BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OF THE
John Elliott Fund

LIBERAL EVANGELICALISM

LIBERAL
EVANGELICALISM AN INTERPRETATION

BY
MEMBERS OF
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED LONDON

Made and Printed in Great Britain,
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
Printers, Bunga.y, Suffolk.

INTRODUCTION
This book is an attempt to produce a reasoned and
coherent statement of the theological position of the
people within the Church of England known as Liberal
Evangehcals. It is in no sense a coUection of miscella
neous essays. It is the w^ork of a group of friends, who
have collaborated together for this purpose ; and although
in one or two particular cases, owing to distance, the
individual has been less in touch with the group mind,
the general intention has never been out of sight. This
does not mean that the group is responsible either for
the phraseology, or for every particular statement in the
individual essays, but that the view broadly presented
and the general method of treatment have been submitted
to the " common mind."
The title of Liberal Evangelical is probably no more and
no less satisfactory than other titles which designate
groups within the Church of England. It appeals to the
writers, however, for two reasons. It suggests that the
" heredity " of their movement is rooted in the great
Evangehcal Revival, and that the " environment " in
which they are at home is the modem world with its
historical method, its philosophy of personality, and its
scientific view of the tmiverse.
The Evangelical Revival, with its renewed emphasis on
the soul's direct relationship to God, on the freedom of
the Spirit, the authority of the Bible, the centrahty of
the Gross, and the need of Conversion, has been a dynamic

vi INTRODUCTION
force within the Church of England. It has not only
profoundly affected individual souls, but has graduaUy
created a feehng and an emphasis with regard to Tradition,
Church Order, the Ministry, Sacraments, Reunion, and
the Rule of Life which are of the first importance.
Restatement, however, has become essential. If the
Evangehcal message is stiU to be operative in a world so
changed from that of the eighteenth century, it must
show that it can outgrow the " scholasticism " of that
century and manifest itself anew in terms of hfe. It must
be made clear that the emphasis spoken of is not tied to a
particular point, but can shift freely along the line of the
Spirit's guidance from age to age.
Two examples of restatement dealt with in this book
may Ulustrate its general intention.
I. The Authority of the Bible.
This stUl stands in its unique position. The right
of appeal to the historical records in order to check
the growth of traditional accretion, to correct errors
of Church teaching, and to release continuaUy new
spiritual movements within the Church, remains as
much a part of the creed of the Evangehcal as ever.
But the authority of the Bible is seen to centre in its
relation to the revelation of God in Christ. It is the
mind of Christ, not the letter of Holy Scripture,
which is authoritative.
2. The Atonement.
The modem Evangelical finds salvation for himself
and for society at the Cross of Jesus. This is as
central to his reUgious experience as it was to St.
Paul. He can not only say, but he cannot help
saying, " The Son of God Who loved me and
gave Himself for me." There is no other Gospel
for him but that of God's Love in action supremely

INTRODUCTION vii
manifested in the Cross. There, as in the story of
Bunyan's PUgrim, he finds peace, forgiveness, and a
new sense of filial relationship to God. His hope for
the world hes in the redemptive forces which contact
with that Love releases in human personality. But
the doctrine is no longer related in his mind to a
primeval FaU of Man, nor need it find expression in
forensic terms. The modem Evangehcal is dissatis
fied with some of the older and cruder penal and
substitutionary theories of the Atonement. It is the
impact of the Cross upon personality which he seeks
to explore. He tries to make it live for men and
women of to-day as the great preachers of the Gospel
in other generations made it live for the people of
their own day. He is conscious that his ovsti presen
tation of theological tmth will in due time pass hke
theirs, and that his owti sincere effort to interpret
the redeeming Love of God in Christ wiU be replaced,
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, by new efforts
in relation to new modes of thought.
The writers would prefer that the book should be
regarded by Evangehcals rather as an eirenicon than as a
chaUenge. For a long time there has been a growing
cleavage amongst those who use the name Evangehcal,
between " old and new," Conservative and Liberal. This
difference has manifested itself acutely with regard to
historical criticism, as in the case of the controversy within
the Church Missionary Society. There are also differ
ences on certain questions of Church polity. But the
cleavage has been unduly exaggerated, and does not
extend, as has sometimes been unjustly stated, to the
fundamentals of the faith. In this connection the Essay
on the Person of Christ is of special significance. In the
matter of fimdamental behefs and in essential spirit there

viii INTRODUCTION
is real continuity between the past and present of Evan-
gehcahsm. It is to vindicate themselves in the eyes of
their brethren, as weU as to serve the larger interests of
the Church and the Kingdom of God, that this volume is
written. No attempt has been made to conceal how very widely
the Evangehcal differs from his Anglo-Catholic brother
in his idea of the Church. But pains have been taken to
state the philosophy which appears to justify the Evan
gehcal point of view, and to offer a constructive argument.
The writers believe that there is at the present moment
a real controversy for the soul of the Church of England.
There is a clash of ideals, of differing conceptions of
authority, of different views of the methods of God's
working; carried far enough back, it might even be
described as the clash of different ideas about the nature
of God. With controversy on this plane the writers are
necessarily concerned, though, in entering upon it, they
would disclaim, and seek to cast out whoUy, any spirit
of partisanship. Let the tmth, and the tmth alone,
prevail. But the ultimate aim of the book is one which is closely
related to the goal of the efforts of aU men of goodvriU —
the bringing in of the Kmgdom of God. ft is to restate
the glorious freedom of the Gospel, the elasticity of the
Spirit's working, the superiority of the inward to the
outward, of growth to stmcture, the spiritual nature of
authority, and the progressive character of God's revela
tion in Christ. It is because Liberal Evangelicalism seems
to the writers of this book to stand, in its larger aspects,
for progress in the knowledge of God through the guidance
of the Spirit, that they have endeavoured to interpret
to the Church its essential principles.
T. G. R.

SUBJECTS AND CONTRIBUTORS

PAGE V

Introduction .....
I. The Development of Evangelicalism . . i
Rev. H. A. Wilson, M.A., Rector and Rural Dean of
Cheltenham, Hon. Canon of Gloucester.
II. Religious Authority ..... 28
Rev. T. Guy Rogers, B.D., M.C, Vicar and Rural
Dean of West Ham, Hon. Canon of Chelmsford, Proctor
in Convocation, Chaplain to H.M. the King.
III. Evangelicalism and Personality . . .51
Rev. E. A. Burroughs, D.D., Dean of Bristol ; formerly
Canon Residentiary of Peterborough and Chaplain to H.M.
the King, and successively Fellow of Hertford and Trinity
Colleges, Oxford ; Examining Chaplain to the Bishops of
Liverpool and Exeter.
IV. The Bible and its Value .... 80
Rev. v. F. Storr, M.A., Canon of Westminster and
Examining Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury;
formerly Fellow of University College, Oxford.
V. The Person or Jesus Christ .... loi
Rev. V. F. Storr, M.A.
VI. The Work of Christ  121
Rev. R. T. Howard, M.A., Principal of St. Aidan's
College, Birkenhead; formerly Vice-Principal of St.
Paul's Divinity School, Allahabad.
VII. The Church — the Sacraments — the Ministry . 147
Rev. H. B. Gooding, M.A., Principal of Wycliffe Hall,
Oxford, Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Chelms
ford ; formerly Rector of Gatcombe, Isle of Wight.

X SUBJECTS AND CONTRIBUTORS
PAGE
VIII. The Kingdom of God ..... 174
Rev. J. W. HUNKIN, M.A., M.C, Fellow and Tutor of
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge ; formerly Vice-
Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
IX. Worship  194
Right Rev. F. S. Guy Warman, D.D., Bishop of
Truro ; formerly Principal of St. Aidan's College,
Birkenhead, and Vicar of Bradford.
X. Reunion ....... 215
Right Rev. M. Linton Smith, D.D., D.S.O., Bishop
of Hereford ; formerly Bishop of Warrington.
XI. The Rule of Life ..... 229
Rev. E. S. Woods, M.A., Vicar of Holy Trinity, Cam
bridge, Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Durham,
Proctor in Convocation.
XII. The Presentation of the Gospel at Home . 251
Rev. E. S. Woods, M.A.
XIII. The Presentation of the Gospel Abroad . 271
Rev. A. W. Davies, M.A., Principal of St. John's
College, Agra, Canon of Lucknow.
XIV. The Future of the Evangelical Movement . 287
Rev. E. W. Barnes, ScD., F.R.S., Canon of West
minster ; formerly Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College,
Cambridge, and Master of the Temple.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
The word " Evangelical " is not newly-coined, it is a
word with a history, and if the attempt be made to
define it, the definition must take into count the whole of
that history. It was used of Wickhffe, and again of the
Reformed Churches at home and abroad, in the sixteenth
century; it reappeared in the eighteenth century, and
has remained in constant use ever since, as the common
property of non-episcopal and episcopal churches.
It is no easy task to describe in a few words what was
the distinctive thing which all these various movements
and religious communities held in common which entitled
them to be called " Evangelical." It is incapable of
definition in any concise, dogmatic form. For though
Evangelicalism has expressed itself in many forms and
in various ages, it is a greater thing than any of its expres
sions. The thing which made LoUardism, Protestantism,
Puritanism, and Methodism great was the fact that they
were expressions of EvangeUcalism, but Evangehcalism
must not be identified with any one of them. They all
embodied a truth which was greater than them aU, an
etemal tmth of which they were but the mouthpiece.
But the mistake must not be made of confusing the great
truth with its expressions. Democracy, e. g., has expressed
itself as sociahsm, communism, bolshevism, as weU as in
more kindly forms, but to identify it with any one of these

2 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
would be a transparent blunder. So to regard Evangelical
ism as identical vsdth any of the forms into which it cast
itself, is to misunderstand the whole matter. As genera
tions succeed one another, so again it wiU emerge in
aUotropic forms, each one more perfectly expressing the
great underlying truth, but none of them ever entirely
doing so. The attempt to define must, however, be
made. The keynote of Evangehcahsm is freedom, " the glorious
hberty of the chUdren of God." God's salvation has made
man free in mind and soul. The redeemed has direct and
immediate access to God, for by his act of wiU he has
released the one barrier which restrained fuU communion
and intercourse vrith the Divine. He is a child of God,
directly taught by his Father, a friend and companion
of the Son of God, iUuminated in his spirit by the indweUing
power of the Spirit of God. God lives in him, and he in
God, and his soul is bathed in the free grace of God.
The practical consequences of this are apparent. The
Evangelical claims a spiritual autonomy; he is free from
the law, for he is a law to himself. His ovrai conscience
is his guide, for it has become more than a mere moral
compass, it is the point of contact between him and God.
" The tmth shaU make you free " is his watchword. It
was because Martin Luther had a firm grip upon this
central Evangelical tmth that his favourite epistle was
that which sounds the trumpet-caU, " Stand fast, there
fore, in the hberty wherewith Christ has made you
free." Thus the Evangehcal is a mystic. He has been
initiated into the Christian Mysteries; hke St. Paul, he
has been " let into the secret." ^ He is a free soul moving
in a medium of free grace.
1 Phil. iv. 12. The word used by St. Paul means, in Classical
Greek, initiation into the mysteries of religion.

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 3
It is this passion for liberty which has been the dynamic
in all the history of Evangelicalism. It made the
Protestant Evangehcals burst the soul-cramping fetters
of mediaeval Rome, it made the Puritan Evangehcals
intolerant of Anglican insistence upon the necessity for
forms and ceremonies, it reacted in politics and was the
real source of the rebelhon against Stuart tyranny, it
produced the revolt of the eighteenth century against the
dead formalism of English rehgion.
It is this last-mentioned stage in the development of
Evangelicalism which most particularly concerns us, since
we claim to be the heirs of the great and honourable
traditions of that revival. It is therefore necessary to
review, as accurately as the narrow hmits of our space
wiU aUow, this remarkable re-awakening of rehgion in
England. " The deplorable distinction of our age is an avowed
scorn of religion and a growing disregard of it." Such is
Archbishop Seeker's judgment upon the spiritual state
of England in his day, and the same marked dejection is
frequently discovered in the writings of men of the
time. The story has often been told of the darkness, vice,
degradation, ignorance, and cruelty which mled in Eng
land in the eighteenth century. The poUtical situation
played a large part in this unhappy result. For the past
hundred years, the land had known no rest : civil wars,
insurrections, revolutions, had kept the nation in per
petual tumult. This reacted seriously, though indirectly,
upon religion. There was a longing for peace and quiet :
the root cause of aU the recent disturbances was because
men were too zealous : therefore, to preserve peace,
eamestness and enthusiasm in rehgion must be dis
couraged. The syUogism was complete.

4 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
To this cause must be added the Deistic Controversy.
Religious disputes have often been productive of much
good by quickening faith or bringing into rehef some vital
tmth. But the Deistic Controversy was almost unmixed
evil. The field on which the battle raged was the
perennial question of authority in religion. The Deists
claimed that " reason " was this final arbiter, by which
they meant " common sense." ^ They maintained that
all that was " mysterious " in Christianity must be ex
cluded, since it could not answer to the test of cold logic.
The orthodox champions accepted the chaUenge, and
though they were conspicuously successful, it was a
barren victory. They justified Christian ethics as agree
able to common sense, but so far as the higher claims of
religion were concemed they secured only a stalemate.^
The philosophy of common sense put the final blight on
religion in England. A frigid, nerveless creed, of which
its stoutest champion. Bishop Sherlock, could only say,
" it is ten to one it is true," fiUed the place of living faith
in the land. Men accepted this tepid creed much as
they accepted monarchy : both were appropriate and
desirable things in a well-ordered state.
Thirdly, the Church was cormpted with flagrant
scandals. The Non- Juror Schism had been responsible
for the loss of many high-souled and pious men, and
though spirituality lingered here and there, drunken,' lazy,
and ignorant clergy abounded, and priests of vicious hfe
were not rare. Pluralism was rife and the bishops were
seldom sufficiently free from guilt themselves to caU the
1 They claimed John Locke as one of themselves, and his singu
larly cold-blooded apologetic, The Reasonableness of Christianftv
viras high in their favour. ¦'^'
a " The philosophy of common sense had done its virork " fin
vindicating Christian ethics) ; " it attempted more only to show bv
its failure that some higher organon was needed for the establish
ment of supernatural truth." Mark Pattison, Essavs and
Reviews, ed. i860, p. 158. '

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 5
lazy and worldly clergy to order : the better sort were in
despair and the indifferent were too much occupied in
seeking fat emoluments for themselves to be disturbed.
Never had rehgion been at a lower ebb in England : it
had ceased to have the power even of a superstition.
Passionate faith and aU the tender and emotional side
of Christianity were disparaged and frowned upon as
dangerous and absurd. Montesquieu's oft-quoted words
were no great exaggeration : " There is no religion in
England ... if one speaks of it, everyone laughs." ^
This very inadequate summary is essential in order to
make clear the contrast with what was to come. The
great revival was not the product of the thought forces
of the time. It was a new gift direct from God. The
fire came down from heaven, and, fanned by the Wind of
God, the flames spread till England was ablaze with a
newly-found faith.
Not infrequently the mistake is made of regarding
Wesley and Whitefield as the human origins of the revival.
It is no disparagement of the wonderful work they did
to correct this. The awakening in Wales, in which Griffith
Jones (and afterwards Howell Harris) figured so wonder
fully, began when Wesley was a boy, and the even more
remarkable revival in West Cornwall, under Walker of
Truro's ministry, preceded the mission of the great
Methodist. No detailed reference to these can be made,
but it deserves note that the Evangelical Revival preceded
the Methodist, so far as the two can be regarded as
separate. Much more is it impossible to describe how God
dealt with the stiff High-Ghurchmanship of Wesley, or
how He called the potboy of a Gloucester inn, George
Whitefield, to be the moving evangehst who reproduced
the Pentecostal conversions among the crowds of Kings-
1 Churton Collins, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, pp. 142,
143.

6 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
wood coUiers. There are few chapters in the whole
history of the Christian Church to equal the story, and
none, perhaps, which surpasses it.
Regardless of the prevailing doubts upon this doctrine
and that, these men ignored controversy altogether.
They had no apologetic, no evidences of Christianity to
advance. They took for granted aU the Christian doc
trines, and the old Evangel of the Cross of Christ rang
throughout the land. They never stayed to argue its
" reasonableness," they never considered expediency,
they never cared what persecution or professional ruin
might befall them. Never did any tmmpet give a less
uncertain sound. Never before were such sights seen in
England, and never since, unhappily. The outstanding
figure was the frail form of John Wesley, who with tireless
energy travelled the length and breadth of the land,
preaching in bams and sheds, in the streets, and in the
open country. His brother, Charles, was the great song-
master, who gave the converts hymns to sing which have
never been surpassed.
But it was rather in their parishes that those, who
were more correctly called Evangelicals, worked. Grim-
shaw of Haworth crowded his church with simple believing
folks, who thronged the Lord's Table in numbers which
still stagger imagination. Venn, at Huddersfield, repro
duced the same scenes, and so did Berridge at Everton,
Romaine at St. John's, Bedford Row, and scores of others.
The Old, Old Story had not lost its power .'^
It seems almost absurd to dismiss this wonderful
chapter of religious history in a few words, but the simple
statement must suffice. Lecky has said that Wesley and
his movement saved England from a French Revolution.
Wesley did a far greater thing. He and the Evangelical
1 The best account of the early Evangelicals is in Ryle's
Christian Leaders of the Last Century.

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 7
fathers saved England from a godless and superficial
civihsation. Enghsh religion was rebom. The Hand of
God, which seemed to be stretched out to take away the
candle of the Church, opened and poured out such a
blessing that the Church could not contain it. Cold
blooded and short-sighted prelates frowned on it all. It
was cant and mischievous nonsense. Let the evil name
of Methodist or Evangelical be breathed against a holy
man, who only asked to be aUowed to preach his gospel
so long as he had breath, and he was professionaUy ruined.
He need look for no preferment, but only for contempt,
opposition, and persecution.
No wonder nonconformity increased, as it did, six-fold ;
the blame cannot be laid upon the revival. Apart alto
gether from the vexed question whether the Methodists
could or could not be retained in the Church, the Countess
of Huntingdon's Connexion, the Calvinistic Methodists,
certainly could have been retained but for the enforce
ment by the clergy of the Toleration Act, whose clear
object was either to silence them or drive them into
dissent.^ Macaulay 's famous passage recurs to mind :
" At Rome, the Countess of Huntingdon would have a
place in the Calendar as St. Selina. . . . Place John
Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first general of
a new society devoted to the interests and honour of
the Church." 2
The Evangelicals alone remained, and no thanks to
the authorities. They remained because they refused to
be driven out, because they ignored the slights, insults,
and persecution which formed their portion. They were
lucky to secure curacies and lectureships ; as for dignities,
they were undreamt of even by the greatest of them.
1 Vide Abbey and Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth
Century, pp. 352, 353, and Fitchett's Wesley and His Century,
pp. 410 ff.
» Essay on Ranke's History of the Popes.

8 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
The fathers of the C.M.S. were nearly all unbeneficed men.
Henry Mart5ai was barred from access to " orthodox "
pulpits; one of the Venn family was denied admission
to Trinity College, Cambridge, because of his name ; the
saintly Josiah Pratt was over fifty before a benefice
could be procured for him. And all these instances
occurred, not at the beginning of the revival, but as late
as the dawn of the nineteenth century.
The charge is often made that the Evangelicals were
inteUectuaUy feeble. A party which included such
people as Wilberforce; Isaac Milner, Senior Wrangler
(" incomparabilis ") ; Farish, Jacksonian Professor of
Chemistry; Scholefield, Regius Professor of Greek;
Joseph Jowett, Regius Professor of Civil Law, can scarcely
be called intellectually incompetent. Nor has justice
been done to their writings. Historians of a second
order repeat the opinions of others without ever reading
the books they hghtly disparage. The Evangelicals were
solely concemed with personal religion, and several of
their works produced a great impression in their day :
such as, e. g,, Romaine's Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith,
Wilberforce's Practical View, and Venn's Complete Duty
of Man. Devotional books are rarely supposed to rank as
" hterature " ; this and a general neglect of Evangelical
writings account for the familiar charge. But in any case,
the more the inteUigence or hterary power of the Evan
gehcals is decried, the greater must their spiritual force
be acknowledged to be.
To estimate precisely the views and ecclesiastical
position of the Evangelicals is no easy matter. They
were commonly caUed Methodists, Puritans, or " saints,"
aU of which were meant to be terms of abuse. How they
came to be caUed Evangelicals is quite uncertain.^ They
1 Vide Overton, The English Church in the Nineteenth Centurv
p. io8, note. ^'

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 9
never gave themselves the title, and indeed its application
to them was a fruitful cause of unpopularity, for the word
is obviously provocative as suggesting that other Church
men were not evangehcal. But the term Methodist was
clearly a misnomer. Both in doctrine and practice they
differed, often fiercely, from the latter. Whereas the
Methodists were Arminian, the Evangehcals were at least
moderate Calvinists, and when the later generation
became more mildly Calvinistic, or even occasionaUy
Arminian, their Churchmanship became more definitely
marked. Without exception, the Evangehcals were quite
unwavering Churchmen. They were devoted to the
parochial system, and never, vrith few exceptions, did
they resort to itinerating, and they keenly resented the
intrusion of the Methodists into their parishes. Even the
first generation of the Evangehcals had no quarrel with
Prayer-book, Articles, or HomiUes. With unanimity they
declared that what they taught was the teaching of the
Church, and in her formularies they maintained that they
found their belief and teaching fully expressed. They were
as firm as the High Churchmen in their opposition to the
attempts of Archdeacon Blackburne and his friends to
relax the obligation of subscription to the Articles.
These last three sentences are sufficient to prove that
the term " Puritan " could not with truth be applied to
them. Their resemblance to the Puritans consisted only
in their strict manner of living and a very exacting observ
ance of the " Sabbath." But this strictness never led to
that sour attitude towards life so common among the
Puritans. They were bright, genial men, with much
sense of humour : indeed wit in several cases was a
marked characteristic.
What, then, distinguished the Evangehcals from others ?
There was little, if anything, which they claimed as a
pecuhar possession. Several bishops, in criticising them.

10 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
caUed attention to the fact that they only emphasised
doctrines which had fallen into the background, but which
were a permanent part of the Christian faith. It is rather
in emphasis, in religious perspective, that the character
istics of Evangelical teaching are to be found.
The central truth of Christian doctrine was for them
Soteriology. The salvation of humanity from eternal
death was achieved by the Blood of the Lamb of God, and
apprehended by man by a simple act of faith. Whether
this act of faith was the outcome of man's free will, or a
gift from God, was a matter of hot dispute between the
Arminian and Calvinistic wings. But all were agreed that
the salvation itself was an act of " Sovereign Grace," that
it issued in a religious experience, a conversion or regenera
tion, for they took the words to be synonymous. Christ's
righteousness was imputed to the behever, he was justified
in God's sight, he progressed in sanctification by the work
of the Holy Spirit, and through the same Spirit he received
the assurance of salvation. This was the heart and core
of the Evangelical message. Their appeal was mainly to
St. Paul, and their kinship with Reformed teaching is
apparent. It was to the conscience and imagination they
addressed themselves, and the emotional appeal frequently
occupied a place in their sermons, just as emotion distin
guished their hymns. The Calvinistic note, more or less
definite with its stress upon the total depravity of man,
was also markedly t5^ical. No more beautiful expression
of this side of their teaching can be given than the verse
of Toplady's famous hymn, the whole of which might be
taken as a concise summary of the Evangehcal teaching :
" Nothing in my hand I bring.
Simply to Thy Cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress ;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace ;
Foul, I to the Fountain fly ;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die."

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 11
Space alone prevents detaUed discussion of these
opinions, but reference to a few famous Evangelical works
wiU perhaps suffice. Romaine summarises the heart of
the Gospel thus :
" The Father covenanted to gain honour and dignity
to His law and justice, to His faithfulness and holiness,
by insisting upon man's appearing at His bar in the
perfect righteousness of the law. But man having no
such righteousness of his own . . . how can he be saved ?
The Lord Christ, a Person in the Godhead co-equal and
co-eternal with the Father, undertook to be his Saviour.
He covenanted to stand up as the head and surety of
His people, in their nature and in their stead, to obey for
them, that by His infinitely precious obedience many
might be made righteous, and to suffer for them, that by
His everlasting meritorious stripes they might be healed.
. . . This adorable Person lived and suffered and died,
as the representative of His people. The righteousness
of His life, and the righteousness of His sufferings and
death, was to save them from all the sufferings due to
their sins. And thus the law and justice of the Father
would be glorified in pardoning them. ... He might be
strictly just, and yet the justifier of him who believeth
in Jesus." ^
The last phrase, constantly in use, was open to mis
understanding. Wilberforce, therefore, in his widely
read book, finds it necessary to point out that it is not a
mere act of mental acceptance, but touches conduct
closely :
" Believing in Jesus. . . . This we shaU find no such
easy talk. ... We must be deeply conscious of our
guUt, heartily repenting of our sins, and firmly resolving
to forsake them, and thus penitently ' fleeing for refuge
to the hope set before us,' we must found altogether on
the merit of the Crucified Saviour our hopes of escape
i Romaine, Life of Faith, ed. 1801, pp. 12, 13.

12 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
from their deserved punishment, and of deliverance from
their enslaving power. . . . We are to surrender ourselves
up to Him to be ' washed in His Blood,' to be sanctified
by His Spirit, resolving to receive Him for our Lord and
Master, to leam in His school, to obey aU His com
mandments." ^
The hmitations of these opinions may be apparent,
but in effect they indisputably laid hold on the conscience,
and produced a hohness of life which was acknowledged
even by the enemies of the Evangehcals.^
The authority to which the Evangelicals appealed as
paramount was the Word of God, which was by general
consent acknowledged to be literaUy inspired. In an age
when Bibhcal Criticism was virtuaUy unknown, an appeal
to the letter of Scripture was final. A material heU, to
which all unbelievers, including the heathen, would be
condemned, to suffer everlastingly in flames, figured
largely in their preaching, and coloured their outlook on
hfe. From this fearful fate, man was saved solely by
the intervention of Christ. The act of Atonement was
regarded as achieved only by the Death of the Lord,^
and the expression of this teaching took, as is apparent
from the above quotations, a clearly marked transactional
form, in which the First and Second Persons in the Holy
Trinity were represented as so acting that Tritheism would
inevitably suggest itself at least to the less educated
hearers. A few quotations from Simeon's Sermon Notes
will make this plainer :
" The Blood of Christ is sprinkled upon us when we
enter into covenant with God, and it binds God, if we
may say so, to fulfU to us His promise, and it binds us,
on the other hand, to fulfil His precepts." *
1 Wilberforce, Practical View, ed. 1797, pp. 127, 128.
2 See e. g. Overton, Evangelical Revival, p. 198.
' This remark is not absolutely true, since occasional references
to His " Life and Death" can be found; but rarely, if ever, is
any stress laid on the Life. * Simeon's Works, vol. xix. p. 448.

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 13
" . . . The covenant engagement entered into between
His Father and Himself. He, on His part, undertaking to
make atonement for sin, and the Father undertaking to
accept it on our behalf." i
"God assumed our nature, in the Person of Jesus
Christ, and became our substitute and surety, that by
His own obedience to the law which we had broken, and
His enduring of the penalties which we had incurred,
He might make satisfaction to His injured justice and
pardon us without dishonour to Himself." ^
These references are quite characteristic. They Ulus
trate the forensic view of the Atonement, which distin
guished Evangelical preaching, and almost excluded all
other aspects of this doctrine. The greatest stress was
laid upon Christ as our substitute, enduring the punish
ment of Divine wrath for human sin in our stead. The
Death of Christ as the supreme manifestation of a Divine
love which had ever been manifested, the perfect obedi
ence of the Life of Christ as constituting part of the
Atonement, and all that might be generally summed up
as the Abelardian view of the meaning and effects of our
Lord's Death, had no place in their teaching.
Another very distinct note of Evangehcal teaching was
their attitude to " the World." It was this not altogether
very consistent austerity which gained for them the title
of " Puritans." They did not regard it as necessary for
those who wished to live a " serious " life to deny them
selves all the gaieties of hfe. Their luxurious dinner-
tables, fringed with the most brilliant conversationalists
of the day, were memorable to those privileged to attend
them. But to be " serious " it was necessary to refrain
from practicaUy all other relaxations. " Worldliness "
consisted mainly in indulging in certain pleasures which
1 Simeon's Works, vol. xix. p. 330.
* Ibid., vol. xvi. p. 524.

14 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
seem to have been rather arbitrarily selected. Concerts,
novels, the play, the dance were aU evil. The appearance
of Handel's " Messiah " was regarded with horror. It
w£is doubly to be condemned, not only because it drew
people to the concert-haU, but also because the setting of
Scripture to music was gravely wrong. Cowper found it
necessary to rebuke the author in his Task :
" Remember Handel ? . . .
Yes, we remember him ; and while we praise
A talent so divine, remember too
That His most holy Book, from which it ^ came
Was never meant, was never used before.
To buckram out the memory of a man."
When the same Cowper, convalescent from one of his
attacks of insanity, consoled himself with fiction, Newton
wrote to a mutual friend on this lapse thus : " Nothing
surprises or indeed grieves me more. . . . ' 0 quam dispar
sibi.' " ^ Legh Richmond warned his daughter, not only
against novels, but also poetry, and against all music
except sacred. Mrs. Cecil relates that her husband cut
his vioUn strings and resolved never to go to the Royal
Academy, because it might interfere vrith his spiritual
hfe. Charlotte Elizabeth indulged in the dissipation of
reading Shakespeare, but she turned over a new leaf, and
writes in her Personal Recollections : " O, how many
wasted hours, how much unprofitable labour, what wrong
to my feUow creatures, what robbery of God, must I refer
to this ensnaring book 1 " ^ So acute was this fear of
" the World," that music, art, literature were all under
suspicion, to such a degree that leaming was often
disparaged. Amold had a great contempt for the
* i.e.. The Messiah.
2 J. C. Bailey, Cowper' s Works, p. xix.
' Overton's 'The English Church in the Nineteenth Century, pp.
102, 103.

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 15
Evangehcals, provoked very largely by " this seeming wish
to keep the world and the Church ever distinct, instead of
labouring to destroy the one by increasing the influence
of the other, and making the kingdoms of the world
indeed the Kingdom of Christ." ^
This charge was by no means unjust, for it is hard to
find indications of a recognition of responsibility to mingle
with the world, refine its pleasures, and uplift it. The
Calvinistic emphasis upon election was a kind of insula
tion, which made the crowds of humanity rather foreign
territory. This remark need receive no qualification from
the great social reforms which made the memory of Wilber
force, GranviUe Sharp, and Shaftesbury glorious. Such
noble achievements were rather raids into the realm of
Satan to strike evil a splendid blow, but to be foUowed
by a retreat behind the frontiers of the elect.
Nor can the views of the Evangehcals upon the Church
be regarded as whoUy satisfjdng. The idea of a visible
Church played no part in their scheme of things. The
true Church was the invisible body of believers, scattered
throughout aU Christian communities, and known only to
God. This was the Bride of Christ. In general, this was
the Reformed view of the Church. Such a conception is
quite inadequate (though perhaps not surprising in view
of the supreme stress laid upon personal salvation and
personal holiness), for it goes far to rob each of the com
munities of the inspiration and urge which come from the
consciousness that the Church is one society, divinely
appointed to discharge a great mission. It emphasises
the individual rather at the expense of the whole. Even
such a friendly critic as R. W. Dale has pointed out :
" The Evangelical movement . . . demanded as a basis
of feUowship a common rehgious hfe, and common religious
beliefs, but was satisfied with feUowship of an accidental
1 Stanley, Arnold's Life, vol. i. p. 73.

16 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
and precarious kind. It cared nothing for the idea of
the Church as the august society of the saints. It was
the aUy of individualism." i But the love of the Evan
gelicals for the Church of England, their loyalty to her
formularies, their hearty acceptance of her doctrinal
position, were without exception sincere and fervent.
It is not surprising, when we recaU the fmitfulness in
good works of this small and despised group of Church
men, that an impartial historian has described them as
" the salt of the earth in their day." There are few of
the ordinary parochial activities of to-day which do not
owe their inception to the Evangelicals. Sunday Schools,
Ragged Schools, open-air preaching, lay ministrations by
men and women, parochial missions : a brave hst of
social and philanthropic works too long to enumerate :
and, in addition, the formation of many great societies,
such as the Church Missionary Society, the Bible Society,
the Tract Society, the Society for Promoting Christianity
among the Jews, Missions to Seamen, Missions to Navvies,
Church Pastoral Aid Society, Colonial and Continental
Church Society, South American Missionary Society — aU
these are only part of their great work for Christianity.
" Quce regio in terris nostri non plena laboris I "

In the early part of the nineteenth century the Evan
gelicals, in infiuence if not in numbers, were very strong,
despite the fact that practically none of the dignities in
the Church were yet bestowed upon them and that they
had scarcely even a lukewarm friend on the bench of
bishops. It was not tUl 1815 that they were in a happier
position in this respect, when Dudley Ryder was appointed
Bishop of Gloucester, a fact which Simeon hailed in a
quaint and not very tactful way. " How delightful it is
1 Dale, The Old Evangelicalism and the New, p. 17.

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 17
to see dignitaries in our Church thus coming forward, and
disciples springing up in Caesar's household." It was by
sheer weight of merit that the party commanded such
respect. The charge of weak Churchmanship, whatever
slight truth there might have been in it, could no longer
be made. Not only had they the pubhc ear, but their
appreciation of the Church's system had become much
more marked. Week-day services, daily services in Holy
Week, fuUer opportunities for Sunday worship, eagemess
to lead their people to Holy Communion, were marked
features of Evangelicalism. They " were, after aU, better
Churchmen than the laissez-faire clergy and laity who were
continuaUy opposing them in the name of the Church." i
But the day of testing was to come; a day in which
much that they thought essential to the faith was to be
assailed, and their most cherished behefs were to be chal
lenged. Space permits only the baldest reference to these
happenings. To summarise great movements of thought
in a few sentences, is to open the door to charges of
inaccuracy and partiahty, but this risk must be taken.
The eighteenth century closed with a kind of rehgious
armistice, due very largely to the shock of the French
Revolution. Conservative forces instinctively combined,
and public feeling was aU on their side. It was vaguely
known that strange religious opinions were abroad in
Europe, but as revolution was also at large on the
^ Overton, The English Church\in the Nineteenth Century, p. 144.
The language used of the Holy Communion by the Evangelicals
is occasionally quite startling, cf. the foUovnng words of Daniel
Wilson ; "I will lead my child to the altar of our Eucharistic
Sacrifice." " Blessed Lord, I am now about to partake of Thy
Body as broken and Thy Blood as Shed for me. ... At Thy
Altar may I renew my dedication." Nor are the following words
quite what we should expect from Simeon : "In pronouncing it
(the Benediction) I feel that I am actually dispensing peace from
God and at God's command. ... I know that I am the appointed
instrument by whom God is conveying the blessing to those able
to receive it." Moule's Charles Simeon, p. 108.
C

18 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
Continent, it was highly probable that both were hatched
from the same egg, and neither was wanted in England,
especiaUy as the former might be the forerunner of the
latter. But despite the vridespread ignorance of German,
which ahnost isolated England from continental thought,
liberal opinions were destined to make themselves felt.
Christian people generaUy were over-hasty in their
judgment upon the issues to be raised, but no section of
Churchmen offered more irreconcilable opposition, or were
more anxious and troubled, than the Evangehcals. They
were slow to move, morbidly nervous of any modification
of view or expansion of doctrine. Even as late as 1862,
Magee wrote of his desire " to awaken the Evangehcal
Clergy to the danger they are in of losing altogether the
inteUigent laity, by clinging to the traditions of Simeon
and Venn, as if they contained aU ' the Gospel,' and refus
ing to admit and adopt whatever truth has been brought
out, either by the critics or the theologians of a later
date." 1
It was long before they were to leam that what was
reaUy of permanent value in those traditions was un
affected by much that alarmed them in current thought,
and that much of what was being said and taught was
simply a side of truth of which they had not been cogni
sant. Indeed, they shrank into themselves and rather
hardened under the strain. Determined not to retreat,
fearful of going forward, Evangehcahsm stood at bay.
Another writer in the same year testified of them : "A
few leading doctrines were for them the essence of the
Gospel, and their preaching in too many cases became
httle more than a monotonous repetition of those
doctrines." ^
We can note only three or four of these great thought-
1 MacdonneU, Life of Archbishop Magee, vol. i. p 83
2 Bp. Fitzgerald, Aids to Faith, Essay II, sec. 9. '

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 19
movements of the century, and perhaps the most impor
tant of these was the criticism of the Bible from the point
of view of physical science. The view commonly held
was quite definite. Plenary inspiration had taken the
place of hteral inspiration : that is to say, textual and
transcriptional mistakes might be admitted, but sub
stantially the Bible was inerrant, its statements were
infalhbly true on all matters, scientific, historical, ethical.
Hence the creation of the world by six creative acts became
an integral part of Christianity, and the subsequent history
of the world, it was beheved, had been punctuated by
certain catastrophes, of which the universal deluge was
one. Special Creation had hitherto received the support
of most of the men of science, and the catastrophic theory
could appeal to the great name of Guvier. The traditional
view looked secure.
The publication of Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-
33), in which he showed that the progress of the world
had been steady and continuous, and unbroken by any
universal cataclysms, was the first shock to this happy
state. This was followed by the publication of his
Antiquity of Man, which proved that the world had been
peopled by highly cultivated races at the supposed date of
its Creation. But great though the alarm was at these
dangerous opinions, worse was to follow.
For over a hundred years a theory called the Develop
ment Hypothesis had been in the air. It had only been
claimed as mere speculation, until Lamarck pubhshed a
work in 1802 claiming to establish it on scientific grounds.
But the differences of opinion among scientific men
rendered it easy for conservatives to make hght of the new
theory. Indeed, Huxley wrote that in 1857 the con
servative position " seemed more impregnable than ever,
if not by its own inherent strength, at any rate by the
obvious failure of aU the attempts which had been made

20 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
to carry it." ^ But in 1858 Darvrin and Wallace presented
two papers to the Linnean Society, to be read at the
same session, which disclosed that, independently but
simultaneously, they had discovered a new theory. The
foUowing year, Darwin issued his Origin of Species, in
which he expanded his paper. Supported by a solid mass
of information gained by the patient observance of a
trained mind for many years, he advanced a new theory
of the " development hypothesis," or " evolution." 2
The frantic alarm this publication occasioned cannot
be exaggerated. Not only was the Mosaic cosmogony
denied, and the scientific accuracy of the Bible chaUenged,
but Darwinism, it was asserted, meant the exclusion of
God from the universe : for how could He be caUed the
Creator if secondary causes had done aU the work ascribed
to Him? Even weU-balanced minds reeled under the
blow, for one of the principal arguments for the existence
of God had always been the argument from design in
nature, or teleology. Evolution was charged with destroy
ing this argument entirely. It is, however, worth
noting that KoUiker, the famous Wurzburg anatomist,
objected to Darwinism because he considered it supported
teleology, and Huxley had to enter the lists to defend
Darwin against the charge of being a teleologist ! ^
There was good enough reason for anxiety, groundless
though in many minds it now seems to be, for scientific
men generally adopted the attitude of cynical hostihty
to religion, and degenerated into a blank materialism
^ Huxley's Darwiniana, ed. 1902, p. 69.
2 Of course, Lamarckianism and Darwinism differed in import
ant points. The contest is not yet over between them, vide,
e. g., Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, Dr. W. Kidd, Initiative
in Evolution,
* Huxley, Darwiniana, pp. 81 ff., but cf. Sir G. Stokes, Gifford
Lectures, Natural Religion, ed. 1891, pp. 50, 51. "The idea of
design is not lost even though the doctrine of evolution is employed
in the freest manner."

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 21
which found popular expression in TyndaU's Belfast
Address to the British Association in 1874, in which he
claimed that he discerned in " Matter the promise and
potency of aU terrestrial life." ^
There were a few eminent men who refused to accept
the new theory, but Agassiz, who was one of these, had to
acknowledge that it was received " by the best inteUects
of our time."
It is hardly necessary to remark that unhappily religious
people have invariably adopted an attitude of blind
opposition to scientific views which seemed to conflict
vrith religion. It was so with the Copemican theory, the
discovery of gravitation, and evolution.^ God was only
supposed to be at work when mystery enshrouded aU.
Just as a conjurer, to maintain his reputation, must
conceal how he does his tricks, so it seemed to be supposed
that God, to retain His Majesty, must shroud all His
methods in mists and darkness. To probe the mystery
was impious, to discover anything was to dethrone Him.
The pitiful controversy which ensued requires only
brief note. Great divines like Bishop Wilberforce, Burgon,
and Liddon maintained that the Genesis stories of the
Creation and the Fall, and the Incamation of our Lord,
must stand or fall together; that if Evolution were
accepted " the entire scheme of man's salvation must
collapse," that the stories of Lot's wife and Jonah in their
literal meaning were " vital " to Christianity. ^ Never did
our faith more need salvation from its friends.
Time has wrought its revenge. On the one hand, the
old materialism is dead as a scientific theory, and on the
1 Tyndall, Fragments of Science, vol. ii. p. 191, gth ed. See
also Huxley, Life of Darwin, vol. ii. p. 210.
2 See, e. g., White's Conflict between Religion and Science.
' A century and more previously, a similar line of reasoning
was used in regard to witchcraft. To deny the reality of vritches
was to deny the truth of the Bible. Cf. " The givmg up vritch-

22 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
other, the view is now commonly held that Evolution in
the broad sense has even increased our sense of the
Majesty of God.
Side by side with the " scientific " ran the literary
criticism of the Bible. But here again the nineteenth
century vritnessed, not the beginnings of these specula
tions, but their emergence into pubhcity and their rise to
power. Old Testament criticism ran back at least to the
time of Hobbes, and Dr. Conyers Middleton, an eminent
Latitudinarian scholar of the eighteenth century, indulged
in much bold criticism, not only of the Old Testament,
but also of the Gospels.^ But in the century under review,
the publication of Strauss's Life of Jesus in 1835, and the
disintegrating ingenuities of the Tubingen School, hardened
opposition to all critical examination of Scripture. The
view was widespread that any toleration of such criticism
was simply an aUiance with atheism. It wais a bold man
indeed who would dare to support in the most temperate
fashion the dangerous thinkers on the continent.
In its most extravagant form the controversy involved
the whole Christian faith. Has such a Person as Jesus
ever lived? Are the Gospels simply fraudulent and
imaginative compositions? Must not miracle be frankly
abandoned? These excesses are only worth mention
because they so gravely prejudiced all serious and reverent
attempts to apply historical methods to the study of
Scripture. But what emerged of real profit was the

craft is, in effect, giving up the Bible " (Wesley), and Sir Thomas
Browne argued, in Religio Medici, that to deny witches was to
deny " spirits," and hence to be an " atheist " !
1 It is a singular fact that this really remarkable person is so
overlooked in histories of the eighteenth century. In Abbey
and Overton's standard work his name is not mentioned I His
extraordinary and diverting Free Enquiry is fairly well known,
but his other critical works mark him as a man bom a century
before his time.

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 23
reconsideration of aU that was meant by inspiration.
Among Enghsh writers, Coleridge was the first to set forth
a new view, and perhaps it may be added a more religious
view, than the old rigid opinion. Instead of regarding
inspiration as practicaUy synonymous with inerrancy, he
defined it in spiritual terms. " Whatever finds me, bears
witness that it has proceeded from the Holy Spirit." " In
the Bible there is more that finds me, than in all other
books put together." This was to him " irresistible
evidence " of its inspiration.
Broadly speaking, this hne of thought was foUowed up
by many of the deeper thinkers of the time, such as Amold,
Maurice, Robertson.^ Such views have not only come to
stay, but with their recognition of the human element in
Scripture, and the consequent theory of progressive revela
tion, it may at least be claimed that, without in any way
challenging the authority of Scripture to " make us wise
unto salvation," and its profitableness " for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,"
they have not diminished the religious value of the Bible,
and have freed many minds from the embarrassment
imposed by the more rigid view.
"The same type of thought came into colhsion with the
commonly accepted views upon certain doctrines, notably
the Atonement. Here the Evangehcals were the most
nearly touched, for with one consent they had closed their
minds to all BibUcal criticism, scientific, hterary, and
historical : the whole thing was branded vrith the hall
mark of Satan. But when the morality of their popular
preaching of the Atonement was questioned, the war was
carried into their camp. Their doctrine of substitution,
that the Divine wrath could only be appeased by the Life
1 For a valuable summary of these opinions, see V. F. Storr's
Development of English Theology in th? Nineteenth Century,
pp. 191 ff.

24 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
Blood of the Redeemer, that the Atonement was a trans
action between the First and Second Persons of the Holy
Trinity, could no longer be assumed as the whole truth
and incontrovertibly true.
Even a summary ^ of this deep question cannot be
attempted. It must suffice to say that the Evangehcals
clung to their theory as the one complete expression of
redemption, and refused to see that the writings of
McLeod Campbell, Coleridge, and others were develop
ments of forgotten aspects of a tmth which no state
ment could entirely define, and correctives to certain
dangerous extravagances to which popular expressions of
their teaching had often led them.
Lastly, it must be noted that the emergence of the
Tractarian School awakened the Protestant enthusiasm
of the Church in general and of the Evangelicals in par
ticular. It was not until the century was more than half
over that controversy centred round ritual. The Trac
tarian doctrines of the Church, the ministry, and sacra
ments, were declared to be simply Romanism resurrected.
Such fears were not groundless. The contribution which
the Oxford Movement made of a vrider view of Christian
feUowship, the Divine character of the Church, the con
tinuity of the Enghsh Church with past ages, the need for
more reverence and dignity in pubhc worship, were
unhappily combined with rigid and unchristian views of
Apostohc Succession,^ an interpretation of the Prayer-
book teaching which combined ingenuity with a novelty
1 See Storr, op. cit., pp. 332 ff., and pp. 424 ff., etc.
2 Cf. A. W. Haddon, Apostolical Succession, ed. 1869, p. 14.
" Without bishops, no presbyters, vnthout bishops and presbyters,
no legitimate certainty of sacraments, without sacraments, no
certain union with the mystical Body of Christ. Without this,
no certain union with Christ, and vnthout that union, no Salva
tion." This view is now greatly modified, at any rate by High
AngUcan scholars. See, e. g., C. H. Turner'g Essay in The Early
History of the Church and the Ministry,

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 25
which raised charges of dishonesty,^ and an atmosphere
of intrigue. The result was that all its supporters were
condemned en bloc. Rome was the enemy,* and this war
cry was amply justified by the periodic secessions Rome-
wards, and the more recent developments of the situation.
The Puritan strain in the Evangelicals came out strongly.
Their attempts to overthrow Tractarianism were not only
a proper zeal for the truth, but also a fight for their own
existence. In 1872, Connop Thirlwall, who was far from
an Evangelical, summed up the position by sa3dng that
it was as if the Tractarians were to send a message to their
adversaries : " We are on our march to take possession of
your camp, and to make you our prisoners : but all we
desire is that you should let us alone and should not
attempt to put any hindrance in our way." ^
Unhappily, the soul of Evangelicalism suffered in the
contest. They forgot that their tradition was based upon
the preaching of a positive Evangel of Christ's dying Love
for souls. Their preaching often became a panic anti-
Roman proclamation, witnessed to by a form of service
from which dignity and beauty were rigorously excluded.
It is not easy for men in the midst of buming controversy
to keep calm and patiently vrinnow the chaff from the
wheat. People who feel deeply and believe intensely
are not good subjects for easy impressions. In our critic
ism we need to remember that it is as impossible for us to
appreciate fuUy the storm and strain of those anxious days
of the past, as it was for our ancestors to project their
minds into the thought-atmosphere of the present.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that rehgion suffered
gravely from the consistent opposition it offered to aU
^ Cf. Newman's Exposition of the Articles in " Tract XC."
2 Even Tractarian leaders hke Hook did not hesitate to charge
extremists with being Romanisers ; cf . Stephens, Life of Hook,
p. 401.
' Perowne's Thirlwall s Remains, vol. 11. p. 307.

