowing' is preceded and followed in this discourse by His repeated claims to omniscience and omnipotence. And OF JESUS CHRIST 113 unless we reject the whole discourse and all similar statements in other parts of these three gospels, Christ's not knowing must be consist- ent in His mind with His assertion of His omnis- cience and omnipotence. There is, therefore, no possible standing ground between rejecting the gospels and Christ as mythical delusions of abominable falsity, or receiving Christ as He everywhere in the gospels claims to be, omnis- cient and omnipotent, the Son of God, the God-man. In no other way could the omnis- cient Son of God be said not to know 'of that day and hour' than in the practical sense that it was the Father's prerogative and not the Son's to declare it." And this conclusion is confirmed by Christ's definite statement upon this very point to the disciples assembled for His Ascension: "It is not for you to know times and seasons which the Father hath set within His own authority." (Acts i, 7). VI THE PERIL FROM VAGRANT AND BASELESS MODERN THOUGHT; GOD'S VOICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND WARNING Only a small minority of the Christian Min- istry and a very few individuals of the Chris- tian Laity have attained such a measure of mental training and scholarly learning as to be able to make original and thorough investiga- tion of the make-up, the textual interpreta- tions, and essential teachings of the Bible, and by their own research and study to reach con- clusive results as to its text and spiritual teachings. The great majority of enrolled Christian ministers and almost the entire Church mem- bership have had limited means and opportuni- ties of Biblical learning, very many not even finding time to give thorough and studious read- ing to the Bible itself. They cannot, therefore, possess sufficient scholarship to acquire at first hand a full and accurate knowledge of theologi- cal and critical questions. These, — ministers 114 MODERN THOUGHT 115 and church-members, — generally accept the textual interpretations and forms of spiritual truth that have been received from trusted pro- fessors or preachers. This great majority comprises two classes: One class, happily including almost the entire Church enrollment, finds personal assurance and satisfaction in actual spiritual experience of enlightening and saving truths. By God's grace this vast body of established believers are immune to alien and hostile influences. They upbuild and maintain the health and vigor of the great living and advancing Church. But there is a second class, relatively incon- siderable in number, in both ministry and laity, who, by reason of idiosyncrasies of tempera- ment or of mental processes, or from an in- ordinate ambition to keep pace with the fore- most and newest thought, are exposed to error and spiritual hurt by an abnormal readiness to accept and espouse the unreasoned speculations and baseless assumptions of the everywhere ac- tive and aggressive exponents of the New The- ology and its inseparable twin, the Modern Criticism. In the interest of this last — smallest yet too sadly manifest — class we are now concerned to present in clear view the explicit and plain warnings of God in His Word, — warnings 116 THE PERIL FROM which every sane and thoughtful mind must be concerned to read and consider. No other mo- tive or feeling prompts this writing and these cited warnings save a deep heart-concern in the many avowed disciples of Christ who stand in peril to-day. The peril touches mainly two basal and vital Facts: 1. The Deity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, i. e., the Fact of the Divine Trinity, through whose three-fold Offices alone man attains life-renewal and peace on earth and a blessed, eternal life in heaven. 2. The absolute integrity and sole relia- bility and sufficiency of the Word of God ex- actly as guarded and preserved, unchanged by human comment, undiminished by a word, and without addition. Passing by any consideration of the manifold changes, the amazing glosses, sophistries, in- ventions and conceits whereby many modern speculative writers "corrupt the word of God," and "handle it deceitfully," we simply cite some plain words of enlightenment and warning from that Word ; and this, in order that all true dis- ciples of Christ may be guarded against vital errors that weaken and undermine faith, and endanger the precious gospel hope of eternal life. MODERN THOUGHT 117 GOd's OWN WORDS OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND WARNING 1. Concerning tJwse who with full knowledge of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, question or deny the Godhood of the Son and the Spirit of God. The first word of Divine command and warn- ing we find in the Third Prohibition of the Moral Law as spoken by the very Voice of God : "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vainl" Throughout the Scriptures the Divine Name stands for the Divine Person. And the One Name which appears ever foremost in the Gos- pels and Epistles is the Name of Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God. Isaiah introduces Him through a symbolic, but actual transac- tion, as conceived by "the Virgin" and named "Immanuel," God with us. He further declares : "Unto us a Child is born, a Son is given, and His Name shall be called . . . the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace ; and of the increase of His Government and of His Power there shall be no end." Other similar evidential references abound in the Psalmists and other Prophets. The facts reported by the