26 DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM
inquiry and criticism. Not unnaturally, this timidity
was regarded as evidence of a weak case. Possible friends
were driven into hostility, and enemies were unnecessarily
provided vrith weapons. The bold men who tried to
reconcile rehgion to the new leaming were denounced and
^persecuted as traitors.
But traditionahsm was nowhere stronger than among
the Evangehcals. Their zeal in missionary work, at
; home and overseas, stiU gave the lead to the whole
Church : they still possessed the genius for discovering
new methods and establishing new organisations; but
their tenacious resistance to the new leaming, which they
praised as loyalty to the old paths, resulted in the loss of
multitudes of their former followers, and this process of
attrition still persists, and wiU continue so long as the
fatal fear that knowledge can destroy truth retains its
power. For though Evangehcalism can give birth to
children, she cannot always keep them at her side.
The most pathetic iUustration of this is the Student
Christian Movement, with its world-wide organisation
and great ideal. The inspiration to impress the Christian
stamp upon the young thinking men and women of the
world first came to Evangehcals. But as the Movement
grew, it demanded a spirit of honest inquiry and bold
, adventure not congenial to its surroundings. Evangelical
ism, it was found, had not staked out a claim vride enough
to include all her many children. " The bed was shorter
than that a man could stretch himself on it, and the
covering narrower than that he could wrap himself
in it."
The Liberal Evangelical is saddened and troubled by
aU this. He is assured that it is God Himself Who has
been teaching the world, not only by His Church, but
also by men of science and by critical scholars, and he is
resolved to prove aU things as weU as to hold fast that

DEVELOPMENT OF EVANGELICALISM 27
which is good, to foUow fearlessly the Spirit of Truth and
to claim all knowledge as part of God's Revelation.
It remains for the writers who foUow to show how
modem Evangelicals seek to adjust themselves to the
clearer light, deeper knowledge, and wider charity of to
day. It is our firm conviction that there are permanent
elements in our view of truth which are not only essential,
if the City of God is to lie four-square, but that the core
of Evangelicalism is indestructible. The past generations
from which we draw our spiritual life may have erred.
They often laid too much stress upon accidentals, inter
preted their views too much in terms of dissent, in their
reverence for the spirit came near to deif3dng the letter,
in their zeal to preserve the old endangered their power
to receive the new, in their assurance that God had
revealed Himself in the past forgot that He was stiU
revealing Himself in the present. But the work they did
for England and England's faith was greater than their
own generation ever knew. The supreme victory is
proven by the fact that Evangehcahsm is a wider thing
to-day than the Evangelicals. We, their children, glory
in this, that the central truths which God called our fathers
to re-discover and re-vitalise are no peculiar possessions
of our own.
Yet we do not believe that our task is done. As a
group within the Church, we exist as a body of men who
regard ourselves as called of God to see that the torch is
kept burning brightly, and that we hand it on faithfuUy
to those who wiU faithfully fulfil the trust. The fashion
of our countenance may differ from those who have
preceded us, but we are assured that our heart is right with
their heart, and that our Evangel is in aU essential tmth
the same as theirs,
H. A. Wilson.

II
RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
As the primary object of this volume is the restatement
of Evangehcal behef, vrithin the Church of England, in
relation to the modem situation, I propose to examine the
view of authority held by the early Evangelicals, with the
purpose of discovering what modifications or develop
ments may now be necessary. The scientific view of the
universe has come since their day; theological research,
if it has not solved, has at least produced a kind of stale
mate in many of the controversies in which they were
engaged; spiritual experience has since thriUed to the
hope of Reunion. The world has indeed changed, but
we do not beheve that the continuity between the early
Evangelicals and ourselves, who claim to inherit their
tradition and would fain be fiUed with their spirit, is
necessarily broken. The principle of growth demands
constant readjustment. It is this readjustment which we
are attempting. We cannot but respect the system of
thought which surrounded and upheld these spiritual
fathers of ours who reveUed in the freedom and power of
the Spirit. We respect, but we cannot rest in it. What
we seek to do is to carry over into our ovm system what
ever is permanent, whatever is vitalising, that is, whatever
is true; not with any expectation of attaining a final
S3mthesis, but in the hope of serving the inteUectual needs
of our ovra generation and handing on the torch to those
who come after.
The early Evangehcals were not interested in phUosophy

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 29
or in what we would call efforts to arrive at " totality."
John Hunt writes in Religious Thought in England in the
Nineteenth Century what I think must be regarded as a
fair criticism.
" The Evangelical serious or eamest clergy, as they
were called by their followers, the fanatics and enthusiasts,
as they were called by those who opposed them, were
more conspicuous for their personal influence than for
any depth or originality of theological speculation."
Their thinking was of a somewhat opportunist kind.
The need of establishing their ovra position within the
Church of England, and the need of differentiating them
selves from the dissenters without, govemed if it did not
warp their thought. The process of what the psycholo
gists call " rationahsation " is very apparent in their
writing. The guiding motive, the compeUing reason,
the real authority which counts, is not always apparent
on the surface. They were more concemed with con
structing a platform which could justify their experience
than in seeking tmth for tmth's sake. During the great
emptive period before the Methodist secession, views on
Church order were in a state of flux, and, as one reads the
writings of John Wesley chronologically, one cannot help
feehng that it is the logic of events rather than of reason
ing which really controls the situation. " Not wiUingly but
by constraint " is his ovra comment on the growing
divergence of his followers from the discipline of the
Church of England. " I dare not omit doing what good
I can while I five for fear of evils that may follow when I
am dead " is his own deliberate summing up of his pohcy.^
The Authority which really counts for lum would appear
to be the Spirit of God working through his ovra and
1 1785 Wesley's Works, (pub. 1831), vol. xiii. p. 224.

30 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
kindred personalities, and vindicated by results. " We
did none of these things tiU we were convinced we could
no longer omit them but at the perU of our souls." '¦
It is possible, I think, to distinguish among them
three types of attitude towards Authority. There is that
of Whitefield, for example, who regarded any or every form
of denominationalism as the " outward appendage of
religion." " Don't tell me you are a Baptist, an Indepen
dent a Presbyterian, a Dissenter. Tell me you are a
Christian. This is the religion of Heaven and must be
ours on earth." ^ Logically this would imply dispensing
with the Sacraments and, I suppose, with bishops also.
For although no doubt there are bishops in heaven, we
hardly think of them there except in a private capacity.
But it would be absurd to attempt any close analysis of
Whitefield's words. Questions of Church order, and of
the ultimate seat of authority for the Church as the
Body of Christ, simply did not interest him. It was his
business and his absorbing passion to preach the Gospel.
Through the Gospel men found life, experienced feUowship,
were sanctified, and finally entered upon " the rehgion of
Heaven." All else hardly mattered. He was au dessus
de la melle. Even though, in response to the Bishop of
London's pastoral letter, he may profess his allegiance
to the Established Church and emphasise the high value
he sets upon the Articles, he was at heart a thorough
going undenominationalist. " I have no freedom but in
going about to all denominations. I cannot join vrith
anyone so as to be fixed in any particular place." ^ There
is something almost intoxicating in his glorious sense of
freedom. How magnificent, for example, is this passage
1 1788 Journal of John Wesley. Standard edition. Vol. vii.
p. 422.
2 1769 Extract from Whitefield's Last Sermons,
5 1 741 Letter to Joseph Humphreys, July 13, 1741. Tyerman's
Life of Whitefield, vol. i. p. 495.

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 31
from his famous sermon " On the FoUy and Danger of
being not Righteous Enough " :
" When we confine the Spirit of God to this or that
particular church, and are not wUling to converse with
any but those of the same Communion, this is to be
righteous overmuch; so it is to confine our communion
within church waUs, and to think that Jesus could not
be in a field as weU as on consecrated ground. . . . The
Spirit of God is the centre of unity, and wherever I see the
image of my Master I never enquire of them their
opinion." 1
There is another type expressed in the Minutes of the
first Conference of Wesley, which bore fruit finally in the
Methodist secession. That powerful mind, with its
talent for organisation and passion for efficiency, wrestled
with the problem of Authority, which it saw must inevit
ably, be faced if progress were to be maintained and the
newly-formed societies of the converted were to stand their
ground. John Wesley must arrive somewhere. He is
constructive where Whitefield is purely prophetic. His
mind works with a view to arriving. He discards the
theory of a National Church, regarding it merely as a
" political " institution. He asserts boldly that a church
in the New Testament always means a single congregation.
He denies that bishops, priests, and deacons must be found
in aU Churches, and even goes so far as to say that " as
God variously dispenses gifts of nature, providence, and
grace, both the offices themselves and the officers ought
to be varied from time to time." Uniformity would never
have been insisted upon " had men consulted the Word of
God only." It is easy to see the direction in which he
is , almost involuntarily movmg. Practical advantage
1 Sermon preached at Kennington Common, Moorfields, and
Blackheath, pub. 1739. Tyerman's Life of Whitefield, vol i. p.
297.

32 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
combined vrith spiritual necessity will outweigh any theory
of Church order which cannot be clearly proved from Holy
Scripture. If it cannot be shown conclusively from the
New Testament that the offices of bishop and presbyter are
distinct, then let the fuU consequences of this admission
be faced in the interest of his societies. Let the presbyter
do what the bishop does — even a single presbyter on his
sole responsibihty. Let him ordain other presbyters to
care for the flock. It is growth that must modify order,
not order that must trammel growth. Thus when the
crisis arrives the ground has already been prepared.
The thinking and arguing have been done. John Wesley
ordains the needed minister for America and the Methodist
secession is complete.
There is a third type of attitude towards Authority with
which we are more intimately concerned than either of
the others. I vrill describe it for convenience as the
method of selecting Fixed Points. It is neither indifferent,
as in the case of Whitefield, nor quite so subjective as in
the case of Wesley. It recognises some organ of authority
other than the New Testament supplemented by the
inunediate consciousness of the Spirit. It recognises, in
fact. Church Authority of a sort, but apphes to it a selective
process. This is what we find in the Apology of John
Overton,^ and it became graduaUy more and more charac
teristic of the Evangehcals who remained faithful to the
doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. His
solution of the problem was to assign to the Thirty-Nine
Articles an authority second only to the Word of God.
The Articles " first deUvered by our Reformers " and the
faith once delivered to the Saints are joined in a kind of
composite authority. The plain and hteral sense of the
1 The full title runs ; The True Churchman ascertained, or,
An Apology for those of the Regular Clergy of the Establishment,
who are sometimes called Evangelical Ministers.

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 33
Bible, the plain and literal sense of the Articles, provides
him with a way through the darkness. The Articles
" according to their literal sense and according to the
meaning of their original framers " become the test of
orthodoxy within the Church of England. " AU attempts
to justify subscription without actual belief of the plain
doctrines of the Articles, we cannot but consider as gross
prevarication." ^ The Freedom of the Spirit, tending
towards ecclesiastical chaos as seen in Whitefield, and
tending towards schism as seen in Wesley, is checked by
what would be called in Pauline language bondage to the
law and obedience to the letter.
This tendency towards literahsm, this documentary and
" fixed point " attitude, only gradually became dominant.
There is a wider horizon to be found in the life of Charles
Simeon, to which the noble document which governs the
operations of the Simeon Trust bears ample testimony.
There were men hke Alexander Knox, an Evangelical at
heart, who could not adapt himself to this selective
process of fixed points. " I know nothing settled in the
whole Reformed body but the liturgy of the Church of
England. I do not add the Articles, not because I have
any real quarrel with them, but because they have not
in any respect the same intrinsic authority. Their force
arises chiefly from convention. They that have sub
scribed to them are bound to them ; but to aU others they
are but the sentiments of respectable men themselves,
requiring the support of some more authoritative sanction.
Not so the liturgy. ... It is virtually the transcript of
'what the Church has said in its converse with God from
the very earliest period. ... Of what then is the liturgy
a standard ? I hesitate not to say of doctrine as well as
devotion. . . . Here then amid the present war of
1 True Churchman Ascertained, John Overton, 1802.
D

34 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
theological elements in due subordination to the sole word
of God I fearlessly fix my foot." ^
But circumstances were too strong to allow the Evan
gelical party as a whole to retain any very fluid doctrine
of authority. There was the warning of the Methodist
secession. They shrank from it as King Lear from mad
ness. " That way schism lies." There was incessant
controversy amongst themselves. There was need of a
solid staff with which to defend their own Churchmanship.
If to salvation by faith with aU its antinomian possibilities
they were to appear to add an authority largely of the
Spirit, they would be open to a double hne of attack.
The need of getting their feet firmly on the ground, of
finding themselves rooted in something other than
experience, began to make itself manifest. The Bible
with the Articles offered the best means of consolidating
their theological position.
This kind of reaction in the course of a spiritual move
ment is one with which we are historicaUy familiar, and
may perhaps be regarded as a psychological necessity.
The difficulty of relating the new experience to hard facts ;
the need of adjusting it to conditions which wiU not adjust
themselves to it, the necessity of making it contro-
versiaUy defensible and capable of being suitably organ
ised, creates the tendency at a certain point to play for
safety. Subconscious plajdng for safety, both as regards
theological speculation and practical action, became
characteristic of the Evangelical party in the later days
of the movement.
There is a close parallel in the Reformation when
Luther's spiritual interpretation of the authority of the
Bible gave place to a rigid and mechanical view, for the
sake of constructing a Protestant platform over against
1 Letter to Rev. Dr. Woodward, 1812, in Alexander Knox's
Remains, 1834.

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 35
the Church of Rome. The necessity of finding a " fixed
point " to balance the fixity of the Church of Rome
impaired the gains and stifled the spiritual development
of the movement. There came a time when the instinct of
playing for safety induced the Reformers to stake out
the freedom they had gained and to consolidate the results
which had been achieved. There is a limit to what the
human mind can attempt in any particular generation
and to the amount of new experience which can be
assimilated. When the limit has been reached, an appeal
is made to some form of external authority immediately
available, which checks the movement for the time being.
Thus the final sjmthesis between a truly disciplined free
dom and a truly liberating authority is indefinitely
postponed. Something of the same kind is going on with regard
to the present movement for reunion. The impulse for
reunion has reached a stage at which it is becoming
dangerous. This new spirit of feUowship threatens estab
lished Church order, chaUenges ecclesiastical conventions,
and demands new combinations and adjustments. It is
interesting to see how history repeats itself. In order to
arrest the movement the Anglo-Catholic is appealing to
that extremely nebulous and wholly indefinable form of
authority, in which he believes, caUed " Catholic Order."
Mr. Glover, on the other hand, is appealing to the very
precise and entirely definable authority, in which he
believes — the Baptist Conference. If the attacks from
either side go on increasing in violence, and spiritual
momentum begins to flag, we shaU find that our leaders
wiU bow to some form of authority, not by any means
necessarily that of the Lambeth Conference, and wiU pro
ceed to " stake out " for our generation as much of the
reunion proposals as they have been able to salve. A
" fixed point " wiU be reached, and the scholasticism which

36 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
will grow up around it wiU only yield to a new spiritual
movement in the future.
There are a few points to be considered in these various
attitudes to Authority which I have described before we
come to consider more closely this deposit of the " fixed
point " theory.
Is there any place for the spiritual undenominationalism
of Whitefield? It is impossible to lay down rules for
prophets and evangelists. The spiritual genius has a way
of making them, as regards himself, look shabby and
antiquated, but it may be safely said that as a theory of
Church polity undenominationalism is, and always has
been, impossible. We cannot rest in such an abstraction,
or be content with such a residuum.
But can we rest any more in the interdenominational-
ism of to-day? We do not say, like Whitefield, " I do not
care whether you are a Baptist or a member of the Church
of England so long as you are a Christian." We say —
" We do care. The Christian life is expressed corporately
as well as personally. Better be a good Baptist than a
bad member of the Church of England. You wiU leam
the value of the corporate life better by loyalty to some
body than by loyalty to none. You will begin to see the
necessity of organic unity, and you wiU be the better
prepared, when the time comes, to help, not hinder, the
corporate movement of your Communion into ' the
larger unity of a reunited Church.' " We regard this as a
great advance on bigotry about Church order on the one
hand or indifference on the other.
So it is, no doubt, but we must remember that it leaves
all problems unsolved, and it is in grave danger of break
ing down. More and more people withdraw from the
denominations themselves because of the shadowy nature
of this interdenominational hfe which fails to function
in the sacramental approach to God. It is commonly
reported that many students at the Swanwick Students'

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 87
Conferences deliberately abstain during the conference
from any act of Communion which would divide them
denominationaUy. I have often wondered what might
not have been the outcome of the Mansfield Conference
if it had met, as many desired, on a frank basis of inter
communion, and whether its present eclipse is due to the
fact that the psychological moment was missed. Unless
interdenominationahsm is seen to be a force continually
progressing towards unity it wiU lose its hold upon the
younger generation. When freedom ceases to broaden
down from precedent to precedent, revolution takes the
field. A new and more reasoned kind of undenominational
ism than that of Whitefield, one which dispenses with
institutional life altogether, may add large numbers to
the Society of Friends.
Again, how far is a man or group of men justified in
taking action which wiU alter or modify Church order
on the ground of the spiritual success attending their
ministry? John Wesley ordains his ministers; George
Fox dispenses with the Sacraments; General Booth
founds an Army whose discipline centres in himself. AU
claim the peculiar mark of God's blessing on their work,
all can point to the spiritual results achieved. The
Societies which they founded have in time become
" respectable," and they now treat vrith other denomina
tions on equal terms, and contribute handsomely to the
baffling problem of reunion.
Of course, the question never presents itself quite so
clearly as I have put it. The witness of the Spirit
internally experienced, and externaUy seen, is supported
by a process of reason resting upon some view of Revela
tion, but it is the consciousness that the individual or the
group stands in immediate relationship to God, and is in
reality inspired, that provides the d5mamic which challenges
Authority. It is neither possible to affirm justification in all such

38 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
cases, nor to deny it in toto. Until the history of the
Church comes to be studied as a ivhole the relation of the
various breaches of Church order to one another cannot
be properly appreciated, nor can the evolutionary
process of its organic hfe be rightly interpreted. We
shall have to read it backwards. We cannot get suffi
ciently outside ourselves, or in front of ourselves, to
discern. " The ultimate tmth of things is the truth as
God sees it." That is beyond us. The final synthesis at
which we shall arrive may be infinitely richer for our
experience of schism. The purging of the whole Body of
Christ from its constant diseases may even be dependent
upon the process of schism. The emergence of a reunited
Church in which authority produces freedom, and free
dom rests upon authority, may be obtainable in no other
way. The slow method by which the Church feels its
way, experimenting, blundering, retrieving, and finally
conserving its gains, is analogous to the process which we
see in nature. A mechanical view of the way in which
the Spirit guides the Church cannot be reconciled vrith
the phenomena of Church history, and does not agree
either with what we know of God in other ways, or vrith
the laws of human psychology.
But there is a warning which we would do weU to take
to heart. To be inspired is not the same thing as to be
infaUible. How often has that mistake been made in
exegesis ! How often has it misled prophets and teachers !
To experience the guidance of the Spirit, and to see
spiritual results, is no guarantee against errors of judg
ment. To plead inspiration for every act, to absolve
oneself from the study of history, and to disregard the
corporate witness of the Church — the Church's " converse
vrith God " — on the ground of private inspiration, is to
incur a very grave responsibihty. It is not a responsibihty
which prima facie many individuals are fitted to sustain.

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 39
Therefore, while the right of schism in obedience to the
categorical demands of truth, whether interpreted as the
claims of conscience or the call of God, remains inalien
able, the occasions on which its exercise is legitimate are
bound to be restricted.
I come now to the theory of " fixed points " which has
been the most popular one in our school of thought in
recent years. From one point of view there is no escape
from it, nor would we desire to escape from it. A religion
which rests upon history must have a fixed point in time
and the Revelation of God which culminates in Jesus
Christ must be the fixed authority for the Christian in faith
and practice. It is even possible to go further back, and
to say that in the Logos the truths which we caU scientific
and those which we caU rehgious find a common source
and origin. If we believe in a rational and spiritual
universe, there can be nothing more certain than that aU
which is truly rehgious, and all which is truly scientific,
spring from the same source. There can be no insoluble
conflict, for God is reveahng part of Himself through
both. There can be no dissociation in the Divine nature.
For us, who see God in His moral and spiritual working
perfectly revealed in Jesus, there can be no anxiety as to
the final reconciliation between what we leam from Him
and what we learn of God through any other channel.
But this primary point is a Life, and not a Book. It
is the personality of Jesus expressed in thought and vrill
and feeling which is authoritative. Only in a secondary
way — and by secondary I do not mean neghgible — is the
Record of the Life authoritative. As long as the inti
mate connection with the Life is reahsed, and its due
subordination to the main purpose of revealing the Life
is recognised, there is no reason why we should not speak
of the imique authority of the Bible. But it is possible
so to interpret the fixed point as to substitute the Book

40 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
for the Person and Bibliolatry for the worship of the
Living God in Christ. It is to this position that Protest
antism, when spiritually it has lost its edge, has been
forced again and again. The true significance of the fact
that Jesus Himself wrote nothing, that the codification
of His teaching is impossible, and that the full interpreta
tion of His personality is a task commensurate with the
life and experience of the Church, has often been missed.
The literalism which tends to stereotj^e thought and
experience, to fetter the freedom of the inteUect and of
the spirit, is foreign to the mind of Jesus. Two great
men, St. Paul and the writer to the Hebrews, each in
his different way, sought to establish the Church in the
liberty wherewith Christ had made it free ; but the records
of Church history proclaim that there is no harder triumph
to be achieved than the deliverance of the religious mind
from this particular form of idolatry. The terrible and
disastrous consequences which follow from it are hardly
understood by this generation, which has to a large extent
found emancipation from its control. AU the horrors of
the Inquisition, the search for and torture of witches
through a period of three hundred years, the prolonged
" Christian " opposition to the abolition of slavery, have
sprung from Literalism. The authority of a Bible pre
sumed to be equally inspired in all its parts, infaUible in
all its teachings, precipitated the Church in a series of
tragic conflicts vrith reason and science, and forced upon
it a persecuting role utterly foreign to the Spirit of Jesus.
Galileo throvra. into prison, Servetus and Giordano Bruno
burned at the stake, Buffon compeUed to retract his
hypotheses and to state plainly that he believed in the
Bible account of Creation, Tom Paine outlawed, F. D.
Maurice and Robertson Smith deprived of their professor
ships, are only examples of the working of such an
authority.

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 41
Into what impossible positions has it driven even the
finest minds held captive by it. Bishop Wilberforce's
comment on The Origin of Species is that " the principle
of natural selection is incompatible with the Word of
God," Mr. Gladstone's on The Descent of Man that " upon
the grounds of what is caUed evolution God is relieved of
the labour of creation, and in the name of unchangeable
laws is discharged from governing the world." Lord
EUenborough in charging the jury which condemned the
publisher of Tom Paine's Age of Reason to eighteen
months' imprisonment and to stand in the piUory once a
month, gives notice to the world that " to deny the tmths
of the Book which is the foundation of our faith has never
been permitted." ^
With this modification of emphasis on the Life rather
than on the Written Word we may accept the starting
point of John Overton. The Bible as the record of a
progressive revelation of God made fully manifest in His
Son, as enabling us to see the Life in relation to human
history and experience, is entitled to the position of a
final court of appeal which has been assigned to it by a
sturdy Protestantism. But the competency of the court
rests in its reflection of the mind of Jesus and the purity
of its decisions upon the expression of His Spirit.
It is when we come to consider the possibility of a second
fixed point such as Overton ascribes to the Articles that
serious difficulty arises. Viewed in relation to their ovra
day, the Articles may be regarded as a charter of free
dom ; in relation to ours, they may present the appear
ance of a fetter to progress. This doctrine of relativity is
of the utmost importance. No Evangelical is likely to
under-value the Articles as a whole. They represent the
effort of men, who have escaped from the rigidity of the
^ Quoted in Bury's History of the Freedom of Thought (Home
University Series).

42 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
Roman system, to stake out as much liberty as they can
assimUate, and to constmct as weU as they can an institu
tional life which may preserve it. The Articles protect
the New Testament doctrine of Salvation from the abuses
of priestcraft. They have preserved the Church of Eng
land from the sectarian attitude of the Church of Rome
towards questions of Church order. They witness to the
necessity of Divine Grace at every point of human life.
They provide a balanced doctrine of the Sacraments.
There is so much to be grateful for in this work of the
English Reformers, that it is a pity to take the edge off
our gratitude by submitting it to too severe a strain.
The Articles are not infaUible. Some of the controversies
upon which they are supposed to adjudicate have either
disappeared altogether, or have passed into another phase,
in which the particular Article which refers to them can
be of httle service. It is probably true that no one
accepts the wording of aU the Articles now, in precisely
the same sense and with precisely the same nuances as
those who drew them up. It would not be unreasonable
to expect that after the lapse of three himdred years a
document so closely related to the controversies of its
own day might weU require supplement or revision.^
There are indeed other points in the Church's history,
and other documents, which would have a far greater
intrinsic claim to be regarded as " fixed." The arbitrary
selection of the Articles to the exclusion of these can by
no process of reasoning be justified, even if we hold, as
Overton held, that aU which was of a permanent and
valuable character connected with these other fixed points
had passed into the Articles. The Historic Creeds and
I Bishop Gore's argument that the dogmatic decisions of the
church with regard to the Person of Christ are "primarily
negative " may be appUed to the Thirty-Nine Articles. They are
intended " to exclude certain lines of teaching." See Belief in
Christ, pp. 218, 219.

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 43
the Decisions of the General Councils come to us with an
apparently much more august sanction, but in the last
analysis it would be no more possible to defend them
than the Thirty-Nine Articles as fixed points standing
outside the realm of inquiry or the possibility of modifica
tion. We have a profound respect for the historic
creeds of the early Church, and we yield them a ready
obedience, inasmuch as they preserve the Church's
collective witness to its experience of the Life made mani
fest and appear to us to preserve the theological imphca-
tions of the Gospel. But they can never constitute a
kind of external authority, possessing for every clause an
infallible sanction, to bar the exercise of reason or the
freedom of the Spirit to lead us into all tmth.
Nor can there be any finality about the decisions of
General Councils, however imposing the tradition which
they represent. No Council can legislate vrithout the
possibility of revision for succeeding generations; and
even though it may rightly claim greater authority in
relation to its own, the extent of its inspiration faUs far
short of infaUibiUty.
It is the same vrith the various scholastic systems which
have dominated the Church. Their finely-spun theories
dissolve as theology and science become more exact and
enter into closer relations with one another. Whatever
of permanent value they have contributed is embodied
in some later sjoithesis. Progress is the law of theology
as well as of science, and the tmth at which we can arrive
at any given moment is only relative. " Faith in Christ
is dynamic, not static." It is false to the Spirit of
Christianity to prejudge a living issue to-day by what
St. Thomas Aquinas " said " or what the Thirty-Nine
Articles " aUow." It is precisely because we are so often
ground to pieces in the Lower House of Convocation of
Canterbury between the upper millstone of St. Thomas

44 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
and the lower millstone of the Articles that we present
to the world a dreary and desolating spectacle.
We are now in a position to attempt some kind of
summary of the Evangelical view of Authority in relation
to the modem situation. I wiU not pretend that that
view is clear-cut or precise. It is of the very essence of
Evangehcalism that freedom is desirable within broad
limits, and that rigidity is more dangerous than variation.
This is the reason why the Evangelical is usuaUy at a
disadvantage in trying to come to terms with his Anglo-
Catholic brother. The Anglo-Catholic knows what he
wants, he has a system into which he desires all people
and things to fit, he would colour the Church with one
colour if he could. The Evangelical, on the other hand,
views a great many things asj"^indifferent," believing
that they depend on psychology and culture. His great
concern is that no system should be allowed to become so
rigid, or be pushed to such an extreme, as to injure or
distort some primitive element in the Gospel. To the
Anglo-Catholic he often presents the appearance of a
Laodicean with regard to questions of Church order, be
cause he habituaUy approaches them from the point of view
of practical advantage rather than of Divine revelation.
The one supreme and outstanding authority, as I have
indicated, is the Incarnate Life God made manifest,
redeeming and mhng the world in Jesus. I do not think
there is any difference in this view to that set forth in
Forsyth's Principle of Authority. The authority which he
attributes so often to the Gospel is always the Gospel of
Christ as Redeemer and Lord. I quote the foUowing
words from his book in order that I may identify myself
with them, and make perfectly clear what I mean by the
Authority of the Life :
" The Word is not the book nor its facts, but its one
Divine Fact; its historic Gospel of the Grace of a holy

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 45
God to human guilt effecting man's forgiven regeneration
in a final way through our faith in the Cross and Person
of Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God. This was the
Fact whose belief created the Church." ^
All else is relative but with very varying degrees in
the authority exerted. In the first place, and in a place
absolutely unique, we put the Holy Scriptures, inasmuch
as through them are conveyed to us the knowledge of
God which culminates in the Incarnate Life and its
manifestation to the world. In the second place we would
put the Creeds of the early Church, as preserving the witness
of the primitive Church to the theological implications
and the spiritual experience of the Life made manifest ; in
the third place the Guidance of the Holy Spirit in our own
day and generation ; and in the fourth the sifted experi
ence of Christian history acting as a check to our possible
misinterpretation of the Spirit's leading, and as admitting
us to a knowledge of His general principles of working.
It wiU be noticed that as soon as we leave the Record
of the Life and the immediate witness to its power and
meaning, the emphasis faUs on subordinating the past
to the present rather than the present to the past. The
past is a school of experience rather than a hunting ground
for precedent. Nor is it to be thought of as we might
think of two thousand miles of cable enabhng the Spirit
of God to telegraph to us from the other end. We are
in wireless communication, and the Spirit of God acts
directly upon each generation. The power to create
precedent is always resident in the present.
Further, owing to the development of the historical
method we may even claim to be in closer touch than
previous generations vrith the historical setting of the
Manifested Life. With regard to the Fathers, it may be
frankly stated that much of their exegesis is out of date,
1 P. 281.

46 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
and many of their books are of purely antiquarian interest.
Certain great works stand out, landmarks for the scholar
and the student, but as a kind of composite authority,
which may be freely quoted to an age hke ours, their
day is long since over. We know something of scholas
ticism as an attempt to reach finality in metaphysical
theology and of the destructive effect of nominahsm in
the late Middle Ages. We know something of the effect
of the intrusion of pagan elements, at an earlier date, into
the Church's life upon the Church's standard of doctrine,
worship, and manners. We know how much retrogression
as well as progress is to be found in Church history. We
know how much the " throw-back " of the Reformation
to the primitive Gospel was needed if the Church were
not to be swaUowed up in the swamps of accretion. All
the king's horses and all the king's men can never set this
particular form of authority up again.
We take our stand upon the immediate relationship
of the Holy Spirit to the Church, and the increasing know
ledge of the mind of Christ which we believe the historical
method is revealing to us. In some ways it seems to us
as if the centuries had shrunk and the Historic Figure
had been newly recovered. The mind of Jesus seems so
vastly larger than any of the systems of the past. His
Spirit seems to have been so inadequately reflected. His
real humanity so often obscured. Jesus our Redeemer
and Lord stands before us vrith a new sharpness of outline,
more real, more human, more Divine.
With regard to the authority of the Church, we beheve
that the analogy of the authority of the State indicates
both its necessity and its hmits. There can be no cor
porate hfe without authority. Authority is rooted in the
social instinct. It is necessary to protect civilised pro
gress. But in essence it is " a social relation involving the
co-operation of several vriUs." The Redeemed Society

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 47
exercises authority like the State, but it does not foUow
that its organisation is stereotyped any more than that
of the State. As the State when it works badly is liable
to convulsions, revolutions, and secessions, so the Church
when it fails in loyalty to the Gospel is liable to similar
catastrophes. But this liability does not rob either the
State or the Church of its inherent rights. Each can on
behalf of the whole body of its members make laws and
exercise discipline and take executive action.
We are concemed primarily as a matter of practical
politics to claim such independence of action for the
various " groups " within the Catholic Church. We
parted for ever at the Reformation with the idea of a
centralised form of government controlling the whole
Church of Christ, and group freedom is an essential part
of the Lambeth programme of reunion. The right of
the Church of England, for example, to vary from the
Church of Rome is an integral part of our belief, yet it is
a right which is constantly being chaUenged within our
own Church.
" It is contended in the West," writes the Bishop of
Ripon in his book on Authority in the Church, " and the
contention is pressed upon the Church of England that
this flexibUity has departed from the hands of individual
Bishops or Provinces, and that a National or Provincial
Church can only vary a Catholic custom by permission
from a representative body of the whole Church. Ulti
mately this claim conveys the demand of the Pope to
supremacy. For if the rights of the Bishops and churches
have passed away in any direction it is into the hands of
the Pope. It is the Papal authority which imposes the
Canon Law upon the Churches, and unless this authority
be accepted, there is no further reason for denying the
rights of National Churches." ^
1 P. 154-

48 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
Regarding " custom " as a variable thing, we assert
quite plainly the right of groups, vrithin the Cathohc
Church, to make what may be regarded as their ovra
bye-laws. It foUows that in our view, within the Church of
England, loyalty to the Church of England may have a
quite definite meaning — a meaning quite different from
that of loyalty to " Cathohc order," whether subjectively
interpreted or interpreted as obedience to Rome. The
Church of England can function as a State. Within
the limits of the Gospel it can take action and enforce
discipline. It need not present either the appearance
of anarchy or paralysis. The Spirit of God can work
through its corporate life.
In this connection, the newly-constituted National
Assembly offers itself, in our judgment, as an admirable
experiment in government. Its newness does not con
demn it. An examination of its constitution reveals that
it is not an attempt to ignore the past, but to incorporate
the experience of the past in the form best suited to the
present. In it, for example, the ancient historic respon
sibility of the Episcopate for guarding the faith is clearly
endorsed, and, on the other hand, the laity are newly
admitted to privilege and responsibility of a synodical
character. There is a wise blending of tradition and
experiment. " The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a
householder that bringeth forth out of his treasure things
new and old."
The type of mind which is proper to the Evangehcal
where organisation is concerned, is the mind which
believes in evolutionary progress and is prepared to see
the Spirit of Christianity constantly moulding the
organised hfe of the Church. The future relations of the
historic Convocations of Canterbury and York to the
National Assembly do not create for us an intricate or a

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY 49
harassing problem. The Spirit of God wiU show us in
time the line of progress which makes for sound and
efficient govemment. It is not possible to argue that the
same people, meeting for the same purpose and seeking
the guidance of the same Spirit, are more in touch with
God when they are constituted as members of one body
rather than of another. Can we seriously beheve that
the Bishops are more inspired when they sit in the Upper
House of Convocation, than when they sit in the National
Assembly or in their periodical private meetings? Can
anyone beheve that " something happens " to the clergy
when they sit in Convocation which gives their decisions
more authority than when they sit in one of the three
Houses in the National Assembly ? Such behefs can only
exist in the twilight where magic supplants reason.
It remains to add one word about the relation of Church
and State. The subject is far too vast for us to attempt
to deal with it in the closing words of this essay, but on
one practical aspect of it as concerns the Church of England
we desire to express our view. The Evangehcal has no
difficulty about the principle of Establishment, or (so
long as he beheves that the action of the State, so far
as it affects the Church, is essentiaUy Christian) about
the exercise by the State of a hmited influence upon
the Church through channels not strictly ecclesiastical.
This, of course, does not carry us very far, as there may
often be great difference of opinion vrith regard to the
action of the State, and also vrith regard to the precise
nature and amount of influence which it is proper for the
State to exert. The problem of the relation of the Church
to a State which is neutral or hostile is comparatively
simple, but the problem of its relation to a State which
professedly accepts Christian authority and teaching is
extremely perplexing. The temptation for the Church

50 RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY
to exploit the State, or for the State to exploit the Church
in its own interests, is always latent if not dangerous
at present ; and it may be that as a working arrangement
EstabUshment wiU eventually prove too difficult to main
tain. The break wiU probably come, not on some question
which concems the S3mimetry of Church order, but on
loyalty to the ethical standard of Christ, conceming which
the Church can accept no compromise.
Meanwhile, the present experiment of the National
Assembly is worth an honest trial. The divisive forces
which came into the Church vrith the Tractarian move
ment have only just begun to ebb. The new spirit
which seeks a basis of reconciliation between all parties
is only struggling into life. The National Assembly must
have its chance. It may succeed in creating in the best
sense of the word " a Church of England " spirit, it may
solve the question of disciphne, it may remove the
scandals under which we suffer, it may even estabhsh a
moral authority capable of controlling the most eccentric
lover of freedom. We cannot join in the campaign for
disestablishment which has been begun by a certain
section of our Church. So far as present evidence goes,
the State is wiUing to pass any legislation for the re
moval of abuses and the increase of spiritual efficiency
which the National Assembly may recommend. Patience
in this matter, therefore, is still for us the order of the
day.
T. Guy Rogers

Ill
EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
I.
In the scheme of this book the aim assigned to the essay
which follows is to place the system of thought and the
theological outlook which have come to be known as
" Liberal Evangehcalism " in relation with the main
movement of contemporary thought and life; in other
words, to sketch in its philosophical background. To do
this at all completely would require a volume to itself,
as well as a very much wider and deeper knowledge than
the writer can claim both of recent philosophy and of
current affairs. Only an outhne study can be attempted ;
and, in the interests of clearness and brevity, it will be
necessary to lay upon one central point an emphasis which,
in a more detailed treatment, might be qualified.
Roughly speaking, the keynote of modem philosophical
thinking is struck by the word " personahty." No term
is more characteristic of modem ways of life and thought.
No element is more central, or at any rate seems to count
for more, in the complex which we call " the present
situation " than the set of facts and forces which the word
" personality " connotes. Thus the rights of personality
lie behind the whole movement for social reform, though
we may sometimes doubt whether particular reforms,
designed to safeguard them, wiU in practice have the
desired effect ; whether, for instance, the average worker
will become less of a " hand " and more of a " soul " by
51

52 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
being given shorter hours, higher pay, and the sort of
education stiU too largely provided for him. By the same
token, education itself is being largely modified by the
new regard for personality. It is required to make an
appeal to its victims, and, for the teacher who would be
up to date, the chief preparatory study is the study, not
of books, but of the child-mind. The subjects taught —
for instance, geography — are taught vrith much more
reference to their human aspects. The whole development
and vogue of psychology are further, and very cmcial,
evidence on the point at issue; and one might find yet
more in modem methods of business, modem political
theory, and almost any other field of modem hfe. Every
where we are being bidden become " more human " ; in
other words, the concept of human personality is setting
at once the goal and the pace. Not least is this so in the
sphere of rehgion. And the claim which we have here to
consider is that Liberal Evangehcalism represents, in this
sphere, the completest and most logical expression — at
any rate, for British religion — of the modern emphasis
on personality. This is another way of claiming that it
represents a step ahead in the gradual emancipation of
the spirit from the letter,^ which has been the main effect
of Christianity in the history of the race.
That Liberal Evangehcalism is such a step on in relation
to the older Evangehcalism is obvious enough, though
some may regard it as a step dovraward. Be that as it
may, it stands for a revolt against a system, a phraseology,
a type of piety which, to the mind of to-day, have come to
seem lacking in humanity, to belong to formal religion
more than to life. The Liberal Evangelical appeals to
the principle of the Incamation to support his claim that
* Or, if you wrill, in the gradual approximation between religion
and life, and rejection of " Religion for Religion's sake." The
Pharisee is the typical exponent of the latter conception.

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 53
anything which can be justly described as " inhuman,"
however justified by tradition, cannot be the best possible
way of representing the mind of God ; for the God whom
Christianity proclaims found His highest self-expression
manward in the Perfect {i.e. completely human) Man.
This, of course, means judging God by ourselves ; and the
frank subjectivity of the standard is, doubtless, open to
criticism. But at least it shows, once more, the concept
of personality at work, and its claim to override authority.
And, after all, it is in foro conscientice that, ultimately,
even the most convinced traditionalist has to justify his
regard for tradition. There is a sense in which man must
always be, for himself, " the measure of all things," even
of God.
But in relation to other rehgious movements and forces
the claim to be " the completest and most logical
expression — at any rate, for British religion — of the
modern emphasis on personality " needs to be explained
and justified. The very multiplicity of spiritual adven
tures — sane or otherwise — which claim to be " modem " ;
the very fact that some of the most unhkely do neverthe
less seem, in some measure, to meet a need ; the apparently
paraUel vitality of creeds and methods which might appear
to cancel each other out : all these phenomena iUustrate
again the revolt of personality against system and logic,
and the claim to self-expression at all costs. No spiritual
movement which was reaUy ahve could fail to reflect what
is so much in the air ; and the same influences appear at
work in the type of Christianity, and in the vring of the
Church of England especiaUy, which are most commonly
contrasted with the Evangelical. The present vigour of
Anglo-Catholicism (if one may use a recognised term
without endorsing its implications), and also the marked
reaction against rigidity shovra by recent developments
in that school, are, from many points of view, signs of the

54 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
triumph of personality over tradition, of the new demand
for self-expression, of the grovring sense that life is larger
than logic.i It is becoming increasingly hard to classify
the most characteristic products of the new spirit at both
ends of the scale. One of the latest pronouncements on
the Anglo-Catholic side is a demand for " Catholicism with
Freedom," * — freedom in a sense which the " Cathohc " ^
of twenty years ago would have regarded as the anti
thesis of all for which he stood, and as destroying the dog
matic finahty which, for him, was the chief merit of " the
faith once for aU delivered to the saints." The writer of
the very important and hopeful pamphlet referred to
believes that " the future of religion in this country lies
with the Anglo-Cathohcs, provided that they can leam
not to be obscurantist." What grounds have those who
1 Dr. Gore {Belief in God, p. 22) acknowledges that " Even the
Catholic Movement in the Church of England, which makes its
special appeal to authority, has maintained itself and spread
largely by an appeal to the rights of congregations to worship and
believe as they please."
' Catholicism with Freedom : An Appeal for a New Policy, A
paper read at the Anglo-Catholic Congress at Birmingham, June,
1922, by the Rev. A. E. J. Rawlinson, B.D., Student and Tutor
of Christ Church, Oxford. E.g. — " The fact is that an acceptance
of critical methods involves in the long run a modification in the
traditional way of putting things, not only as regards the
authority of Holy Scripture, but also as regards the authority of
Holy Church; it involves a re-thinking of the whole problem of
the nature and basis of Catholic authority, along lines less mechan
ical, less rigid and narrow, and it maybe more spiritual, than those
of the past. In a word, it means some form of ' modernism ' "
(p. 6). It is only fair to add Jthat Mr. Rawlinson has, apparently,
found himself a good way ahead of his party. The complement
of this movement within Catholicism is that of the " Free
Catholics " in the Nonconformist Churches.
3 When printed with a capital C, the word will, in this essay,
denote Catholicism in the technical, historical sense; when with
a small c, it will bear the literal (and original) sense of " universal."
A " cathohc " Christianity has yet to be found : up to now, the
exclusiveness, on principle, of Catholicism, of whichever local
type, has been a chief cause of the divisions of Christendom. So
the distinction is crucial.

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 55
caU themselves Liberal Evangelicals for the same belief
about the point of view which they represent ?
Briefly, two main considerations may be aUeged in sup
port of their claim : national psychology (which is largely
bound up with national history) and the nature of ultimate
spiritual tmth.
The new emphasis on personality involves its recogni
tion in nations also. " Nationality " is personality on
the national scale. It follows that even a catholic^
religion must be compatible with varying national types.
If the blotting out of national differ entice in a mechanically
uniform intemationahsm is a thing to be deprecated and
resisted, — ^in a sense, that is the issue on which the war
was fought, since Germany aimed at world-peace through
the imposition of a uniform Kultur, — a similar uniformity
in a Universal Church would be equaUy a loss and untrue
to the human facts. That, however, is a larger question.
For the moment the pornt is that, if our own country is
ever to be Christian, it must become Christian in a British
way. And, unless the average Briton is utterly at sea
about his own psychology, there does not seem much like-
hhood that a genuinely British Catholicism vriU ever foUow
the hues of the Anglo-Catholicism of to-day. True, the same
principle which demands a genuinely British Catholicism
must leave room, within it, for many variants, including
the Anglo-Catholic sort : nothing vrill necessarily be
excluded but the principle of exclusion itself. But if the
type of Christianity now suggested by the word Anglo-
Catholic is to be represented as the true, or desirable, or
normal type, even though it be first dissociated from
obscurantism and exclusiveness, it is pretty clear that the
bulk of the British people (and this includes the Welsh
and the Scottish, though no longer the Irish), vrith their
genius for nonconformity and their long habituation to
1 Cf. previous note.

56 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
other than episcopal forms of worship, vriU stiU remain
outside what wiU thus be neither a national nor a catholic
church. Before the Reformation, the whole country, so far as it
had been Christianised at all, was Catholic perforce. It is
significant that, when the great change came, the real
success was Scottish Presbyterianism. The later splits
within it were not at all comparable to the breakings away
from the Episcopal Church of England; and they have
now been largely mended. Organised religion presents a
far more solid front in Scotland than south of the Tweed.
In England, except where danger threatened from the
Roman side (as in 1688), the Church of England has never
been an object of national enthusiasm. From the first,
the movement which attracted general sjnnpathy was
Puritanism; and the only rehgious movement since the
Civil Wars which could in any sense be caUed a popular
or national one was the Evangelical Revival of the
eighteenth century. In spite of the great vogue, in the
restricted areas, of Anglo-Catholicism to-day, there is
nothing to suggest that an Anglo-Catholic Church of
England would have any chance of uniting the English
people, let alone the Scots. At best it might stand as the
most ardent, united, and respectable of the Sects, and so
prolong the age of sectarianism. Past and present history
alike suggest that a Christianity which is reaUy to win
into one Church the British peoples must be sought, if
anywhere, on something like Evangehcal ground.
And the same conclusion is suggested by reference to
the ultimate nature of spiritual tmth, as Jesus Christ
declared it. It is here that we can reassure ourselves
when the modem deference to personality is criticised
as antinomian, or when the modem claim that rehgion
must be " human," and justify itself to the conscience of
man, is set aside as too subjective. For Christianity

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 57
" the Truth " is a Person, and, for the Hebrew religion
which stands behind it, the Ultimate Reahty is also a
Personal Consciousness, — " I AM." Religion is there
fore essentiaUy a relation between persons. Anything
of a system which grows out of such a relationship is
secondary to it. A system of some sort is involved when
millions of human persons are linked together through
their self -same relationship vrith God. " The Church "
grows inevitably out of this view of individual rehgion.
But the system must remain subordinate to the relation
ship itself. Inclusion in the system cannot produce the
relationship. Where the relationship exists, the system
cannot effectually, or without stultifying itself, exclude.
And what is the test? "The sohd foundation of God
standeth, having this seal," — and then foUow the two
primitive " notes " of Churchmanship, viewed as joint-
relationship of men to God. First, " the Lord knoweth
them that are His " : it is not a matter of outward rites
and qualifications. And secondly, " Let every man that
nameth the Name of the Lord depart from iniquity."
But Catholic Christianity, in all its forms, has always
seemed to put the system- first, and to discount in those
outside it alike the inward assurance of Christ's Presence
and the outward conformity of the life to His ovra.
Technical credentials have counted for more than Christian
character. The Church becomes an institution, with its
rules and customs, instead of a society of those who know
God as a Friend. Bishop Gore admits, in a recent book,
that " there are people who beheve passionately in the
Church and the Sacraments, but appear to have a very
slender and meagre belief in God." i And it is just these
people who woiUd be most indignant if even the most
spiritual and respected of Nonconformists were officiaUy
admitted to the Holy Communion in an Anghcan church.
I Belief in God, p. 29.

58 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
It would infringe the system; and, for such minds, it is
the system that counts. On the other vring, Evangehcal
Christianity has, it is true, been weak and inconsistent
in many things. It has suffered, and is suffering now, not
least from past neglect of the corporate and institutional
side, in which the Catholic is strong. But it has, at any
rate, always stood above aU for " personal religion,"
— for the fact, that is, that into a valid Christianity a
man's own personality must enter, that he must have his
own relationship with God, that no " opus operatum "
of another man or of the Church can create this for him,
and that, where such relationship exists, the Church's
part is only to authenticate, confirm, and help to develop
it. It is not hard to see which of the two approaches is
more in line with the modern emphasis on personality and
revolt against system. And the modern emphasis is, at
at any rate, congruous with the Hebrew and Christian
doctrine of God and with the view of religion, first pro
pagated by the Hebrew prophets, which was afterwards
endorsed and developed by Jesus Christ. This, then, is
a further reason for the claim that Liberal Evangehcalism
represents, far more than any form of traditional Catholic
ism, the completest and most logical expression, at least
for the British peoples, of the S3nithesis between vital
Christianity and the characteristic forms of modem
thought. So, as the writers of these essays believe, the Evan
gelical who understands his own first principles stands
nearer alike to the heart of Christianity and to the main
stream of modem life, and is also, in his conception of
churchmanship, aiming for a wider ultimate Whole.
Liberal Evangehcals in the Church of England to-day are
as convinced of the Divine Reality and the redemptive
power of the Cross as their predecessors of the eighteenth
century, who recovered that Reahty and made that

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 59
redemption a real force in the life of the nation at a time
when the prevaihng Deism hid the possibility of it even
from the Church. They are as convinced as the Reformers
that the record of God's self-revelation, in Holy Scripture,
shares the sacredness and unalterable value of the revela
tion itself, and must remain the final standard of Christian
belief. They are as convinced as the Nicene Fathers that
in Jesus Christ the Church beholds the authentic radiation
of the Divine glory, the authentic impress on human nature
of the Divine character, so that he who sees Him sees the
Father, in so far as God can be made visible to man. They
are as convinced as the first Apostles of the Divine origin
and quality of the Church, the society in which that
Divine impress upon humanity is perpetuated by the
presence and work of the Holy Spirit in individual Chris
tians, and of which the formula (if one may so put it) is
" Christ in you the hope of glory." All this the modem
Evangelical steadfastly believes. But at the same time
he is prepared to see included in the ultimate whole —
the coming Catholicism — much that the old Evangelicals
repudiate, much that ranks as essentiaUy Catholic, or
even Roman, to-day.
But on two supremely important conditions. First,
that innovations, whether from the Right wing or from
the Left, shall justify themselves at the bar of reason and
spiritual experience, and be admitted because of their
proven usefulness to human souls, not because they belong
to a certain tradition; secondly, that nothing shaU be
included which, by its inclusion, would exclude other
practices having the same experimental guarantee, or
compromise the presentation of the etemal Gospel in
terms which vriU reach and convince the modem mind.
There is what might be caUed the "genius" of Christianity,
which distinguishes it from all other religions. It is true
that all sorts of avenues may lead to the One Christ ; but

60 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
it is also tme that His outlook is definite and distinctive,
and nothing can be accepted as " Christian " which, even
if it has helped an individual to Christ, tends, for the
majority, to confuse the vision of His mind. The mind of
Christ, plainly and sufficiently revealed in the New Testa
ment, is the test to which all innovations need to be
brought before they can receive the corporate Christian
sanction. And particular ways of seeking to express that
mind must also be judged in relation to the human minds
to which they seek to appeal.^ In other words, all
sanctioned practices and teachings — and they might even
be such as seemed to contradict each other — ^must come
in on an Evangelical, not on a traditionahst Cathohc,
footing. A true Catholicism, not a hberalised Catholicism,
must be for all the end in view.^ The appeal is, through-
"^ Two rather controversial instances may make this clearer.
" Anglo-Catholics " normally object to Evening Communion, but
seem to do so on a theory of the Sacramental Presence which
Evangelical Churchmen not only do not accept, but are bound, by
their own first principles, to repudiate. Hence a concordat which
should stipulate for abstention from Evening Communion could
never be accepted by any Evangehcal Churchmen, even if he
never practised it or actually disliked it on (say) grounds of seem-
liness or long tradition. On the other hand. Evangelicals might
possibly concede a certain use of the Reserved Sacrament " for
purposes of adoration," if it were made clear that, in such use,
the consecrated elements were only serving the same purpose as
(say) a Crucifix might more reasonably serve, by concentrating
sense and thought at once, and so making possible a more vivid
realisation of the Spiritual Presence of Christ : but, believing
what they do about that Presence, they could not concede any
other use of the Reserved Sacrament which tended to locaUse
or materialise it in the worshipper's thought.
2 Cf . again note 3 on page 54 supra. For the distinction between
what I have called the Evangelical and the traditionalist CathoUc
footing, cf . Mr. Rawlinson's pamphlet, quoted on the same page.
In the section just before the sentences there reproduced, he
speaks of " the state of mind " typified by the remark of a layman
who, complaining of the prevalence of heresy, said to him : " The
worst of it is that, even in cases when the clergy beUeve the right
things, you have no guarantee that they ar* not believing them
merely because they happen personally to think them true,

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 61
out, to personality as it is in the present, not to any
different authority set up in the past. For the goal of
the Church's evolution is not a perfected mechanism, but
a perfect Man. (It is not even the impersonal " Man
hood.") And its function, in aU its parts (which are
persons), is a ministry of persons to persons, in and
through their common relationship with the Divine
personality of the Three in One, and depends on each one
of those persons preserving his individual differentia —
being himself. For " He Himself gave some as apostles,
some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as shepherds
and teachers, to the perfecting of the saints for the task
of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ,
until the whole of us attain to the oneness which consists
in faith in and personal knowledge of the Son of God, to
a perfect Man, the measure of the extent of the fulfilment
of Christ." 1

We have seen that " the keynote of modem theo
logical thinking is stmck by the word " personahty,' " and
also that the modem outlook taUies, to this extent, vrith
that of Christianity, for which the final Reality is not an
idea, not a system, but a Personal God. The present
dominance of the conception of personality is itself a
fruit of Christian influence.
For Greek thought, the " idea " is that which gives
character and value to individual things. It is the com
mon, universal element which runs through aU things of
the same class and makes them a class. No individual
specimen can perfectly embody the type; and so the
type is more important, " more real " (as Plato would
instead of accepting them simply and solely upon the authority
of Holy Church." For this " state of mind " ( ?) there can be no
quarter. ^ Ephesians iv. 11-13.

62 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
say), than the individual. " The idea of man " is some
thing higher than any individual person. And, since
reason is what is typical of man, it is the possession of
reason — normality, capacity for conforming to plan as
well as for discovering order in things and classifying
them — ^which gives the individual person his value. The
philosopher is therefore the human ideal : irrationality
is the greatest defect.
But Christianity starts out from the amazing claim that
God had revealed Himself in an individual life, not of a
philosopher, but of a common working Man, whose
eminence was not intellectual, but moral and psychical,
and whose career apparently ended on a cross before He
had produced any system or even reached His prime.
No wonder it was " to the Greeks foohshness." And yet,
in philosophy as well as in practical Ufe, the Christian at
once began to outstrip the Greek. The principle of the
Incamation involved intellectual, as well as social and
political, consequences which we can watch unfolding
ever since. " The great Greek masters seem hardly to have
asked themselves the question about Divine personality
which seems to us so important." (NaturaUy, for, for
them, ideas were supreme : God, for Plato, is " the Idea
of Good," and there is no occasion to personalise Him.)
" It was indeed the spirit of Christianity which first made
the question of personality in God and in man real and
urgent; and it was Christian philosophy which first
found it necessary to devise a special word to signify
it." 1
It is only in our own day that we are beginning to see the
full extent of the revolution of outlook involved, — though
perhaps later ages vriU see it even more fuUy. In the
persistent wrangles between those who have appealed to
" authority " and those who have laid claim to " inspira-
^ Gore, Belief in God, p. 63.

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 63
tion," — the old lights and the new, — ^which may seem to
some the staple of Christian history, we see the Greek
mental habit (reinforced by the , Roman atmosphere of
discipline in which the Church grew up) wrestling with the
effects of the Christian emphasis on personality, conse
crated as it is by the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, " God
in us." And it is the point of this essay to suggest that
the present revolt against organised, institutional religion,
and demand of free play for the individual self, may at
least partly mark a further stage in the same evolution
from the Law to the Gospel.
What are, in brief, the historical antecedents of the
modem outlook, apart from its immediate causes in the
war and post-war events?
Politically a new chapter opened for the whole world
with the French Revolution and the Rights of Man. This
is a mere commonplace. But the Revolution was itself
but an aspect of the Romantic Revival, both of them
marking a great re-orientation of human thought, to be
connected largely with the " Enlightenment " of the
eighteenth century, which has been described as " the
Renaissance reasserting itself against the Reformation."
And that points us back to the dav(Ti of the modem
world, and to that other great two-fold readjustment of
the human mind to newly-realised fact, which marked the
end of the Middle Ages. Professor Gwatkin quotes the
saying that " As the Renaissance discovered the world,
so the Reformation discovered God." The real world
had been obscured by a theory of it : God had been over
laid by a system, the Church. Again, in the step forward.
we can see the insurgence of the personal against the
abstract and the institutional. But the two discoveries
formed a pair, and were meant to go on together. It was
in so far as they separated that both movements behed
their early promise : that humanism drifted into paganism.

64 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
and Protestantism, becoming itself dogmatic, a system
rather than a spirit, became also inhuman, and so as
imperfect a witness to God as Catholicism had been
before it. Personal and social life owed a debt incalculable
to the work of the Renaissance and the Reformation;
and religion, by becoming more inteUigent and more
spiritual, became a new thing with a new future before it.
But pohticaUy it is the clash of rival dogmatisms that
colours the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, untU men began to tire of religion itself. Hence,
when the fires of zeal were spent, the eighteenth century
swung to the secular extreme, dreaded enthusiasm, cold-
shouldered Christianity, and set itself to be humanistic
again. For it " the proper study of mankind is Man."
Hence, in the " Enhghtenment," the spectacle of " the
Renaissance reasserting itself against the Reformation."
And hence, too, for the first time since the Roman Empire
adopted Christianity, hfe and thought began quietly to
ignore what had at any rate always been their official
centre, belief in God.
For the eighteenth century, however, it was Man with
a capital M that counted, the abstraction, not the
individual. This might seem like reversion to the Greek
outlook. But Greek inteUectualism throbbed with a
vivid sense of the value of concrete existence, of
individual persons and things, even when it placed the
Universal above the Particular. The eighteenth century
was rationahst rather than inteUectuahst. The rational
side of human consciousness alone appeals to its phUoso
phers. For them the non-rational is sub-human, and so
to be discounted ; and this meant discounting the indi
vidual as well. For the rational is also the universal;
and, in so far as human nature was rationalised, — the
eighteenth century ideal, — ^it would also be leveUed up to
a standard type. Yet, if there is one thing plain to our

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 65
modem eyes, it is that a whoUy rational being would not
be a human person at all. The perfect rationahst, who
was whoUy predictable and always lived " according to
plan," an achieved type, not a self -realising individual,
would be as intolerable to real humanity as the mere
creature of impulse is despicable to the rationahst himself.
Either extreme is equaUy less than human. And that is
where the Romantic Revival came in, to glorify those
elements of human nature which constitute individual
ity, — the unpredictable and unique in each, — and to
reassert them side by side with those which make for
the ideal type. True personality consists in a blend of
the emotional and instinctive vrith the intellectual and
rational ; and what is, perhaps, the very heart of person
ahty is the fact that the blend can never be twice the same.
A repetition man, were "repeat orders " possible in Nature,
would as such be less human than the original individual
whom he reproduced. It is individuality that counts :
and individuality spells defiance of system.
And now to-day we have psychology justifying the
reassertion of the instinctive as against the rational, and
giving it even higher honours; while the phUosophy of
Bergson teUs us that, in so far as reason has imposed its
own sense of system upon reality, in so far as it has
inteUectuahsed and dissected it, it has faUed to reach
reality at aU. The norm of reahty is mobihty : the type
of reality is the flux of human consciousness, with its
persistent identity which yet can never repeat itself. So
the tme metaphysics inevitably becomes empirical, —
" a kind of intellectual auscultation," seeking to hear the
soul-throb of reahty; and, since reality is flovring, "an
empiricism worthy of the name ... is obhged for each
new object that it studies to make an absolutely fresh
effort." 1 It cannot work with a ready-made system.
1 Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 31, 32.
F

66 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
AU this involves the exclusion of dogmatism, in science
and theology ahke. And yet it is not agnosticism or
scepticism in a new form. Bergson's " intuition " claims
to arrive at reahty, to be, in fact, the only way of arriving.
It is the glorification of the indeterminate, and the
recognition that of all the higher forms of reahty in-
determination (or free wiU) forms a part. In this perspec
tive unreconciled contradictions no longer appal. Dr.
Gore, in the book already quoted, cites Sir WUliam Bragg's
Boyle Lecture as a vivid case of this new tendency even in
orthodox science. Referring to two apparently contra
dictory theories of energy, he says, " We are obliged to
use each theory as occasion demands, and wait for further
knowledge as to how it may be possible that both should be
tme at the same time. . . . The curiosity of the present
situation is that opposite opinions have to be held or used
by the same individual in the faith that some day the
combined tmth may be made plain." ^ Criticism, too,
has ceased to be formal and become mainly psychological.
The most obvious note of modem art is experiment and
unexpectedness. If science stiU officiaUy recoils from the
unknown, yet culture centres in thd instinct for it, and
there are at last signs of a reaction from the materiahstic
insistence on natural science as the staple of a " modem "
education. PoliticaUy, old distinctions and systems are
disappearing, those of class and party, and now, to some
extent, those of race. At least the war has forced the
conviction on all who are open to conviction that, for an
age which has carried nationahsm too far, something like
a world-commonwealth, built on the spiritual basis of a
common, universal humanity, is the only alternative to
chaos. More and more two facts stand out as lUtimate,
— the human individual and the human Whole. Inter
mediate groupings have only relative values. The nation,
1 Quoted from The Times, May 13, 1522.

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 67
the class, the cultural unit, the commercial organisation,
these things must be judged according as they minister to
the right making of the individual and to the good of the
Whole. And is not this just the Christian perspective,
arising out of the Christian view of God and man, with
the Kingdom of God as the goal ahead, and the individual
as the sphere and the means of its coming? Politics
and philosophy seem at last to be converging upon it,
and recovering at once from the age-long bias of Greek
inteUectualism and from the materialistic obsessions
of nineteenth-century natural science. And the pivot
throughout is the new insistence on personality.^
This may sound like a throwing over of reason, the
distinctive guide of man, in favour of instinct and that
whole emotional nature by which the lower animals are
guided. If it were so, it would be whoUy retrograde. The
relation of reason to faith is too large a question to enter
upon here, but it is, at least, a matter of history that the
Evangehcal in aU ages has stood for the " service of God
along the lines of reason " {Xoyiicr] XaTpeia) of which
St. Paul speaks (Romans xii. i), as against the " opus
operatum " of magic and the " dead works " of the Law.
Liberal Evangelicals would be, therefore, the last to
1 Bergson, when he speaks of " the consciousness we have of
our own self in its continual flux " as " introducing us to the
interior of a reality on the model of which we must represent other
realities " {Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 55), goes a good way
towards saying that the ultimate reality must be akin to personal
consciousness. And when {ibid., p. 67) he adds that " an invisible
current causes modern philosophy to place the Soul above the
Idea," borrowing (as he says) the language of the Platonists, we
may claim substantial confirmation of our main point, even though
he vnshes " to deprive the words of their psychological sense," and
give " the name of Idea to a certain settling down into easy
intelligibUity " — i.e., the desire for precision, system, finality —
" and that of Soul to a certain longing after the restlessness of
life." For Christianity, personahty, in God and in man, stands
above system ; and Clu-ist came, not that we might have finality,
but that we might have life.

68 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
acquiesce in any belittling of reason. But the function of
reason is to organise materials given to it, not, in the
interests of its earlier formulations, to exclude materials
which seem to upset them. It is not to prescribe the
moulds into which all new human experience must be mn,
but to correlate the new with the old. And just at present
reason is handicapped by the very wealth of new material,
from every quarter, which cannot be correlated tiU it has
been digested. The lower rationalism is therefore dis
credited ; but the higher rationahsm, the conviction that
Reason is great, and vriU yet prevail, and be aU the greater
for the conflict, — this is the very sheet-anchor of progres
sive thought. The needed synthesis vrill come. But for
the time being, if need be, the new and the old must even
jostle together in the minds of men, tiU a metaphysic
embracing both is evolved.
Meanwhile not devotion to existing systems, but
something like the Christian respect for human person
ality, must be our guide. The present phase is not
anti-rational, but it does go against the survival of
anything rigid, dogmatic, institutional, in the sphere
of rehgious thought, whether Catholic or Protestant
in colour. Nay, more, since it is precisely in rehgion
that man is most consciously and deliberately in touch
with mystery, it is in religion that the modem mind vriU
be most impatient of dogmatism and definition. It is
in his own personahty that a man finds himself nearest to
the unknown, meets it in the form in which he can least
doubt it, and yet most obviously faUs to analyse or
obj ecti vise it. Hence the modem emphasis on Divine
immanence and corresponding rejection of transcendence.
Hence, too, the inteUectual anarchy that could not but
foUow that rejection, both within organised Christianity
and outside it. We see it, for instance, in aU the t5rpi-
caUy modem forms of rehgious individuahsm, sometimes

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 69
caUing themselves " New Thought," the charm of which
seems to be that they are based on human intuition
or experience, not on any extemal religious authority.
This anarchy, as we have seen, can plainly not be
accepted as final. But how is it to be attacked or counter
acted ? For the authoritarian in religion the obvious resort
is to authority. What better argument for applying it
than the facts of to-day ? Indeed, at the present moment
there is a vigorous effort, on both extreme wings, to
reassert authority in some form. It is seen alike in the
Anglo-Catholic Congresses and in the almost inquisitorial
" fidelity to principle " of the Evangehcals of the older
school. But this is precisely the hne of attack which
stiffens resistance to the uttermost; for it is for the
superior rights of "personality," as against tradition,
that the rebels claim to stand. So, on the part of all the
more moderate and intermediate forms of orthodoxy, there
is a grovring tendency to concentrate on two things : the
witness of first-hand religious experience, and the doctrine
of God. Hitherto authority has been located in the
Church, — an institution. Now we must find it, if at all,
in the conception of God, the Divine personality, and in
the experience which human persons may have of Him.
Christianity is simply the revelation of the nature and
character of God in His relation with human persons.
In its doctrine of the Holy Spirit it aUows amply for Divine
immanence and guarantees individual freedom against
the tyranny of system. " The Church " is the Body in
which this Spirit hves and grows, in all His " diversities
of operations," not a machine for keeping His activities
standardised. It is easy, in the light of rehgious history, to see the need
for recognised authority and the justification of those
who, in our own age, as in so many others, have pleaded
for " the old paths " and regarded vrith suspicion the

70 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
so-called iUuminations of their contemporaries. It is tme
enough that, in the long mn, the old does often prove
durably " good," while modem " improvements " go out
of fashion. But history also shows that religion has, in
the end, gained most, and made its great forward move
ments, when men have dared to break with convention
and be religious in their own way, in strict relation to their
own times. So it was with the Hebrew Prophets; so
again with the Reformers ; so with the eighteenth-century
Evangelicals, whom Gwatkin calls " the prophets of the
modem world." ^ They represent the elan vital of a
creative evolution, showing itself inevitably in a leaving of
old paths, a disregard of existing systems. Without such
movements there would be no progress.
At the same time, their validity depends on their
remaining progressive. Again let Bergson remind us that
mobihty is of the essence of life, and that " a certain
settling down into easy intelligibility " marks the first
stage towards petrifaction. That is where the very
success of a new movement breeds its dechne. Owing its
sway to its spontaneous birth out of special circumstances,
it tries to formulate its secret and systematise its mysteri
ous power. The formula and the system belong to the
date of their framing, — and then the times change. The
revolutionary becomes a conservative unawares : when the
next new movement begins, he leads the resistance, and his
power is gone. So it was, not least, with the eighteenth-
century Evangelicals. To quote Gwatkin's penetrating
estimate of them once more, they " gave [rehgion] its
depth, but neither its breadth nor its height. They carried
over from the Middle Ages more hindrances than they
1 The Knowledge of God, vol. ii. p. 243. Cf . also p. 242, of the
religious type to which " Pietists, Methodists, Evangelicals,
revivaUsts in general " belong : " There is a good deal of variety
among them, for they are men of their own time, who deliver
their message in the language of their own time."

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 71
knew. . . . Their religion, hke the Latin, began and ended
with religion, and brought 'secular' things into no organic
connection with spiritual. . . . They were essentiaUy
men of the eighteenth century, with the hmitations of
the eighteenth century. The ' plan of salvation ' they
preached was as clear and full of common sense as
Matthew Tindal's Deism, and as characteristically wanting
in a sense of mystery." ^
It is just here that we touch the heart of the controversy
between the " old " and " new " Evangehcals of to-day.
The old are primarily concemed for a system, which, as
they expound it, bears the label of another age : the new
are mainly interested in the elan vital, and believe in a
true creative evolution under the auspices of that " Creator
Spirit " who is the Spirit of the Perfect Man. Perfect
humanity is complete humanity : Jesus Christ could say,
vrith the character in Terence :
"Homo sum : humani nihil a Me alienum puto."
And some of us feel that there must be a way of presenting
His Gospel which wiU make His " modem-ness " apparent
to the modem mind, with its revolt from authority and
reverence for personality, and so recover His authority
another way round.
In other words, the real controversy to-day is not
between sacramentahsts and rituahsts on the one side and
representatives of " spiritual " rehgion on the other. We
see now that this distinction itself implies an antithesis
between matter and spirit which experience, supported
by modem thinking, does not endorse. Nor is it between
those who stand for " Churchmanship," in the sense of
corporate rehgion, and those who emphasise the relation
between the individual and God. We see now that
1 The Knowledge of God, vol. ii. pp. 244, 245. Some of us might
consider this summary more epigrammatic than strictly fair.

72 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
personahty itself is such that a fuU rehgion can never
be anything but corporate, involving an organic and
disciplined community, while yet any rehgion which does
not belong to the individual himself is rootless and vain.
The real hne of cleavage is between those who, whether
on the Right wing or the Left, — I leave it to the reader to
decide which is which, — stand for the binding force of a
system, an authority, a formula, based explicitly on the
past, and those who think of the Church as an ever-
grovring Divine Adventure, of its successive movements
as part of what St. Paul calls " the increasing of God," ^
and of the Christian attitude as one of " faith," not in the
sense of submission to what is, because it always has been,
but in that of resourceful expectancy of what next new
thing is coming out of the treasures of Providence. And
this at least can be said for the modems, that God through
out His self-revelation has been perpetually upsetting the
calculations of the traditionahsts, breaking through the
frontiers set up by authority ; while yet, by the very fact
that the essence of Christianity is personal friendship with
Himself, He has given to His followers at once the present
experience of finality and the guarantee of that perpetual
growth and progress which is necessary for tme personal
life. Christ is the Way that advances as weU as the Tmth
that abides : it is because He is always both that He is
for aU ages the Life as weU. 3-
The new attitude, then, frankly discards the aid of
" authority " in the ordinary sense, and seeks to meet the
protests and claims of personality on the terrain of
1 Col. ii. 19, t))v aSfijo-iK TOU 0eoS. See the whole context,
vrith its reference to Christ's triumph over the past and its
" authorities," and to the danger of " planting one's feet on things
seen " — existing experience — in the effort to advance.

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 73
personal experience itself. " Si documentum requiris,
introspice " : the tmest proof of Christianity, and the
surest guarantee of its permanence, is found within the
human soul. Tme, this approach is only valid, and wiU
only lead to sound results, if Reality is as the Christian
Creeds describe it : if, that is to say, God exists, is such
as Jesus and the New Testament declare Him, and is
truly interpreted in the experience of Christians ever
since. But that is quite as much a hypothesis for the
older orthodoxy. In the nature of things it cannot
be scientifically or objectively proved. It can only be
clinched by a man's own experience. For the philosophy
of personality, however, that is as good a proof as is needed,
The one reality which we aU seize immediately is our self ;
and self-consciousness (in the phUosophical sense) is the
most indisputable form of knowledge. Systems which
seek a more secure and binding authority outside the soul
are fundamentally sceptical; alike the Roman system,
with its infallible Church and its objective, localised
Christ in the Mass, and the extreme Evangelical, vrith its
insistence on an infaUible Bible as the necessary bulwark
of tme faith. The objectivity which it is thus sought
to give to spiritual truth is of a kind of which it is
strictly incapable; for "spiritual" imphes a relationship
to personahty, and " spiritual " truths can only be
obj ecti vised by being wrought into the life of a person.^
He who accepts a spiritual tmth on authority only, holds
it not as a tmth, but as an opinion, a dogma. It only
becomes a truth for him when he has experienced it;. and
even then he does not hold it as a truth so long as he
dehberately refuses to investigate the authority on which
he accepted it as an opinion. If this refusal is at all due
1 One may recall the famous sentence of Hooker about the
" Real Presence " of Christ being only to be found " inthe faithful
receiver " of the Sacrament : not within him locally, but in the
quality of the life that ensues.

74 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
to fear that inquiry may rob him of the experience which
his faith has brought him, then he is a sceptic even in the
way in which he clutches his faith. And, while this is
so, albeit unconsciously, it vriU bring a warp and a one-
sidedness into his presentation of that faith. Holding
a tme opinion may suffice to make a man good : it is only
knowing the truth that wiU make him free.
Now so far as that great hypothesis goes, on which the
vahdity of what I have caUed the " new " attitude depends,
— the reality, personality, and character of God as Chris
tians conceive of Him, — it is a significant fact that, after
aU the Christian dogmatics of centuries, and all the
elaborated " proofs " which have been offered of the exist
ence of God, it is stiU instinct and experience that, for the
most part, make men behevers. In circles where men
argue such subjects, doubt still prevails. Professor Webb
admits " the general reluctance of the philosophers " even
now to concede the personality of God,^ that primary
necessity of a fmitful personal rehgion. And, with the
spread of education and of the sceptical spirit, we find the
same hesitation in the average man. Many to-day are
Christians in their essential sympathies, but cannot
bring themselves normally to pray. They accept Christ's
teaching, but not His " Father in Heaven," on the reality
of whom aU the teaching hinges. In other words, the
thinking part of mankind, and of each individual, tends
to drop back to the Greek position, placing " the Idea
above the Soul," making the abstract more real than
the concrete. They can accept Christianity, but not
Jesus Christ.
And here, if there is to be any escape, it is the instinctive,
emotional, psychical part which must come to the rescue.
Fortunately it is characteristic of the modem attitude to
give this side of personality its due at last. We need not,
^ God and Personality, p. no.

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 75
therefore, be agitated about the fate of systems, formulae,
external authorities, against which the modern mind
rebels, when it offers itself for conviction in more imme
diate and valid ways. Is it not enough to appeal, in the
first place, to experience and instinct, and so reach
authority from within? That, anyhow, is the Hebrew
attitude to God. It is naive and almost free from specula
tion. It proceeds from intuitions, which it confidently
describes as words from God. And in this Jesus Christ is
a Hebrew of the Hebrews. It has been remarked that
He cuts clean through the sophistications, due to Greek
influence, which colour what we caU " the Wisdom litera
ture," and ignores the false reverence through which later
Judaism avoided the Divine Name, and spoke of God as
" the Heavens." For Him God is simply and always a
Person, " Our Father " ; and rehgion is personal relation
ship with Him. He never argues for His own point of
view, or appeals to authority. The impression which His
outlook and that of the prophets and psalmists has made
on religious thought and life ever since sufficiently vindi
cates His method. Have we not here sufficient ground
for our necessary hypothesis — the personahty of God —
and sufficient encouragement to dare to be Hebrews and
not try to be Greeks : to be (as Bergson puts it) empirical
rather than systematic, and, as we refrain from seeking
extemal support from systems, so not to worry if the
systems, which our fathers leaned on, seem to be
undermined ?
The authority which the modem world wUl recognise
is that of fresh " acts of the Holy Ghost." The Church
which is able to do them will graduaUy clothe itself with
valid authority as, by the same method, the Church of
the first century did. It had to do vrithout the support
of traditions : why cannot we ? The effort to safeguard
an authority which is at present discounted is, perhaps

76 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
more than anything, preventing our gaining an authority
before which all would readUy bow.
And hence the position of the Liberal Evangehcal to
day. Holding with fuU conviction (as has been expressed
already) ^ the body of the Evangehcal tradition, he is yet
prepared — ^not by an unwiUing act of renunciation, but
because, for him, what is in the interests of truth must
also be " for the furtherance of the Gospel " — to do vrithout
the argumentative support of any theory of the Creeds,
the Bible, or the Church, on which men have rested in
earher days, so far as the progress of scholarship may seem
to make it insecure, and to meet modem critics of
Christianity on any ground they themselves may choose ;
provided only that they vriU loyally face the facts of their
own personal consciousness and of human history and
experience, wUl give reasonable evidence reasonable weight,
and vrill foUow the argument whithersoever it may lead.
Similarly, the Liberal Evangelical does not seek to rule
out from the fullness of Christ developments of hfe,
devotion, or doctrine, which, though they do not appeal to
himself, and even run counter to his own tradition, are
demonstrably among the " many ways " in which " God
fuUUs Himself " in men of other temperament or outlook ;
provided always that such additions do not, in the end,
have the effect of subtracting from the comprehensiveness
and simplicity of the Gospel, or form themselves into a
system, claiming special authority or value, by which the
freedom of personality in its Godward motions comes to
be hampered or curtaUed.
Unhke an earher Evangehcalism, which, just because
is was so sure of the spiritual experience which was its
hfe-blood, concentrated on propaganda, scorned to philoso
phise, and then grew alarmed and^stiffened itself when it
found its certainties subjected to criticism, the Evangeh-
1 Cf. supra, pp. 58-9.

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 77
cahsm of the twentieth century, again just because it is so
sure of the Christian experience, is only anxious to investi
gate its inheritance because so it counts on further extend
ing it. By adding to our faith knowledge, we cannot but
enrich it, if indeed the world is God's world at aU. And
no loss of the original depth and simplicity of the
saving personal relation with Christ can result from such
" follovring on to know the Lord " as vriU reveal to His
friends His cosmic significance. His bearing on all things
that are. For " all things were created through Him and
with Him as their goal, and He Himself is before aU things,
and aU things hold together in Him." An Evangelicalism
with this basis cannot help becoming the tme Catholicism ;
for its essential process is to relate each human individual
in a personal friendship with Him who is the personal
Spirit of the Whole.
Of course all this gives only an " interims-theologie."
But, in the first place, a transitional theology is just what
is needed in a time of transition, when the issues are so
obscure and so complicated, and when it is more difficult
even than in normal times to separate the wheat from the
tares. And, secondly, if there is anything in what has
been said about the dangers of seeking finality in a system,
a four-square theological system is just what, even were it
attainable, we should need to avoid. If was the finality
of eighteenth-century Evangehcahsm which prevented its
retaining sway in the nineteenth century. If, at a time
hke the present, material science can accept and provision
ally work vrith two seemingly contradictory theories,
awaiting new light to blend them into one, it is not out of
the way to suggest the same method in religion, especially
in a religion which stands for the inclusiveness of Love as
weU as for the definiteness of Truth.
Again, the position sketched is, frankly, eclectic.
Starting from the infinite variety of human personahty,

78 EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY
and regarding personality, not standardised and developed,
but normal and natural, as the sphere of God's most direct
self -revelation, we must aUow His " multi- variegated
vrisdom " to work itself out in many pattems. It is so
in Nature : why not in the Kingdom of Grace ? The
modem Evangelical vriU therefore be free to co-operate
with, and even borrow from the characteristic armoury of,
the Modernist on the one side, the Anglo-Catholic on the
other, without apologising for inconsistency.
But surely we may claim that, transitional and eclectic
though it be, this position remains in its essence Evangel
ical. It is tme to the Evangelicalism of all the ages, vrith
its fundamental stress on the necessity of personal relation
with a Personal God, whom it interprets in terms of Jesus
Christ; in its consequent rejection of opus operatum in
any form as a possible substitute for personal attitudes
and acts ; and in its insistence (which again foUows logic-
aUy) on the individual as the cmcial point in the whole
process of rehgion, and on the faith of the individual —
that is, his own attitude as a moral and rational being
towards the God in whom he believes — as that which alone
can make him rehgious. It begins and ends vrith person
ahty. And so it wiU be a corporate rehgion, vrithout
becoming mechanicaUy institutional. It vriU have room
and reverence for sacraments, since personality is itself
sacramental, vrithout any risk of becoming magical. It
will be capable of being human and practical in the highest
sense, organic to all the activities and interests of the
lives of persons, without danger of forgetting that its
source and centre is spiritual. Divine, and its raison d'etre
is to bring God into everything, and, " whether we eat or
drink, or whatever we do," to " do aU to the glory of God."
This emphasis is surely primitive, and surely it is modem
as weU ? The tme battle for the future of religion is the
battle between the many-sided mystical sense, to which

EVANGELICALISM AND PERSONALITY 79
faith in God is the most natural thing in the world, and
the sceptical instinct, which cannot believe anything tUl
it has been systematised and endorsed by authority, and
then rejects the evidence of the mystic against its clear-
cut pronouncements because that sort of evidence cannot
be systematised and carries its authority in itself. It
would be a tragedy beyond tears at a time like the present,
when a world in revolt against institutions and authority
is caUing aloud for inspired personality to show it the way,
if those who stand in the succession from the prophets of
Israel, the leaders of the Reformation, and the Evan
gelicals of the eighteenth century, found themselves
debarred, by quarrels about their own traditions and
institutions, from claiming their true destiny and letting
their hght shine
E. A. Burroughs.

IV
THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
The Bible is the record of God's self-revelation to
mankind. Throughout it is instinct vrith the sense of the
Living God. Its fundamental presupposition is that God
is in vital communion with man. God acts in history
and upon the individual mind and conscience, is ever
seeking to reveal His nature and to draw man into
feUowship with Himself. The Bible is fuU of theology, but
is no systematic theological treatise. Out of its over
flowing revelation we frame our varjdng theologies, but
no one of them, nor aU of them taken together, can exhaust
the spiritual richness of the book itself.
God reveals Himself in many ways. The Bible is not
the only source of our knowledge of God, but it is by
far the most important source, as the two follovring simple
considerations are sufficient to prove. It is from the Old
Testament that the world has derived its ethical mono
theism ; it is from the New Testament that it has derived
its Christianity. No other book has exercised an influ
ence comparable to that of the Bible, or has been so widely
read. Unless man's native instinct for rehgion perishes,
we cannot imagine that the day vriU ever come when the
Bible vriU cease to be studied, for nowhere else can men
find in anything like similar degree that spiritual satisfac
tion for their needs which they are compeUed to seek.
And in the majority of cases where other books peld such
a satisfaction, it wiU be found that they are in debt to
the Bible. Are the Psalms, or the Fourth Gospel, or the
80

THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE 81
Parables of Jesus ever Ukely to become antiquated ? The
Bible " finds me," wrote Coleridge in a weU-known
passage. It is its power of " finding " us in aU moods of
penitence, joy, sorrow, doubt, lonehness, feUowship; of
reveahng the hidden springs of our nature and voicing
the innermost aspirations of our souls; its power of
suppl3dng the etemal wants of the human spirit by
bringing it into living contact vrith God and Christ, which
guarantees for it a unique supremacy. The man who
wiU thoughtfuUy and prayerfuUy read the Bible, letting
its message sink into his heart, vrill be troubled by no
doubts about its spiritual value. " The opening of Thy
words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the
simple." Now the intelligent Christian wiU desire to know all he
can about this record of God's revelation and about the
manner in which God has unveiled Himself. Here we
owe an incalculable debt to the army of modem scholars
who, by patient investigation and the use of methods
tmknown to, or very imperfectly grasped by, our fore
fathers, have thrown a flood of light upon this volume.
They have examined, first the Bible itself, its text, its
stmcture, the connection of its various parts, and the
stages by which it grew to its present form. In addition,
they have brought it into relation with the discoveries
of archaeology, ethnology, philology, comparative rehgion
— in a word, with the whole world of modem knowledge.
The result of aU this varied research is that we to-day
know far more about the Bible than any earlier generation
has known. AU this new knowledge is truly a fresh
revelation from God, for man could never discover any
thing if God were not wiUing to reveal it. We should
approach the results of modem Biblical scholarship with
the thankful recognition that, though not all the con
clusions of criticism may stand the test of time and be
G

82 THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
found finaUy conect, though revision and readjustment
may be necessary, yet here is an achievement which,
viewed broadly, can only be attributed to the Ulumination
of that Spirit of Truth whom Christ promised as our guide
into all tmth. Modem scholarship, let us remember,
is no mushroom growth of a night. It is the child of
more than two centuries of research, during which, vrith
constantly improving methods of investigation, scholars
have been at work upon the Bible, gathering a harvest in
which the grain far outweighs the chaff.
What, now, are the broader results of these studies,
which have so profoundly modified our general view of
the Scriptures?
(i) We have learned to view the Bible as a literature,
unique indeed in kind among the national literatures of
the world, but subject to the laws and principles which
govern the growth of any literature. It is sometimes
forgotten that the word Bible is an Anglicised form of
a plural Greek word (ra ^i^Xla) meaning " the books."
A unity of spiritual movement and purpose runs through
the Bible, so that it may rightly be called one book; yet
Jerome's name for it — " the Divine library " — is more
appropriate. Its many parts differ greatly in date,
style, contents, and value. Whatever inspiration may
mean (and this wiU be considered later), no one would
assert that Esther and Chronicles possessed the same
spiritual value as Isaiah or St. John. We do a grave
injustice to the manifold message of the Bible if we treat
aU its parts as being on the same level. The writer of
the Epistle to the Hebrews realised that God's revelation
in the past had been made in varying modes, that He
had " spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers
portions and in divers manners." This national hterature
is rich vrith an immense variety of writing, proverb,
prophecy, chronicle, poetry, letters, gospels; and, as

THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE 83
do aU other hteratures, it contains legend, myth, aUegory,
fable. Embedded in the narratives of the Old Testament,
and indeed, though to a far less extent, in those of the
New Testament, are statements which, in the light of
modem knowledge, we cannot regard as historicaUy true.
No thoughtful person would maintain to-day that the
Creation narratives were literally true ; or that the story
of the Tower of Babel gives an historical account of the
origin of human speech ; or that the sun and moon stood
StiU in the valley of Ajalon when Joshua won his great
victory over the Amorites. A modem student reading
the account of this last incident (Josh. x. 12-14), while
he would not deny that God could work the stupendous
miracle involved in the cessation of the motion of the
sun and moon, would ask whether it was more probable
that such a miracle happened, or that we have here a
piece of poetry. It had been a great victory after a
battle in which the issue trembled in the balance. The
poet who commemorated the triumph pictured Nature as
watching breathlessly. Sun and moon stood stiU to gaze.
We have a parallel form of expression when we read that
" the stars in their courses fought against Sisera "
(Judges v. 20). Spiritual tmths can be conveyed in
aUegorical or poetic form. Our Lord taught by parable ;
could not God have taught in Old Testament times in
the same way ? If we persist in turning the poetry of an
oriental book like the Bible into hard prose, if we lose sight
of the fact that it is a literature embodying national
traditions of immense antiquity, coming dovra from ages
when our ordered science and historical knowledge did
not exist, we do great harm to the sacred cause of truth
and create unnecessary difficulties for faith.
(2) Because we have learned to appreciate the Bible as
a literature, we have come to see that the human element
in it is larger than was at one time supposed. " We have

84 THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
this treasure in earthen vessels." The writers of the Bible
were men, taught indeed, we believe, by God, but not so
controUed by the Spirit that they were incapable of making
any mistake, or lifted above the level of their feUows in
their general knowledge of science and history. God
never in His dealings with men treats them as machines.
He uses them as His instruments, but respects their
individuahty, and in His action upon them does not over
ride the natural working of their mental powers. Frankly
to recognise the human element in the Bible is surely to
add freshness and interest to our study of it, and to bring
it into closer connection vrith common hfe.
(3) The newer studies of the Bible have brought God's
method of revelation revealed therein into line with what
we know of His method of working elsewhere. This
statement has both a negative and positive aspect.
Negatively, we now feel ourselves free to reject as asser
tions of actual historical fact some of the stories of strange
happenings in the Old Testament, because they con
tradict what we know of God's method of operation.
Similar stories abound in the early literature of Greece and
Rome, of India, China, and indeed of every nation. No
one believes these other mythical and legendary state
ments, and, unless we are to attach no weight to what
modem knowledge has to teU us about God and His mode
of working, we are inevitably driven to regard stories
of the same kind in the Bible as in fact untme, even
though they may enshrine rehgious tmth of a different
order. Thus the strangeness of the Hebrew past is
removed, and Hebrew history takes its place as part of
the vast historical movement which has been in progress
since man appeared upon the earth. By the advance of
modem knowledge the area of the miraculous has been
steadily contracted. This does not mean that miracles
are impossible, or never happened,^ but it does mean that,
^ Cp. Essay on The Person of Jesus Christ, pp. 113, 118-119.

THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE 85
if a natural explanation of a reported strange event
can be found, that explanation must be accepted. Our
great-grandfathers would probably have regarded as
supernatural things which are to-day the commonplaces
of physical science.
But the positive bearing of the statement is more
important. God's method of working, viewed generaUy,
appears to be a method of evolution. From less to more,
from the imperfect to the more perfect, from the unde
veloped to the developed, is the course of the Divine plan,
which a study of the universe reveals. Slowly through
miUions of years was this earth prepared for the advent of
life. Life then appeared in lowly forms, but those forms
were endowed with powers which in course of long ages
have produced the existing immense variety of animal
and vegetable organisms. With the emergence of the
vertebrates a line of advance was started which cul
minated in the appearance of man; but man as an
uncivilised being akin to the beasts, yet possessing a
mental and moral nature, which was in due course to
raise him to lofty spiritual heights. Onward and upward
has been the movement of the world. This same principle
of progressive evolution governed, as we now see, God's
Self-revelation in the Bible. Little by little were the
Hebrews taught Divine truth as they could appropriate it.
Progressively did God reveal Himself, the revelation
culminating in the Old Testament in the prophets, but
stiU clearly pointing forward to something better yet to be ;
tUl in the fuUness of time came Christ, who gathered up in
His teaching and Person aU which was vital in what had
gone before. The whole story of God's deahng with the
Hebrews is a commentary on His revelation of Himself
to Moses at the buming bush under the name " I am that
I am." Those words are more accurately translated
" I wUl become what I vriU become." They speak of a
God whose nature it is to unveU Himself in progressive

86 THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
fashion. They help to explain the forward-looking
character of the Hebrew religion. Are they not of the
same essential texture as our Lord's words about the
progressive teaching of the Spirit ?
What an immense help to us to-day is this thought of a
gradual revelation I Many, for example, are puzzled by
finding in the Old Testament an imperfect morahty, or
actions attributed to God which are incompatible with
His character as revealed by Christ. How, for instance,
could the God of Love, the Father, order the massacre of
innocent Canaanite babes, or send bears out of a wood to
devour little children who caUed Elisha " bald-head " ?
Why should Jael be praised for most treacherously kUling
Sisera, whom she was bound to protect by the laws of
desert hospitality, once she had given him food? All
these difficulties vanish, if we bear in mind that God was
not able to make the whole truth known at once. He
could not reveal more of the moral law or of His own
character than the people could at any time receive.
But what He did reveal was always a stage in a clearer
tmth which He was later going to unfold. The human
mind and not God must be held responsible for any
imperfections in Hebrew morality.
One word of caution is perhaps necessary here. It is
probably tme that in the general Hebrew mind the con
ception of God as a tribal god preceded the conception of
Him as the God of the whole earth, which we find in the
prophets. But we cannot rule out the possibility that
a man like Moses may have had a much nobler conception
of God than the mass of the people. God, after aU, would
surely want to reveal as much of Himself as He could;
and it may well be that some of the rehgious leaders of
the race received a revelation far richer in significance
than that grasped by the popular mind. We have to
remember that in the general process of evolution degener-

THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE 87
ation is a fact. Parasites " constitute a good half of all
animal species," ^ and a parasite is a form which has gone
downhiU instead of uphiU, having found it more profit
able in the struggle for existence to adopt a less complex
mode of hfe and structure. Similarly, we cannot neces
sarily take the modern savage as a type of his primitive
ancestor. For he, too, may have degenerated. I am
not, of course, arguing in favour of the older behef that a
fuU revelation was made to the patriarchs. The facts are
against that view. I am only urging that we should not
confine a spiritual movement within too rigid lines. If
there are plains and vaUeys in the spiritual life, there are
also peaks. And God " giveth not the Spirit by measure."
Let us note the splendour of this conception of a
progressive revelation. It emphasises the thought of plan
and purpose. It makes us marvel at the final achieve
ment. How did it come about that from such lowly
origins there grew up so rich a stmcture of rehgious truth
as the ethical monotheism of the prophets ? We are forced
to the conclusion that a Divine power was operative
throughout the process, guiding the development of the
nation and iUuminating the minds of its teachers.
(4) The gradual unfolding of a great redemptive purpose
is most clearly seen in the prophets of the Old Testament.
God's purpose is, of course, revealed in the history of
Israel, in the sequence of events which befeU the nation,
but it was the prophets who grasped the meaning of that
history and brought out its underl37ing philosophy. And
it is in connection with prophecy that modem scholarship
has perhaps done its most successful work. The prophets
hve for us as they never hved before. The great majority
of their writings can be assigned to fairly accurate dates,
and can be set against the historical background which
evoked them. Our whole idea of a prophet's work has
i Romanes, Darwin and aftey Darwin, vqI. i. p. 408.

88 THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
been wonderfully enriched. We no longer, as an earher
generation was wont to do, think of him as a man con
cemed chiefly to predict a distant future, and marveUously
gifted with the foresight necessary for such a task; but
we see him as God's agent in a many-sided work. The
prophet was the embodied conscience of the nation, wit
nessing for truth and righteousness. Social reformer
protesting against social evils; political adviser to kings
in hours of national crisis; upholder of the claims of
spiritual religion in an age of formalism or idolatry;
interpreter of the national past, so fuU of lessons of Divine
guidance and judgment; witness to the nearness and
reahty of the Living God, who had selected Israel for
special privUege and therefore for greater responsibihty;
the prophet comes before us as a man entrusted with a
divine message pregnant vrith manifold meaning.
But what of the future? Was there no prediction?
Certainly there was, and it is as we study this predictive
element in prophecy that we feel compeUed to affirm the
purposive character of the whole movement. Within the
larger circle of general prophecy is the smaUer circle we
caU Messianic prophecy. Messianic prophecy is character
ised by an optimistic outlook of hope. A better time is
coming. A kingdom of peace and righteousness wiU be
estabUshed. God has not yet revealed the fuUness of
His redemptive purpose. In many of the prophets, in
the greatest certainly, this hope of the coming of the king
dom is connected with the coming of a King, whose figure
forms the centre of the picture. Here in these early
prophets is the seed-plot of that Messianic hope which
dominated the later apocalyptic writings of Judaism.
But it is important to notice that the prophetic pictures
of the future vary greatly in detaU and colour. In some
material blessings are more prominent than spiritual.
Some are particularist and narrowly national, others more

THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE 89
universal in their outlook. Nor, when the central Figure
is present, is He drawn in the same colours by aU. If in
some pictures it is an Ideal Ruler invested with the
attributes of kingly sovereignty who is described, in others
it is a Priest-King ; while in the great prophecy of Second
Isaiah (ch. liii.), a prophecy in which the movement of
Messianic prophecy reaches its climax, the Figure is that
of a Suffering Redeemer, who redeems His people by shar
ing their sorrows and dying for them. We cannot say
that there was no detailed prediction when we compare
this last prophecy with the events of our Lord's passion,
but prediction of detaU is a very subordinate element, as
is plain when we remember that the prophets do not agree
in what they predict. The predictive element is found
rather in the general character of the whole movement,
taken in connection vrith the fulfilment which it received
in Christ. None of the Prophets had any knowledge of the
time of the coming of the kingdom, nor had any of them
a vision of Jesus Christ. But we, looking back on the
movement in its totality, and noting how in Christ it
received a large fulfUment, how many hues from the past
gathered into a focus in Him and His work, can only see
in it the marks of design. We realise that the prophets
were uttering a message of deeper significance than they
at the time understood, and that Messianic prophecy was
something essentiaUy purposive. We demand an explana
tion of this remarkable movement. Can we find it any
where except in the thought of a Self-reveahng God ?
(5) This essay makes no attempt, except incidentaUy,
to state or discuss the conclusions to which scholars have
come with regard to the structure and date of the various
books of the Bible. It is concemed with the larger ques
tions of the general character and value of the volume,
and of the meaning of Inspiration. But reference must
be made to one point in this connection, because it throws

90 THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
light upon the nature of the Old Testament as a whole.
Scholarship has proved that many of its books are com
posite products, and have reached their present form by
a process of gradual construction and revision. Our
modem sense of literary proprietorship was lacking among
the Jews. If we to-day were editing the works of an
earlier author, we should be very careful to preserve
intact his original composition, and should put our omti
comments and emendations in footnotes. But an opposite
method prevailed among the literary schools of Old Testa
ment times. They handled earlier documents with the
utmost freedom, altering them for didactic purposes to
suit their ovra point of view, or modifjdng them as they
thought best. The Pentateuch will serve for an example.
This contains what there is no good reason to doubt is a
Mosaic nucleus, but, as the work now stands, it dates from
a period centuries later than the death of Moses. A few
scholars, it is tme, dispute this conclusion, but the great
majority are agreed that the " Law of Moses " did not
reach its final stage tiU the fifth century B.C. There was
a period of marked hterary activity during the exile and
after the retum to Palestine. During this period the
Priestly school of writers re-edited the Jewish law, pre
serving the earlier legislation, but when necessary adapting
it to suit the changed needs of the time. Thus the growth
and codification of Jewish law was, as is the case with
the law of aU other nations, a gradual process. This same
school of writers also revised the historical records of
their race, and the Priestly narrative is found in Genesis i.,
and runs on, interwoven with other strands, through the
whole Pentateuch. To them we owe the books of
Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. If we compare Chronicles
with the books of Samuel and Kings, we see at once that
the priests were not attempting to write scientific history
in our senge of the term, but wrote with a moral and

THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE 91
religious purpose, seeking to enforce the religious lessons
of the past, and interpreting the nation's earlier history
from their own ecclesiastical standpoint. When the
temple was rebuilt and temple worship was again possible,
the Psalms were collected and arranged as we now have
them by this same school, though later additions were
probably made to the hymn-book. The Psalms vary
greatly in date. Some are Davidic; others may be as
late as the time of the Maccabees in the second century
B.C. Many other instances might be given of writings in
the Old Testament which are composite in character, such
as the Book of Proverbs or Isaiah. Indeed this process of
revision and re-editing has been apphed to most of the
books. A study of Biblical methods of hterary composition
helps us to give their right place to critical problems.
Questions of date, authorship, structure are of secondary
importance compared with the spiritual message of the
Bible. They are not, indeed, unimportant, for it makes
a vital difference, for example, to our study of prophecy,
if we can date a document, determine its authorship, and
the historical circumstances under which it was composed.
And these literary and historical questions grow in import
ance when you are dealing with contemporary or practicaUy
contemporary writings. Thus the date and authorship
of an Epistle or Gospel have a direct bearing upon its
historicity and trustworthiness. But the further back
you go into the region of national tradition about a remote
past, the more secondary do these problems of criticism
become. Are the stories of the patriarchs any less valu
able because they have been re-edited, or because we are
uncertain how much strictly historical matter these
ancient traditions contain ? They stiU remain for all time
" profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction which i§ fgr righteousness." The world can

92 THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
never outgrow their religious charm and beauty. If any
feel perplexed at these results of criticism of the Old
Testament, let them reflect that the fact of this continual
process of literary revision of the documents witnesses to
the permanence and vitality of the spiritual movement
we caU inspiration. If one man, David, had written all
the Psahns, I think we should feel less sure that God was
behind them, than we feel when we know that they repre
sent centuries of trust and aspiration. If Moses had com
piled aU the legislation of the Pentateuch, we should have
had a less striking proof of Divine control than we have
now that we know that God was enabhng successive
schools of writers to make the Law a vehicle of rehgious
teaching. What arrests attention is the continuity of the
spiritual movement recorded in the Old Testament, and
scholars, by enabhng us to see the hterary process as a
whole in its various stages of growth, have emphasised
that continuity.
Criticism is on surer ground when it reaches the New
Testament, because it is dealing with documents more
nearly contemporary vrith the events they describe;
and it is satisfactory to note that the general tendency of
this criticism is in a conservative direction. Thus the
dates of the Synoptic Gospels are placed earher than they
were placed fifty years ago, and their historicity, and the
historicity of certainly the greater part of the Acts, is
commonly admitted. The main Epistles of St. Paul are
unquestionably genuine. The Fourth Gospel is stUl a
source of much perplexity. Perhaps the problem of its
authorship vriU never be finaUy solved, but I cannot feel
that those who maintain that its author was St. John the
Evangelist are fighting a hopeless battle. The last word
has not yet been said upon that problem. More difficult
and more important is the problem of the general character
and historicity of the work. I refer to it, not to discuss

THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE 93
it, but because it raises clearly the issue between truth of
fact and tmth of idea. This Gospel contains much tmst-
worthy history; indeed scholars show a tendency to
accept some of its statements rather than those of the
Synoptic Gospels, when there is a contradiction between
the two. But it is confessedly less a history than a
rehgious interpretation of the Person and work of Jesus
Christ. The author puts into the mouth of Jesus words
which we cannot always be sure that He uttered. He
interprets His teaching, rather than transcribes it
verbatim. The date of the Gospel is somewhere between
90 and no a.d. Thus behind it lies a grovring experience
of Christ's power in the Church and in individual lives.
It was this rich experience which led the author to attempt
his interpretation of that wondrous historic hfe. Is
the value of the Gospel any less because the Person of
Jesus is seen in part through a luminous veil of symbolism
and allegory ? If the Living Christ speaks to us through
the Spirit in the pages of this Gospel, are we going to
rebel because we are told that the author has blended his
own thoughts vrith the language which he attributes to
Jesus? There is a truth of fact and there is a truth of
idea. God uses both to make His revelation knovra.
Criticism has helped us to distinguish between them, and
for this we owe it a real debt.
We pass now to consider what is meant by Inspiration ;
a word which the Bible nowhere defines and which the
Church has never officiaUy defined. Inspiration means
" inbreathing," and is a term applicable rather to the
writers of the Bible than to what they wrote. It is not
the record which is inspired, but the men who composed
it. To discover what inspiration means we must examine
the Bible itself without presuppositions as to the mode in
which God made His revelation, and let it teU its own
story. Unless we are to reject modern scholarship and

94 THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
aU the new knowledge which God has given us, it is plain
that we must abandon two views of inspiration which
were formerly held. One is Verbal Inspiration, the other
Plenary Inspiration. No one to-day would defend the
former; but there are still some who would uphold Van
Mildart's contention that " it is impossible even to imagine
a failure in judgment or in integrity " in the Bible.^
But this, surely, is to allow no room in the Bible for the
human element, and to reduce inspiration almost to
dictation. It is to forget that the Bible is a hterature,
whose parts are of very different values; and to lose
sight of the purpose of a Divine revelation. The Bible
was given that men might be taught rehgious truth, not
science or such secular knowledge as they could discover
by their own inteUigence. The inspiration of the Bibhcal
writers lies in the fact that they were able to give to the
world a religious message, which still Uves. The Divine
element in the Bible shines out all the more clearly when
you set it against its human background. Why was it
that the writers of the Old Testament were able to rise
so far above their contemporaries in other nations in their
conception of God ? The answer is that they were specially
taught by God. But this Divine Ulumination did not turn
them into automata, nor was it given in equal measure to
aU. There are degrees of inspiration; there is progress
in the revelation made. God used human beings as the
channels of His revelation, and no human being is
infaUible. The Bible writers were not infaUible, and shared
in the scientific and historical outlook of their time. We,
to whom a fuUer knowledge has been given, can see their
mistakes and limitations. But we must stiU marvel at
their achievement and still confess that the spiritual trea
sures of the Bible are imsurpassed. It is not enough to
^ From the Bampton Lectures, 1814. An Inquiry into the
General Principles of Scripture Interpretation.

THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE 95
say that the Hebrew race had a genius for religion. That is
true, and that is why God selected that race as the medium
of His self -revelation. But we must go further, and
postulate a special iUumination by the Spirit of the hearts
and minds of the men who have given us the Bible. We
caU them inspired because we feel that, urUess God had
been teaching them, they would never have reached to
such heights of spiritual insight.
Our contention is that we should come to the study
of the Bible vrithout any preconceived opinion as to the
nature or mode of Inspiration.^ Who are we that we
should dictate to God how He should give His revelation ?
In this connection it is worth while to examine very briefly
how the older and more rigid view of inspiration arose.
The early Christian Church inherited from the Jews their
intense veneration for the Old Testament, which ulti
mately grew so strong that every letter of Scripture was
regarded as sacred. Influenced by this Jewish opinion,
and realising keenly the religious value of the Old and
New Testaments, the early Fathers for the most part
adopted a very strict view of inspiration. When the
Canon of Scripture was finally formed, it was very natural
that the books which gained admittance to this official
list should be regarded as something peculiarly sacred and
apart from aU other writings. Passing over many cen
turies, we come to the Reformation, when the Protestant
Churches of England and the Continent broke away from
the authority of Rome. The Reformers appealed to the
authority of Scripture, though such men as Luther and
Calvin kept a partiaUy open mind about the nature of
inspiration. It was in the seventeenth century, an age
of bitter theological controversy, when the Bible was being
1 In the remainder of the essay I have, vnth the Editor's kind
permission, made use of some articles which I wrote on " The
Bible and Modern Scholarship " in the Church Family News
paper in the spring of 1922.

96 THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
attacked by both Romanists and free-thinkers, that those
who were defending the Bible interpreted inspiration as
meaning infaUibUity. In place of Rome's rigid eccle
siastical system they set up an equaUy rigid system of
Scripture authority, which was almost universaUy accepted
in the Protestant Churches. It is a help to trace out the
origin of a belief. It puts us in a better position for
judging of its tmth. It enables us to see that in claiming
infallibility for the Bible we are making a claim which
the Bible never makes for itself.
I have left to the last the grave problem of the authority
of our Lord in regard to His references to the Old Testa
ment. It is a problem, grave in itself, and in the religious
issues which it is raising at the present time, particularly
among those who belong to the Evangelical school of
thought. Hostility to BibUcal criticism reaches its chmax
over this question, upon which no compromise is surely
possible. Let us approach it with frankness and rever
ence. Jesus frequently referred to the Old Testament.
He had been brought up on it, and, it would seem, had
specially studied the Psalms and the Prophets. Now
" He spake vrith authority " ; and attached a very high
value to the Old Testament, as pointing to Himself. He
clearly regarded the Scripture as being of Divine origin.
So far we are on common ground. Our difficulties begin
when we ask how far His authority extended. Are we
precluded from forming an independent judgment on a
literary problem because Jesus made a statement on the
matter? For example, He referred to Jonah as having
preached to the men of Nineveh, and in the parallel
passage in St. Matthew it is stated that He spoke of him
as having been three days and nights in the whale's beUy.
He said " remember Lot's wife," and spoke of Psalm ex.
asiiaving been written by David. Does this settle the
matter, and prove that Jonah was actuaUy swaUowed by

THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE 97
the whale, that Lot's wife was actually turned into a piUar
of salt, and that David was the author of the Psalm?
This is a real difficulty which is perplexing many devout
people. They feel that our Lord could not have said
anything which was untrue, and that it is an act of
irreverence on the part of the critics to suggest that David
did not write the Psalm, and that the story of Jonah is
an allegory, and the story of Lot's wife a legend. Now
let us note the seriousness of the dilemma in which we are
placed. On the one hand you have One who confessedly
" spake with authority," but, on the other, you have
human inteUigence, God's gift to man, which, after
weighing all the evidence and in a spirit of complete
reverence, decides that these statements of our Lord are
not to be taken as statements of historical fact. Are we
to abandon the use of our reason, or is there a way out
of the difficulty? The problem is concemed with the
nature and range of Christ's authority. I cannot help
feeling that those are wrong who interpret Christ's
authority in this strict fashion. Christ came to reveal
God to men, and to give men power to live as sons of
God. His authority is moral and spiritual. Does that
authority suffer if we think of Him as sharing the current
Jevrish opinion about the authorship or historicity of a
particular passage in the Old Testament? Was it part
of His mission to settle literary problems ? Would He have
been understood, would He not have perplexed men's
minds at that time, if He had taken any other view of
those questions than that current among His feUows?
The Jews beheved that David wrote Psalm ex. Scholars
tell us that the Psalm is of later date. Jesus in the
course of an argument vrith the Pharisees on another
subject quoted the current opinion about the authorship
of the Psahn. Is His spiritual authority really lessened
if we hold that David did not write the Psalm ? May we
H

98 THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
not use the same argument about His reference to Jonah,
and urge that our Lord's belief was that current at the
time in Jewish circles ? Indeed may we not go further
and refer to our own common practice of speaking of
fictitious characters as if they were real ? ^ We say
unhesitatingly, " That is what Hamlet said; that is how
the good Samaritan acted," without meaning to imply
that either actuaUy existed. How often we quote from
Pilgrim's Progress, saying " Christian felt like that when
he was in Giant Despair's castle," without any intention of
maintaining that Christian and the giant were real people.
The value of the lessons which Jesus wished to teach is
in no way impaired if we take the view which I am advocat
ing. If it is maintained that no word ever fell from the
lips of Jesus which did not conform to final tmth, then
He was right when He spoke of the sun " rising " and all
modem science is wrong. If it be answered that He was
here using a popular mode of speech, that is the very
position which the modem critic of the Bible takes in
reference to our Lord's utterances about the Old Testa
ment. It was the popular way of speaking to talk of
Moses as the giver of the law, and of David as the author
of the Psalms. The " Psalms of David " was the popular
name for the Psalter.
Behind this immediate problem which we are discussing
lies a deeper one, the problem of what limitations were
involved in our Lord's assumption of human nature.
Can we maintain that His manhood was real, if it carried
no hmitations with it ? He Himself confessed that He
was ignorant about the date of the Second Coming. If
knowledge of that was not necessary for His mission, why
'^ A prophet Jonah is mentioned in 2 Kings xiv. 25 as having
lived in the reign of Jeroboam II. There may have been a
tradition that he went to Nineveh. But the story of Jonah as
we have it in the Book of Jonah is obviously an allegory. Hence
he may fairly be called a fictitious character.

THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE 99
should we assume that a knowledge of these literary
questions was necessary? We cannot, I think, hold that
our Lord knew the tmth and yet did not reveal it. It
is more reverent to urge that " He condescended not to
know." In becoming man He took upon Himself the
limitations of human nature. Many Christians have
never really faced the question of what is involved in the
fact that Jesus was tmly man. In their thought of Him
the Godhead has overpowered the Manhood. Jesus was
God, but God only in so far as that was compatible with
being at the same time man. His Manhood was the
vehicle through which His Deity was revealed; just as
in the Bible the Divine revelation is given through human
instruments. Imperishable, then, and unsurpassed is the value of the
Bible, with its record of a gradual revelation culminating
in the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ. For aU time
humanity's chief spiritual riches must lie in the New
Testament, which tells the story of the life and work
and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, and describes the
experience of those early disciples who found out what
wealth was hidden in His Person, and how the Spirit of
Truth could make them " wise unto salvation." But the
New Testament cannot be properly understood apart
from the Old Testament. Both are part of the same
movement, and this essay has tried to show that criticism
has in no way destroyed the rehgious value of the earher
Hebrew Scriptures. Many people, however, have not yet
grasped this fact. One of the reasons why the practice
of Bible reading, as an integral part of the devotional life,
has largely disappeared, is that many are confused and
perplexed by the results of Biblical scholarship, especially
as these affect the Old Testament. They think that
critics have destroyed the value of the Bible and reduced
the Old Testament to a mass of legends. They have no

100 THE BIBLE AND ITS VALUE
idea of the splendid, constructive work of criticism, of
how it has made the Bible live anew and emphasised its
marvellous spiritual unity. But as a truer appreciation
of what the scholars have done spreads through the com
munity, and as their conclusions are made available for
the general public by the issue of cheap and simple books,
of which indeed a large number are already in existence,
the Bible vriU come again into its own, and will once more
be what it was to an earlier generation — the unrivaUed
treasure-house of spiritual truth.
V. F. Storr.

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
" What think ye of Christ? " is the perpetual problem
of Christian theology, but the pressure of the problem is
felt more acutely in some ages than in others. It is
being so felt to-day ; and there is not a httle resentment
that a matter should be re-opened which many regard
as having been settled once and for all by the concihar
decisions of the Church. But it is inevitable that, as
knowledge grows, the decisions of the past should be
criticised. One age cannot impose its theology upon the
next. Each age, if its theology is to be living, must
investigate anew its beliefs and the modes in which they
are set forth. We cannot help asking questions. Why
should we not ask theological questions ? And how can
we reasonably invoke the authority of the past to pro
nounce on problems, important aspects of which never
came at all within the purview of the past? The past
cannot have said the last word about problems which
were not then in existence.
It may not be amiss if I indicate briefly some of the
reasons which have brought this problem of Christ's
Person prominently to the front to-day. Much uneasi
ness wiU be dispelled if it can be shown that those who
are criticising the traditional Christology are not wanton
disturbers of our peace.
(a) The Creeds, as the Articles remind us, are based
upon Scripture. It is very natural, therefore, that with
lOI

102 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
the growth of Bibhcal criticism the statements of the
Creeds should in their turn become the object of critical
inquiry. Unless the Scriptural basis is sound, the credal
superstructure cannot be sound. Now hterary criticism
of the New Testament of necessity opens up many
questions of a doctrinal character. Did Christ Himself
claim Deity? Can we be sure that we understand the
meaning of the passages which appear to substantiate
that claim? What would the expressions used have
conveyed to the minds of His contemporaries ? Can they
rightly mean more for us than they meant for them ? In
this matter of New Testament criticism the cardinal issue
is that of the value to be attached to the Fourth Gospel.
That Gospel was written with the object of shovring that
Christianity was the one, universal, spiritual rehgion
gathering round the Person of Jesus Christ conceived as
God manifest in the flesh. But admittedly this Gospel
is less a history than an interpretation of Christ's Person.
This does not mean that there is not history in it, and
trustworthy history; but it does mean that the author
wrote it primarily with a theological interest and purpose.
At once questions such as these arise. Was the author
justified in caUing Jesus God? Were the words which
he puts iiito the mouth of Jesus words which Jesus
Himself used ? If we are to use this Gospel as evidence
of the Deity of Jesus, can we quote from it proof-texts?
Must we not rather take the broader ground, that the
interpretation of Christ's Person there given best accords
with what we know of His character, consciousness, and
influence in the world ?
{b) The growth of a feehng for history and the develop
ment of the historical method of study have led scholars to
investigate origins. Theology has been caught up in the
flowing tide of historical research. In particular, much
attention has been given to the Person of Jesus Christ,

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 103
and men have sought to realise Him as a living figure;
to see Him, not through the glasses of later doctrinal
speculation, but as He really was when He walked and
talked in Palestine. The main result of this " retum to
Jesus " has been a fuller appreciation of His true
humanity. But the more we insist, and rightly insist,
upon this, the more urgent becomes the question, In what
sense was He God ? How can a man be also God ?
(c) The rapid advance of the science of psychology has
helped to force the problem to the front, and has made
many feel that the definition of Christ's Person framed in
451 A.D. by the Council of Chalcedon requires revision.
That definition has ever since remained the authoritative
expression of the Church's belief vrith regard to the two
natures of our Lord, the human and the Divine; but
our attitude towards it has of necessity changed with
the growth of modem knowledge. In two respects the
definition is to-day felt to be unsatisfactory. In the
first place, though the framers of the definition clearly
meant to imply that the union of the two natures was so
close and living that there was only one personahty,
" one Christ," not two Christs, one human and one Divine,
we cannot but feel that they have left us with a dualism.
The human and the Divine are set side by side, conjoined,
but not organicaUy fused. The form taken by the
theological controversies of the period immediately
succeeding Chalcedon shows that the problem was not
satisfactorily solved. The Chalcedonian formula is so
framed that it has made possible the behef, which stiU
popularly obtains, that our Lord acted, now as man,
now as God. But if there is one thing which modem
psychology insists on more than another it is that
personality is an organic unity. A normaUy constituted
person is an organic whole vrith a single centre of con
sciousness and a single wiU, He is not made up of

104 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
separate faculties, but rather of elements fused into an
organic unity, none of which can be rightly estimated if
they are divorced from the whole to which they belong.
In the second place, we to-day in describing personality
should lay our main emphasis on the person's conscious
ness, vrill, and moral character. The ethical and volitional
aspects of personality are regarded as giving personality
its tme meaning. But in the Chalcedonian definition
the term used is " nature." And behind that word lay
all the earlier growth of Christology, which was dominated
by the word " substance," and the associations of the
latter term were carried over into the former. The makers
of these traditional definitions had to use the philosophical
ideas and terminology of their time, and the word " sub
stance " gave them just what they required. " Of one
substance with the Father " succinctly expressed the idea
that Christ was God. It is doubtful if we could find a
better term. But the fact remains that we to-day do
not think in terms of a substance philosophy ; nor is the
word " nature " very satisfactory, because it seems to
imply the existence of a kind of unorganised matter
waiting to be shaped by the wiU. But in a personality
nothing can exist apart from the centrahsing activity of
the personality. There is no such thing as human nature
in the abstract, nor is there a Divine nature in the abstract.
There are only human beings and God, centres of living
experience and concrete life. There can be no question
whatever that the impression which we receive, when we
read the Gospel story, is that we are reading about an
individual person like ourselves, possessed of a single
volitional centre and a single consciousness, a true
human being, who lived a genuine human hfe. When we
try to translate this impression into terms of speculative
theology, we must be tme to it. It is because many feel
that the doctrine of the two natures is a doctrine dealing

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 105
with abstractions and resulting in a dualism that they are
calling for a revision of it.^
{d) Once more, Christology is feeling the influence of
the change which has come over philosophical thought
upon the question of the relation of God to man. 'The
conception of Divine immanence, a conception which has
been steadily growing for one hundred and fifty years,
holds the field. God and man are no longer thought of
as apart, man on earth, God in some transcendent heaven,
but as organically related, God dweUing in man, and
man in God. " In Him we live and move and have our
being." Men are asking whether, if God is immanent in
all men, His immanence in Christ differs in kind from His
immanence in ourselves. Is the difference between Christ
and ourselves one of kind, or only of degree? Is the
ultimate goal of humanity to attain to the same measure
of union with God which Christ attained? Wherein
precisely does the uniqueness of Christ consist? I
question if there is any theological problem to-day which
needs more careful investigation than this of the Divine
immanence. Unless we define clearly what we mean by
God's indwelling, we may easily find ourselves adopting
ideas which are fundamentaUy un-Christian. For example,
by speaking of God as immanent in aU men, we may be
led to minimise the significance of Christ's Incamation,
either by thinking of incamation as a general process
going on continually in the race, or by misconceiving the
relation between man and God. Christian theology has
always seen in the Incamation an Act of God, by which
the Divine vrill stmck do-wn into human history in a
special manner for a redemptive purpose. If our theism
is to be Christian theism, we must defend the tmth that
1 I desire here to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. H. R.
Mackintosh's great book. The Person of Jesus Christ. No recent
work on Christology is so profound or illuminating.

106 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
God can break in on the accustomed order with special
acts of power. The Divine indweUing, again, may be
so interpreted as to deny what is meant by Creation.
This implies a fundamental distinction between man and
God, and the dependence of man, both for origin and
continuance, upon the Divine will. Because God pro
gressively reveals Himself through human nature, it
does not follow that humanity is God, nor that all men
have in them the potentiahty of becoming Christs. To
deny that there is any difference between man and God,
to affirm, as is so often done to-day, that essential
humanity is essential deity, is to be untrue to the teaching
of the Bible and of Christianity. Nor, I think, is it
sound philosophy.
Perhaps enough has been said to show that there are
to-day good reasons for investigating anew the problem
of Christ's Person. As Christians we need not fear the
issue. A faith which is afraid of criticism is a poor thing.
God wiU take care of His truth. It is for us to commit
ourselves to the guidance of the Spirit of Tmth.
The problem which confronts us may be summarily
stated in this way. We have to find the metaphysical
equivalent of the value which Jesus Christ has for faith.
For faith Christ has the value of God. He is the one and
only Saviour, who on the Cross died for the sins of men.
He is the Conqueror of death, who by His Easter victory
brought life and immortality to hght. He is the Ascended
Christ, who now reigns, exercises power, and is slowly
drawing humanity to Himself, so that finaUy aU things
may be summed up in Him. In the daily hfe of the
disciple He is the Friend and Companion, who com
municates hfe to those who follow Him. Let us note that
an important part of the problem of His Person consists in
finding an explanation of the influence which He is exercis
ing and has in the past exercised upon human hves and

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 107
characters. Unless we are prepared to dismiss Christian
experience as an illusion bom of auto-suggestion and not
grounded in any objective reahty, we have to aUow that
Christ is now hving and is a fount of life and power to
men. Whatever constmction we put upon His Person
must be adequate to cover this abiding influence. It is
not enough to assert that Christ has for us the value of
God, beca.use He perfectly reveals the character of God.
We want to know whether He is God, whether in the reahn
of ultimate reality there is something objective which
corresponds to this faith-value. We have also to do
justice to His tme humanity. In Christian thought His
humanity has been too often overpowered by His Deity,
and there are many to-day who have never really given
fuU value to the doctrine of His manhood. But the
Cathohc faith is that He is " Perfect God and Perfect
Man." Now in seeking to construe His Person we must begin
with His humanity, for we understand something at any
rate about our own human nature, and so start from
familiar ground. Let me again emphasise the fact that,
as we read the Gospels, we unquestionably receive the
impression that we are dealing with a real human being,
and not with a lay figure. Jesus comes before us as a
man among men, a Jew of Palestine, living at a definite
historical period, sharing in many matters the outlook
of His contemporaries, and passing through all the normal
stages of human growth. His individuality is marked,
more marked than that of any other character in history.
Anyone who will read such a book as Glover's The Jesus
of History wiU see how extraordinarily human Jesus is
in the Gospel story. We can adopt no theory of His
Person which obscures His essential humanity. The
doctrine that His humanity was impersonal, which early
obtained currency in the Church, and is still to-day

108 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
defended in some quarters, seems to me so to obscure it.
Has anyone ever met with an impersonal humanity?
Does not the conception belong to a mode of thought
which we have outgrown ? The schoolmen believed that
universals such as humanity really existed, and that
individuals shared in them, thus partaking in a common
essence or substance. We regard such universals as
abstractions, as generalisations of thought. The qualities
or properties which are common to a group of individuals
do not exist apart from the individuals. There were two
reasons why the doctrine of an impersonal humanity was
promulgated. In the first place, the Church wished to
avoid Nestorianism, which attributed to our Lord an
independent human personality ; and in the second place
found it difficult to conceive how a man could have the
universal relationship to the race which Jesus had. The
heart of the problem is, of course, just this : how to combine
within the limits of the same personal hfe the concrete
individual humanity of Jesus with the world-wide
sovereignty of the Christ. We do not solve the problem
by mnning away from it ; and we run away from it if we
deny that Jesus was a human being like ourselves.^
Our real troubles begin at this point. How can the
Man Jesus be also God ? And in what sense is He God ?
How can the two natures of traditional theology coexist
in one Person? One thing the Gospel narrative forbids
us to do. It forbids us to say that Jesus did this as man,
that as God ; wept by the grave of Lazarus as man, but
as God stilled the storm. There is no trace of any
division in His Personahty. He had not two volitional
1 I have made some use in this essay of the paper on the
Incarnation which I read in Manchester Cathedral in the winter
of 1922. That paper is published in Fundamentals of the Faith,
which is a reprint of four lectures given in the Cathedral. My
thanks are due to Messrs G. J. Palmer and Sons, 7, Portugal
Street, for permission to quote from it.

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 109
centres or two centres of consciousness. The fusion of
the Manhood and of the Godhead was complete, and
resulted in a single organic unity of Person.
Is the assertion that He had only one will heretical,
and a lapsing back into Monothelitism? Let me very
briefly deal with this. Monothelitism, or the doctrine
that Christ had only one wiU, was condemned in 680 A.D.
at the sixth oecumenical council of Constantinople, which
affirmed that there were in our Lord two natural vriUs,
or two natural energies. Between these, however, there
was no opposition, since the human wiU was perfectly
subordinate to the Divine vrill. Therefore in actual fact,
in the concrete volitioning of His life, there was only one
dynamic centre. If two vriUs are perfectly fused, the
resultant is one volitional activity. The controversy
over the two natures inevitably expanded so as to embrace
the question of the will. The Dyothelites wished to show
that nature included wiU, and that duality of will was an
essential implication of duality of nature. The Mono
theUtes were determined to insist on the unity of Christ's
Person. The problem was to form a clear conception of
the relation of the two wUls in actual working. The
decision of the Council does not appear to me to settle
the difficulty. Just as " nature " was taken in abstraction
from the living personahty, so " will " is treated in the
abstract. The factors in the situation, of which we have
to take account, are these. We have to do full justice
to the genuine humanity of our Lord, and we have to
maintain the unity of His Person. We have also to rule
out all notion of two vrills acting intermittently, for that
violates the unity of the Person. Nor can we adopt any
idea of an amalgam or semi-physical composition of wUls,
which is surely meaningless. What is left for us but to
say that the human vriU of Jesus was so absolutely one
with God's wiU, that it was a perfect instmment of the

110 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
Divine purpose ? Christ was God under the limitations
of human nature, and therefore His wUl was God's wiU.
But no distinction can be drawn between His volition as
man and His volition as God, otherwise you are back in a
dualism. We cannot sunder into parts the harmonious
unity of our Lord's Person.
What grounds, now, have we for attributing Godhead
to Jesus ?
(a) A study of His consciousness, as that is revealed in
the Gospels, shows Him standing in a relation of peculiar
intimacy with His Father. He knows and manifests the
Father's mind and purpose. His communion with God
is unbroken. And knowing intimately the purpose of
God, He perfectly fulfils it. Obedience to God charac
terises His hfe throughout. There are no discords in His
character ; He has no divided aims. Throughout His
life the controUing principle is, "I came not to do mine
own will, but the will of Him that sent me."
{b) He comes before us as one who is without sin, who
shows no consciousness of sin in His own life, who judges
sin with penetrating judgment, and claims to forgive it.
Hostile criticism has not succeeded in weakening the
impression we receive that He was sinless. We may
regard His sinlessness as both cause and effect of His
pecuhar intimacy with His Father. His perfect com
munion with God enabled Him to resist aU the attacks of
evil; and, conversely, because He was thus flawless. He
could perfectly reveal the Divine vriU and character.
(c) The complete poise and balance of His Personality
is a striking expression of His uniqueness. Other human
beings show some excess or defect in their qualities, and
their development is never perfectly harmonious. But
Jesus appears as one whose growth to manhood was
without any one-sidedness, who always knew vrithout
any hesitation what to do and say, and moved through life

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 111
always sure of His ground, and in complete harmony with
Himself and God.
{d) Has there ever been anything to match His teaching,
before or since, either as regards form or matter ? If we
had nothing but His parables we should account Him the
most consummate teacher of the race. But when we
consider the teaching as a whole, note its universality of
application to human need and aspiration all the world
over, mark its spiritual insight, its power of appeal, its
life-giving character, we can only bow our heads in
reverence before the teacher. The originality of the
teaching has sometimes been questioned. Doubtless
much that Jesus taught had been taught before, particu
larly in the Old Testament. But this in no way detracts
from His originality. In the first place, He came to fulfil
the past, and belongs to the same line of spiritual purpose
as that revealed in the Old Testament. Hence we should
expect that he would re-affirm the deepest truths taught
by psalmist and prophet. In the second place, originality
consists not so much in saying what is absolutely new
(though Jesus did say quite new things) as in fusing
in a fresh and living way, so that it emerges with new
power and attractiveness, what had been less well said in
earlier times. The Johannine statement, " The words
that I speak unto you are spirit and life," is abundantly
tme, as Christian experience has proved.
{e) In our estimate of Christ's Person one of the most
determinative factors is, of course. His Resurrection
and what foUowed it; for the Resurrection cannot be
adequately studied apart from the Ascension and Pente
cost, and the present spiritual sovereignty of Christ. If
the life and teaching in Palestine are volume I of the
story, volume II, beginning vrith the Resurrection, is
the record of the immeasurable results which have flowed
from His Person, life, and work, seen in a single, com-

112 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
prehensive view. Granted that the Resurrection is a
fact (and whatever difficulties of detail there may be in
the story, difficulties about the consistency of the records,
or the mode of the rising from the dead, they do not, I
think, overthrow the central belief), then that fact is an
imperious challenge to explain the Personahty of Him
who rose. What other name but God can we give to
One possessed of the character sketched above, and
wielding now so wide a spiritual rule ?
A word must here be said in reply to those who argue
that, if we were sinless, we too should triumph in the same
way over death, and that consequently there is no reason
for making Christ different in kind from ourselves. His,
it is said, is merely human nature at its best and fuUest ;
the difference between Him and us is one of degree only.
For the sake of argument let us grant that sinlessness in
us would carry with it the power to conquer death. But
we cannot stop there. We must go on to consider the
implications of Christian experience throughout the
centuries which have foUowed on those " stainless years "
in Palestine. That experience has always referred itself
to Christ's Person as its living, objective ground. Unless
you can explain away that reference as iUusory, what
Christ is doing now is the vital matter. And what He
does now, and has done since He left the earth, seems to
me to mark Him off from men as a Being who cannot by
any possibihty be brought solely vrithin the terms of
humanity. Is it seriously contended by those who speak
of our being " potential Christs," or of " the Christ in aU
men," that we finite human beings are destined to die
for a race of men, to exercise the spiritual sway which
He exercises, or to grow to the dimensions which we
believe He attained? No; Christ's career marks Him
out as unique, and the term " God " alone describes Him.
It is an old puzzle when a difference in degree becomes

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 113
a difference in kind ; and where the principle of continuity
obtains, as it does in a world which is the scene of an
evolution, it may at times be difficult to solve it. But
differences in kind are not incompatible with continuity;
indeed, they depend upon it, for you cannot call two things
different unless they possess some common qualities.
Life differs from the inorganic, but the substances of the
inorganic world are present in the body of the hving
organism, only they are infused by a new principle and
shaped to new purposes. Because we call Christ unique,
and so different in kind from men, that does not imply
that His was not a genuine humanity. Between ourselves
and Him in constitution there is a true continuity, but
there is more in Him than in us, something new, which
we do not possess, and surely never shall possess. What
this " more " is we shall consider in a moment. New
kinds are always emerging in evolution. Hence from the
evolutionary standpoint uniqueness is not an impossible
conception. But evolution is not a self-explanatory
process. We have to find a metaphysical basis for it.
The theist makes the wiU of God the ultimate cause of the
evolution of the world, and reserves to that wiU the power
to act in special ways for the execution of the Divine
purposes. If the coming of Christ was, as we believe, a
speciali act of the Divine WiU, should we not antecedently
expect that there would be something unique about His
Person ?
Can we now still further define His uniqueness? We
reach, I think, the heart of the matter if we ask whether
He is different from us in origin. Let us be clear as to
what is at stake. We have to choose between two t57pes
of interpretation of His Person and work. One is caUed
the Adoptionist view, which regards Jesus as a man
speciaUy selected by God, and speciaUy endowed with the
Spirit for a great redemptive work. The other is the

114 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
traditional orthodox view, which, framed originaUy in a
soteriological interest, stiU maintains itself on soterio-
logical grounds. It asserts that self-sacrificing love moved
God to come to earth Himself in the Person of His Son
for the redemption of sinful men. God gave Himself for
the saving of mankind. There can be no question that
it is this latter interpretation which has given Christianity
its vitality. In Christianity the soteriological interest is
supreme. It is a Saviour who is the central figure in
Christian experience. No theory of Christ's Person is
adequate, or can do justice to the soteriology, which is of
the very essence of our faith, which makes Him less than
God under the limitations of human nature. In origin,
therefore, Christ belongs to the realm of etemal reahty.
Theology has sought to emphasise this fact by speaking
of His pre-existence.
The profoundest issue raised at the recent Conference
of Modem Churchmen at Cambridge was precisely this.
Did Jesus Christ pre-exist ? If we say that He did, what
exactly do we mean by the assertion ? Now it is obvious
that our hmited finite minds cannot form any clear
conception of the interior hfe of the Godhead. We can
only feel our way towards a metaphysics of Christ's
Person, which shaU not neglect elements which faith
feels to be essential. The doctrine of the Etemal Trinity
is our attempt to frame such a metaphysics. The
important point to remember here is, that Judaistic
monotheism, which the Christian Church inherited, was
modified because a place had to be found in God for the
significance of Christ. The thought of God was immensely
enriched by the Person and work of Christ. As those
early theologians surveyed the materials vrith which
they had to build, these were the factors which confronted
them. First, the Personality of Christ, which could not
be explained solely in terms of manhood. Next, the

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 115
teaching of Christ, which spoke of God as Father. Thirdly,
the consciousness of Christ, which revealed itself as the
consciousness of a Son standing in pecuhar relations of
intimacy with His Father. Could they do othenvise than
insist that this relation of Son and Father was expressive
of something essential and ultimate in the Being of God ?
Must there not be distinctions within the Godhead?
Must not Christ be the Etemal Son with a hfe of His own
before He came to earth ? There was also the thought of
the Divine Love which gave meaning to the word Father.
Is not Love an active energy ? Must not an Etemal Love
have etemaUy an object upon which it is exercised ? Must
not the Father eternally have a Son to love?, In this
kind of fashion was the Trinitarian conception of God
reached. We have stiU, however, to ask whether we can more
precisely define Christ's pre-existence. The human con
sciousness of Jesus did not pre-exist. The Church has
never taught that : it has never attributed humanity to
Christ before the Incamation. Nor, again, can we affirm
that the pre-existence of Christ means that He pre-existed
as a separate Personality and Consciousness, for does not
that mean tritheism, and destroy the unity of God? I
question if we can say more than that God pre-existed;
but God, not as a bare unity, but as a Being, whose
essential nature as Love involves the existence within
Himself of personal distinctions, these distinctions,
however, being subordinated to a unity. If we are to find
an adequate metaphysics of Christ's Person, we must think
of His Sonship as etemal. But we cannot give a logical
rendering of the thought. We cannot go further than
St. Augustine, who said, " We speak of Three Persons,
not in order that we may affirm it, but because we cannot
be silent about it."
Christ, then, is God. His origin is to be sought within

116 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
the Godhead. His present spiritual sovereignty forbids
us to attribute to Him anything less than Deity. But
when He walked in Palestine He was true man. How can
we form any inteUigible conception of such a Being?
How can we comprehend, within the hmits of a single,
personal life, the birth at Bethlehem, the subsequent
growth to manhood, the Resurrection and Ascension, and
the spiritual power which He now exercises? We can
do it only if we think of Christ as growing to an increasing
fullness. We must boldly apply to Him the conception
of development.^ Note, however, that this does not
mean that He grew to be something which originaUy He
was not. He did not grow to be God, At every stage
in His career He was God under the limitations imposed
by that stage. He was perfect as a Babe, as a Boy, as a
Man, but all the while He was growing to completer
self-expression. He " grew in wisdom," in character,
in consciousness of His destiny, in communion with
His Father. Perfection, we must remember, does not
necessarily involve completeness. A rosebud can be
perfect as weU as a rose, though it is not fuUy developed.
Perfection is a relative term. As He grew His essential
Godhead was increasingly revealed, untU at last the
limitations imposed by His manhood feU away, and He
entered into His final destiny of universal rule.
It must always be impossible for us fully to imderstand
Christ's Person, because we are deahng with something
unique. But if we take as our guiding thought the
progressive self-revelation of God in Nature and man,
then it is not unreasonable to suppose that, after human
personahty had appeared, God should reveal Himself
through a perfect personality, thus shovring what the
tme type of manhood is. And if personality was to be
1 This is the governing conception of Mackintosh's The Person
of Jesus Christ,

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 117
the organ of God's self-manifestation, it was natural
that this perfect Person should go through all the stages
of normal human development from birth to death. But
if this is our determining conception, we must be tme to
it, and must be prepared to allow that there was a real
self-limitation on the part of God in assuming our human
nature. Moberly's words in Atonement and Personality
should be taken to heart by aU :
" He is, then, not so much God and man, as God
in and through, and as man. He is one indivisible
Personahty throughout. . . . The Incarnate never leaves
His Incamation. God, as man, is always, in all things,
God as man. He no more ceases, at any point, to be
God under methods and conditions essentiaUy human,
than under these essentially human methods and con
ditions He at any point ceases to be God."
If He was tme man, then His Deity must be sought in
and through His manhood. What belongs essentiaUy
to human nature must belong to Christ. We cannot,
for example, refuse to admit that JHe was limited in
knowledge on the ground that He was God. That is to
be untrue to our affirmation that He was really man;
for limitation of faculty is a universal characteristic of
human nature. As Bishop Moorhouse put it in his
striking essay on the Limitations of our Lord's Knowledge
in The Teaching of Christ : " to affirm, then, that Divine
modes of thought belong to the humanity of Christ, as so
many do, is either to be guilty of a contradiction in terms,
or to fall unconsciously into a monophysite denial of our
Lord's tme humanity. It is to be either iUogical or
heretical." Space does not aUow of our discussing vrith
any detail the range of the limitations involved by the
fact that the humanity of Jesus was real.^ But we may
1 Cf . Essay on The Bible and its Value, p. 96 S,

118 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
put the matter broadly in this way. In His moral and
spiritual intuitions He was one with God ; and when He
spoke of God, of His own relation to Him, of God's relation
to us, of sin, and the great etemal spiritual tmths, there
we may feel that we have a revelation of ultimate reahty.
There His perfect humanity was a flawless medium for
God's self -manifestation. But in matters not directly
concemed with the heart of His redemptive mission, such
as science or Biblical criticism. He shared the outlook of
His contemporaries. It was not His province to reveal
the final truth about matters, which the human mind is
capable of investigating by its own powers. I am
pleading that we shaU do justice to His humanity, and that
we shaU adopt no speculative theory of His Person which
shall in any way make that humanity unreal. What lies
behind the present Modernist movement is the feeling
(surely not groundless) that theology, while affirming in
words the reality of His manhood, has not yet given fuU
value to the implications of the thought. It may be that
the battle vrith Arianism wiU have to be re-fought. AU the
signs point in that direction. But of this we may rest
assured, that faith wiU not easily accept any view of
Christ's Person which refuses to endow Him with the
attribute of Deity.
In conclusion, let me point out that from a nature
possessed of the endowment which we believe Jesus
possessed, we should antecedently expect activities which
we call miraculous. The records of miraculous action
must be tested, each one on its merits. It may be that
aUowance has to be made for an element of ideahsing.
But the point I want to make is this, that we have no
means of saying what is or is not possible for a sinless
being of heavenly origin, such as Christianity holds Jesus
to have been. Miracle is not an easy word to define,
nor am I caUed on here to define it, or to speculate

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 119
whether as the human race advances in knowledge we
too may not be able to do some of the " mighty works "
which Jesus did. The fact remains that, if you seek to
ehminate miracle from the records, you are left with the
mere fragments of a story. Let anyone try to write the
life of Jesus, leaving out aU His reputed miracles, and
the teaching and conversations based upon them, and see
what remains. The greatest of the miraculous happen
ings is the Resurrection, and that is one of the comer-
stones of Christianity. The Incamation itself is a
miracle, for no other being like Jesus has ever appeared
upon earth. And this is tme, whether we are ready to
accept the story of the Virgin Birth or not. Those who
disbelieve that story are caUed on to show how the story
arose, if it were not true. Jt is not, I think, sufficient to
say that it arose as part of a general tendency to exalt
Christ's Person. We should not to-day make belief in it
our first line of defence, or maintain that a man who does
not accept it cannot believe in the essential Divinity of
Christ. We should rather urge that, if the miracle of the
Resurrection came at the end of our Lord's hfe, it is
fitting that a miracle should come at the beginning.
Different minds vrill attach a differing theological signifi
cance to the Virgin Birth. Some will refuse to place
theological emphasis upon it. Others vrill insist that
there is a real connection between the sinlessness of Jesus
and His birth from a Virgin, and will argue that, since
sin has somehow affected the physical constitution of the
race, a physical miracle is required for the appearance of
a sinless being. To this the reply wiU be made that, if a
physical taint is inherited, it can be inherited equally
from the mother's side, and that therefore in strict logic
we should postulate the sinlessness of the Blessed Virgin.
One general consideration we should, I think, bear in
mind. The more we emphasise the connection between

120 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST
our Lord's sinlessness and His supematural birth, the
greater danger are we in of making His moral probation
unreal. If we are to preserve His genuine humanity we
must surely find the ground of His sinlessness in His wiU,
rather than in anything physical. That He was really
tempted and was called on to use moral effort is a tmth
to be vigorously guarded. We should do nothing to
remove Him out of the circle of our own ethical experience.
The task, then, which hes before our theologians is to
see whether they can so present anew the Person of Jesus
Christ as, on the one hand, to avoid what seem to be
defects in the traditional mode of presentation ; and, on
the other, to preserve the deep redemptive value of His
Person, which it has always been the object of Christology
jealously to guard.
V. F. Storr.