Evangelists and Apostolic writers match the predictions of Psalmists and Prophets. The Son of God is 118 THE PERIL FROM born and named, and His every word and act proves His origin directly from God, and His Person to be in the highest sense Divine. As further definite points of proof: Baptism is performed "in the name of the Lord Jesus," (Acts ii, 38) ; we are bidden to "do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus" ; it is affirmed that "we have life through His name"; and healing the body and saving the soul is attributed to "the name of Christ." Linking together Isaiah, Paul, and Peter the proof of Christ's Deity is made still clearer : Is a. wlu, 21-23. As the mouth-piece of the Redeeming Jehovah Isaiah speaks: "There is no God else beside Me, a just God and a Sav- iour. Look unto me and be ye saved. By Myself have I sworn . . . that unto Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear." Phil, ii, 5, 8, 9-11. "Christ Jesus . . . being made in the likeness of men . . . be- came obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore God . . . gave unto Him the name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Acts iv, 10-12. Peter, arrested for healing and standing before the assembled Sanhedrin, boldly answers: "In the name of Jesus Christ MODERN THOUGHT 119 of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, . . . even in Him doth this man stand before you whole. He is the stone which was set at naught of you the builders, which was made the head of the corner. And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, whereby we must be saved." Is there not in these incontrovertible Scrip- tural testimonies absolute and conclusive evi- dence of the true Deity of Jesus Christ, as God's Eternal Son? And if so, are not those writers who intelligently deny His Godhood and boldly assert the fatal untruth of His sole manhood justly charged with "taking the name of God in vain"? And does not their persist- ency in daring the Infinite God involve fearfully cumulative guilt? Two more words of Warning under this head : (1) Christ's confirmation of the Psalmist's prophecy, and His denunciation of doom against those who defy His Divine Supremacy: Luke xx, 17. "The stone which the builders rejected, The same was made the head of the corner. Every one that falleth on that stone shall be broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter him as dust." "What a commentary upon that word, 'Whosoever falls on this stone shall be broken,' is the whole history of the heresies of the church 120 THE PERIL FROM and the assaults of unbelief! Man after man, rich in gifts, endowed often with far larger and nobler faculties than the people who oppose him, with indomitable perseverance, a martyr to his error, sets himself up against the truth that is sphered in Jesus Christ ; and the great divine message simply goes on its way, and all the babblement and noise are like the sea-birds that come sweeping up in the tempest and the night, to the hospitable Pharos that is upon the rock, and smite themselves dead against it. Sceptics well known in their generation, who made people's hearts tremble for the ark of God, what has become of them? Their books lie dusty and undisturbed on the top shelf of libraries ; whilst there the Bible stands, with all the scribblings wiped off the page, as though they had never been ! My brother, let the his- tory of the past teach you and me, with other deeper thoughts, a very calm and triumphant confidence about all that opponents say now- adays ; for all the modern opposition to this Gospel will go as all the past has done, and the newest systems which cut and carve at Chris- tianity will go to the tomb where all the rest have gone." — Alexander Maclaren. (2) Hebrews 10:29. "Of how much sorer punishment shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the Covenant ('The blood MODERN THOUGHT 121 of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin,' 1 J no. i, 7) an unholy thing, and hath done de- spite to the Spirit of grace!" 2. CONCERNING THOSE WHO DIMINISH, ADD TO, OR CHANGE THE VERY WORD OF GOD Jer. xxvi, 2. "Speak all the words that I command thee to speak; diminish not a word." Jer. xxiii, 30, 32. "Behold, I am against the prophets, saith Jehovah, that steal my words, every one from his neighbor . . . and that cause my people to err !" // Tim. i, 13. "Hold fast the pattern of sound words which thou hast heard from me." Heb. xiii, 9. "Be not carried away by div- ers and strange teachings." Col. xiii, 8. "Take heed lest there be anyone that maketh spoil of you through his philoso- phy and vain deceit, after the rudiments of this world, and not after Christ." Gal. i, 7, 8. "There are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we or an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel than that which we preach unto you, let him be anathema (ac- cursed)." Mark vii, 1$. "Whosoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe on Me to stumble, it were better for him if a great mill stone were 122 FINAL WARNING hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea." Luke xvii, 1. "Woe unto him through whom the offense cometh !" The plainest, most explicit word of warning we read in the final utterance of Christ from the Throne, — the closing word of the Revelation from heaven: Rev. xocii, 18, 19. "I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are writ- ten in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book." Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: July 2005 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 One copy del. to Cat. Div. L IUI 1b W\