VI
THE WORK OF OHRIST
" The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that
which is lost." " Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners." " The Father hath sent the Son to be
the Saviour of the world." Thus our Lord and His
two chief apostles epitomise in almost identical terms
the work which He came to do. He came to save,
to save a world of sinners from aU evU unto aU good.
The chief end of Evangelicalism is so to make known the
Gospel of full salvation through Christ that He may be
experienced by aU as Saviour; the task of the modem
Evangelical is to interpret to modem men and women
in the hght of modern thought, with aU its emphasis on
personality, the meaning of this salvation, and to do
so vrith a truthfulness which wiU, as far as it is ever
possible, satisfy their reason, and with a beauty of moral
appeal which wiU move their hearts and stir their wiUs.
The object of this essay is first of all to give a positive
and constructive interpretation of the work of Christ
which the writer believes to be true to the deepest teach
ing of the Bible, true to the facts of human experience
as we understand them in these modem days, continuous
in line of development with the theories of the past,
and generally representative of the point of view of Liberal
Evangelicalism (sections I-III). The treatment here
wiU naturally be theological. The latter portion of the
essay wiU attempt to show that the Gospel can be preached
121

122 THE WORK OF CHRIST
to-day with aU the passion and conviction vrith which
the great Christian Evangelists of the past preached it
to the people of their day (section IV).
We turn at once to the Bible as the source of the Gospel
which we seek to explain. In the Old Testament Revela
tion the work of Christ had been clearly foreshadowed.
The idea of salvation through the vicarious suffering
of God and self-oblation of the sinner is one of the domi
nant notes of the Old Testament. The New Testament
is the natural fountain from which we draw our clearest
knowledge of the saving work of Christ, because it is
the original record of the life and teaching of the Saviour
Himself and of the earliest inspired interpretations of
His meaning for mankind. Within the New Testament
we give supreme value to the Gospel Record of the hfe
and teaching of Christ. By what He said, by the life
He lived, and by the way He died. He has given us a
perfectly clear and unmistakable gospel of God and man
and salvation.^ His teaching must be our primary
standard of reference.

I. The Problem of Salvation
The first necessity in explaining the meaning of the
work of Christ is to caU to mind the setting into which
it fits. Our theory of salvation vriU depend upon our
ideas of the character of God, the meaning of human
life, the nature of sin. Divine wrath, punishment, and
judgment. We must see what the plight of man was
from which the Saviour needed to rescue him.
I . Our starting point is the nature of God. God is Love.^
He is a Personal Father of infinite love. We must go
further, and say that God is only Love ; all His attributes

1 St. John vi. 63, 68.
- I. John iv. 8 and passim.

THE WORK OF CHRIST 123
and activities are simply functions of His love. We
must say this because it is truest to the idea of God which
we have been given in Jesus, and also because we must
believe that " what should be highest in us is highest
in God, namely, love." ^
Now we may admit at once that we do not know a
thousandth part of what Love means at its highest and
best. It is just because of this failure that our knowledge
of the truth breaks dovra. If we would begin to under
stand the meaning of salvation, we must actively call
up into our consciousness aU the noblest instincts of our
best loves and consider them in aU their action and
reaction in experience as we know it, and then attribute
them to God. Think of what the love of a good father
towards his child would mean, if there were added to it
the tenderness of a mother's love, the companionship
of a brother's love, and the intimate sympathy of the
love of husband and wife. His love would be utterly
benevolent; he would never cease to desire all that
was good for his chUd so long as the chUd existed ; nothing
the child could ever do would make him wish to inflict
upon the child any suffering which was not simply and
solely for the good of the child or the other chUdren of
the family; his righteousness would be another name
for his unchanging love in its moral self-consistency.
His love would be awe-inspiring in its demands ; it would
never rest content with anything less than the highest
in his chUd; his holiness would be but another name
for his holy love. Should his chUd sin, this holy love
would express itself in active antagonism towards his
evU doing ; but it would not seek to injure or to destroy.
Should the other chUdren of the famUy be hurt or cor
rupted through the sin of the erring chUd, the father's
punishment would be severe, but its object would be
I Cf, I. Cor. xiu. 13.

124 THE WORK OF CHRIST
directed solely towards the exposing and checking of
the evU, never towards the hurt of the chUd or the driving
of him further from himself. His justice would be another
name for the refusal of his love to disregard his chUd's
wrongdoing, and thus aUow him to think of his father
as something lower than the highest. Furthermore,
the shame of the child's sin would be felt most acutely
by the father, the more acutely the more close and sym
pathetic his love. FinaUy, if the child should sonow-
fuUy and genuinely repent, and tum his vriU once again
towards his father's ideals, his father ought to, and would,
forgive him freely, receiving him back by progressive
stages into the intimacies of fellowship according as he
was able to enter into them, the only limitation being
the child's growing capacity to understand and do his
father's vriU. He would know that, given time, his chUd
would amend the harm he had done among the other
chUdren by the positive influence of his new obedience
and love.
Such is the delivery of our search into the noblest
meanings of our own love as we should wish it to be.
Just because it is the highest that we know, we cannot
attribute less to God, otherwise He would not be God,
for He would not be Love. Love is the unchangeable
nature of God.
2. AU this being so, when God made man in His ovra
image He made him with the potentialities of a nature
like His own, a nature capable of loving perfectly.^ He
is capable, in the first place, of loving God perfectly.
God is the Father of each human being, and each human
being is a child of the Father, and capable of living in
perfect filial relationship with Him. Again, man's nature
is such that he is capable of loving his brother man per
fectly, as God loves each. The goal of humanity is that
1 St. Matt. xxii. 37-40.

THE WORK OF CHRIST 125
it should be a family whose Father is God, and the very
essence and mamstay of whose life is God-like love.
Complete feUowship between God and man and between
man and man is the meaning of human life. It is God's
plan for humanity. It could not be otherwise, God
Himself being Love.
3. But it is more than a plan, it is an order. Nature
reveals to us a world of order and a God of order behind
it. Everything that lives can live and develop only as
it obeys the law of its nature. The same holds tme
in the world of human life. God, being a God of law
and order, has so planned human personality and relation
ships that it is a necessity of man's tme nature, as weU
as his tmest freedom and blessedness, to live in perfectly
loving relationship with God as Father and with his
feUow human beings as brothers. Any breach of this
law of man's nature must as inevitably lead to injury
to his personality, as in the so-called natural world a
breach of the law of its nature inevitably leads to injury
or to destruction of the organism which violates it.^
This and this alone is the meaning of the moral law which
governs human hfe on its spiritual side.^
4. Sin is therefore the state of the man who wUfuUy
violates the law of his own nature by adopting an attitude
of self-wiU towards God and selfishness towards his feUow-
men.' Every conceivable form of sin can ultimately
be resolved into a reversal of the law of highest love.
Every imaginable act of sin is an act against God, who
is Love ; it is also an act against the whole body of God's
famUy, which hves only by love. It is the life of self-
banishment from the Father's love and human feUowship.
This is the specificaUy Christian conception of sin.
5. The consequences of sin are far reaching. Its effect
on man is that it destroys his personahty. " The soul
1 Gal. vi. 7. ' Rom. xiii. 10. ' Cf. I. John. iii. 4, with iv. 21.

126 THE WORK OF CHRIST
that sinneth it shaU die." Every sinful act inevitably
injures the personahty of the man who commits it.
The injury may be immediately visible in the man's
physical or moral condition or in some reaction on him
of the person against whom he has sinned. On the other
hand, the injury may be for the time being entirely
invisible, lying deeply hidden in the recesses of his mind
and soul ; but it is none the less real.^ The new psychology
is explaining to us the many ways in which this takes
place. Sin injures a man's memory, producing evil
" complexes " and undesirable " subconscious motives."
It has an effect on his wiU, producing on every occasion,
with inexorable certainty, an increase of the habitual
tendency to repeat the sin. Worst of all, it injures his
idea of God. Man ought to have been able to understand
and realise that God is Love, because he is made in God's
image and capable of understanding Him. But man has
spoUed the image of God by becoming selfish, suspicious,
and vindictive, with the consequence that he imagines
that God is like himself, selfish, suspicious, and vindictive.^
Men are afraid of God vrith a wrong kind of fear. They
know how vindictively they treat each other when one
hurts another, and so they imagine that God wiU deal
with them likevrise. They do not believe that God stiU
loves them and has no desire to injure them beyond the
injury which they have already brought upon themselves
by their own sin. A deep sense of " guilt " in the sense
of the deserving of a retributive stroke from God is set
up in their minds. Or the fear of God may be of another
kind. Man sees the pain and suffering of the natural
world, and, not having the experience of love in human
life to counterbalance it, he becomes alienated from the
God of nature, believing Him to be hateful, harmful,
callous, cold.
1 I. Tim. v. 24, 25. 2 Cf Rom. I. 23, with 29-31.

THE WORK OF CHRIST 127
The injury of sin to man's idea of God may act from yet
another quarter. One of the worst things about sin is
that men do not realise how serious it is. They excuse
sin in each other, and fall into the mistake of imagining
that God excuses it too. They do not repent because
they do not want to repent, and they do not want to
repent because they do not understand what sin is.
What is true of human individuals is true of human
society. Sin is a state of society which is selfish. It in
jures and ultimately destroys it, splitting it up into isolated
groups of warring individuals and classes and nations.
But sin has its effect also on God. Because He is
man's Father, His love for man is always what it has been,
an unchangeable desire to bless; but the activity of
His love is interrupted. There can no longer be the
interplay of mutual feUowship which is love in action.^
Further, He must continue to will and to support the
moral order by which man brings upon his own head
the misery and injury of his sin.^ He must also, because
He is man's Father, set Himself in antagonism and opposi
tion to His sinning chUdren, not with the purpose of further
injuring them, but only with the object of checking them
in every way consistent with their freedom of wiU, and
of bringing them back to Himself. He becomes a " love-
made-angry God."^ What we speak of as His " wrath "
is the reaction of His holy love against sin.
6. And what is the meaning of punishment ? It is that
corruption and degeneration of personality which, as
we have seen, is the inevitable result of violating the law
of love. A person acts selfishly ; injury to the personality
inevitably ensues ; that is his punishment. A person
acts selfishly towards the community or family of men;
the family is injured, and the injury inevitably reacts
1 Is. lix. 2. 2 St. Matt. xiu. 12-15.
' George Macdonald, The Diary of an Old Soul.

128 THE WORK OF CHRIST
on the individual in ways seen or unseen; that is the
punishment for the sin. Every act of lovelessness puts
us out of harmony with God; that is the punishment.
" The Divine punishment is the Divine reaction against
sin, expressing itself through the whole constitution or
system of things under which the sinner lives." ^
There is no sin which goes unpunished. If the implica
tions of aU that has been written above on the effects
of sin are thought out in aU their variety and fullness, it
will be understood that the sayings of Scripture are utterly
tme, that " Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shaU he
reap," * and " Be sure your sin wUl find you out." ^ The
process begins in this life and is carried to its end in the
life after death. " Sin fulfUs its own punishment ; justice
is axiomatic. God's judgment and punishment take
effect as spiritual degeneracy and alienation from God. . . .
And the final end of such separation from God must be
total death." *
But even this punishment which God inflicts by His
moral order is an activity of His love. More and more
the moral consciousness of the State is coming to realise
that the object of civU punishment is not retributive but
reformatory. It is certainly so in Divine punishment.
" God's object is not to inflict pain on the unrepentant
sinner. . . God infficts no pain without a moral purpose."*
Such suffering as faUs on the evU doer, faUs on him for
reclamation, not retribution.*
^ Dr. Denney. ^ Gal. vi. 7. ^ Num. xxxii. 23.
* Douglas White, Forgiveness and Suffering. See Rom. vi.
26. 5 ji,ig_ See Hos. v. 14; v. 3.
^ Hence if we wish to speak of punishment as inflicted by God,
the word must be entirely relieved of the idea of personal vengeance
or reparation, and confined to those disciplinary consequences
of sin which God's loving moral purpose for His children requires.
Since the idea of punishment is inextricably connected in popular
thought and usage with some element of personal reparation,
it is perhaps better still not to use the word in relation to God,
but to speak only of consequence.

THE WORK OF CHRIST 129
Such then was the condition of affairs which Divine
love had to meet before the Incamation, and stiU has to
meet to-day. Man had faUed to fiUfil the law of love,
alienated himself from the life of God, brought upon
himself the injury which foUows from the working of
the Divine moral order. He was unrepentant, and
unable truly to repent. He was blinded to the tme
nature of God, and also to the possibilities of his own
true nature. He was in bondage, and unable to set
himself free. God in His love had to devise a way of
At-one-ment by which He could bring His chUdren into
perfect feUowship with Himself. He must seek to save
each individual child. He must seek to save the whole
human family, bringing to it its destined life of mutual
love and feUowship. This was God's " problem." The
work of Christ was, or rather eternaUy is, to solve it.
How He has done so let us now consider.
II. The Work of Christ — His Incarnation, Life,
AND Death
When God desired thus to save mankind, He did the
only thing which Love could do : He identified Himself
completely with man in order that by the power of His
personal influence He might bring him back to Himself.
It was the act of God in which He took aU the initiative.
He made Himself " at one " with man in his misery
and sin in order that He might make man " at one "
with Himself in His blessedness and holy love. He
became " Immanuel," God with us, that He might be
" Jesus," our Saviour. In Jesus Christ God entered
right into human life personaUy as a man. In His hfe
and in His death by the infinite sympathy of a perfect
love He identified Himself vrith man; as the Risen,
Ascended, Living Christ, by His indwelhng personal

130 THE WORK OF CHRIST
influence, He stiU identifies Himself with us, redeeming,
saving, transforming our lives.^ The extent to which
we understand this activity of God's love vriU be measured
chiefly by the extent to which we have ourselves entered
into an experience of the same kind with those whom
we truly love. Its consequences for man are manifold.
Let us first consider the work of Christ in His Incamation,
Life, and Death, and then His work as the Living Christ.
But let us enter on this study with three things clear
in our minds. Firstly, the Christ of history was and ever
is God, so that in everything which He said and did
and was it was God Himself who was acting and revealing
Himself. Secondly, He was always reaUy human. It
is not within the scope of this essay to attempt a recon
cUiation of these two truths.^ That they are true is
the foundation on which Christianity and our hope of
salvation is built. And thirdly, His birth and life and
death are inseparable from each other. His death was
the consummation of His hfe, the supreme moment of
His revelation, the final test of His personality, the
concentration into one hour of the meaning and purpose
of His whole Incarnation, the most potent as weU as the
deepest and most painful moment of His self -identification
vrith man, — but, it was all a part of one whole and con
tinuous life of self-revelation and self-giving. Not orUy
in Jesus hanging on the Cross, but also in the Jesus of
Nazareth, Capernaum, and Jerusalem, we are looking
into the face of God.
What then did He achieve by His self -identification ?
(i) He revealed man's true nature in its perject relation
to God as Father and his Jellow-men as brethren. One of
the miserable results of sin, as we have already seen,
is that man has lost the art of hving; he spoils his
^ II. Cor. V. 19 ; Eph. ii. 4-7.
' See Essay on The Person of Jesus Christ,

THE WORK OF CHRIST 131
individual life, and often reduces his social life to chaos,
because he does not know how he ought to live, either as an
individual or as a member of society. Christ has revealed
to. us on the plane of natural human life what kind of
life we are designed to lead and find our true happiness
in leading.^ He is our Perfect Example.
His was a life of perfect human love. " His ideal of
greatness was found in service and self-giving. ... He
just lived an unpretentious life of absolute devotion to
the highest good of His brother men. His was the
perfectly useful hfe." ^ But man was made in order
that he might love as Jesus loved. Human society was
fashioned by God that it might be a society of persons
behaving towards each other eis Jesus behaved towards
men. Jesus Christ has made it clear in His life and teach
ing that a man is truly human only in so far as, like
Himself, he has leamt to treat every other person as a
brother in a great family, and that society is truly human
society only in so far as every member considers every
other member a brother, and acts towards him on that
assumption. In that revelation which Christ made, the Cross occupies
a central place. In this world of unloving men it was
inevitable that One who lived a hfe of uncompromising
love should in the end have to lay dovra His life. The
Cross was inescapable. " Having loved His ovpn. He
loved them imto the end." ^ On the Cross He consum
mated His revelation in human hfe of that sacrificial love
which is the tme nature of every man. It was an achieve
ment of incalculable moral value to mankind. It makes
a tremendous chaUenge to our consciences, for, having
seen the perfect hfe of Christ and its heroic consummation
1 St. John viii. 12 ; Eph. v. i, 2.
2 Stevens, Doctrine of Salvation,
' St. John xiii. i.

132 THE WORK OF CHRIST
on the Cross, we realise instinctively that that is the hfe
which we ought to be leading.^
The life of Christ was also a life of perfect filial obedience
to God. God was an intense reality to Jesus, the most
real Person in His environment. He came to do the WiU
of God, and did it always. ^ In the end, when the end
had to come. He was obedient even unto the death of
the Cross.' He offered Himself up willingly and freely
as an oblation to God. It was a revelation of our true
attitude towards God, an attitude which ought to be
our normal one at all times and in aU circumstances.
(2) H^ d^^^t effectuaUy with human sin. He dealt
with it in the only ways in which Holy Love identif jdng
Himself with the sinner could deal with his sin. In
every case it is the Cross which gives supreme value
to what He did.
By the contrast of His own perfect holiness, He showed
the depths to which man had sunk.* He was always
Himself holy. He revealed to men their sins by shovring
them what they ought to be. His holiness was the holi
ness of God, and He was never so holy as when He was
giving His life for His friends upon the Cross.
But He also revealed the attitude of God towards sin
as one of uncompromising antagonism to evil. Jesus
throughout His life, both by His teaching and in His
actions, showed a spirit of strenuous opposition to evU.
His opposition manifested itself in active ways, but not
in the way in which human antagonism to evU often
expresses itself. He showed no desire to retahate, to
extract reparation for Himself, to injure the person of
the sinner. But He condemned and denounced selfishness
and greed and aU that is not love in the severest possible
language.* You Caimot imagine Him coming to terms
1 I John iii. 16. 2 St. John viu. 29.
8 Heb. v. 8, 9- * St. John xv. 22-24. ° St. Matt, xxiii.

THE WORK OF CHRIST 133
with one who was deliberately living in opposition to
the law of love. While moving among sinful men with
unfaUing friendliness and sympathy, yet He was whoUy
" separate from sinners." ^ It was this opposition which
brought Him into conflict with the authorities and led
Him to His death. Again, He whoUy and utterly disso
ciated Himself from the sin of the world. It was pressing
upon Him aU through His life to prevent Him doing God's
WiU in a world where there was so httle of love; the
pressure reached its climax at His death, when the whole
force of sin was brought to bear upon Him. It was the
most critical moment in the moral history of the world.
ShaU He give up His life of love, come down from the
Cross, and save Himself, as He might have done? Or
shaU He resist the temptation to such selfishness to the
very end ? He resisted to the last, triumphing gloriously
over the power of sin, and maintaining unsuUied the purity
of Divine love.
Now aU this which Jesus Christ revealed in His ovrai
life and death is the etemal attitude of God towards sin.
He is indignant with sin, not with desire for reparation,
but vrith a pure anger which " scathes because it needs
must bless." He is against it, as Christ was, and can
not have free fellowship with the evil sinner.
This revelation was an essential part of the Atonement,
for until men reahsed and understood this about God,
there was no chance of their taking up a right attitude
towards their sin. If God is to forgive sin, and treat
the sinner as though his sin had never been committed,
there must be a showing of " His righteousness," ^ a
vindication of the unalterable holiness of His love. The
resistance to evil by Christ to the uttermost limit on the
Cross was in itself a positive vindication of this element in
God's love. 1 Heb. vii. 26, ' Rom. iii. 25.

134 THE WORK OF CHRIST
But the death of Jesus Christ means even more than
this — and here we tread with a sense of profound rever
ence for Him who went into the midst of an experience,
the mere margin of which the most loving among us have
but touched. Because He was perfect Love, He must
go the whole way with man. Drawn by the necessity
of His life in this sinfiU world, drawn by the necessity
of His love for man, dravra also by the necessity of exhibit
ing the reality of the moral order in a world which was
forgetting it. He entered into the worst conditions in
which sin had involved us. Sin, as we have seen, results
in the destruction of life — the personal life of the individual,
and the family life of human society. The holy, loving
Son of God entered into this world, where sin was doing
its deadly work, much of it unseen and unrecognised. It
could not touch the purity of His love. But it tortured
His mind and crucified His body. He bowed His head
in submission to the holy love of God as expressed in
the moral order. He submitted Himself to the doom
which sin had brought upon the world. Deeper stiU
even than this, by sympathetic self -identification, through
the vicariousness of love, " He was made sin on our
behalf " ; ^ He felt the shame and curse and doom of
it as though He had sinned Himself. " It is the love of
Him who gives Himself to and for sinners so perfectly
that He can make Himself one with them even in their
sinfulness, which means that He feels their sins as His
own ; we may even dare to say that it was to Him, who
knew no sins of His own, as though He had Himself com
mitted them." ^ No theology has ever been able ade
quately to explain the cry of dereliction of Christ upon the
1 II. Cor. V. 21 ; Gal. iii. 13 ; I Pet. ii. 24.
2 E. L. Strong, The Incarnation of God, p. 13. This work is
to the writer of this essay the most illuminating of all books on
this subject.

THE WORK OF CHRIST 135
Cross, because it is beyond the range of human experience,
but it is the cry of One who is experiencing in its bitterest
intensity that sense of alienation from God-who-is-Love
which is the worst result of sin. He recoiled from sin
as every man ought to do, bearing all the agony which
was involved in doing so.
By this deep experience through which He passed
our Lord accomplished a work of inestimable value.
In Him God " condemned sin in the flesh " by exposing
the worst that it can do. " To see sin at its worst we
must see the Best at its mercy." Sin is fully judged
only when it is fully exposed. If we would know what
sin is, we look at the Cross and see what it can do to
incarnate Love. He completed that " vindication of the
holiness of God " by vrillingly suffering in Himself the
full reaction of the moral order to human sin, accepting
the inexorable righteousness and severity of perfect love.
He therein led the way for every man who would be
reconciled to God, for He revealed the attitude of recoil
from sin and submission to God which man must adopt
if he would find his way back to the Father's forgiving
heart. He did all that Divine love could do to break
down the barrier of unrepentance which man's sin has
raised between him and God. There is no fact like the
Cross to make men understand and feel the reality of
their sin, because it makes them see that sin crucifies
perfect goodness. The Cross reveals what it cost God to
redeem man from sin.
(3) Christ has revealed to us the forgiving love of God.
We have seen that between God and man sin has raised
not only the barrier of unrepentance, but the barrier
of fear and mistrust, a barrier of man's ovrai making,
but which God alone can remove. When man wakes
from his unrepentance he realises the horror of his sin
in its effect on himself, on his brother man, and on God.

136 THE WORK OF CHRIST
He feels his responsibUity for what he has done. But
his sin produces in him a sense that God must punish
him with a retributive stroke beyond the self-infhcted
consequences of the moral order. A sense of " guilt "
of this kind is a disease of the soul of a very real kind,
and until it is removed he will never be reconciled to God.
Now, if one thing above all others is unmistakable in
the teaching and behaviour of Jesus Christ, it is that
God is not of such a nature as that. God is teUing man
in Christ and supremely through the Cross, in language
which it is impossible for hira to misunderstand, that He
is wholly willing to receive back His repentant children,
and that directly they sincerely repent He vrill forgive
them their sins freely and fully, i The Cross of Christ
is a window through which we may look in and see the
heart and mind of God. When we are looking at Jesus
Christ, we are looking into the face of God. We can,
therefore, always rely upon God to behave as He behaved.
How did Jesus behave upon the Cross ? " When they
crucified Him . . . Jesus said, ' Father, forgive them.' " ^
God is not different from that.' " Who, when He was
reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened
not . . . who His own self bare our sins in His ovwi body
on the tree." * God is not different from that. God is
telling us in Jesus Christ on the Cross that, though He
is hurt and grieved beyond all measure by our sins,
though He must oppose them to the uttermost, and
cannot pass over them without full expression of this
antagonism, though He cannot forgive an unrepentant
sinner, yet, as we should expect from a perfect earthly
father, He is completely willing to forgive him when he
comes in tme repentance.^
1 St. Luke vii. 41, 42; xv. 1-32; St. Matt. vi. 14.
2 St. Luke xxiii. 34. ^ Eph. iv. 32, v. I, R.V.
* I Pet. ii. 22-2^ 5 I John i. 9.

THE WORK OF CHRIST 137
This is why the Cross is central in the forgiveness of
sins. It is Ijoth necessary and adequate; necessary,
because nothing short of the Cross could make men sure
that God was of such a nature; adequate, because as
a matter of actual experience the vision of the Cross does
deal with the guilt of sin and assure men that they have
been forgiven.^
Thus when Jesus Christ gave up His life upon the Cross
the first stage of His work of At-one-ment was finished.
Living the life of God incarnate in the form and fashion
of a man, and identifying Himself completely with the
human race in its suffering and sin, He had revealed all
that man could know about God's holy love in its bene
volence, its costly suffering, and its antagonism to love
lessness; He had exposed and condemned sin finally
and adequately ; He had achieved a life of perfect obedi
ence to His Father, thereby conquering in human life
the mightiest forces of moral evil. It was an objective
accomplishment in the life of God and in the history of the
human race, which was to have incalculable consequences
on the relationship between God and men. God-in-
Christ had sacrificed Himself for us.
III. The Work of Christ — Resurrection, Ascension,
AND Indwelling
Christ's redeeming work of self-identification now enters
on a new stage. Through the Resurrection and Ascension,
Jesus Christ was " lifted up " into a transcendent sphere
of existence, in which, however. He is not more distant
from human life than He was in Galilee, but in which
His human-Divine 'personality is charged with powers
1 In this sense Christ is indeed " the Propitiation for our sins."
The word has not been used in this essay because it has come to
have several different connotations and associations which would
make explanation necessary on each occasion.

138 THE WORK OF CHRIST
of universal influence upon mankind.^ Through " the
coming of the Holy Ghost " ^ He began a period of
activity, endless while human life shall last, in which,
by the self-identffication of redeeming personal influence,
He makes Himself actuaUy one with individual human
persons, and thus saves them from all the evil in which
sin has involved them, and raises them to their true
life of fellowship with God and man.' The same Person
who made Himself knovra in Gahlee and Jerusalem,
who gathered into His personality all the energies of the
human experiences through which He passed, — the same
Jesus Christ now " personally influences " or " flows
personally into " the lives of the disciples.* This is a
tremendous statement. Its tmth is a fundamental fact
of the Christian Gospel and experience. The constant
realisation of the spiritual Presence of Jesus Christ was
the normal Christian experience of the apostolic age. It
shines out from the personal history of the great repre
sentative Christians of the period ; ® it is embedded in
its literature, both in the Gospels * and Epistles. It
is a real Catholic article of Christian experience down the
ages. It can only be explained as the redeeming inter-
penetration of the Divine personality of Jesus Christ
with the personalities of men.
We are now in a position to see in all its fulness the
At-one-ing work of Christ, the Saviour of men. " Christ
is our Redeemer, not merely because He once died for
us, but because He who died lives now ... to impart
to us what He won by His earthly life and death." His
1 Rom. V. 17-21.
2 All that follows may be spoken of as the work of the Holy
Spirit, who, being the Spirit of Christ, mediates to us the personal
presence of Christ. Only limitations of space prevent the full
mention of the Spirit's work ; it is assumed throughout.
3 Heb. vii. 24, 25. * Rom. vi. i-ii.
° Gal. ii. 20 ; I John iv. 4, 13.
« E, g, St. Matt, xxvii. ; St. Mark xvi. 20.

THE WORK OF CHRIST 139
earthly life and death were, as we have seen, an objective
achievement of incalculable worth for the human race
and for the individual persons who compose it. That
achievement is translated into inner operation when He
Himself comes into redeeming personal union with our
individual personalities, bringing with Him the values of
His earthly achievement, changing us in such a fashion
that we may become " at one " with our Heavenly
Father in the same way in which Christ Himself is one with
Him. Let us try to trace the course of Christ's saving
work in the life of an individual sinner, remembering,
however, that it is impossible to forecast the order in
which, in any given case, the various values of the redeem
ing relationship of Christ will be consciously experienced
in the life of the redeemed. Yet it is certain that every
element of Christ's work must sooner or later be realised
before he can be " saved to the uttermost."
I. The first touch of the Redeeming Christ upon the
personality of the sinner brings a true and real repentance.
We have seen how absolutely necessary this is, and how
only the work of Christ, and supremely His Cross, can
produce it. He makes men see, as they have never seen
before, the evil of their sin and its meaning to God. He
gives them a sense of moral repulsion from sin's love
lessness, and leads them to repudiate it for what it is.
He leads them onward still to His own attitude of loving
obedience to God, of determination to love men as He
loved them.
2. Blended with repentance there comes the faith which
finally links the soul with Christ. It is the personal
act of the sinner himself, and yet, like repentance, it has
its original impulse in the contact of the Living Christ
upon his soul.i It means that the man commits himself
entirely to the Living Christ, that through His redeeming
1 Eph. ii. 8.

140 THE WORK OF CHRIST
influence he may be saved. It is " the one possible
attitude for intercourse between the soul and God, just
as it is between the child and his father." Through this
blended act of repentance and faith the man is brought
into that intimate relationship between himself and Christ
which is described as being " in Christ." There " in
Christ " he is " justified " and forgiven.^
3. Justification and forgiveness mean that God, seeing
that His child has sincerely repented, and seeing that he
is committed by his faith into the personal charge of
Jesus Christ, receives him back into fellowship with Him
self as though he had never sinned.* His antagonism and
disfavour and condemnation on account of past sins cease.
He remembers his iniquities no more. Man's repentance
and faith may as yet be incomplete and immature, but
they are sincere. God accepts him for Christ's sake,
and especially for the sake of His death, because He knows
that " in Christ," and through the energies of the Cross
stored up in Christ's Person, he will one day be like Christ.
It is an act of sovereign grace on the part of God.
An entirely new start is given to the sinner. His sins
are blotted out as far as they concern the relationship
between himself and God. As we have already seen,
it is the Cross of Christ which makes the sinner sure that
this is so. The burdened sinner looks into the face of
God in Jesus Christ, and sees there the assurance that God
is forgiving Love. Through the Cross God is revealed
to his innermost consciousness as One who has " justified "
and forgiven him.
4. The hfe which follows is a lifelong friendship between
the new man and His Saviour, in which the greatest
influence is redeeming love. Love to Christ and to man
becomes the dominant note in his life. He is bound by
the chains of a grateful loyalty to Christ as the One " who
1 Eph. i. 6; Col. i. 14. « Rom. iii. 24-28.

THE WORK OF CHRIST 141
loved me and gave Himself for me." " In Christ " his
mind is gradually purified from selfish motives and un
worthy ideals, until he comes to " have the mind of Christ."
" In Christ " his emotions are stirred in unison with His.
" In Christ " his will is made strong to overcome every
temptation, because he is living within the magnetic
circle of the infiuence of Him who in human life revealed
unconquerable moral power. His subconscious self is
gradually made full of Christ, with the attendant conse
quences of a harmony and wholesomeness unknown
before. " In Christ " he has the remission of sins; for
while forgiveness does not at once undo all the mischief,
which by the working of the moral order sin has wrought
in the sinner, yet, by the redeeming personal influence of
Christ, the effects of sin, from which man is suffering in his
personality, are gradually counteracted and done away.
Christ is the burden-bearer of sin, not merely on the Cross,
but in the life of those whom He redeems. At the price
of a great cost of suffering to Himself, He endured the
consequences of our sin, in order that we through His
life in us might be rescued from the consequences of sin
in our lives. " In Christ " man becomes all which God
intended him to be.
IV. The Gospel which we Preach
Having considered the work of Christ from the theo
logical point of view, we are now in a position to take up
the theme of the Gospel or Evangel of Christ which springs
from His work. No theory is of any avail which cannot
furnish us vrith the means of preaching " the everlasting
Gospel " with conviction and power. If the New Testa
ment is any uidex to the purpose of Christ's coming, it
is clear that He came in order that a message of extra
ordinary worth to mankind might be set forth clearly

142 THE WORK OF CHRIST
and with freshness at every tum of human history.
The Gospel which we preach is the Gospel of the New
Testament, the good things which Jesus preached in
Galilee and Jerusalem and the Apostles proclaimed
throughout the Roman world. It is still a good thing
and fresh for men to-day. Let us single out some of its
primary elements for special emphasis.
I. It is a gospel of the Reality of God. Christ came to
make God intensely real to us. In a world that is for
getting God for material interests it is Christ who stands
forth and tells us that the most real thing in the world
is — God. God was a tremendous reality to Christ. To
think of God as an ever-present Father was the natural
posture of His mind ; to speak of God with ease and with
out self-consciousness was a feature of His daily conver
sation ; the wholehearted devotion of His life to the plan
which He believed God was working out through Him
was the " subconscious " motive of all that He did.
God was near and real. And more — the God whom Jesus
believed in as man and revealed as God was one who is
Love. He was altogether attractive and worth knowing.
Our Gospel is that God should be and may be as real
and attractive to each one of us as He was to Jesus Christ.
The need of such a gospel is transparent. Men to-day
do not think of God as real; they often do not think of
Him at all, or if they think of Him, He is at some point
or other repellent. Through Jesus Christ and what He
did we can make men see, as nothing else can make them
see, that God can come into their lives as the One who
matters more than anyone else in the world. Men need
to know God and to know Him as Love, and to know
what love means. This is the Gospel of Christ which
we preach, and there is no guarantee that it is true except
the teaching and the death of Christ. Ultimately the
Gospel of God's Love is a close preserve of Christianity.

THE WORK OF CHRIST 143
Men are baffled by the mystery of pain, and try to believe
against all appearances that God is Love. The Gospel
that God is like Jesus in His life and in His death is the
only thing which makes it believable that He is so.
2. Yet the men of this generation greatly need to under
stand the counterpart to all this, which is that sin also
is a reality. The whole conception of sin to-day is shallow.
The sense of heavy responsibility resting on us on account
of every wrong action committed, the sense of having
culpably fallen short of something higher which was
within our reach, the sense of being tied and bound by
chains which cannot be broken, the sense of being cut
off from God in a way which ^ves meaning to the terms
" lost " and " doomed," is largely absent from the thought
of to-day. Can we re-establish the Christian idea of sin ?
It is sometimes lamented that because we believe in
eyolution, because we do not speak of the "wrath of
God " in the old sense, because we do not attach the same
meaning to " everlasting punishment " as our fathers,
therefore our most formidable guns have been spiked.
Nothing could be more untrue. In the last resort it
is always the Holy Spirit of God who convinces the sinful
of their sin, and the message on the lips of the preacher
is but the instmment which He uses. The Gospel of
Christ, interpreted in fresh ways by the modern messenger
of God, is as powerful an instrument as ever in the hands
of the Spirit of God for producing that Christian realisa
tion of sin which is the preliminary to the Christian
way of salvation. We may drop with genuine rehef
the outworn explanations in which we have lost con
fidence, but we take up with conviction what seems to us,
and proves to be, a sharp and many-edged tool for breaking
down the apathy and resistance of unrepentant men.
The portrayal of the ideal human life of God's holy Servant
Jesus in language which clothes Him as a brother man

144 THE WORK OF CHRIST
of ours to-day makes the unworthiness of sin seem real.
We need not shrink from exposing the devastation which
sin is working in human personality and human society,
taking as illustration some of the gloomy findings of the
new psychology. Our exposure will have its culminating
effect as we are able to show what pains of body and mind
and soul our Lord endured when He was at the mercy of
our sin, suffering its extreme consequences. We shall
yield to none in our emphasis on the severity of God's
love, in His demand for the elimination of everything
which is evil in us, in His antagonism to our self-vrilled
lovelessness, and in His discipline by which He would
bring us back. But above all and through all we shall
present the picture of a God who at all times is Perfect
Love, and whose love takes upoa itself the costly suffering
of our sin. Abundant parables from human love at
its best will help to make it plain that sin is real and
terrible, and that men must repent.
3. The Christian Evangel from the very first has been
the message of God's full and free forgiveness of sins.
There is an instinctive disturbance of the human heart
in its relation to God which is as universal as the idea
of God itself. It is often expressed in the crudest ways.
Theologians may differ as to its basis in reality. But the
higher and more moral the idea of God, the keener is
the sense of being " in the wrong " with Him. The Gospel
of Christ is the message of an entirely new start in our
relationship with God, and this new start comes to us
through the death of Jesus Christ. No other religion has
anything at all like this to proclaim. God will have us
back, treating us with the intimacy of sons, and forgetting
that we had ever been against Him. With vivid illus
tration and glovring conviction we " make men see "
that this is true. It is the message of the Cross, because
it is the death of Christ which has the power to bring

THE WORK OF CHRIST 145
home the fact of Divine forgiveness to the human mind
and conscience. It speaks in different ways to different
people. It tells of One who took on Himself all the
responsibility for our ultimate redemption, and for whose
sake God can forgive us. It tells forth the unshakable
love of God Himself, always ready to forgive. Men need
this Gospel more than they know, for it is only in this
atmosphere of freedom with God that a man can become
his best self and render his truest service to God and
his fellow-men.
4. If in what now follows we seem guilty of exaggeration,
it is a suspicion which we gladly incur in common with the
New Testament. The heart of the Gospel of Christ is
that a man who comes through faith under the influence
of the Living Christ enters on a life of triumphant living
which is on an entirely different plane from life vrithout
Christ, and that this kind of life is possible for all. There
is often httle desire for high spiritual achievement because
ideals are poor and hopes of success are low. But yet
the vogue of psycho-analysis unrelated to religion seems
to show that people are hankering after a better and more
victorious life to an extent greater than we sometimes
imagine. There are many who would leap to the news
that life in the present could be raised to a level of moral
stability and mental repose, where energy would be spent
in useful service instead of being exhausted in failure.
But this, and much more than this, is what Christ can do
for every man. Our Gospel is that, through the Holy
Spirit, Christ dwells actually in the life of a man in such a
way that he is as a matter of normal experience delivered
from falling into sin, kept calm through toU and perplexity,
and inspired to serve his brethren. There are a vast
number of Christian people who have not fully realised
the possibilities of their position. The strength of Evan
gelicalism has been its insistence that this overcoming

146 THE WORK OF CHRIST
life in Christ is possible for every Christian. It is perhaps
here that the close kinship of Liberal vrith other types
of Evangelicals is most clearly felt.
It is left for other essays to carry this theme to its
climax, by showing how the personal redemption of the
individual through Christ issues in membership of a body
of disciples, who together find the completion of their
tme selves in that loving service of God and man which
it is the work of Christ to make possible.^
1 Cf. Essays VII and XII.
R. T. Howard.

VII
THE CHURCH— THE SACRAMENTS— THE
MINISTRY
The Church
The history of the Christian Church begins with its
Founder, Jesus Christ. But to understand the idea which
lies behind the work of our Lord we must reahse that the
Church is not something entirely new. It is evident,
for example, that the idea exists in the Old Testament.
The Jewish idea of the people of God in the Old Testament
becomes in the New Testament the Church of Christ.
And to understand the growth of the idea fuUy, it is
necessary to go stiU further back; for it is clear that
the Hebrews were not the first nor the only people who
thought of themselves as standing in a special relation
ship to God and tried to organise their lives in accord
ance with what they conceived to be the nature and
wishes of the Deity.
Among the most important of the factors which con
tributed to the development of human hfe in the earliest
ages may be reckoned experiments in the direction of
social action. At first instinctively, later on with increas
ing consciousness of its meaning, man began to explore
the inter-relationship with other men in which he found
himself placed, and, in proportion as he understood it,
to utihse it in building up a higher kind of life. He
found, for example, that by co-operation he could secure
better results. Thus relationships of trade and industry
m

148 THE CHURCH
were brought into existence. It was realised also, as
experience increased, that fellowship is possible in other
directions — for example, feUowship of knowledge and fel
lowship in the moral sphere. Similarly, the comparative
study of rehgion shows that from an early time men
instinctively began to explore the possibUity of feUow
ship in the spiritual sphere : to have some idea of an
outside power or powers, with which they sought to get
into touch, and in accordance with whose conceived
wishes the life of the tribe was to be regulated. It would
not be justifiable to apply the word " Church " to so
primitive a spiritual fellowship as this; but at least the
germ of the idea is there : the rest is the history of the
development and purifying of the idea.
It is unnecessary to trace the detaUs of this develop
ment minutely : it will be sufficient to notice three stages.
I. In the course of time a great advance is made through
that gradual apprehension of God among the Hebrews
which led to what is caUed Ethical Monotheism; and
with it, as its inevitable concomitant, the clearer percep
tion of the way in which the society acknowledging such
a God must be organised. These together mean a more
intense sense of feUowship with God and the attempt
to reach a higher moral level in the national life. They
involve also a deeper consciousness of the things, which
stand in the way ; especiaUy a consciousness of the need
of forgiveness and of the need of Divine help, satisfaction
for which is sought through prayer, sacrifice, and priest
hood, but not attained in any permanent or adequate
degree. 2. In due time the Incarnation takes place. Another
stage is reached. The meaning of the previous process
of development becomes clearer. The nation is given
a fuUer apprehension of the Nature of God as revealed
in Christ than had previously been attained. This

THE CHURCH 149
involves, as a necessary consequence, a clearer grasp
of moral principles and of the kind of life which the
society must live, together with a clearer understanding
of the way in which this is to be made possible. The
consciousness of the need of forgiveness is both deepened,
and at the same time satisfied, through the teaching and
the work of our Lord. His work of Redemption, however
understood, is one of the indispensable preliminary
conditions to the realisation in any adequate degree of
that fellowship which had been the age-long quest of
man's spirit. Similarly, the consciousness of the need
of help, heightened by the fuller realisation of the nature
of the life to which man is called, finds a response in the
gift of new life made possible through the fact of the
Incamation and redemptive work of our Lord. Thus
what was dimly grasped, and " in divers portions and
divers manners " partiaUy achieved, is now more fuUy
understood and made capable of realisation : all that
for which the Old Testament sacrifice for sin stood has
been achieved; aU that the priesthood symbolised has
been fulfUled, in the Person and work of Jesus Christ.
The great idea after which man had been groping is ready
to be actuahsed — the coming into being of the Church,
in the fuU sense of the word.
3. One thing more was necessary. This, the third
stage, was reached at Pentecost. Then the Divine Life,
the Spirit of God, actuaUy passed in a supreme degree
into those who, because all the conditions of knowledge,
of forgiveness, of faith, had been fulfilled, were now
capable of receiving that Life and entering mto complete
feUowship with God and vrith one another. The Church
is a fact.
The object of the above sketch is to remind us that
the uniqueness of Pentecost must not be isolated from
everythmg that had happened previously. On the

150 THE CHURCH
contrary, the birth of the Christian Church was only the
actuahsing and fulfilling of an idea which had already
been in part grasped, however dimly and crudely, and
in part, with whatever mistakes, put into practice from
the very beginning, so far as we can teU, of human history.
In course of time both the idea and the realisation of
it grow clearer and more definite, until at last all this
yearning and experiment on the part of man are justified
and fulfilled when, as a result of the teaching and work
of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God, dwelling in a certain
number of people, brings them into touch with Him
and with one another in a bond that is worthy of the name
of feUowship.
A glance over the whole course of development shows
that there is a double process going on : (i) A seeking
on the part of man ; the und5dng attempt, handed on by
each generation to its successor, to explore in the spiritual
direction the meaning of that fact of fellowship which
is inseparable from aU existence; and (2) the response
of the Divine to that seeking; the revelation by God of
Himself, of His Nature, in the apprehension of which by
man lies the realisation of his quest. Moreover, these
two act and react on each other. God is always taking
action towards man, and this prompts man to the seeking;
but also man does not find, save by seeking, and seeking
in the right way. Every right act of seeking meets vrith
response which encourages and makes possible further
right seeking and finding. And since the seeking and
the response are between persons, the essence of the rela
tionship is personal : the whole process, therefore, must
be thought of in moral and spiritual terms. So it is not
untU the right conditions have been produced that the
Holy Spirit can descend at Pentecost; and thenceforth
those who are to enter into the feUowship which has been
achieved must possess these moral and spiritual conditions,
which alone guarantee and can effect such fellowship.

THE CHURCH 151
The essence then of the Christian Church is the reahsa-
tion of the feUowship between man and God, and between
man and his brother man, which only became possible
when, through God's gradual revelation and man's
apprehension, man was brought to a stage of development
which enabled him moraUy and spiritually to enter into
the Divine Life mediated through Jesus Christ, and taking
the form in himself of the indweUing of the Holy Spirit.
It would seem, therefore, that the conditions of member
ship of the body can only be stated in general moral
and spiritual terms, and that membership of the body can
only be tested in a similar way. Ultimately the only
real test which can be applied is that to which our Lord
points, when He says, " By their fruits ye shaU know
them " ; or that on which St. John lays so much stress
in his First Epistle, the practical test of the kind of hfe
manifested in action. The Body embraces aU those
who have recognised in Jesus Christ the Revealer of
God and the Redeemer of man, and, through that recog
nition, have been enabled to attain to the moral and
spiritual qualities which alone can bring the personality
of man into touch with the Personality of God. Of those
who seek in this way we can be sure that they are entering
upon that new life of fellowship vrith God, and therefore
with their feUow-men, which is the essence of the Church.
Did the process of development end at Pentecost?
Was the feUowship complete? Just as a mistake may
be made by failing to place the nature of the feUowship
brought into existence at Pentecost in its proper relation
to previous history which led up to it, so a mistake may
be made by overlooking the history to which Pentecost
led. If we wish to get an adequate conception of the
Church, we must look both backwards and forwards :
thus we win a ghmpse of the Church which is to be.
If we look forward from Pentecost to our own times,
there are immediately evident three limitations to the

152 THE CHURCH
complete realisation of the idea which we have found to
lie behind the word Church.
I. As we have seen, Pentecost is reaUy the culmination
of that spiritual seeking and finding under Divine guidance
which is not confined to one nation, but is inherent in
the nature of man and is as wide as the whole human
race. It may be doubted, therefore, whether the feUow
ship can be complete untU aU peoples are brought within
it. The smaU Church at Pentecost had to enlarge its
boundaries. This enlargement, which is stiU proceeding,
is not a mere matter of numbers. Each new nation,
nay, each new individual, entering into the feUowship
deepens and enriches the life of the whole. The history
of Christian missions is emphasising this lesson to-day.
We are conscious that the idea which has been handed
down to us from the forefathers of our race is capable
of stiU fuller realisation : the Church in a real sense is
stUl to be. Every race must make its contribution,
and not untU these have been made wUl the Body of
Christ be complete.
2. History has shown only too clearly that even in
that part of the Body already in being there is not the
degree of perfection which there might be. In so many
individual lives which go to form the whole the feUowship
vrith God and with one another has been so little reahsed,
because the life of individuals is not Christ-hke. This
does not mean that the Church does not exist; but it
is important for aU the members to keep in mind the ideal
of perfect feUowship as the condition of being able to
realise it more fuUy. In this way, too, as we look to the
future, we hope to see, and are inspired to labour for,
the Church which ought to be.
3. Another limitation is seen in the fact that various
parts of the existing Body, so far from endeavouring to
realise that common feUowship which constitutes the

THE SACRAMENTS 153
reality of the Church, are contented to seek their own ends,
rather than the good of the whole; so far from working
in unity, they are divided one against the other; the
feUowship is broken. Is it not evident from the nature
of the case that the life of the Church cannot be complete
untU the life of the Spirit has brought the parts into a
corporate unity? The life cannot exist in fullness in
one part ; it can only be fuU in each part when it is full
in the whole.
Do these limitations mean that the idea of the Church
is, after aU, a faUure ? Such a judgment wUl only seem
plausible to those who take a wrong view of history. If,
as has been suggested above, we let Pentecost take its
right place in the whole course of human history, which
means the gradual spiritual progress of humanity under
Divine guidance, then there is nothing about which we need
be unduly discouraged. The three limitations mentioned
above — the comparative slowness of the spread of the
Church, the comparative faUure of individual lives,
and the lack of unity — are results which might have been
foreseen as likely to arise from the medium in which the
fellowship was being established, and therefore have
come to light in the course of history. These defects,
however, can be conquered by the spirit of feUowship
itself; a feUowship which we believe to be irresistible
because it comes from God, but which may be retarded,
or more quickly consummated, in proportion as we,
realising that herein lies the essence of the Church,
co-operate whole-heartedly in those very directions in
which limitations now exist.
The Sacraments
From the first we find associated with the feUowship
on which men had entered in the Christian Church certain

154 THE SACRAMENTS
acts which can be called sacramental; among them two
especiaUy prominent, connected the one vrith the begin
ning, the other with the sustaining of the new life — Bap
tism and the Lord's Supper. Two questions at once
arise : (i) Are these acts necessary to the feUowship ?
(2) If so, what is the meaning of them ?
I. With regard to the first of these questions, it may
be said that the fact that the Gospels record the institution
of these two sacraments by our Lord Himself (a position
which modem criticism has not succeeded in disproving)
settles the question of their necessity. Nevertheless,
it is stUl important and profitable to ask wherein the
necessity lies. Two reasons may be suggested :
{a) The comparative study of religion shows that
similar acts have very generaUy accompanied the rehgious
history of man. The acts have often, and in early times
usually, been crudely conceived : magical and super
stitious ideas have centred round them. A glance over
the history of religion shows that there has been progress
from low and imworthy to higher and more reasonable
conceptions of the meaning of such acts ; but the sugges
tion that in a highly spiritual rehgion such as Christianity
no sacraments at aU are necessary is not an inevitable
conclusion from such development. The development
has been the purifpng of the fact; the persistence of
the fact suggests that it does meet a fundamental need
in human nature.
{b) The sacramental principle is not confined to rehgion.
It arises out of the fact that we are spiritual beings
expressing ourselves in a material environment. Thus
material things become sjonbols to us of spiritual values.
A flag is a material thing, which we know to be made
up of different pieces of cloth, but which stands to us for
spiritual qualities such as honour, or loyalty to King and
Empire. A clasp of the hand is a sacramental act

THE SACRAMENTS 155
through which we express by material means a spiritual
meaning — friendship. A beautiful sunset, a mountain
peak, a star — indeed, to those who have the capacity
to see, the whole world — may convey a message about the
existence and nature of God. The sacramental principle
is as wide as life itself in the human plane ; it has a place
in the spiritual sphere, as in aU other spheres of man's
experience. And inasmuch as that fellowship of men
with God and with one another, which was consummated
at Pentecost, is the high-watermark of man's experience
on earth, so the sacraments which we find especially
associated with it from its beginning are the high-water
mark of his use of the sacramental principle.
2. If the use df sacraments is a natural element in
the spiritual life, we must proceed next to inquire into
their meaning. This is of vital importance. We have
seen that ia the lower stages of religious experience,
acts which can be caUed — though not in the fuU sense
of the word — sacramental are apt to be conceived of
in ways which are repugnant to later stages of enlighten
ment and spiritual development. And there is always the
danger that traces of the lower may linger on in the higher
stage, with lamentable results. Take, for example, the
attitude of the Jewish nation towards circumcision.
It is natural and in a sense inevitable that in primitive
forms of culture man should regard this, or some similar
visible mark, as a means of bringing him into a special
relationship vrith the Deity; but such a conception is
inconsistent vrith the ethical idea which the Hebrews
reached of the nature of God. Yet even the leaders of
the nation had to be taught by St. Paul that it is the
moral qualities (the faith of Abraham) which secure
feUowship with God, and that circumcision, so far from
securing it, is only a sign that it already exists.
Bearing in mind this danger of interpreting the higher

156 THE SACRAMENTS
in terms of the lower, instead of the lower in terms of
the higher, can we define more exactly the nature of a
sacrament ?
{a) A sacrament is the natural and necessary expression
in a material environment of a spiritual fact which
already exists. It does not create the fact. It owes its
own existence to the pre-existence of the spiritual fact.
The sacraments of Christianity are the expression in
outward acts of the spirit, the feUowship, which has
already been caUed into existence. It is the existence
of this feUowship lying behind them which constitutes
their validity as sacraments : apart from it they would
be meaningless.
{b) A sacrament, also, although it does not create,
fosters the maintenance and development of the spiritual
experience or state out of which it arises, and of which
it is an expression. A clasp of the hand is meaningless
except as a token, an expression in act, of a feeling of
friendliness; but it also, in helping that friendliness to
find expression, helps to maintain and increase it. Simi
larly the flag is not a flag untU there is some pre-existing
conception of Empire and loyalty of which it is the symbol ;
but, because it is this, it also fosters and increases the
conception. The neglect of one or other of these two aspects of
a sacrament, and the failure to put them in their right
order, have led and stUl lead to mistaken ideas of sacra
ments, which, in different directions, hamper the con
tribution which a right understanding and use of the
sacramental principle should make to the growth of
spiritual life.
If a sacrament, then, is both the expression of a pre
existing spiritual fact and the means of increasing it,
it remains to be asked in what way exactly it performs
these functions. This question, too, is important, because

THE SACRAMENTS 157
the conception we form affects the degree in which a
sacrament achieves its object for us. No explicit guidance
is given on this subject in the New Testament. It would
seem that it must become clearer with the growth of
spiritual experience and the knowledge of reality in
general to which man attains.
I. As we have seen above, the necessity for sacraments
arises from the attempt of spirit to express itself in a
material environment. It is obvious, therefore, that
the question of the relation of spirit to matter is germane
to the question of the nature of a sacrament. Now the
Christian conceives that God is in some sense " immanent "
in matter. Matter is an expression of His Thought and
an instrument of His Will. Its explanation must ultim
ately be given in spiritual terms. So it has not unnatur
ally been held that a sacrament fosters our feUowship
with God because the Divine is immanent in a special
way in the sacramental elements. But surely this is
not a satisfactory view ; for {a) the fact that God must be
conceived as being in a certain relation to matter, which
is popularly described as immanence, and so, for example,
stands in that relation to all bread and wine, is no basis
for reasoning to a special spiritual Presence in the par
ticular bread and wine used in the Communion Service,
but rather the opposite. For philosophically it is diffi
cult to see how God can be immanent to a greater degree
than before in the same material elements. Again (6)
the fact that the Son of God was incarnate is no argument
for imagining that there is a special Presence in the ele
ments in the Communion Service .: that is to lose sight of
the fact that the Incamation was the union of the Divine
with human nature, not merely with a physical organism.
This does not provide any basis for a Real Presence in
material elements : rather it suggests its improbabihty.
For whatever be the correct way of describing the relation

158 THE SACRAMENTS
of God to matter, surely it is at least clear that God
expresses Himself more fuUy through more highly organ
ised forms of matter, in an ascending scale, and finaUy,
in the fullest degree of aU, through the human personality.
To find a special Presence in the material elements of
the sacraments rather than in the persons of the wor
shippers would involve a retrogression which is incom
patible with all the evidence we possess of God's relation
to created things. The true extension of the Incamation
is in the Church, that is, in the faithful who, actuaUy
realising in themselves the Christ spirit, make up the body
of Christ. The sacraments can only be called an exten
sion of the Incamation in a secondary sense, as being
associated vrith the expression and deepening of that
Christ life in Christians.
2. Since a sacrament is a means of expressing and
promoting fellowship between persons, it is evident
that it is impossible to leave moral qualities out of con
sideration. Everyone would agree, for example, that
repentance and faith are necessary if the sacraments
are to be effectual to those who use them. But this
admission raises the question whether, if such quahties
be present, God vriU vrithhold Himself (or whatever we
conceive that He gives in response to such quahties)
until such outward and visible signs, as, for example,
water and the baptismal formula, have been used. Would
not such a theory imply a conception of the nature of
the Deity which we should be unwilling to have attributed
to ourselves?
3. But if reason precludes our accepting such theories
of the nature of sacraments, it wiU be asked : How then
do they contribute to spiritual life? The answer surely
is to be found in recognising that a sacrament is not a
material element, which links two persons together
because one or other of the persons is, in whole or in

THE SACRAMENTS 159
part, for the time being in that element, but rather is
the means by which one person conveys to the other,
or both convey to each other, some message about them
selves. Such, for example, is the marriage ring, which
gives a mutual assurance of love and loyalty. Such is a
picture. The artist is not in it ; but he has given a message
through the medium of colour which has meaning to one
who brings to it the qualities necessary for appreciating
the artist's idea. The artist is not in the picture; but,
nevertheless, the picture has been the means of bringing
the mind of the appreciative observer into real touch
vrith the mind of the artist.

Baptism
As there is general agreement as to the particular
effects associated vrith baptism, such as forgiveness and
the gift of new life, and as these are set out clearly in
detaU in the Catechism and Articles of our Church, it
does not seem necessary to discuss them. But in the
light of the principles at which we have arrived above,
the question must be raised as to whether such effects
can be indissolubly associated with the moment of bap
tism. Experience shows that a baptised person often
displays no sign of regeneration. To say that the Divine
gift at baptism is potential, merely shelves the difficulty,
for it implies that something has been given at the moment
of baptism which may develop afterwards. But if the
principles mentioned above are true, it is difficult to see
how anything can be given except in response to the
existence of certain quahties, in which case whatever
is given must be real and not potential. Moreover, if
the necessary quahties are present before the act of
baptism, it can hardly be maintained, as we have seen,
that the response is delayed. If this is so, it may be

160 THE SACRAMENTS
asked : What then is the meaning and value of the
sacrament ?
I. It is an outward sign that an individual has volun
tarily on his part, and with the consent of the other
members, joined the society which we caU the Church.
2. This outward act of joining the body of Christ is
not a mere act of enrolment. It means that the man has
consciously sought to get into touch with that feUowship
which exists in the body, to which he contributes some
thing, and which reacts upon him, so that both his own
life and the general life of the body are deepened and
enriched. 3. The outward act is an assurance to him of the love
of God, which has always been seeking him, and has
achieved aU that is necessary for his redemption. It
helps him to believe, to grasp the fact. It strengthens
those qualities which are necessary, both because it is
an assurance to him, and because he is brought into
relation with the others who possess those quahties which
are necessary for getting into fuUer touch vrith God.
Because the act has been instituted by Christ Himself,
and because it is the act of the whole fellowship of the
Church, it becomes to him, like the picture, something
in the outward and visible sphere, which helps him to
apprehend the fact of forgiveness and love, and the
approach towards him of the divine Personality, the Divine
life, which regenerates and develops the human per
sonality. In other words, the sacrament is an effectual
sign, which helps the individual to grasp what God
offers. In what has been said above the case of adult baptism
has been in view. Is such a theory applicable to cases
of infant baptism ?
I. In the case of infants, just as in the case of adults,
the sacrament is the sign of admission into the Church, it

THE SACRAMENTS 161
being assumed, by those who present and those who
receive, that the chUd is wiUing to be admitted.
2. By this admission the chUd's life is brought, through
the action of its sponsors, into touch with the faith, the
hope, and the prayers of the whole body. These spiritual
influences create the right environment, in which the chUd
can grow, expand, and develop naturaUy as it becomes
older. 3. Does the child receive at the moment of baptism
those gifts, for example, forgiveness, new life, and the
like, of which the sacrament is a pledge to us? It is
impossible to conceive of God as acting along any but
the moral lines suggested above. It would seem, there
fore, that we can only say that, whatever is given, is
given in such a way that, if and when the chUd possesses
the qualities necessary for receiving the gifts, he wiU
at once begin to enjoy them. It must also be remembered
that we have very little knowledge as to the degree in
which an infant personality can be in touch with the
Divine Spirit. We can be sure that in baptism the chUd
does receive such blessing as his infant personality is
capable of receiving, and that, if he grows normally
in the Christian sense, his feUowship with God and with
the body of Christ wUl be increasingly reaUsed.
The Lord's Supper
What account can be given of the sacrament of the
Lord's Supper in the light of the New Testament teaching
and the general principles of interpretation mentioned
above ?
I. Our Lord associated His institution of the sacra
ment with the giving of His body and the shedding of
His blood, and said : " Do this in remembrance of Me." ^
1 Although some doubt has been thrown on the genuineness of
these words, because they are not in St. Matthew and St. Mark,
M

162 THE SACRAMENTS
The sacrament is, in the first place, a commemoration
of our Lord's death. It brings to us a message of the
redemption of mankind through His life, death, and resur
rection. The whole act centring round the elements
of bread and wine is a symbol in the visible sphere of
eternal tmths in the invisible spiritual sphere : that God
loves us; that, through the action which He Himself
has taken, He can forgive us and that we can be sure of
His forgiveness and of new life. The sacrament is a
pledge and assurance to us of these truths which lie at
the basis of our spiritual life.
Psychologically this act of remembrance cannot be
over-estimated. The vivid impression produced upon the
mind by means of the " dramatic " repetition of our Lord's
words and acts helps to bring home to those present the
meaning of the death upon the Cross, the apprehension
of which makes a supreme appeal to the best that is in
us. The stimulating effect of such acts of remembrance
regularly repeated is of incalculable value in the buUding
up of the Christian life.
2. The whole act becomes a means of enabhng us to
get into touch with Christ, that is, vrith the Divine hfe
and power which came through Christ into the world.
" As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the
Father; so he that eateth Me, he also shaU hve because
of Me." " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves." If
what has been said above is true, it is impossible to
localise the Presence of our Lord in the elements. But
it is a true instinct which sees in the Communion Service
a means of entering into relationship with Him, and finding
spiritual nourishment for our own lives through feUow
ship with Him. He is present; but His Presence, if
and are absent in several MSS. of St. Luke, yet the practice of
the Church from the beginning implies some such command.

THE SACRAMENTS 163
any attempt is made to localise it, can only, in the light
of what has been said above, be sought for in the faithful
communicants. He can be said to be speciaUy present
because He is speciaUy realised ; and the use of the sacra
ment is just this, that it helps us, whUe we are in this
material environment, wherein the influence of person
ality on ourselves is associated so closely vrith, and made
real to us through the senses of sight, hearing, and touch,
to reahse His Presence, and so both to maintain and
increase the feUowship between the human and the Divine.
His Presence, because He is Spirit, not matter, becomes
tmly real to us only in proportion as we can enter into
feUowship with Him. This is the real Presence which
we find in the sacrament. It is in this way that it is,
as our Article describes it, more than a mere sign : it
is an effectual sign, because it helps to produce in us the
desired result.
3. There is a sacrificial side to the act. The atoning
death of our Lord was a sacrifice : this was made once
for aU. " But He, when He had offered one sacrifice
for sins for ever sat down on the right hand of God."^
That sacrifice cannot be repeated. Whatever our inter
pretation of its meaning, we may be said to plead this
sacrifice whenever we end our prayers vrith the words
" through Jesus Christ." At greater length, and more
impressively, but in what is essentiaUy the same manner,
we plead the sacrifice for sins once offered in the Com
munion Service.
Moreover, the sacrifice was effectual, because it was
not an offering in the Old Testament sense of flesh and
blood, propitiatory in themselves, but because, through
these, was being expressed a right attitude of vriU. " Lo,
I am come to do Thy wUl."^ As we remember this
redeeming work of Christ, and as we enter into feUowship
1 Heb. X. 12. ' Ibid. x. 9.

164 THE SACRAMENTS
with Him, we can and must take up the same attitude to
God which He took up, of doing His wUl, of making the
sacrifice in our own lives. Through the act of communion,
that is, the fuller estabUshment of feUowship, we are
associating ourselves more closely vrith the sacrifice of
Christ. We are presenting " ourselves, our souls and
bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice "
unto God. It is in proportion as Christ is really present
in us that we can do this. In the act of communion
we find both a call to service and the strength to serve,
in the spirit of Christ. What a potent force, if the meaning
of the sacrament is rightly understood and taught, this
might be for the regenerating of Society to-day !
4. FinaUy, although we have been thinking of the act
from the point of view of the individual, we must not lose
sight of the social side. Behind the act lies the feUowship
which through the act is both finding expression and being
more fuUy realised. Coming into closer relationship
with Christ brings us into closer feUowship vrith one
another; approaching Christ corporately helps us indivi-
duaUy to attain to deeper fellowship with Him. The
act is essentiaUy a social act. Its significance, whether
we think of the aspect of commemoration, the act of
communion, or the offering of self in sacrifice to God,
is deepened as we share it with others, and the Divine,
the Christ-like life, is more fuUy realised in the individual
and in the whole body of Christ.
Reahsation of aU that is imphed in this fact is surely
of vital importance to the weU-being of our own genera
tion. Amid the complexities of our industrial and
social life the instinct for brotherhood is making itself felt
with increased insistence. It is a right instinct; but,
through human blindness and selfishness, so far from
finding satisfaction, it often issues in results that are
anything rather than brotherly. MeanwhUe we have

THE MINISTRY 165
in Christianity the only possible satisfaction for this
instinct : we have the tme standard and meaning of
human brotherhood in that feUowship with God and with
one another initiated by the teaching and work of our
Lord ; a fellowship which, as we have seen, finds at once
its fuUest expression and its chief means of growth in
this sacrament. It may be questioned whether religious
teachers can render any greater service to the world at
present than by giving the best they have in the attempt
to explore industrial and social problems in the light of
Christian principles; to teach the doctrine of Christian
fellowship; to guide the striving towards something
better, which underlies so much of the present restlessness,
to find and recognise its satisfaction and fruition, not in
human — therein lies the failure — but in Christian fellow
ship; to strive to make the Communion Service — the
Service of feUowship — the great bond of union in place
of the human expedients which so continuaUy fail. Does
the Evangelical school of thought feel satisfied that it
is making a sufficient contribution in this direction ?
The Ministry
Just as from the beginning of the religious history
of man we can discern the germ of the idea of a Church
and acts of a sacramental kind, so, too, we find certain
individuals who perform religious functions in the group
or tribe. In the rise of this class of officials, however
crude and superstitious, at first, was the conception of
their nature and functions, we find a right instinct, which
in course of time is purified, and may be said, from the
human point of view, to lead to the higher idea of a minis
try, which is generaUy accepted as necessary to corporate
religious life to-day. It wiU be sufficient for our purpose
to notice two stages in the history of this development.

166 THE MINISTRY
I. Among the Hebrews it is possible, in the light which
modem research has thrown on the Bible, to discern traces
of a growth from the early days, when it may practicaUy
be said that every man was his own priest, through the
rise of a class of Levitical experts, to the culmination
in the minutely ordered ministry of the Post-Exilic period.
There can be no doubt that in its final stage this was a
" sacerdotal " ministry; that is, men could only approach
God satisfactorily through the priest. It is important,
however, to recognise that this fact is in part due to, and
arises out of, the belief that no real approach could be
made to God through the barrier of human sinfulness
except by propitiatory sacrifices of the right kind, offered
in the right way, knowledge of which was considered
to be in the hands of the priestly class. This Old Testa
ment ministry, we believe, was one of the institutions
which emerged under Divine guidance for the religious
education of the nation; but this, of course, does not
mean that the idea of the ministry set forth in the Old
Testament is perfect and final. The whole conception
of the gradual unfolding of the Divine plan for man
suggests the contrary.
2. Just as we find the age-long idea of a Church and
the sacramental principle reaching their perfect expression
through the teaching and work of our Lord, so, too,
the thought of the ministry reaches a higher level, at
which, while the main idea is confirmed, mistaken elements
in the previous conception disappear in the light of the
fuUer revelation. To take one example of vital importance
— while the idea of a ministry stands out clearly in the
pages of the New Testament, the sacerdotal aspect falls
into the background. This "is inevitable. FeUowship
vrith God, which was being sought through the mediation
of a sacerdotal priesthood, and so inadequately satisfied,
in the Old Testament, was fully effected through the

THE MINISTRY 167
mediating work of Christ. The way to God has been
opened by and through Christ, and feUowship with God
has become a fact for every member of the Church.
If it may be said of the whole Christian body that they
are a " royal priesthood," it must be asked (i) in what
sense any ministry is needed for such a body ? and (2) what
is the right form of ministry?
I. With regard to the first of these questions :
{a) It is evident that as in other spheres of corporate
action, so in that of religious life, since, as we have seen,
this is essentiaUy corporate, there must be certain indivi
duals who act in an official capacity, to perform functions,
as representatives of the whole body.
{b) If then, as seems clear from His teaching about
the Kingdom, our Lord did intend to found a visible
society on earth, which we call the Church, we should
expect to find also that He contemplated a ministry in
connection with this corporate feUowship. This expecta
tion is justified when we tum to the record of His life
and teaching. For the careful selection of certain indivi
duals, twelve in number, the careful training throughout
the whole of His ministry, culminating in more detailed
instructions during the last week and especially on the
last night of His earthly life, the appearances and com
mands given to them after His resurrection, all combine
to produce a strong impression that He did intend to
institute some kind of ministry for His Church. On the
other hand, the lack of detailed instructions suggests
that, as is tme of His teaching in general, He did not
lay down any definite rules as to the exact form which
the ministry was to take. This suggestion is confirmed
by the record of the growth of the ministry in the
later New Testament period, to which we must now
tum 2. The question of the correct form and nature of the

168 THE MINISTRY
Christian ministry is admittedly difficult. The modem
study of the New Testament, however, has throv»Ti some
hght on the subject. It seems fairly clear that in the
New Testament there are two types of ministry which for
some time overlap : {a) the one — composed of Apostles,
Prophets, and Teachers — itinerant and universal in its
administration ; {b) the other — local in its jurisdiction —
composed of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.
{a) In the first period of the new fellowship which had
come into existence, the lead is naturally taken by those
who had been most closely associated with, and been
trained by, our Lord during His earthly life — the
Apostles. They direct the fortunes of the Jemsalem
Church; they preach the news of the Gospel in the sur
rounding districts; they give their approval to develop
ments in different directions. But this kind of ministry
is not limited to the Twelve. The work and influence
of St. Paul surpass the work and influence of the other
Apostles. In addition, we find Prophets and Teachers
as recognised classes of ministers who move about
freely and are treated with respect in all the Churches.
These together supervise and foster the development and
organisation of the Church in its early period.
(&) The threefold ministry which we have inherited
is part of this growth and organisation of the Church.
It grew up under the aegis of the Apostolic ministry;
but it is quite evidently not the same. The itinerant
ministry graduaUy disappears as its function is fulfiUed;
and in its place there arises the localised ministry of
Deacons, Priests, and Bishops.
What is the nature of this threefold ministry ?
{a) It is the result of gradual growth. The facts
recorded in the New Testament do not suggest that it was
of Divine institution in the sense of having been received
from our Lord by the Apostles and imposed by them on the

THE MINISTRY 169
Church. On the contrary, it takes shape slowly. First, at
the very beginning of the life of the Church in Jemsalem
the Seven are appointed for purposes of administering
alms — probably the first step in the direction of the
diaconate. In the same early period in Jemsalem, there
is mention of Presbyters, without any mention of special
appointment. As Christianity began to spread, certain
officials are solemnly appointed and set apart by the laying
on of hands with prayer, probably in each Church, and
are called Presbyters or Bishops. Finally, though this
is not quite clear in the New Testament period, the name
" Episcopos," or Bishop, is limited to one official in each
Church, suggesting that one of the Presbyters has been
elevated to a position of authority over the others.
This growth is thoroughly intelhgible. It arises natur
ally out of the circumstances and meets the needs of the
expanding life of the Church.
{b) What then is the authority of this ministry? It
has been suggested that the Apostles received their
authority from our Lord, and that they appointed suc
cessors to take their places, handing on the same authority
to them. Now it is clear that there is what may be called
historic continuity in the sense that there was always a
ministry; and the threefold order, speaking broadly,
grew up with the approval of the Apostles. But can it
be said that the Apostles appointed Bishops as their
successors, handing on the authority which they received
from our Lord, so Ihat no ministry is valid unless it is
in the " Apostolic Succession " ? Without entering into
a discussion of the various passages in ancient literature
bearing on this question, it may be said that this theory
is improbable. For (i) The gradual development of
the ministry, culminating in the Episcopal Office, is
against it. (2) There is the question as to whether the
authority was given by our Lord to the Apostles only.

170 THE MINISTRY
or to the whole body. A careful study of the passages ^
in St. Matthew xvi. 18-19 and xviu. 15-20, and in St.
John XX. 19-23, suggests that it was not limited to the
Twelve Apostles; nor is any such limitation suggested
in the account of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pente
cost. The facts point to the authority as residing in
the fellowship as a whole. The body of Christians appoint
officials to act for them, and the authority of these officials
is delegated by the body. The authority is ultimately
of Divine origin, for the fellowship in the new life is
called into existence by Divine action ; but it is not given
directly to a class of officials, who, through the powers
entrusted to them, call the Church into existence; the
Church, as a whole {i. e. all the members of the body),
is brought into close fellowship with God through the
work of Christ, and proceeds to organise itself in various
ways, including the appointment of ministers to function
for it. The authority is the authority of the whole body.
It would seem, therefore, that the validity of the ministry
wiU depend, not on whether there is an unbroken line of
Apostolic-Episcopal ordination behind it, but rather on
whether the minister is a tme representative of the body
and has its authority behind him. Moreover, it foUows
from this that — although the origin of the ministry sug
gests that a smaU body of Christians might, proceeding
in the New Testament manner, appoint ministers whose
ministry will be valid — yet the unity of the whole body is
a matter of vital importance : the perfect ministry ought
to be a ministry of men who are conscious that they have
behind them the consent and explicit acknowledgment
of the whole body of Christ, acting, not in rival parts,
but in harmonious unity.
(c) Furthermore, if the above account is right, it is
^ See Headlam, The Doctrine of the Church and Reunion, pp.
31-39-

THE MINISTRY 171
clear that in function the minister represents the body.
The functions which he performs are not given by direct
commission from above to him alone in contradistinction
from the people. It is the body, the feUowship, which
has the right, let us say, to perform sacramental rites,
or grant absolution; it is the fellowship which makes
these acts vahd; the right to perform such functions
is delegated to the minister by the fellowship.
{d) Finally, it may be asked what is the value of this
threefold ministry? (i) We believe that the Church
was being guided by the Holy Spirit. We may believe,
therefore, that in feeling its way to Bishops, Priests, and
Deacons, the Church was gradually leaming to function
through a ministry which had the Divine approval.
2. HistoricaUy this form of ministry has abundantly
proved its value. If we look to the past, the very fact
that it has survived more than one upheaval of Christen
dom and persisted to the present day shows that it is
a good form of ministry. Moreover, this estimate of
value is being remarkably confirmed at the present day
by the movements among some of the Non-Episcopal
bodies of Christians towards a form of govemment which
may be described as Episcopal in all but name.
3. It secures continuity with the past. Although it
must always be remembered that the Spirit comes first
and the outward order, in which spiritual experience is
registered and conserved, comes second; and that, if
the old order is unsuitable to express the new spiritual
experience, it must inevitably be changed, yet what is
old and tried should never be given up hghtly. If at the
present time, for example. Reunion could be secured
by a totally new form of organisation, then it would be
the duty of the Church, and the Church would have the
necessary authority, to form such an organisation. But,
as a matter of fact, in view of its long history and the

172 THE MINISTRY
movements mentioned, it may be questioned whether
there is any form of govemment which would be so suitable
for holding together Christendom at present as the
Episcopal. We have seen that both the study of the New Testament
and reflection on the nature of the Church itself make
it clear that it is necessary to have some settled form
of ministry. It is also evident, as our Articles recognise,
that the vahdity of the ministry cannot depend upon
the moral and spiritual worthiness of the minister. But
we must not aUow these facts to lead us to a conception
of the ministry which is in any sense mechanical. The
minister of the New Testament Church is not, as we have
seen, a sacerdotal mediator between God and man. He
is a representative of the Christian body. The essence
of the body is fellowship with God which is ever striving
towards increase intensively and extensively. These
go hand in hand. The body has to show the Christ life
to those outside. In proportion as it is able to do this,
it wiU succeed in fulfilhng the work of its Master. The
minister, as representative of the body, ought in him
self especially to show those moral and spiritual qualities
which must be the outcome of the life of the body, if
this is real. Like the prophet of old, he must be the
interpreter of the ways of God to man, or (in other words)
an ambassador for Christ. Through his own experience
and manner of living he should be able to show men what
the meaning of life is, and so bring those who know Him
not to a knowledge of God, and deepen the feUowship
of those who already are members of the body of Christ.
Herein lies the essence of his office, whether as preacher
or as performer of sacramental rites. Is not the compara
tive neglect of this fundamental aspect of the ministry
largely responsible for the faUure of the Church to make
its voice heard vrith regard to so many of the great issues

THE MINISTRY 178
of modem life ? The world of to-day needs prophets :
organised rehgious hfe at present fails to produce them.
There is the danger of worshipping system; but it is
inspired personahties who count.
Conclusion
In what has been said above about the Church, the
sacraments, and the ministry, it has been impossible to
attempt more than a slender sketch, and, in the light of
modem study of the Bible, the comparative study of
religion and the modem philosophical outlook in general,
to emphasise certain points which seem to be of vital
importance. It must also be remembered that no such
attempt can be final. The Church is a living, grovring
organism developing under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, and " it is not yet clear what we shaU be." But
it is incumbent upon Christians in every generation,
and not the least upon those who bear the name of Evan
gehcal, remembering their heritage of spiritual freedom,
to make the attempt fearlessly to face all the facts which
the use of our faculties brings to light in various directions
and to co-ordinate the various sides of our experience.
The future depends so much on the honest attempt to
understand the past and interpret the present rightly.
The above is an inadequate attempt; but recognition
of the principles emphasised is necessary, in the opinion
of the writer, to the persistence and spread of Christianity
in the world of to-day.
H. B. Gooding.

VIII
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
The Coming of the Kingdom
The first utterance of our Lord's public ministry is
given in the earliest of the Gospels in these words : The
time is fulfUled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand : repent
ye and believe the gospel.'^ His last address to His foUowers,
spoken, according to St. Luke, just before " He was taken
up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight," was a
reply to the question " Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore
agEiin the Kingdom to Israel? " It is not for you to know
the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His
own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy
Ghost is come upon you : and ye shall be witnesses unto Me
both in Judcea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost
part of the earth,^
First and last the Kingdom of God, if not the main sub
ject, was at least one of the main subjects of our Lord's
message. There is happily no doubt as to the meaning of the
Aramaic phrase used by our Lord and rendered into Greek
in the Gospels and then into Enghsh as " the Kingdom
of God " or " the Kingdom of Heaven " : the phrase means
simply " the sovereignty of God."
Among the Jews of our Lord's day there was a wide
spread expectation that the sovereignty of God would
be made manifest through a dramatic intervention by
God in the course of history.
» St. Mark i. 15. 2 Acts i. 6-8.
174

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 175
The prophets of the Old Testament had often looked
forward to " a day of the Lord," that is, to an intervention
of God involving judgment upon misdoers, whether of
Israel ^ or of other nations.^ In the language of poetry,
that day was associated with the shaking of heaven and
earth, the darkening of the sun and the quenching of the
light of the moon and of the stars.'
And besides this solemn expectation of judgment we find
also the anticipation of an age of happiness when the voice
of weeping shall no more be heard nor the voice of crjdng,
for heaven and earth shall have been created anew.* Asso
ciated with this hope is the hope of a perfect ruler, often
conceived of as a descendant of David,^ though sometimes
described in language which fits no merely human king.®
In the Old Testament itself these prophecies remained
only partially fulfUled. Visitations of God there were;
there were restorations; there were righteous kings.
But the expectations of the prophets were far too large
to be satisfied by any of these or by all of them put
together, and their visions remained unrealised.
To subsequent generations their unfulfiUed prophecies
were a promise of a dramatic intervention of God still to
come in the course of history. In the apocalyptic htera
ture of the first century before, and of the first century
after, our era the drama is presented in several forms
differing in detail from one another, but aU bearing a
family likeness. The sovereignty of God was to be reahsed
in a new age of righteousness and prosperity brought in
by the power of God. According to some, the scene of
this new age was to be this present world; according to
others, it was to be " a new heaven and a new earth "
And some, though not all, centred their hopes in the figure
1 Amos V. i8. 2 Zephaniah iii. 8.
^ Is. xiii IO, 13; Joel ii. 28-31.
* Is.lxv. i7ff. ; Zech. xiv. 9; Obad. 21. ^ Is. xi. ' Is. ix. 6, 7.

176 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
of a Messiah, that is, an anointed king, who should act as
God's agent and viceroy. Under him, the kingdom of
faithful Israehtes would triumph over the whole of man
kind, and those who refused to submit would be destroyed.
According to most forms of Messianic expectation, sentence
would be pronounced upon aU the ungodly, and especiaUy
upon all the oppressors of Israel, at a great assize presided
over by the Messiah himself.
Such hopes as these form the background against which
we must set the phrase which, as we have already seen,
denotes the " sovereignty of God."
We have recently been reminded by Mr. Emmet ^ that
the phrase itself is scarcely used in the apocalyptic htera
ture which is the chief source of our knowledge of the
Messianic expectations current in the time of our Lord.
And that fact does at least suggest that it is not one of
the phrases stereotyped in connection with these expecta
tions. Moreover, we find the phrase used in the Mishna
without any direct reference to the Messianic age. When
the Mishna was finaUy compiled ^ the destruction of
Jemsalem had driven Messianic expectations underground.
The great Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai,' who raUied the
survivors of Israel to a new centre at Jamnia, is said to
have given it as his opinion that God had revealed to
Abram this world, but that He had not revealed to him
the world to come ; * and the whole energy of the men
of the new Synagogue was devoted to the present under
standing and keeping of the Law. Even so, the use of the
phrase " the Kingdom of Heaven " stiU survived. It is
said, for instance, to have been employed by Rabbi Joshua
ben Korcha * when, from the way in which Deut. vi. 4-9
^ The Lord of Thought, p. 259.
" About 200 A.D. 2 About 75 A.D.
* Ber. rab. 44 (on Gen. xv. 19) quoted by Professor Burkitt,
Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, p. 12 n.
» About 150 A.D.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 177
is foUowed by Deut. xi. 13-21 in the recital of the Shema,
he argued that the Israelite is to take on himself the King
dom of Heaven,! before he takes on himself the yoke of the
commandments : that is to say, the acknowledgment of the
sovereignty of God is to precede the observance of the
Law. Here there is plainly no direct reference to a future
Messianic kingdom.
Thus the phrase chosen by our Lord was not so closely
bound up with apocalyptic expectations as not to survive
their subsidence; and whether used with reference to
the future or with reference to the present,^ the funda
mental idea of the phrase remains the same — " the
sovereignty of God." Our Lord's first message therefore.
The Kingdom of God is at hand, may be rendered more
precisely The sovereignty of God is about to be realised.
From eternity to eternity indeed God is aU sovereign,
but in a world distracted by sin and ugliness and death
His sovereignty is not reahsed. Our Lord proclaimed the
good news that this realisation was on the point of
coming. Our Lord's conception of the God whose sovereignty
was thus about to be realised is, happily again, sufficiently
clear. God, all sovereign, the fountain of wisdom, justice,
goodness, love, is best conceived of as the Father in heaven ;
gathering up in Himself and infinitely transcending the
utmost perfection imaginable of any earthly father, and
yet not removed thereby from His children and the work
of His creation, but inexpressibly close and perpetuaUy
active in history; revealing Himself and making His
presence felt in the realm of time-and-space. In con
nection with this Divine purpose of revelation God had
used individuals and nations as His instruments. Israel
had been chosen out for His service in a special way, and
it was to Israel in the first place that our Lord addressed
^ Berakhoth, ii. 2. ^ St. Luke xvii. 20, 21.
N

178 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Himself.! Israel, won for the Kingdom, would be its
natural missionary to the ends of the earth. For God
was in no sense a racial god. Already He had faithful
subjects among the Gentiles ; ^ and our Lord saw in Jonah,
the preacher of repentance to the great heathen city of
Nineveh, a type of Himself.'
No part of the world is to be excluded from the realisa
tion of God's sovereignty. Wherever and whenever this
reahsation takes place even for a moment there and to
that extent we have an " eamest," a foretaste, of that
Kingdom.* But any such partial realisation and all such
partial realisations put together are only a foretaste, a
mere foretaste, of the reality.
The reahty itself can only be represented by pictures;
one aspect only of it can be presented at a time; and
the form of any particular picture must be suited to the
understanding of those for whom it is intended.
Thus we cannot imagine our Lord speaking in twentieth-
century language to a first-century audience. And it is
clear that He made use of ideas connected vrith the coming
of the Kingdom famihar to those whom he addressed.
Two instances will be sufficient.
The first is taken from St. Mark, xiv. 62. In answer to
the direct question of the high priest, " Art thou the
Christ, the Son of the Blessed ? " Jesus said :
/ am : and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the
right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.^
1 St. Matt. XV. 24. "I was not sent but unto the lost sheep
of the house of Israel."
2 Ibid. ix. 10. Our Lord said of the centurion, " I have not
found so great faith, no, not in Israel."
^ /. e. as a preacher of repentance St. Luke xi. 30 — even as
Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of Man
be to this generation. (Compare verse 32, and contrast St. Matt.
xii. 39, 40).
^ St. Luke xi. 20.
^ Even Mr. Emmet is not able to explain away the eschato
logical reference in this passage, op, cit, p. 290.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 179
What other interpretation can be given to these words
than that Jesus is Himself the Son of Man who wiU come
with the clouds of heaven ? It was with this expectation
that the disciples, we are told, retumed to Jemsalem
after our Lord's Ascension.^
St. Paul is still more explicit : " The Lord Himself shall
descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the
archangel, and with the tmmp of God : and the dead in
Christ shall rise first : then we that are ahve, that are
left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air : and so shall we ever be with
the Lord."2
Again there is no mistaking the language of St. Matthew,
xxv. 31-46 :
When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all
the angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His
glory : and before Him shall be gathered all the nations :
and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd
separateth the sheep from the goats. . . . Jesus is the
Messiah, and the Messiah will be the judge at the great
assize. But it is very important to observe that all this
apocalyptic scenery was already familiar to our Lord's
hearers. The only thing that was new in St. Mark, xiv. 62,
was the identification of Jesus Himself vrith the heavenly
Messiah. In St. Matthew, xxv. 31-46, it is not a revelation
about the form and arrangement of the Last Judgment
that our Lord gives. His hearers knew beforehand as
much as He told them about that. Our Lord took the
conventional picture and fitted into it His own splendid
conception of the Law of Kindness.'
Moreover, we certainly find in the New Testament less
^ Acts i. II, 12.
2 I. Thess. iv. 16, 17.
' For further details, see Professor Burkitt, op. cit, pp. 23 ff.

180 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
and less emphasis on the outward form of the coming of
the Messiah and His Kingdom, and more and more on its
inward significance. From this point of view questions
of time and space are not raised.
The Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, says
St. Paul to the Romans ; ¦"¦ and in writing to the Colossians
he assumes that the Kingdom is a present reality when he
speaks of the Father who delivered us out of the power of
darkness, and translated us into the Kingdom of the Son
of His love.^
This tendency to regard the Kingdom as, above aU,
something really existing in spite of all appearances
reaches its culmination in the Fourth Gospel.
In this Gospel the word kingdom occurs in three verses
only.' The idea of the sovereignty of God is expressed by
the term the will of God.* The conception of the will of
God is one of the connecting links between the synoptic
gospels and the Fourth Gospel ; but in the Fourth Gospel
it occurs almost as many times as in the three others taken
together. The sovereignty of God is realised in the case
of the individual in so far as he does God's will. Closely
connected with the doing of God's wUl is Knowledge
(vii. 17), and with Knowledge Life. Those who do God's
will and come to know God through Jesus Christ have
already entered into the experience of etemal hfe. This
is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God,
and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ (xvu. 3).
/ am the resurrection and the life . . . whosoever liveth
and believeth on Me shall never die (xi. 25, 26). The concept
1 Rom. xiv. 17.
" Col. i. 13.
5 St. John iii. 3, 5 ; xviii. 36.
* Generally the will of Him that sent Me (St. John iv. 34 ; v. 30 ;
vi. 38, 39) ; or the will of My Father (vi. 40) ; or simply His will
(vii. 17; IX. 31).

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 181
of time is felt to be inadequate, and of necessity to be
transcended when we come into the realm of spiritual
reality. And this applies even to the idea of judgment. He that
believeth not hath been judged already (iii. i8). The line
of thought is continued in the first Epistle that bears
St. John's name. The world passeth away and the lust
thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever,^
God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.
He that hath the Son hath life ; he that hath not the Son
of God hath not life.^
And finally here and now and always the essential
characteristic of this life is love : we know that we have
passed out of death unto life, because we love the brethren
(iii. 14) . Love is of God, and everyone that loveth is begotten
of God and knoweth God ... , God is Love . . .ifwe love
one another, God abideth in us, and His love is perfected
in us (iv. 7, 8, 12).'
In this " ampler purer air " " time and space seem all
no more." There is no postponement of our Lord's
Presence. He never leaves the disciples He loves. /
will not leave you desolate : I come unto you. Yet a little
while, and the world beholdeth Me no more ; but ye behold
Me.* If a man love Me, he will keep My word : and My
Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make
our abode with him (xiv. 23) .
It is the main purpose of this essay to maintain that
there should be no retrogression from the position reached
in the Johannine writings. There it is clearly recognised
that whatever the exact value of the concepts of space and
time may be, they are not strictly adapted to the expression
of spiritual reality. Spiritual things cannot be adequately
represented by things within the space-time continuum.
1 I. John ii. 17. ^ Ibid, v. 11, 12.
8 Cf. St. John XV. 9, 12, * Ibid. xiv. 18, 19.

182 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
It is necessary sooner or later to introduce the concept
of eternity, and of eternity as something not identical
with indefinitely extended time.
Now here, of course, we mn the risk of losing ourselves
in vagueness and of using terms the meaning of which we
do not really grasp. And as a matter of fact we cannot
dispense with picture-language. It is better to en on the
side of crudeness than to aUow our religious ideas to
dissolve into mist. We can sympathise with the monks of
Egypt at the end of the fourth century who were alarmed
at the teaching of the Origenists that God must not be
thought of as possessing anything like a human form;
when one of the most respected among them, the aged
Serapion, is reported to have exclaimed : "They have taken
away my God and I know not whom to worship." ^ And
we must recognise not only that our Lord and the early
Christians coiUd do no other than clothe their expectation
of the realisation of the sovereignty of God in pictures
painted in the colours of the time, but also that we our
selves have not outgrovra the need of such pictures.
The important thing to recognise is that they are but
pictures, and that in addition to the pictures of the first
century others may be painted with the pigments of
to-day. And we must endeavour both to appreciate the
gallery of pictures which we have inherited from the past
and to add to it out of the new materials which God has
given us.
We must constantly bear in mind three things. First,
that it is impossible to suppose that our Lord would have
disapproved of the advance of natural science, or that He
would have His followers refuse to make use of the new
knowledge gained through this advance. Natural science
has introduced a better method of inquiry as well as a
higher standard of accuracy into the whole field of
1 Cassian, Collationes x. 3.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 183
attainable knowledge. For a thousand years from Galen
to Harvey there was practically no advance in medical
science. Why? Because investigators tried to proceed
by logical argument instead of by practical experiment.
Certain drugs having certain natures must apply to the
diseases with whose natures they corresponded : that
argument was accepted without the experiments necessary
to discovering the actual effect of these drugs upon the
living organism.
¦ Statements as to events in the space-time continuum
must always be brought as far as possible to the test of
experiment. Questions, for instance, with regard to
the future of the material world are questions for answers
to which we must in the first place look to natural
science, and ask what prospects are rendered likely by
the results of experimental researches into the consti
tution and course of Nature. The scientist is the person
to whom we should first apply to know how and when
this world will cease to be a habitable planet. The
picture he wiU give us wiU not perhaps be very clear
or definite, but we shall gratefully find room for it in
our gaUery and take it into account in interpreting
our other pictures.
In the second place, we must never allow ourselves to
forget that " the spirit of man is not confined by time and
place." 1 Consider the state of a man the moment after
his death. The question. Where is he in space? has no
meaning. And, as we have recently been reminded in
a very forcible way by Professor Einstein, the concept of
time is inextricably bound up with that of space. The
disembodied spirit, therefore, being no longer in space,
is probably also no longer in time.
It is StiU, of course, not beyond the scope of the
sovereignty of God, and we must be very careful not to
1 See Dean Inge's Outspoken Essays, Series II. p. i6.

184 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
bind our conception of God's sovereignty in spatial or
temporal fetters.
On the other hand, if we are to predicate anything at all
about the spirit when it has escaped beyond this mortal
life, then we must of necessity employ picture-language.
" Who can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think
thereof without an ecstasy " ? ^
The value of pictorial representation may be illustrated
in connection with the idea of judgment. In the Fourth
Gospel, as we have already seen, we find the conception
of judgment as self-acting. The sinner by his own act
condemns himself : by his ovrai act he sets in motion the
forces by which he is punished. This is, of course, a very
popular doctrine to-day. But it may be questioned
whether it does not owe its popularity partly to the fact
that in many minds it reduces the punishment that foUows
sin to a mere shadow. In many cases a man sins so easily
and lightly, and the burden seems to fall to such an extent
on the shoulders of someone else, that he reahses no
effect of importance in himself. The pleasure is tangible,
the effect appears neghgible; and he can accept the
whole doctrine of self-acting judgment without turning
a hair.But he cannot so easily retain his complacency if he
has before him a picture of himself standing before the
judgment seat of Christ. Such a picture corresponds to
his sense of righteous indignation much more closely than
any pale theory which from time to time appears to be
inoperative. We cannot then dispense with pictures in thinking of
spiritual reality, and this is the third consideration we must
keep before us as we study the language of the New
Testament. It is for us to prize our inheritance from the
1 Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (ed. D. L. Roberts),
p. 14.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 185
past and seek to lose none of its real value. It is not con
sistent with the respect due to the Scriptures to treat them
in the arbitrary manner in which they are treated by
many writers, some of those, for instance, who publish
books about the Second Coming of Christ. Examples
vriU be found in plenty in the chapters which treat of the
Millennium, or the Thousand Years' reign of Christ
upon earth.
It vriU be sufficient to observe the foUovring points :
first that passages from all over the Bible are taken from
their contexts and applied apparently at the mere fancy
of the writers concemed.
Thus in a smaU book of this type which has had a wide
circulation, passages from the Old and New Testaments
are intermingled in an extraordinary way. In one short
chapter we find St. Luke i. 32; Zech. ii. 10; Isaiah xxiv.
23; Isaiah ix. 7; Rev. xix. 16; Rev. xi. 15; Ps. Ixxii. 11;
Rom. viii. 17; Col. i. 12; Zech. xiv. 9; Isaiah ii. 4; Jer.
xxxiii. 6-8; Zech. xiv. 8-21; Isaiah xxxui. 24; Isaiah
Ixv. 20; Isaiah xxxv. 5, 6; Isaiah Ixv.; Ezek. xxxiv.
25-30 ; Isaiah ii. 3, — aU quoted and applied to the period of
a thousand years when our Lord, according to the writer,
wUl rule as king at Jerusalem.^
But, further, the chapter raises a much more serious
question : What is it that has given rise to this astonish
ing conception of a thousand years' reign of Christ as
monarch of an earthly Jerusalem ? It is weU known that
this conception has been widely held among certain
sections of Christians both of the early Church and after
the Reformation of the sixteenth century. ^ But what is
the source of the behef ?
1 No wonder the same writer looks forward to an immensely
increased interest during that period in Bible Study of this
kind. " What Bible-searching competitions," he exclaims,
" What Bible talks."
' In §0 far as a beUef is to be judged by its fruits in good

186 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Its exponents no doubt point to Rev. xx. 4 f . But it
seems to have escaped their notice that in these chapters
of the book of Revelation, St. John the Divine is describ
ing his visions. Is it not clear that the scenery must be
taken as vision-scenery and purely sjnnbohcal ? No one
thinks that the gates of the New Jemsalem will be made of
single material pearls, or its streets paved with material
gold. And must we not also take the periods mentioned as
vision-periods and equally symbolical ? In that case the
thousand years are no more to be interpreted hteraUy
than the pearls and the gold.-*^
St. Augustine not only saw this point clearly himself,
but he convinced his feUow-Christians of it, and from the
fifth century onward MUlenarianism, though from time to
time it stiU lurked in certain quarters, no longer received
any official support from the Church.^
But it is time that we left such vagaries and tumed
again to the New Testament. It is impossible in this
essay to attempt to cover all the ground, and it vriU be
sufficient if we seek to understand what our Lord Himself
is reported to have said with regard to the coining of the
Kingdom. We are stiU met at the outset with questions of place
and time. Our Lord spoke of coming with the clouds of
heaven : He said the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand.
It is true that at the beginning of the Christian era heaven
was very generaUy localised above the sky : in Cicero,'
living this belief will not receive a very favourable verdict.
Throughout its history it seems to have been associated with
extravagance and lack of balance.
1 See Dr. Swete's note on Rev. xx. 6. " St. John does not
commit himself to a reign upon earth," Commentary, p. 261.
2 St. Augustine interpreted the thousand years as the period
of the duration of the Church on earth. He did not take them
to be literal years, though some of his readers did, and argued
that the end of the world was to come in 1000 a.d.
' Somnium Scipionis, iii. 8.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 187
for instance, we find the behef that the Milky Way is the
abode of the blessed dead. It is tme also that such a
view is no longer tenable. We now know that the earth
is not even the centre of the solar system and that the
physical heaven is no longer to be thought of as having
any such direct reference to one of the tiniest of its
innumerable spheres. But we have not ceased, and we
shall not cease, to take the physical heaven as presenting
to us heaven itself, and to see in the depths of colour
glowing in the sunset a picture of celestial glory.
And when we come to the question of time it is essential
that we should observe exactly what it is that our Lord
says. The plainest of all His statements is that recorded
in St. Mark xiii. 32 : But of that day or that hour knoweth
no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but
the Father. What can this be but a dehberate discourage
ment of inquiry into " times and seasons which the Father
hath set within His own authority " ? ^
It must be admitted, however, that our Lord Himself
taught frequently and distinctly that the Kingdom was
at hand. And yet
" Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong."
There is a suggestion which wiU go a long way to
meet the difficulty thus raised and which deserves more
consideration that it has hitherto received. It is the
suggestion that our Lord's prophecy was, like several
of the prophecies of the Old Testament, not absolute, but
contingent.^ One of the most striking instances in the Old Testament
is that connected with the prophet Jonah. Jonah came
to Nineveh and proclaimed his message that the city was
1 Acts i. 7.
2 See Joel ii. 12-14 and Ezek. xxxiii. 13 ff. See also Dr. J.
Skinner, Prophecy and Religion, pp. 74 ff.

188 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
about to be destroyed : " Yet forty days, and Nineveh
shall be overthrown." ^ But when the people of Nineveh
repented, " God saw their works that they tumed from
their evil ways ; and God repented of the evil, which He
said He would do unto them; and He did it not." ^
And it is a significant fact which we have noticed
already that our Lord referred to Jonah as a type of
Himself. How far, then, may we suppose that some such para
phrase as the foUovring tmly represents our Lord's
announcement of the coming of the Kingdom ? " God
holds His Kingdom in readiness : it wiU come immediately
you are prepared : prepare by repentance."
That repentance is a necessary condition of the advent
of the Messiah is a doctrine which we find in rabbinical
writings. In the Talmud, for instance, we read that if
Israel repented but one day the Messiah would come.'
We can hardly be wrong in seeing an element of con
tingency in our Lord's prophecy in St. Matthew xix. 28 : *
" Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed Me,
in the regeneration when the Son of Man shaU sit on the
throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones
judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Is not our Lord here
referring to the twelve Apostles ? And did not the twelve
at that time include Judas ?
May we not say then that it is our Lord's teaching that
the Kingdom really is imminent and would come if — ^if
only men were prepared ? ^
We are reminded of the Interpreter's house in the
Pilgrim's Progress where Christian sees a man busUy
1 Jonah iii. 4. 2 7jj^_ iii_ jq.
3 Sanh. 98a. Compare Acts iii. 19-21.
• Paralleled in St. Luke xxii. 30.
5 For further suggestions along this line of thought see A. G.
Hogg, Christ's Message of the Kingdom, especially the chapters
entitled " Why Does it Tarry ? " (pp. 24 ff.) and " It Need Not
Tarry " (pp. 41 ff.).

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 189
engaged in raking over some straw while an Angel holds
out a golden crown above his head : so intent is he on his
task that he does not for one moment hft his eyes from
the ground.
It remains for us to try to translate into the English
of to-day what was written for our leaming in the language
of the first century. To complete such a task would take
us far beyond our limits in this essay and far beyond our
strength. We can but make a beginning.
The Kingdom of God is not to be adequately defined in
terms of the space-time continuum. It is only partially
expressible in social reconstmctions and the like. In
fact, it is better to regard aU these as preparations for the
Kingdom than as the Kingdom itself. The Kingdom is
heavenly and more real than all the appearances which
make up the extemal world. It is God's Kingdom, and
it is God who wiU bring it to realisation.
The farmer sows his seed and then he can do nothing
more. He goes to bed at night and gets up in the morning :
and God does the rest.-^
And God will bring in that Heavenly Kingdom upon
which, as upon something above our endeavour and our
understanding, our affections are set " Where Christ
is seated on the right hand of God." * And they shall bring
the glory and honour of the nations into it : and there shall
in no wise enter into it anything unclean or he that maketh
an abomination and a lie.^ No pretence will avail : no
tampering vrith standards will be possible. The one
absolute standard is the perfect human life revealed in and
through Christ Jesus ; and by that standard all shall be
judged, both the quick and the dead.
And to ourselves the message is plain. First : repent
and tum to God ; give ourselves to the doing of His vrill,
1 St Mark iv. 26, 27. * Col. iii. i. ^ Rev. xxi. 26, 27

190 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
not fanatically, not sensationally, but quietly and reason
ably. And second : beUeve the good news.
" As things are they shaU remain ? " No. Mr. Benja
min Kidd has argued that the world could be entirely
transformed by education in a single generation. But
education in practice means educationahsts, and there's
the rub. The hope held out to us in the Gospel does not
rest in the last resort on educationahsts, stiU less is it based
upon calculations in Economics or Astronomy.
It is for us indeed to use every effort to transform this
world of sense in which we hve into the fashion of that
Heavenly Kingdom, and to employ the best means in
our power and earthly instmments so far as we can.
Our Lord never for one moment encourages His followers
to be unpractical or inefficient. If the children of this
world are wiser in their generation than the children of
light, He regards it as a grave scandal.
To neglect the social problems of our time, with their
obvious bearing on morals and religion, is to shirk a
Christian duty. Questions of housing, of employment,
of popular recreations and education, questions also of
Eugenics, — questions often of great difficulty, — must be
faced. They vrill not brook of delay. Answers to them
must be found, and answers which are in accordance with
the principles of that Heavenly Kingdom, above aU with
its fundamental principle of Love. In finding answers to
these questions, every Christian man has in his ovra sphere
a part, and not an easy part, to play.
But our hope is not to be measured by our apparent
success or by our apparent failure. We have a " hring
hope,"^ both sure and steadfast and entering into that
which is within the veil." ^
This hope depends entirely on confidence in the hving
1 I. Pet. i. 3. 2 Heb. vi. 19.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 191
God, and it becomes ours only in so far as we are tumed
to Him.
" God's in His heaven
All's right with the world."
Browning does not put the words into the mouth of the
idle and the self-indulgent. In such a mouth they would
either be a mockery or they would have no meaning
whatever. It was Pippa, the httle factory girl, who
sang them in the summer moming of her rare holiday.
That hope we may and must cherish. Confirmation
of it will ever and again come to us from the etemal
world. Innumerable children the giant St. Christopher
carried over the great river, and one day he was given to
see that it was the Christ child he was carrjdng. Innumer
able strangers were entertained by the Dominican brethren
at Florence, and in the famous fresco left on their walls
by Fra Angelico it is the Lord Himself whom they are
receiving. " These things never happened, but they are always
true." ^ Christ's Presence is His coming, as the very
word 2 used in the New Testament may serve to remind
us. But all this is merely by way of foretaste. Eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them
that love Him? To depart is to be with Christ : * with
Christ, though the manner of that " with " is indefin
able and beyond expression. He is not again to be knovsn
after the flesh : ^ that which in the time-space continuum
keeps other people at a distance from us cannot separate
us from Him who is now for ever released from all such
^ The Emperor Julian ratra Se ^^c^/ero fiev ovSf-iroTf, ian Se aei
(Sallustius Philosophus, jrepl eeav Kal /f<(s|Uou, iv.). The reference is to
the myth of Attis.
2 Tapovcla (Parousia).
3 I. Cor. ii. 9. * Phil. i. 23. = ii_ Cor. v. 16.

192 THE KINGDOM OF GOD
limitations. We are stiU hampered by them ; but we, too,
look for our release ; and so shall we ever be with the Lord}
We see not yet all things subjected to Him.^ But He
must reign till all things are in subjection under His
feet? From time to time a great crisis anticipates the
final crisis of aU. There is a last hour, we perceive it is
a last hour : * there have been many : there vriU be many
more perhaps before the last hour of all. " History passes
through great cycles. . . . Each of these periods in tum
sensibly anticipates the end of all things. The world is
seen sweeping in its orbit towards the gulf ; it grazes the
edge, to escape it for that time, and to set forth upon a
wider circuit which must bring it to the final plunge." ^
In relation to the time-space order itself, God's purpose
in Christ will ultimately be vindicated. The age-long
mortal process works towards a climax : one " Divine
event," whether far off or not,
" To which the whole creation moves."
The goal of history is the Kingdom of God.* In the
meantime, God has been pleased to make known even
among us the Gentiles this mystery : Christ in you the
hope of glory?
As possessors of so glorious a hope, the first Christians
were continuaUy rej oicing. And when they were accounted
worthy, as they put it,® to suffer for the Name, they
rejoiced the more. Confidence gave sureness to their
decisions. They were not tied and bound by precedent.
They went forward with a new enterprise or with a new
development of their institutions without either nervous-
1 I. Thess. iv. 17. 2 Heb. in. 8.
3 I. Cor. xiv. 27. * I. John ii. 18.
5 The late Dr. G. G. Findlay in a fine passage on " The Last
Hour" (I. John ii. 18), Fellowship in the Life 'Eternal, p. 217.
' See Oman, The Problem of Faith and Freedom in the Last Two
Centuries, p. 187.
' Col. i. 27. 8 Acts V. 41.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 193
ness or irresponsibihty. Warmth kept them flexible and
amenable to the guidance of the Spirit. Their leaders
did not lose a sense of proportion. They did not strain
at gnats and swaUow camels. They did not confuse means
with ends. And to those who questioned the promise
of His coming their reply was this — ^may it not be taken as
our reply to-day? Forget not this one thing, beloved, that
one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand
years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His
promise . . . according to His promise, we look for new
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
1 II. Peter ui. 8, g,
J. W. Hunkin.

IX
WORSHIP I.
Worship means adoration ; it is a tribute of love to the
God of love from the people of His great love. Worship
is communion; it is touch with God and through Him
vrith one another. It is an interchange of gifts between
Him who is the Father of all and the children of the great
famUy. We offer our poor gifts of love and devotion :
we receive His rich blessings of pardon and peace and
power and life. It is an opportunity for the reahsation
of our fellowship in the Church of Jesus Christ. Inci
dentaUy it is an opportunity for raU5dng to that feUowship
those who are hving without hope and vrithout God in
the world.
AU this Christian worship means and has come to be.
In more general terms, worship is man's recognition of
God. It is almost universal and it is as various as it is
universal. Each nation and tribe has its form and
method of worship. They vary as man's conception of
God varies. Instinctively man feels after God. That
universal instinct gives him who denies the existence of
God cause for thinking and for hesitating. Somehow the
instinct of worship is universaUy implanted in the heart
of man. Sometimes he worships because he fears, some
times because he desires to propitiate, sometimes because
he loves. His worship depends upon his conception of
God. If he think his god cmel, he offers him human
sacrifice; if he think him foolish, he deceives him by
194

WORSHIP 195
pretence ; if he think him immoral, he worships him vrith
obscene dances and vicious ceremonies ; if he seem boorish
and implacable, he cuts himself with knives and lancets
that he may appease him. When the vision fails or is
marred and blurred, the people cast off restraint, and
worship loses its beauty. The Old Testament is fuU of
iUustrations of the point. Men worshipped tribal gods
and local deities, and their worship was poor and mean.
Jeroboam departed from the purer faith, and the setting
up of altars in Dan and Bethel lowered the standard of
worship in his kingdom. The controversy between
prophet and priest had at its root a difference in the
conception of God. Faith and life and worship go
together and react upon each other. In a final contrast
the whole position is summed up — the woman of Samaria
with her poor and local notions of God : " in Jemsalem or
in this mountain," and the Master Himself vrith aU-con-
trolhng words upon His lips : ' ' God is a Spirit and they that
worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in tmth."
AU this has vital bearing upon the position to-day.
We anive at a principle which must control our thinking.
Our worship must reflect our creed : our faith must be
wrought into the very fabric of our worship. Lex cre-
dendi, lex orandi is a fact, a working principle and an
ambition. We shaU do ill if we frame our worship on
Old Testament principles, for we have fuUer vision than
the men of that time. We shall do UI if we bind ourselves
to the traditional worship of a particular century or set
of centuries, for the Holy Spirit stiU guides us into a fuUer
realisation of tmth, and changing circumstance often
demands change of method, though never of principle.
We shaU do best if we lay largest stress upon the hints as
to worship which the Master Himself gives us, almost
always by way of principle or iUustration of principle, as
He proclaims the Gospel of the Kingdom. In the Apos-

196 WORSHIP
tohc Church we see the beginnings of Christian worship
and St. Paul helps us much by the enunciation of prin
ciples, often Ulustrated by special application, such, for
instance, as the law of decency and order, and that
Christian expediency wherein liberty is controUed by
considerateness. The Church in the twentieth century
is thinking out afresh its methods of worship : it must
foUow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, an ever-present
and ever-continuous guidance; it must face the needs
and problems of to-day ; it must not ignore the experience
of the Christian centuries, though it must not be a slave
to it ; it must remember above all things that its worship
must ever be dominantly expressive of the Gospel of the
Kingdom and the message of redemption which is en
shrined in the New Testament. In a very real sense the
worship of to-day must preach the Gospel. Our worship
reveals our conception of God. We see Him in the face
of Jesus Christ, and so " through Jesus Christ our Lord "
is not merely the conventional ending of our many
prayers, but is the controlhng principle of all our worship.
Next as to the worshipper. He is manifold in class,
character, outiook, attitude. For each our common
worship mustjbe the instrument of his adoration, the
opportunity of his communion. The problem has always
been with the Church, but the complex character of modem
life has enhanced its difficulty. We must find within the
Church place for every man's worship, the devout com
municant, the casual stranger, the . young with their
ambitions, the old vrith their cares, the cultured and the
ignorant, the social reformer and the individuahst — all
the various types that make up the great famUy of man.
It is the Church's task to bring them aU into touch with
God. HappUy the fuU message of the Gospel embraces
them aU, but the Church's task is none the less.
The modem science of psychology naturaUy enters

WORSHIP 197
here. It has made great advances and has taught us
much, but it has not yet reached sufficient finahty to be
at all a sure guide. Few of its problems are finally solved.
There is dispute as to the supremacy of the will. There
is dispute as to the influence of the emotions. But the
principles of the science, so far as they are agreed, bring
help to those who in a common-sense way are trying to
make the worship of the Church as adequate as may be
for the minds of those whom it strives to influence. It
makes man much more complex : it adds difficulties, and
helps to solve them. The time has not yet come for
anything like dogmatism as to the relation between
worship and psychology, and for a while at least we must
be content to make the best of the hints which psychology
gives us in the planning of our worship. After aU, the
old principle of the twenty-fourth Article, that the worship
of the Church must be in "a tongue understanded of the
people " in its fullest appUcation is our best guide. We
must study ourselves and our people, and our worship vrill
be influenced by our study. People who worship are
extraordinarily diverse, and modem worship must in
many ways meet many needs.
As a rough generalisation, Churchmen of all schools of
thought, and quite especially Evangelicals, have differen
tiated between the converted and the unconverted : those
whom it is our task to win, and those whom it is our
privilege to edify. It has sometimes been suggested that
our Prayer-book is a book of worship for converted
people, and there is much tmth in the suggestion. On
the other hand, our present book is so full of the Gospel
of redemption that ever and again it is striking the note
of redemptive vrinsomeness. Whether it was intended to
do so or not, it always seems fuU of message for those
who have come for lower purposes than the real purpose
of worship and who may stay to pray. Evangelicalism

198 WORSHIP
stands distinctively for the doctrine of the Cross, for the
fact of the Atonement, and for the need of conversion.
Evangelicalism has ever been content vrith the balance
of our Prayer-book in that particular direction, and it
would be false to its opportunity if it ever forgot, or
aUowed to be displaced, the evangelistic note in our
common worship. After all, we are all of us, even the
most devout, slow to appreciate the fuUness of our redemp
tion. Our adoration and our communion wUl never be what
they might be unless Calvary be persistently placarded
before us. Very tmly our services are all mission services,
and in all our plans for making our modem worship
more effective we must make them more so rather than
less. It is the Church's task to proclaim Christ, and the
public worship of God ought to set forth consistently the
mind and wiU of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Our
worship must be intelligible to modem thinking. It must
respond to modem needs. It must bring men and
women into touch with the full faith and the full life of
the Gospel. Its full helpfulness is summed up for the
individual in the splendid phrase : " That I may know
Him and the feUowship of His sufferings and the power
of His resurrection." Worship must not only be the
setting in which quite suitably the Gospel of redemption
and of the Kingdom can be preached, it must itself be
such preaching.
We have a Prayer-book in our hands, we have before
us the proposals for revision. The book we have been
using for three hundred years, and few of us are now
using it exactly as it stands. The most bigoted opponent
of Prayer-book revision is usuaUy in practice the most
radical reviser of it. To that book English Christianity,
Anglicanism throughout the world, and we might dare
venture to add, the Free Church communions of our ovra
day, owe an incalculable debt. But as it stands few

WORSHIP 199
find it completely satisfactory as a vehicle of worship in
the twentieth century. It speaks the language and
breathes the atmosphere of three hundred years ago.
To even the casual student of history it sometimes suggests
the controversies of that period, some of them long since
dead and now better decently buried. The Reformation
reasserted certain tmths which are fundamental to our
faith, and it vrill be an ill day for us if we allow ourselves
to be deprived of aU that it gave us. The needs of to-day,
however, are not precisely the needs of the sixteenth
century. Language has changed and so has the world.
The real faith of Christ abides. The Church of to-day as
it kneels to worship cannot wear the clothes of three
hundred years ago. We must have revision, and more
than revision. We are being asked on some sides to-day
to substitute for our sixteenth-century book a book
modelled upon the worship of earher centuries stUl, to
re-introduce medieval forms of worship as a substitute
for those of the Reformation. Such a substitution wiU
not help the Church as it faces its task. If we are losing
ground by worshipping, and speaking, and thinking, in
the terms of the sixteenth century, we shaU assuredly
lose more ground if we try to do the same in terms of the
twelfth or the fourteenth. If the Reformation is played
out — we whole-heartedly repudiate the suggestion —
medievalism is dead. We shall be iU-advised indeed, as
we try to face the problems before us, if we aUow ourselves
unduly to be swayed by tradition, whatever the tradition
be. We are the people of the twentieth century, holding
the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We would
not, and we must not, change our faith. We must
express it both in teaching and in worship in terms
intelhgible to this century and apphcable to its needs.
The treasure of the ages is ready to our hands, and we
shall be foolish indeed if we do not avaU ourselves of it.

200 WORSHIP
If we revert to Reformation or medieval forms and methods
of worship simply because they are Reformation or
medieval, the very story of the past wiU convict us of
folly. If we choose them because they are good in
themselves and suffice for our needs, we shall have leamt
aright the lessons of history.

2.
Thus far have we considered controlling principles.
Our conception of God will govern our worship. The
varying needs of the variant worshipper vrill influence its
method. Bearing these principles in mind we can try
to discover some of the features which should characterise
our modem worship.
Evangelicalism has always stood for simplicity in
worship. In these better educated days we have learnt
more of the value of beauty. In the complex situations
of the last few years we have grovra to need — and, vrith
or without authority, to practise — liberty and elasticity.
In a broken and distraught world we have longed for the
sense of fellowship. Simplicity, beauty, liberty, fellow
ship. These seem to be at least some of the features
which should characterise our modern worship.
Simplicity in worship has marked Evangelicalism more
or less as a matter of principle. The great facts of the
Gospel are simple in practice and application, however
mysterious they be in dogmatic understanding. Lajdng
stress upon the fact that we have access to God through
Christ, that our task is to make tryst between Christ and
His disciples, we deem simplicity to be essential lest we
distract. There was too much distraction in medieval
worship. The preface to the Prayer-book bears testi
mony to the fact. Worship in consequence became a
pageant and a show, a performance, something in which

WORSHIP 201
the worshipper had no part. It did not matter that
most of it should be in Latin. He did not expect to under
stand it and was quite content. It fitted the age in which
he lived. The average man left the riddle of life to his
betters ; he was content with serfdom and feudalism and
such-like things. All this has been changed with the rise
of democracy. A cynical statesman can say, " We have
made the people our masters, we must educate them,"
but an inspired and militant Church vriU say, " It is our
task to bring the people to God, we must see to it that
we do not make the way to Him more difficult than it
need be." There are some to-day who speak of the
invincible ignorance of the laity, who pour contempt upon
the man in the street, who sneer at the bricklayer and
the charwoman. But may we not put it to them that
in doing so they are forgetting the method and- the spirit
of the Master, who taught His Gospel of the Kingdom in
the simplest terms, and culled His illustrations from the
field and the hedges, from the business activities and
the children's games of common life ? Simplicity is not
childish, it is child-like, and child-likeness is essential to
the Kingdom of Heaven.
Beauty, too, should characterise our worship. Spiritu
ality is truest beauty, and we worship the Lord in the
beauty of holiness, but not necessarily in the ugliness of
everything else. In the past, Evangelicalism has been
afraid of beauty in worship, and indeed it has been
charged against our British character that we have little
sense of the beautiful, either in art or anything else.
Perhaps the charge has been sometimes true. But now
there are signs of a change, and the development of
education is at least partly responsible for it. Time was
when we were satisfied with the three R's for the workman's
child, and what we were pleased to call " accomplish
ments " for the child of the well-to-do. Our school walls

202 WORSHIP
were decorated, if at all, with advertisements of some
body's pens and somebody else's mustard. Our school
songs, if taught at all, were sugary ditties devoid of
music. In ecclesiastical architecture we ignored all the
beauties of the past, or plastered them over and erected
barns in the approved style of churchwardens' Gothic.
No wonder that we felt little need for beauty in our
worship and that we were afraid of good music in our
choirs. The new generation will have none of this. It
has learnt, at least to a certain extent, to appreciate true
art and to enjoy it. It is leaming to appreciate good
music and, again, to enjoy it. Evangelicalism has been
slow to learn this, and of course there is danger in excess.
There is always dignity in tme beauty, and sometimes
our modern exponents in the realm of art and music have
forgotten this. There is beauty in music, but not in
musical gymnastics. There is beauty in colour and
ornament and carving, but there is none in tawdriness or
in tinsel, and too often very little in the gorgeous catalogues
of ecclesiastical furnishers. The present writer has no
right to be dogmatic, but when he sees and hears some of
the curious monstrosities which are perpetrated even
to-day in the name of art, he sometimes wonders whether
the old austerity and bareness did not save us from
something even worse.
Clearly, we need liberty and we must have elasticity.
The Prayer-book as it stands ties our hands far too much.
Happily we have refused to be tied, and the happenings
of the last eight years have compelled us to seize more
than ever the liberty which should be ours. But it is a
pity that we should be compelled to seize it and, if our
conscience be tender, feel criminals in the seizing. In the
proposals for the revision of the Prayer-book there is a
much larger liberty. Prayers for many occasions are
inserted, alternative services granted us, and a wealth of

WORSHIP 203
ordered liberty is ours. We must learn to use it. A
story is told that news of the great fire in Chicago was
brought to an ecclesiastical assembly. In consequence
the assembly fell to prayer. They prayed for many
things, but, as one put it afterwards, " For Chicago we
did not pray," and the reason was that there was no
collect provided in the Prayer-book to be used on the
occasion of a great fire. The misguided ecclesiastics of
that assembly are not dead yet. It ought not to be
impossible so to arrange an ordered liberty that loyal
ministers of the Church's worship may make the worship
of each occasion fit the need. The old-fashioned con
servative bids us pause lest chaos ensue. Better a living
Church, engaged in living worship, and in living service
despite the chaos, than a dead Church ministering in
desperate order to a dead world.
One of the reasons alleged at the time for the extra
ordinary stringency of the Act of Uniformity was that
liberty would be licence with clergy who might be disloyal
both to Church and State. That danger is gone, and
indeed if it still existed the freedom of the pulpit would
give larger scope than propaganda by prayer. Surely
there is some place in the Church of England for extem
pore prayer, and yet even Evangelicals have largely
ceased to use the liberty they have.
Communion with God must mean communion with
one another, and the note of feUowship should characterise
our worship. True, it is sounded in our present Prayer-
book. Its compilers called it the Book of Common
Prayer, but the note is not sounded loudly enough for a
world which has been driven by its troubles almost against
its will to realise the value of common purpose, common
endurance, and common service. The Church is a society
of redeemed individuals, but it is also a society pledged
through Christ to the redemption of the world. It is an

204 WORSHIP
army of salvation rather than merely an ark of salvation.
Too often our common prayer ignores or minimises this
aspect; too often in our interpretation of the Prayer-
book we have forgotten it. When we have remembered
it, we have thought of it only as a fellowship of religion,
not as a feUowship in life. The idea needs expression
both in the language of our services and in the method
of our worship. The Church has been described as the
conservative party at prayer ; a clever description, with
just enough of the touch of truth about it to make us
resent it. It is the Church's task to heal broken brother
hood. We can do it by prayer and effort. We can do
it even by an effort to express the ideal in our prayers
and our services. It is a matter of emphasis perhaps,
but matters of emphasis are not unimportant, and any
thing in worship which helps us to feel our fellowship
helps to create the fellowship we feel. The Master taught
us both by precept and example the duty of common
worship, but the one great service which He has ex
pressly ordained for us is itself a service of communion, not
only with Him, but, as both He and St. Paul made clear,
with one another. " Drink ye aU of this." " Ye are all
partakers of the one loaf." Perhaps Evangelicalism in
the past has minimised the Eucharistic aspect of the
Holy Communion. There is real danger to-day that in
the chorally sung Eucharist with but few communicants
we may forget the primary element of feUowship. It
need not be so necessarily, but unless we take heed it
may aU too easily so become.
In the interests of feUowship one question of practical
politics immediately arises. There are some among us
who would frankly recognise our divisions, and who would
urge further that the Evangelical and the Catholic con
ceptions of truth are ineconcUable — that there are, in
fact two religions in the Church of England. In the

WORSHIP 205
matter of Prayer-book revision they would accept this
position, would authorise two uses, would issue two
books, and give to each party exactly what it wishes.
The result would be two Churches, bound together by
the nexus of the Establishment and by mutual toleration.
It would mean two divergent Communion offices, and
would have the most serious issues in many directions.
Of course, divergence is preferable to the sacrifice of
truth, but we believe that aU which is best in Evan
gelicalism, and all which is best in Catholicism, are alike
essential to the well-being of the Church. Each school
of thought has a contribution to make, and whUe it may
be that for the present distress alternative uses should
be suffered, we look confidently for a happier day when
the whole Church, all that is adventitious and aU that
is irrelevant laid aside, shall settle down again to use one
Book of Common Prayer, a book, of course, much more
elastic than the present. It has taken us some fourteen
years to reach the present stage of Prayer-book revision.
It wiU not be wasted time if for fourteen years, by means
of a supplementary book and in other ways, we make
experiments and at the end find once again a common use.

With these marks of worship in our mind, simphcity,
beauty, hberty, sense of feUowship, we tum to a brief
study of the matter of ritual. Ritual must be the
servant of worship, and we cannot do vrithout it. When
it becomes the master it obscures worship, it hinders
freedom and simplicity of access to God. And because
it has done so at decadent moments in the history of the
Church, Evangehcahsm hsis always been shy of much
ritual. In happier days when we are clear that we are

206 WORSHIP
preaching the same Gospel, vrith a real emphasis upon aU
its essential parts, we can afford to be more tolerant, and
except where extravagances abound, the old ritualistic
squabbles have in fact largely disappeared. As we
understand each other better and as the spirit of feUow
ship grows, we can more easily bear the vagaries of each
other's ritual, but this toleration must be mutual, and if
suspicion is laid aside by one school of thought, the other
must refrain from contempt. Extravagance and narrow
ness alike are to be deprecated.
Ritual at its best does three things for us. It gives
us decency and order. It adds beauty to our services.
It expresses doctrine. There is some ritual which is
merely a matter of convenience. It helps us to avoid
muddle on the one hand and fussiness on the other. It
is necessary, it must be unobtrusive, and it must be
thought out. There is ritual which adds the touch of
beauty. We love flowers upon the meal tables of our
homes. How can they be out of place on the great meal
table of the Lord's Supper? So also with the ritual of
colour and of music, if there can be ritual in music. There
is ritual which expresses doctrine, which by method of
eye and ear gives teaching. It is of this last ritual that
we need to be careful. Sometimes it may teach amiss,
sometimes in process of time it ceases to teach at aU.
In the former case we must put the ritual aside, in the
latter we can follow the line of convenience or even of
fashion vrithout demur. For instance, it is to be pre
sumed that the use of the academic govra in the pulpit
as against the surplice was originaUy intended to mark
the prophetic character of the preaching office, and
perhaps to extol the importance of preaching. We have
ceased to use the gown, partly for convenience' sake and
partly because fashion has changed. Evangehcahsm
was right in emphasising the importance of preaching.

WORSHIP 207
None can over-emphasise the value of the ministry of
the Word. One sometimes wonders whether present-day
Evangehcahsm gives to that sacred task the importance
it had in the Apostolic days, and which it should have
for ever down the centuries. To persist in the govra as
a party badge is foUy. It is much greater foUy to
depreciate preaching. Again, in Reformation days men
had almost ceased to regard the Holy Communion as the
communion feast. The Eucharistic and sacrificial aspects
of the Sacrament had been over-emphasised and the com
munion aspect excluded. Hence it was necessary, if the
whole truth were to be recovered, that the ritual of the
Sacrament should not obscure that whole truth. In
the curious changes of circumstance, posture became
important, the eastward position and the north end
received a definite doctrinal significance, and there was
no clearer mark of division visible to the eye than the
posture taken. Incumbents put into their advertisements
for a curate " north end " or " eastward position," and
those who answered knew at once what was meant.
The ritual has lost its significance in the minds of most
men. Fashion is deciding in favour of one use, and in
the interests of uniformity we need not fear that we are
endangering doctrine in this particular by following
fashion. To take an iUustration of a different kind. In
many churches now-a-days wafer bread is used. The
exigencies of war time gave larger vogue to the practice.
Evangehcahsm dishkes it, because it remembers that in
the two great Sacraments of the Gospel Christ adapted
to His high purpose two of the commonest operations of
life, washing and taking food, and in the case of the latter
used the common bread of the country, and the wafer
does not seem quite as near to the s3mibolism of the
Sacrament as is wheaten bread. But the matter does
not seem to some of us to be supremely important, and

208 WORSHIP
we can bear with it. Sometimes, however, we find
round wafers used, each separately made. This seems
definitely to break the s3mibohsm of the Sacrament.
" We are all partakers of the one loaf," and the common
partaking of the broken bread, though it mean much else
beside, is the symbol of our communion. Other illus
trations could be given where the difficulty is greater.
We of the Anghcan communion naturally do not wish
unnecessarily to stand aloof from ritual which has had
long tradition in history, but it does sometimes happen
that traditional uses have been so wedded to erroneous
teaching that we feel compelled to set aside uses even
though they have long tradition behind them in order
to avoid the danger of error. Things good in themselves,
or at any rate indifferent in themselves, may become
harmful through association. This was remembered at
the time of the Reformation, and needs to be remembered
still, though it need not be over-emphasised. Ritual
varies immensely amongst us, and quite often it varies
according to taste. Tastes differ, and we cannot argue
about them. Uniformity of ritual is not essential to
unity of spirit. Let our toleration be as large as may be.
With the great problems and tasks of to-day before us,
bothering about clothes and postures and such-like things
seems only comparable to Nero's fiddling. Christian
considerateness wiU help us through, but it must be
shovra on both sides. Insistence upon eccentricities of
ritual leamt during a holiday on the Continent is as much
to be deprecated as a narrow adherence to the ritual of
our Evangelical forefathers in bygone days. Common
sense and mutual understanding ought to enable us to
solve our ritual problems, not by the subordination of
all to a common law, but by a larger toleration of each
other's tastes. After aU, the subjective effect of ritual is
of more importance than its objective character, and there

WORSHIP 209
is no question but that austere simphcity and gorgeous
profusion ahke attract and distract in the matter of real
worship, according to the habit and temperament of the
worshipper.

4-
The character and the arrangement of our services on
Sunday remain to be considered. The number of those
who are able to worship in the week is necessarily smaU,
and they are normally the really devout. With a httle
care and considerateness the number may easily be
increased. Sunday, however, is a much more difficult
problem. The conditions of modem life, especiaUy in
the case of the wage-earning classes, are — to quote the
report of the Archbishops' Committee on the Worship of
the Church — " greatly inimical to the offering to God on
Sundays (particularly Sunday mornings) of a free-will
offering of a holy worship, of ourselves, our souls, and
bodies." Only by a radical change in our social and
industrial system " vrill the way be made clear for the
retum of the people to the public worship of the Church."
Pending that change, however, we must make the best
of the present situation. The problem of Sunday evening
is comparatively simple. With a revised lectionary, with
an inteUigible use of the Psalter, with also the kind of
elasticity as to prayers suggested in the proposals for
revision, and with a reasonable regard to the musical
taste of the average congregation, the Evening Prayer of
our Prayer-book is, in my judgment, and I think I have
the backing of common experience, the happiest form of
worship for Sunday evening. It gives opportunity for
adoration ; it helps to communion with God and feUowship
with men, and it may be made the best mission service
which we can devise for attracting and vrinning that very
p

210 WORSHIP
large number of somewhat careless folk who oxUy think
of God on Sunday nights. To intrude into that worship
unaccustomed or unpleasing ritual, to attempt a musical
service which even a Cathedral choir would find difficult,
when our choir is by no means of Cathedral standard, is
to discourage, if not to drive away, the very people whom
we are anxious to win. Rightly handled, our Sunday
evening services may form a continuous evangehstic
mission in our parishes, vrith a fmitfulness beyond even
our hopes and our prayers.
Sunday moming is much more difficult. We have
become the slaves of two particular hours, 8 and ii,
the latter, apparently, generaUy convenient, the former
not so much so, especially in agricultural districts. The
danger is that we should settle dovra to a celebration of
the Holy Communion with a few communicants at 8,
and either Matins, or a celebration with even fewer
communicants, at ii. We want more communicants and
we want them more worthy. For the communicant the
celebration at which he communicates is always the
central service of Sunday, whatever its hour. For us
the Holy Communion is the service at which most easily
we can realise Christ's Presence and appropriate His
gifts. In our complex modem hfe we must not make it
either impossible or unduly hard for our feUow disciples
of the Master to be communicants. We cannot regard
the ecclesiastical custom of fasting before reception as
irrevocably binding, though we respect the conscience of
those who so regard it. There are already clear signs,
especially in rural areas, that insistence upon the custom
is, in fact, excommunicating large numbers of people.
Bishop Wilkinson of Truro used to say that the com
munion is greater than the fast, and of course we cannot
but agree. We agree, further, that the whole tradition of
the Church is in favour of making the Holy Communion

WORSHIP 211
service in some way central. The Archbishops' Com
mittee on the Worship of the Church had to face the
problem, though it did not find itself able to solve it.
It may be worth while to quote here two paragraphs
from memoranda appended to that Report bearing upon
the subject.
The first is from the pen of the present Bishop of
Pretoria (Dr. Neville Talbot) :
" As regards the Holy Communion, few things have
emerged more clearly in the war than the importance of
the hour at which the Holy Communion is celebrated.
Frequently no, or small, attendance at a celebration has
been due to the fact that the hour has been suitable for
chaplains or officers, but impossible for the men. This
experience in war must lead to inquiry into like facts
in peace, in regard to both rural and industrial life.
If, as is probable, such inquiry points to the need of
Holy Communion in the evening, it will be important to
secure that it is always a service by itself, for those who
cannot come at other times, and not a sequel to another
service from which individuals stay on, on the spur of
the moment. The discipline of preparation and fasting
need not be overthrown in principle by the application
(as regards time) to the Holy Communion of our Lord's
judgment that the Sabbath was made for man and not
man for the Sabbath."
The second is over the joint signatures of the Bishop
of Kampala (Dr. Gresford Jones) and the present
writer :
" We believe that through a revival of a true concep
tion of Communion lies the way to a deep spiritual revival
in the Church. By a true conception we mean a real
Communion, all uniting, all partaking, all in the fullest
way seeking to enter into holy fellowship with Christ
their Lord, and vrith His Church militant on earth and

212 WORSHIP
triumphant above. We believe that the effort to reintro
duce what is tantamount to ' High Mass ' as the regular
Sunday morning service, vrith its non-communicating
attendance, and, in consequence, its one-sided presenta
tion of Truth, will, if it is pressed, bring grave loss to the
Church. It will either keep people away from church,
or it vrill lower the standard of Holy Communion, and so
check that recovery of fuller spiritual life which we
desire."

Some have attempted, and with no little success, to
solve the problem by arranging once or twice a month,
or more often if it makes for edif5dng, to have a parish
Communion at a convenient hour, preceded perhaps by
Matins to the end of the Benedictus, which is in reality
a corporate Communion of the communicants of the
parish. Some have quite advisedly retained or intro
duced Holy Communion in the evening. Evening Com
munion used as the distinctive badge of a party is
intolerable sacrilege. On the other hand, some criticism
of evening Communion comes into the same category.
Our Lord instituted the Sacrament in the evening, and
for a while, apparently, the Church so celebrated it.
Presently the custom changed and has the tradition of
many centuries behind it, the practice of fasting quite
naturally tending to stereotype the morning hour. If
in this day in certain circumstances there is need for
reversion to the evening, such reversion must neither be
regarded as irreverent nor as disloyal to ecclesiastical
tradition. It seems worth while to make an appeal to
those who esteem highly the practice of fasting to think
out their position again. If fasting is based upon a
materialistic conception of the Sacrament, we have no
more to say, save to demur. If it is to be used as a
spiritual preparation for reception, surely the hour of
midnight is a quite arbitrary factor in the matter. It is

WORSHIP 218
surely competent for the modem Church, guided by the
Holy Spirit of God, to make a new mle, or to create a
new custom. The duration of the fast might quite well
be brought into relation with the hour of the Communion
service, rather than be determined by the division of
one day from another, a particular division which was
certainly not universal amongst the nations at the time
when the Christian Church came into being. Evangel-
icahsm is wilhng to leam from other schools of thought
in the Church emphasis upon particular aspects of the
Communion service, but it is not wUhng to forgo that
which is, after all, fundamental to the service. We
cannot in these days retum exactly to the setting of the
Upper Room on the night of the Institution, but we omit
at our peril anything which is essential in that original
celebration. It is impossible to argue here the doctrinal
question, but " on the night that He was betrayed " all
who were with Him received the Holy Communion
vrith their Lord, and as much as may be it must be
so still.
This brings us back to our starting point. Worship is
adoration, it is communion with God and with one
another. It is essentially a spiritual thing, the touch
of our spirits with Him. Because we are human, much
that is material must enter into it. The material must
not distract, it must point to Him. We must worship
Him in spirit and in truth. The more we remember
that in our earthly worship, the more vriU that earthly
worship conform to the worship of heaven, when the
limitations of time and space are removed and the veils
of sense and material are dravra aside, and His servants
serve Him, worship Him, face to face. Till then, our
worship draws us to Him; till then, it preaches His
Gospel; tiU then, it sets us to work to pass on that
Gospel; tiU then, it brings us help and strength for our

214 WORSHIP
work and service; tiU then, may He speed us on, His
Church at worship. His Church at work, in the great
adventure of bringing the Kingdom of God and the
Gospel of His grace into the very heart and hfe of the
world which so sorely needs Him.
Guy Truron.

X
REUNION
It is a commonplace of writers on Reunion that the
Anglican Communion stands in a position unique in its
opportunities. Profoundly infiuenced by the Reforma
tion, proudly claiming for two and a half centuries to be
the child of that movement, it yet retained the historic
organisation and continuity of life which have rendered
possible the " Catholic Revival " of the nineteenth cen
tury. Consequently it has affinities on the one hand
with the Churches of the Reformation, Lutheran and
Reformed ; and on the other with the historic Churches
of the East and the West. Of recent years explicit
emphasis has been laid much more upon the latter affinities
than upon the former; but it may be doubted whether
the great body of Church folk, silent though not without
conviction, reaUy acquiesce in this tendency.
Be that as it may, it is quite clear that the Church of
England contains within its limits Catholicism and Pro
testantism as does no other communion in Christendom.
The C3aiical observer looks on at the continual friction
and strife to which the presence of this variety in the life
of one community gives rise, and is prone to declare that
such heterogeneous elements can only be held together
by the tie of self-interest ; take away, he says, the position
of prestige and privUege given by the Establishment, stiU
more the solid material advantages due to the ancient
endovraients, and these contrasted and confhcting sections
wiU fall asunder at once, and " hive off " to their respective
215

216 REUNION
affinities. Such an opinion is a plausible one ; it conforms
to the standard of self-interest by which the man of the
world is wont to judge the actions of his fellows. But it
is a superficial judgment; it fails to look below the
surface, it fails to see either the almost insensible grada
tions by which the gap between the logical extremes is
bridged, or the strong sense of fellowship which exists,
more often felt than expressed, between the different
elements. Give due weight to these unquestionable
features of our Church life, and the fear of serious cleavage
on the removal of material attractions ceases to haunt
the mind; the centripetal forces overpower the centri
fugal; the cynic may scoff, but his gibes fall harmless on
him who knows the facts of the situation.
To this position of the Anglican Communion in its
relation to the whole of Christendom the position of the
Evangelical Churchman vrith regard to Anglo-Saxon
Christianity may be compared; he holds a mediating
place. Whether we look at past history, or at present
teaching, he is closely akin to the great non-episcopal
communions which include numerically the considerable
majority of English-speaking Christians. In passing, it
may be urged that this is a fact which Churchmen in
England are very apt to forget. In this country they
form, save in a few exceptional districts, the prepon
derating element in the religious life of the people ; and
they fail to remember that this state of things has not
been reproduced either in the Colonies or in the United
States; there the non-episcopal communions are in a
large majority; and this is an element in the situation to
which insularity must not blind us. But of the close
relations of Evangelical Churchmen to the non-episcopal
communions, whether historical or doctrinal, there can
be no serious question. In history, the great movement
of the eighteenth century which bears the name Evan-

REUNION 217
gelical arose for the most part within the Church
of England; but the new wine was too strong for
the old bottles, and the Methodists broke away to form
their organisation apart; the Methodist communions
the world over are the direct offspring of that movement
to which Evangelical Churchmen look back as their own
origin. The influence of the movement on the older
English Nonconformity was scarcely less profound; it
had been a declining force through the greater part of
the eighteenth century; its renascence and extension
during the nineteenth were in a large measure due to the
Evangelical revival. No surer testimony to this can be
found than the title which the Nonconformists themselves
have chosen for one of the organisations in which they
unite — The Federation of Evangelical Free Churches.
It was the new spirit of fervent religious zeal generated
by the movement in Scotland which lay behind the
secession of the United Presbyterians, and the disruption
of 1843, causing breaches which now are weU-nigh healed.
Evangelicalism within and without the Church of England
looks back to the one source, and finds a common begin
ning in that movement which originated, as far as the
eye of man can trace, in the " Holy Club," as its detractors
called it, founded by " four young gentlemen of Oxford,
in November 1729."
Doctrinally the position is much the same. While
Evangelical Churchmen must be clearly distinguished from
Low Churchmen, a distinction of which neither they nor
those who differ from them are sufficiently mindful, yet
that which differentiates them from another great school
of thought in the Church is their attitude to the Christian
Society. Epigrams are proverbially misleading, yet they
sometimes crystallise the essential features of a situation.
And it would not be wholly untrue to say that, while for
the Catholic the individual exists for the Church — hence

218 REUNION
his insistence on the Incarnation — for the Evangelical
the Church exists for the individual — hence his insistence
on the Atonement. If personal reminiscence may be for
a moment allowed, the writer was early taught " The
High Churchman puts the Church before Christ ; we put
Christ before the Church," a statement as untme — and
as true — as the preceding epigram. Both alike testify,
however unguardedly, to the Catholic emphasis on the
corporate life of the Society, to the Evangelical insistence
on the personal life of the individual. This emphasis
on the individual, his direct relationship vrith God, his
personal religious experience, his priority to the society
in importance, is shared by the Evangelical Churchman
with his brethren of the Free Churches. With them he
shares too a grave distrust of any system, however logically
complete and compelling, which attains its completeness
by ignoring facts of experience; he cannot accept a
theory of the Church and of the means of grace which
classes together, as far as the covenanted assurance of
the grace of God is concemed, " baptised persons who are
estranged from the legitimate ministry; or . . . those
who reject the Sacraments, as the Society of Friends; or
. . . pagans who respond to such light as they possess,"
however much this theory may be charitably cloaked by
pious expressions that " there may be great hopes of
uncovenanted operations by the Holy Ghost outside the
sphere of the covenant." ^ Such a theory is to him
intolerable; its inconsistence with the facts of life is
plain evidence that its logical completeness is due to
premises too cramped and narrow to take in the whole
sweep of the love of God.
And yet we Evangehcals are set by the providence of
God in " one communion and fellowship " vrith those
who hold such a theory; we have learned to value their
1 Stone and Puller, Who are the Members of the Church ? pp. 9, 10.

REUNION 219
contribution to the life of the whole society ; we feel that
the influence of close contact with them has been for our
good; we can respect, while we reject, their principles,
and still more the devotion with which those principles
are held, and which they inspire. We cannot but be
conscious that the Communion to which we belong would
be the poorer if it consisted only of men more or less
hke-minded with ourselves. The Catholic claim to be
the one exclusively legitimate system of Christian doctrine,
the one true expression of the mind and purpose of
Christ upon the field of history, we cannot away vrith.
The Cathohc position, with its insistence on the corporate
life of the Church, its reverence for tradition and con
tinuity, its insistence on order and beauty in worship,
and its proclamation of the material as the sacramental
vehicle of the spiritual, we have learned to respect and
value. Now here lies perhaps the most difficult and the
gravest of the problems which underlie the reunion of
Christendom. The friends of union are faced vrith the
question whether the Church of the future must be based
on a logicaUy coherent and consistent system of doctrine,
whether the theory underlying that Church must be the
same in the mind of all its members, or whether there
can really be a fellowship so strong in its sense of oneness
as to include within itself the Cathohc and the Protestant
positions, a practical unity which can subsume these
sharply contrasted inteUectual concepts into itself. It
must be insisted that this question is a problem, not a
theorem, that if there be a solution its triumphant con
clusion wiU run " Quod erat faciendum," not " Quod erat
demonstrandum," It is easy for the Latin and the Greek Communions to
display unity ; they have an underlying theory, logical in
its completeness; it is easy for the non-episcopal com
munions to present, each of them, a spectacle of com-

220 REUNION
parative unity, because they consist of men drawn together
into fellowship by agreement on certain points, to assert
which the particular communion exists. Either side
maintains the exclusive legitimacy of its own claims tmly
to represent the rehgion of Jesus Christ ; but the facts of
life and experience cast doubt upon such exclusive claims.
Either side can point to the fraits of the Spirit in its
members, and, if not blinded by prejudice, by bringing a
mind already made up to facts which do not fit the pet
theory, must recognise some measure of these fruits among
the members of the opposite camp. How can these con
flicting standpoints, each vrith its own contribution to
make for the good of the whole, be brought vrithin the
fellowship of the one Church ? The Anglican Communion
is trying, successfuUy or unsuccessfuUy, to work out this
problem ; and the strife, the friction, the heat, generated
by the process are obvious to all men.
But that which is most obvious is not necessarily the
whole truth ; more than once already we have had occasion
to assert, what must be put forward with fresh emphasis
here, that behind and beneath aU the turmoU on the
surface and the asperities which the extremes on either
side deal out to one another, there is a real and grovring
spirit of fellowship, a spirit of which the outward union
is an increasingly tme expression. Here then in the
microcosm of our own communion we are hammering out
a unity of opposites, each maintaining its ovra principles,
but respecting those of the other side, which may, in the
providence of God, point the way to the solution of the
problem in the larger sphere of Christendom as a whole.
This being so, if we Evangelicals have any contribution
to make to the task of reuniting Christendom, it surely is
that we can say to those with whom we, both historically
and doctrinally, are largely in agreement that we find it
no impossible task, but a true disciphne of the spirit, to

REUNION 221
live in the same feUowship with most of those from
whom we differ so profoundly; that while the intimacy
of the contact unquestionably modifies our outlook and
modes of expression, yet we are not conscious that we
have moved from, or betrayed, the fundamental position
of our Evangelical heritage.
Here perhaps wiU arise our main practical difficulty.
Our brethren of the Free Churches will say, nay indeed,
do say, that while we speak fair, and assert a considerable
area of common ground vrith them, our practice has
been scarcely distinguishable from that of the strongest
Catholics. " If these be your con'rictions," the chaUenge
will run, " why have you not had the courage of them ? "
Nearly thirty years ago it was said to the writer by a
Nonconformist that he always found it easier to get on
with High Churchmen than vrith Evangehcals, because
the position of the former was unmistakable, but that of
the latter ambiguous.
The challenge is a fair one and must be met. It is not
enough to urge that political controversy has obscured
the religious aspects of the case ; this would be in a large
measure tme; for the maintenance of the existing prin
ciple of a connection with the State by the Church of
England, and the stalwart opposition of the Free Churches
to any control of religion by the secular power, have
brought the two sides into violent coUision. But in this
matter the old lines of cleavage are being modified on
both sides ; and whatever may have been the position in
the past, the present day offers no adequate ground on
this score for abstention from friendly relations in act as
well as in word.
Further, it is quite clear that mere co-operation in
schemes of social reform, valuable as this may be in
bringing men of different communions together, in giving
them the very necessary opportunities of reaching mutual

222 REUNION
understanding and respect and habituating them to
viewpoints and methods of thought other than their ovra,
can never suffice as the only, or the main, method of
bringing the two sides into a closer unity. Common
service has its place in the cause of reunion, but rather
as a preliminary stage than as the chief means of bringing
about the desired result.
The chaUenge which is made to us is, Why, when we
Evangelicals and the non-episcopal communions hold
much the same views on the Church and Sacraments, we
are not more ready from time to time to take part to
gether in acts of worship, to share vrith them our oppor
tunities of teaching and evangelisation, and above all to
join with them in the great sacrament of feUowship at
that Table which is the Table of the Lord, not of any
Church. It may be admitted at once that here we have failed
to realise the full implications of our principles ; by these
principles, the non-episcopal ministries are deficient from
the point of view of order. But we cannot deny facts;
the Holy Spirit has worked by their means. Their
sacraments have been tme means of grace to the
recipients ; and we see no reason to classify this grace as
" uncovenanted " ; it is the grace of God. God has offered
His love (and does grace mean more than this ?) to them
as to us; they have claimed it, and have found it even
as we have done. And we have not in action recognised
this position; practically we have acted as though our
theory threw doubts upon the efficacy of their ministra
tions, and questioned the reality or the quality of the
grace received through those ministrations : our attitude
towards them has not differed from that of men who do
so question and doubt.
At the same time, two considerations may be put
forward which have undoubtedly weighed with Evan
gehcals in restraint of action along the lines indicated.

REUNION 223
In the first place they had to consider the effect of
their action on that section of their owti communion to
which such action would be in the last degree repugnant :
with these men Providence has set them in fellowship;
in that feUowship they have learned much, and they
believe that in maintaining it they are helping toward
that larger unity to which reference has more than once
been made ; there is the restraint of charity. Yet charity
may not in the long mn be allowed to restrain tmth. If
our principles demand certain action, that action must
be taken at all costs. Charity may be manifested in the
restricted sphere of the action, its infrequent occurrence,
and the careful definition of its limitation. But if action
be required .to express principle, that action must from
time to time be taken. Nor can the history of the
growth and development of the Oxford Movement into
the present Anglo-Catholic party give its members any
very strong ground for complaint if other schools in the
Church of England tum a deaf ear to protests as they put
their own principles into action.
Secondly, there has been amongst the Evangelicals a
strong sense of order and discipline; it is customary to
look upon the early members of the school as having
little regard for rules and regulations. The disregard of
parochial boundaries in evangehstic work, the disturbances
to which their unpopularity gave rise, and other features
of the first days of the movement have all contributed to
form this impression. But a closer acquaintance with its
history vrill show how false in the main this impression
is. The fact that a movement of such force, and essen
tiaUy individualistic in character, should have been so far
retained vrithin the Church of the eighteenth century, is
clear evidence of the sense of Church order in the majority
of its prominent adherents.
And this tradition has hved on. Numerous instances
might be given ; but one wiU suffice. A clerical Society,

224 REUNION
clearly Evangelical in its leanings, which fiourished in
Herefordshire during the first half of the nineteenth
century, had among its rules a provision that the minute
book of the Society should be submitted annuaUy to the
Bishop of the Diocese for his inspection; that practice
was maintained during the first twelve years or so of the
Society's existence; it only ceased with a change of
Bishop, the new occupant of the See " graciously inti
mating " that he no longer required its observance. The
history of the school wiU bear out the assertion just
made that it has always had a strong sense of order.
Now nothing is clearer with regard to the Church of
England than that her system is one based rather upon
regard for practical working, than upon an overwhelming
desire for theoretical consistency ; the national character
has found expression in the religious organisation of the
land. The Preface to the Ordinal lays down no theory of
Orders, but states a historic fact, and provides for its
continuance " by lawful authority " : it is to that " prin
ciple of Church Order " that the resolution of the Lambeth
Conference (12 B ii) dealing with its relations with
ministers not episcopally ordained, in the matter of the
Holy Communion, appeals. That in these matters refer
ence should be made to a principle of order rather than
to a theory of grace, is good evidence of the method of
the Church of England.
It can scarcely be questioned that the Anghcan Com
munion as such had laid down no principles on which
some sort of religious intercourse might be arranged with
the non-episcopal communions which claim the loyalty of
the majority of the English-speaking people. Her history
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries makes it
plain that the absence of episcopal ordination was no bar
to occasional intercourse of the kind; but this looked

REUNION 225
rather to the Reformed Churches of the Continent than
to the separated folk of her own race and speech. In
relation to these the tendency was all to separation and
the erection of barriers : the bitter legacies of the Civil
Wars and the Restoration, the not unnatural irritation at
the formation of the Methodist Societies and at their
ultimate secession, the political and social straggles of
the nineteenth century, all served to accentuate the lines
of cleavage, and to set Church order on the side of
seclusion and the closed door. Along with this influence
came the rigid ecclesiastical theories of the Oxford Move
ment, which reinforced the inherited tendencies making
for entire religious separation. Church order and ecclesi
astical theory together formed a weighty inhibition to
any experiment in the direction of religious intercourse
between the separated bodies; and the Evangelicals felt
the restraining force. There is no need to do more than
recapitulate the influences which graduaUy tumed the
tide; the needs of foreign missions, the weakening hold
of all organised religion on the mass of the nation, and
the breakdovra of convention of every kind under the
shock of war, all combined to draw Christians of different
commimions together.
When the Lambeth Conference met in 1920 no subject
set down for deliberation provoked such interest, roused
such hope, or invited such forebodings as did that of
reunion. With all the undoubted interest in the possi
bility of reunion vrith the historic communions of the
East and the West, the real cmx of the situation lay in
the question of the relations of the Anghcan Communion
with the great non-episcopal communions of the Enghsh-
speaking peoples. The Commission of Faith and Order,
originating with the Protestant Episcopal Church of
America, had promoted conferences which had prepared
the ground; other less formal conferences at Mansfield,
Q

226 REUNION
Swanvrick, and elsewhere had brought about a measure
of understanding of the respective positions; but these
gatherings had no real authority. The Lambeth Con
ference, while purely advisory, gave advice with such
weight of experience and authority behind it as could not
be ignored, and could only be rejected with the gravest
sense of responsibihty. The issue is well known, though
its implications have been widely misunderstood. General
schemes of intercommunion and interchange of pulpits
were condemned; but "occasional authorisation to
ministers, not episcopaUy ordained who . . . are working
toward an ideal of union such as is described in our
Appeal, to preach in churches within his Diocese " was
the course commended to the Bishop as justifiable; the
relation of " the rule of Confirmation as conditioning
admission to Holy Communion " was definitely hmited;
and the refusal of " Communion to any baptised person
kneeling before the Lord's Table (unless he be excom
municated by name) " by the individual priest was
expressly condemned as uncanonical. Such in essence
was the advice as to action tendered by the Conference
to the provincial Synods of our Communion.
In the provinces of Canterbury and York, the Con
vocations have accepted the advice with regard to
preaching; though the Lower House of Canterbury
appended a rider to its acceptance, asking the Bishops to
authorise such preaching only at services other than the
regular services of the Church.
It has been remarked above that the imphcations of
this advice have been widely misunderstood; there stiU
remains in the minds of many people the impression that
for a Nonconformist minister to preach in an Anghcan
church or for a minister of the Church of England to
preach in a Nonconformist chapel is a highly disorderly
proceeding; a proceeding can scarcely be termed irregular

REUNION 227
and disorderly which has behind it the weight of the
almost unanimous advice of the Anglican episcopate and
the authority of the provincial synod. Provided that
the conditions laid down have been observed, such occasion
of acts of religious intercourse are now in no way contrary
to Church order. And to this extent, at least, the Evan
gelical can act upon his principles without fear of a breach
of order. Why should he not so act? Why should he
not respond to the challenge to obey his principles?
There can be no doubt, to those who have taken the
trouble to make themselves acquainted with the facts of
the situation, that action along these lines will do much
to create among Free Churchmen the temper and attitude
which are supremely necessary if reunion with them is to
be achieved. We violate no principle by such action;
we make no breach in Church order ; we are guilty of no
indiscipline. Is it not laid upon us to act along these
lines, that we may do our share in restoring unity ?
With regard to intercommunion, the position is rather
different. At the outset it may be said that nothing like
a " general scheme " would be contemplated as anything
but the result and achievement of reunion. But occa
sional acts of communion would seem from time to time
the natural culmination of special periods, in which
fellowship has been realised to an unusual degree amongst
those who are normaUy separated by ecclesiastical
divisions. As far as order is concemed, even the limited
recommendations of the Lambeth Conference, which claim
only to be the statement of the canonical position, have
not been dealt with by Convocation. But we must, in
accordance with our principles, stoutly contest the claim
that intercommunion can under no circumstances be
aUowed until formal reunion has been consummated.
Here a biological analogy may help us ; in the development
of the hving organism, function precedes and creates its

228 REUNION
specific organ. So on the highest plane, the spiritual,
the sense of feUowship, sweUing over ecclesiastical bound
aries, finding its expression in, and fostered by, the highest
act of Christian worship, will bring about its organic
manifestation in a reunited Church.
Along hues such as these, true to their own position,
having full regard to the order of the Communion of
which they are members, not indifferent to the feehngs
and claims of those other members from whom they
differ so widely, yet within the one fellowship, may
Evangelical Churchmen make their contribution towards
the solution to the great problem of the reunion of
Christendom.
M. L. Hereford.

XI
THE RULE OF LIFE^
There is a striking passage in Baron Von Hiigel's
Eternal Life in which, speaking of the essentials of
Religion, he draws attention to what he caUs their " hori
zontal " and " vertical " aspects. " Rehgion is essentially
Social horizontally, in the sense that each several soul is
intended to . . . develop its own special gifts vrithin,
and through, and for the larger organism of the human
family. And it is essentially Social vertically — ^indeed
here is its deepest root. It is unchangeably a faith in
God, an intercourse with God ; and though the soul cannot
abidingly abstract itself from its fellows, it can and ought
frequently to recollect itself in a simple sense of God's
presence. Such moments of direct preoccupation with
God alone bring a deep refreshment and simplification to
the soul."
It is these aspects of personal Christian living, the
" horizontal " and the " vertical," which form the subject
of the present essay. With these two elements of the
Christian life Evangelicalism has always been very
deeply concemed; and has made, it may fairly be
claimed, no mean contribution to Christian thinking and
Christian experience in these directions. It may be that
sometimes this very concern has produced a certain over
emphasis and lack of perspective. But to insist on the
1 The writer has made use in this and the following essay of
material, recast and amplified, which has already appeared in
his recently published work Everyday Religion.
229

230 THE RULE OF LIFE
fundamental importance of these two things springs from
a sound instinct. In no generation is the Church, or the
individual Christian, free from the danger of compromising
with " the world," and it is well to caU men's attention
to the fact that there is a very real dividing hne between
Christian and non-Christian standards and values. And,
on the other hand, Evangelicals have always sought
to ensure due prominence for the great truth that a life
which is to bring forth good fruit must strike its roots
deep into the soil of humble, faithful, persevering com
munion vrith the etemal God. These two elements in
personal Christianity are separable in thought, and for
the purpose of the present essay may be more conveniently
handled in separate sections; but, before proceeding so
to treat them, the writer would like to make the proviso
that in actual practice there is no such line of demarcation
between the inner hfe with God and life lived out in the
world of men : the two act and react closely on one
another, and form, or ought to form, a consistent and
harmonious whole.

I.
Let us take first the Christian's " mle of life " in the
common world. What, in this matter, is the position and
attitude of those of us who stand in the hne of Evangelical
tradition ? Our evangelical forefathers of the last century
maintained very strongly a point of view which was in
part inherited from an older Puritanism, and in part was
an outcome of the Evangehcal Revival of the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. Their view, stated
broadly, was that the bulk of human activity in this
world which is not definitely rehgious must be regarded,
at any rate provisionally, as being on the whole inimical to
religion, and therefore should be engaged in by the Christian

THE RULE OF LIFE 231
man with the utmost caution. It was, of course, recog
nised that he must live his daUy life, eam his daily bread
as a normal member of the community, but the idea that
hfe itself might be, and was capable of being. Christianised,
as well as human character, hardly dawned on the minds
of some of the finest Christians of those days. They
concluded, as we now think too readily, that " the world,"
as denounced in the New Testament, denoted a good deal
of the world of business and commerce, and most of the
world of art and recreation, sport and pleasure; and
that, therefore, in aU these things the Christian should walk
very warily, and many of them he would do weU to avoid
altogether. Such an attitude, for men rediscovering living Christi
anity in a peculiarly godless age, was certainly inevitable
and, for their time, probably right. But for us conditions
have changed ; and further, we also, as they in their day,
are digging afresh for ourselves into the treasures of the
etemal Gospel. And we cannot but feel, as one result of
our investigations, that the idea of personal spiritual
safety bulked over large in their thought. It does not
seem to us, as we read the Gospel, that spiritual security
for the individual, in this hfe and the next — a kind of
insurance for the soul against ultimate disaster — is the
final objective of Christianity. The question is partly
one of emphasis. It is, of course, tme that to know God
in Christ does mean, both now and hereafter, gain and not
loss. But this was not the side of " salvation " on which
Jesus laid the most stress. He seems to have been more
concemed to quench selfishness, in religious as well as in
other forms ; He wanted to make men forget themselves
altogether and to leam how to lose themselves in God and
His Cause ..." Whosoever vrill save his life shaU lose
it ; but whosoever shaU lose his life, for My sake and the
Gospel's, the same shaU save it." The early Christians

232 THE RULE OF LIFE
were surely right in their insistence that the follower of
Jesus must " keep himself unspotted from the world " ;
for Christ's man there can be no coming to terms vrith
evil or compromising with iniquity known and understood.
But Christians of later days have sometimes interpreted
the principle in a rigid and arbitrary fashion, so as to
involve, in effect, an unwarrantable abandonment to the
enemy of fair tracts which should of right belong to God's
Kingdom, and a cowardly withdrawal on the part of
Christian disciples from secular and commonplace human
activities in the midst of which their Master lived His
earthly hfe. To us to-day it would appear a more tmly
Christ-like course not to remain aloof but to fare forth, in
Christ's name, into life's highways and bjrways, taking
the risk of getting splashed vrith their mire.
Such a view of the Christian " rule of life " in the world
would seem to be bound up with the whole idea of the
Kingdom of God ; and the recovery of that idea has been
one of the most significant happenings in the religious
world during the present century. The meaning and
implications of Christ's message of the Kingdom are
dealt with elsewhere in this volume.^ Suffice it here to
suggest that, in thus proclaiming the advent of God's
Kingdom, Jesus Christ was not pointing on to a golden
age in the dim future, but did reaUy mean to claim for
God the corporate life of men here and now. The fact
and significance of this claim were to a large extent missed
by Christians of a century ago. Wilberforce, iij, his
Practical View of the System of Christianity, first published
in 1798, says something of the relation of religion to
society and to the economic hardships and problems of
the time. He explains that Christianity makes the in-
equahties of the social scale less gaUing to the lower
orders, that it reminds them " that their more lowly path
I Cf, Essay VIII.

THE RULE OF LIFE 233
has been aUotted to them by the hand of God : that it is
their part faithfully to discharge its duties and contentedly
to bear its inconveniences . . . that the peace of mind,
which Religion offers indiscriminately to all ranks, affords
more tme satisfaction than aU the expensive pleasures
which are beyond the poor man's reach . . . that ' having
food and raiment, they should be therewith content,'
since their situation in life, with all its evils, is better than
they have deserved at the hand of God : and, finally,
that all human distinctions wiU soon be done away, and
the tme followers of Christ will all, as children of the same
Father, be alike admitted to the possession of the same
heavenly inheritance. Such are the blessed effects of
Christianity on the temporal well-being of political
communities." ^ In putting forth such views as to the
relation of Christianity to the community Wilberforce and
other Evangelicals of his day were doubtless sincere;
but it is hardly open to question that in this thing they
misunderstood the mind of Christ. However true it may
be that this world is a place of training for hfe in another,
it can scarcely be doubted that Christ's programme of
God's Kingdom, and the law of love on which it is based,
can be, and is Divinely intended to be, realised on this
earth on a scale far greater than humanity has yet seen.
Moreover, the sheer fact of the Incamation leaves no
room in Christian thought and practice for a religious
" departmentalism " which would rule out tracts of living
as outlawed areas where the writ of God cannot run.
Jesus Christ quite clearly was, and is, concemed with
life in all its fuUness ; and any reUgion which is too narrow
to cover all the breadth of human living cannot properly
be called after His name. He came to show men a faith
which should touch hfe at every point ; His Incamation
can hardly mean less than that God Himself is concemed
1 Quoted in Hammond's Town Labourer, 1760-1832, p. 231.

234 THE RULE OF LIFE
vrith everything human. To attempt to find and foUow
a " mle of life " based on these principles is, obviously, a
higher ambition and a harder task than obeying directions
in which the good and the evil are more clearly catalogued ;
but it is an enterprise which Christians of to-day need to
take in hand, and in which Evangelicals, with their special
outlook and heritage, may well give a decisive lead.
And what in practice, and for the ordinary person,
would such a mle of life involve ? It wiU mean, for one
thing, a considered attempt to regard and engage in his
daily work, whatever it may be, as something relevant
to the mind of God, as a service which may, however
remotely and indirectly, promote the ends of God's
Kingdom. Whether bricklayer or 'bus-driver, clerk or
corn-merchant, doctor or lawyer, he will not regard his
labour or profession as a separate, neutral thing, with
which his religious hfe has no real link or contact ; rather
wiU he seek to express Christianity (and so to express
fc'OTse// creatively) in the first instance through the medium
of his daily business. Many Evangehcal Christians,
particularly perhaps the Quakers of a century ago, have
set a high standard of honesty and integrity in business ;
but, with a conscience somewhat inelastic and a vision
limited, they have often faUed to observe the grievous
injustices wrought by our industrial system as a whole,
just as they have largely lacked any conception of its
transformation and redemption by the Christian spirit.
To say this is to raise the whole question of the relation
of Christianity to modem industry, a question which
cannot be pursued here. But this reference to the
problem is deliberate, because in the opinion of the writers
of this book no " rule of life " is truly Christian which
ignores this problem, or which fails to see that the first
and most important sphere for the practice of Christianity
is the actual field of labour in which the Christian earns

THE RULE OF LIFE 235
his daily bread. It may be noted, moreover, that to
apply Christianity in such fashion is the only finally
effective way of spreading it. It is a common weakness
of organised religion, in its attempts to propagate the
faith, to rely more on official preaching and other forms of
specificaUy " reUgious " activity, than on instructing and
inspiring its members to exhibit the Christ spirit in all the
range of common living.
And what should be the Christian attitude to other and
wider ranges of human interest and activity, to the world
of art and beauty, of sport, amusements, and recreation ?
By what " rule of life " is he to thread his way through
this attractive and bewildering maze? For many
Christians of bygone generations, including Evangelicals
of saintly life, there has, in this matter, been no question
of threading a way ; their counsel and their practice have
been to pass by on the other side. That cutting of the
knot, that rigid abstention from whole tracts of human
thinking and human doing, dictated partly by an over-
hasty classification of good and evil, partly by sheer fear
of imperilhng the soul — that attitude may have been right
for them in their day; for us, in ours, the right course
lies, unquestionably, along other lines. We would not
compromise with evil, any more than they ; but we think
perhaps we see the good more clearly, and what may be
reclaimed as good. It seems to us that Christ Himself,
in His earthly life, was so sure that this earth was His
Father's earth, and that everything tme and good and
beautiful had its own place in His Father's Kingdom.
God, we feel — and the conviction is deep-rooted in the
historic revelation of Him and in answering human
experience — is in, and is the ultimate source of, all beauty,
just as He is in tmth and in goodness : those " three
sisters never sundered without tears." There are many
Christians of our day who find that sensitiveness to beauty

236 THE RULE OF LIFE
is a soul-window open towards God, that earth's fair
things can and do minister to very deep needs and
longings ; with Keats they leam that
" in spite of all
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep ; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in ; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season ;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read
An endless fountain of immortal drink.
Pouring into us from the heaven's brink." ^
Then with regard to the question of recreation and
amusements. In any attempt to work out a Christian
rule of life here, a first point to note is that the desire
for amusement, the vrish to find something to minister
to our faculty of laughter, is a natural and healthy instinct.
" Healthy laughter is the salt of hfe." Where there is
no laughter there is a diminution of life; and Christ
would have nothing to do with deliberately diminishing
life. The attempt to push man's instinct for amusement
outside the Kingdom of God is surely one of the greatest
mistakes that religion has ever made. Canon Guy Rogers,
in a paper on The Church and Amusements, notes the fact
that in the early days of the Y.M.C.A. Punch was excluded
from its reading-rooms because, apparently, it was not
sufficiently serious. "It is no part of the Y.M.C.A. to
provide amusements or recreations for its members," was
a common statement of policy; and when zealous secre
taries went so far as to say, " no Christian young man
should take part in a swimming match, or indeed a match
of any kind," there was no one to enjoy the joke ! Dr.
Dale and Archbishop Trench received a severe rebuke
from the official organ of the Society because they
1 From Endymion,

THE RULE OF LIFE 237
ventured to take part in the Tercentenary Shakespeare
Celebrations at Stratford church. They were accused, in
the sonorous language of the day, of " traUing their
Christian priesthood in the dust by offering homage at
the shrine of a dead pla37wright ! "
Now it ought to be recognised that this attitude of
complete disapproval of all amusements, however strange
it may seem to us, was in fact the expression of a natural
and vigorous reaction against the coarseness and sensuality
of many of the amusements of that day. It was, as Puri
tanism has always been, a protest against the encroach
ments of godlessness on some of life's fair spaces. But
it does unquestionably represent a maimed religion.
There may indeed come times, as in a debased society,
when the individual who would do right has no option
but to break completely with human activities which, not
necessarily wrong in themselves, have become, for him
and his day, hopelessly entangled with evil. Then there
is nothing for it, as Christ said plainly, but to cut off the
offending hand or pluck out the eye. But that, as He
showed also, is a desperate remedy, and it means a maimed
life. It is safe to say that in our own day, while there is
much that is morally perilous and even indisputably evil
in contemporary amusements, the general conditions are
not such as to justify the Christian in regarding and
treating amusements generally as outside the Kingdom
of God. It is, moreover, a shaUow and arbitrary judg
ment — one still too prevalent in some reUgious circles —
which would identify " the world " with this or that
particular amusement. " Love not the world nor the
things that are in the world." As Christians we want to
obey that precept, but there is no short cut to obedience
to be had by deciding that " the world " means the theatre,
or going to dances, or attending race-meetings. Unfortu
nately, " the world " cannot be thus labeUed and disposed

238 THE RULE OF LIFE
of; as many of us have leamt by now, " the world " is
really an inner temper or attitude which gets up with us
in the moming and lies down vrith us at night, and can
express itself in all sorts of ways which have nothing what
ever to do with amusements. Nor have we any right
frankly to abandon fair tracts of God's world to the enemy.
There are stUl too many people who cling to the timid and
ancient superstition that the devil has all the best tunes !
That contracting of life in the supposed interests of right
eousness, that building of fences in the vain hope of shut
ting out sin and shutting in holiness, is an operation
which will receive little encouragement from an honest
study of the earthly life of Jesus Himself, with all its
sanity, its freedom, its happy comradeship, its hatred of
cant, and its limitless belief in the possibilities of human
goodness. We should surely be closer to His mind if we
set ourselves to reclaim for the Kingdom of God everything
human which is redeemable.
Let us, in order to test the ideal thus set forth, consider
in the light of it one of the commonest amusements of
our day — as, indeed, of all time — namely, the theatre.
It is clear that the drama is as fundamental and normal a
part of human creative capacity as the power to paint or
write or make music. And, as one of our leading actresses
has pointed out, the Church should be " more preoccupied
with the theatre than with any of the other arts, for the
reason that the drama has so direct a bearing on the
mentahty of the people and the conduct of life." ^ In
fact aU wiU agree that the theatre might be one of the
highest and purest forms of our amusements. How, in
practice, may such an end be attained ? Not, assuredly,
by good people condemning the stage on account of what
they caU the " life behind." That is no solution. I
1 Miss Sybil Thorndike, on " The Aims and Ideals of the Stage,"
Southend Church Congress Report, p. 271.

THE RULE OF LIFE 239
should like to endorse what Canon Rogers has said, and
what is often forgotten, that "it is no more possible to
distinguish between the purity or muddiness of the people
who sing or play or dance to you than it is to distinguish
between the different sources from which your money
comes or the morality of the writers whose books you
read. When people talk about and isolate the evil
environment of the stage, they forget that there is an
evil environment also in pohtics; that our organised
business life constitutes a far more difficult medium than
the stage for living a Christian life, and that behind the
whole of our social life lies an unchristianised social order."
The discrimination required of those who want to see the
stage functioning within the Kingdom of God is to support
the kind of theatres and plays which make for that end and
to discountenance those which do not. If a Christian
should find himself looking on at a play or a scene which is
disgusting, he should have the strength of mind to walk
out, and to write and teU the management why he did
so. The matter is, in the last resort, in the hands of the
public. If more people cared, and showed that they cared,
for good plays and for clean and clever entertainments,
such as may be seen at several London theatres, then
we should be less plagued and victimised by the feeble
and suggestive stuff which the ignorance of too many
producers supposes the public to want.
There is only one more word which may be added, and
it should be said very plainly. For the Christian disciple,
his whole view of life and his whole way of living must, at
every point, take into account the Cross of Jesus Christ.
That richness of life, physical, mental, spiritual, for which
aU men hunger, which he, the Christian, longs fuUy to
experience and to share, is inseparably connected with
the death of Jesus. He, its Giver, Himself entered hfe
by the gate of death. Himself was made perfect by the

240 THE RULE OF LIFE
things which He suffered ; it is the wounds in His hands
and feet which give His love, the very love of God Him
self, its unique power to heal and redeem. We there
fore, servants of the Crucified, will be content to sit loose
to this world's pleasures. We wiU not forget that we are
disciples of Him who, on earth, knew no luxuries and had
not even where to lay His head. In all our fun and recrea
tion, gratefully accepted and enjoyed as His own gift,
we shall never be wholly unmindful of the submerged
multitudes, friends of His, shut out from the shining land.
We shall learn, like St. Paul, to travel hght; with a
happy self-sufficiency ^ to be equally content with much
or with little of those things which make hfe pleasant.
And, hke the Master Himself, we shall, with high-hearted
resolve, leam to put the Cause before everything else, and
to find our greatest joy in vrilhng sacrifice.

The words of the foregoing paragraph indicate suffi
ciently the vital connection between the two sections of
this essay. The moral balance and spiritual effectiveness
of a Christian's hfe in the world depend absolutely on the
quahty of his hidden life with God. There is a close and
intimate relation between the " horizontal " and the
" vertical " aspects of all his living. The goveming
principle of all his human relationships, " Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself," is based on, and conditioned
by, something more fundamental stUl, " Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart and aU thy strength."
^ Cf. Phil, iv, II, aiTdpKTis — " I have learned how to be
content wherever I am ... I have been initiated into the secret
for all sorts and conditions of life, for plenty and for hunger, for
prosperity and for privations."
Andcf., too, II. Cor. vi, lo : " as having nothing and yet possess
ing all things."

THE RULE OF LIFE 241
The crucial importance for every Christian of constant
personal communion vrith the etemal God — infinite and
etemal, yet aU the while in Christ entirely accessible and
available — has always been asserted and emphasised by
Evangelical Christianity. Students of history would
agree that Evangelicals have made this side of personal
religion pecuharly their own, and have contributed, in
this direction, no small enrichment to the life of the
Church. We, Liberals of a later day, in this matter
frankly and gladly associate ourselves with the behef and
practice of our fathers and forefathers. We would
reassert in our day, what they reasserted in theirs, the
great New Testament truth, that direct personal access
to God, and an interior life of close feUowship with Him,
is not the prerogative of priests or the privilege of mystics,
but the Divinely intended, normal experience of the
humblest and most ordinary Christians. This may be a
truism now; it was very far from a truism in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when those
who re-founded their devotional hfe, and their life of
Christian service, on this tmth found themselves in frequent
coUision with the then religious authorities. In 1762,
for instance, as Canon Barnes has lately reminded us,
four Oxford undergraduates were brought up before the
Vice-Chancellor on the charge of being " enthusiasts who
talked of regeneration, inspiration, and drawing nigh
to God " ; the charge was admitted and they were sent
down from the University.
Since that time a good deal of water has flowed under
the bridges, and Evangelical affirmations as to the soul's
converse vrith God, and the transforming personal conse
quences involved, have completely come into their own.
'The work of modem mystical writers is a vridely varying
commentary on the one text that the plain man may
and should leam how to hold communion vrith the unseen
K

242 THE RULE OF LIFE
God ; while the new psychology has done much to unravel
the character and the working of that spiritual power
which invariably accompanies any true experience of
such communion. This latter point is one which should
surely receive due emphasis in any teaching on the Christian
rule of hfe. The whole effect of getting the hfe rooted
in the deepest spiritual reahties is to create a new confi
dence in moral possibUities, to breathe a new climate where
the remotely ideal becomes the obviously practicable.
This is a characteristic note in all tme Christian experience:
" In Him who strengthens me I am able for anything " ;
" it is no weak Christ we have to do with, but a Christ of
Power " ; and the point is, as Evangelicals have ever
insisted, that this exuberance of spiritual life, this clean
break with old sins, this flow of moral power is God's
free gift to the ordinary man ; to regard it as an attain
ment of the religiously elect is to misunderstand it
altogether. Now. it has to be admitted that " it is a great art to
commune with God." The capacity for that art is
universal; but the due practice of it depends mainly,
as in all other realms of human activity, on taking pains.
What kind of pains to take, and how to become proficient
as a man of prayer, are questions which, fitly enough,
have engaged the attention of and elicited guidance from
practically all the schools of rehgious thought. It is not
possible, in this portion of an essay, to embark upon any
exhaustive ainalysis of the contribution made to this
field of religious experience by past and present Evangeh
cahsm. Only one or two points can be mentioned, points
which, from the standpoint from which this book is
written, seem to call for special emphasis. One such
point is the importance, in any devotional mle of hfe, of
a sufficient degree of liberty and elasticity in method.
The mode of converse with God is not a thing which can

THE RULE OF LIFE 243
be defined and cramped within rigid rules, any more than
one should presume to prescribe formulae for the life and
growth of human friendship and human love. The
counsel given, a generation since, by that great saint and
Evangelical leader, Handley Moule, for the last eleven
years of his life Bishop of Durham, holds good for our
day and for all time : "No methodisation of secret
prayer," he urges, " must ever be such as to over-ride and
injure its individuality, its personal freedom and speciaUty,
of address to God. If by method we mean anything
which really hinders and crosses our ' boldness,' our
humble outspokenness, with Him, our statement to Him
of precisely the now present thought of the soul, the now
present burthen of confession, prayer and praise, then our
method is a mistake." ^ Such warning is not unneeded
by the enthusiastic disciple of this or that devotional
system. Not that there is no room for system of some
kind. Discipline, order, and method are, in their place,
as essential to effectiveness in prayer as they are to
effectiveness in other departments of human effort. And
we who write this book would be prepared to admit the
value of devotional forms and practices, with which we
ourselves might not be, personally and temperamentaUy,
in sympathy. But we would maintain strongly that any
system must be servant and not master; that there are
other spiritual methods which are at least equaUy
effective ; and that aU such methods should be aUowed
to vary in accordance with the almost infinite variety
of human nature and the catholicity of love which is
human and Divine.
For all loyal sons of the Church of England the Holy
Communion, it need scarcely be said, wiU always be one
of the most indispensable media for the receiving of the
Divine hfe, for the realisation of the Divine love : a
^ Secret Prayer, p. 29.

244 THE RULE OF LIFE
medium aU the more indispensable for its real, however
indefinable, synthesis of extemal and internal, of objective
and subjective, of body and soul, of matter and spirit.
Some of the older Evangehcals, unable perhaps to free
their thought of the Holy Communion from the heavy
and ancient fetters of doctrinal controversy, sometimes
seem, it must be confessed, to have missed something of
the wonder and the joy in this holy Sacrament. We, of
a newer generation, would fain recover — nay, we are
indeed recovering — the wonder and the joy, the mystery,
the speU, the sense of belonging to a world-vride, age-old,
spiritual freemasonry, the sense of assisting at a timeless
drama, which come to those who, vrith hearts in tune and
with a spirit of expectancy, draw near to the Table of the
Lord. Here again we would put in a plea for liberty, for
fresh-eyed vision, for constructive thought and constmc-
tive teaching. The young communicants in our churches
deserve, and ought to have, something more than the
rather thin and conventional instruction on the Sacra
ments doled out to them in their Confirmation classes.
It is for the clergy to see again, and to help their communi
cants to see, the rich significance, the glory and the beauty,
of this brotherhood meal, this oath of aUegiance, this
pledge of unutterable Love, this pouring of the Life of
God into the life of men.
A word must be said as to the supreme importance of
regular Bible study in the devotional life. There is no
doubt that there has been, for some years now, a steady
decline, even among eamest Christians, of the habit of
Bible study and Bible reading. Whatever be the causes
of this decline, the fact is one to be deeply deplored, and
to be mended by whatsoever means may be found to be
effective. There is a good deal of evidence that many
Christians, especiaUy younger Christians, are neglectful
of Bible study, partly because they are in a fog about the

THE RULE OF LIFE 245
Bible itself, partly because they have not clearly grasped
the vital connection between historic Christianity and
their own present, personal Christian life. We who
collaborate in this book are strongly of opinion, as one
of the other essays has endeavoured to show,^ that the
whole great movement of critical and historical investi
gation of the Bible's nature and significance is having,
and will increasingly have, as it percolates down from the
scholar to the plain person, the result of bringing the Bible
again into common use, as the indispensable vade mecum
of every strong, true Christian life. For, after aU, as this
essay has sought to set forth, a personal knowledge
of God is the foundation of aU Christian life and character.
But how shaU God be adequately knovra save as He may
be seen in the historic Jesus Christ, and in all the great
religious experience which prepared for, and followed
upon, that unique revelation? And how shall those
movements and events of history be understood and
assimilated apart from that amazing Divine library of
which they constitute the central theme ?
Again, we would urge that there can be no sane and
strong life of mystic communion unless great pains are
taken to adjust and co-ordinate the inteUectual grasp of
tmth vrith the immediate, emotional experience of the
Presence. In this inner life with God the mind must
play its proper part. An aU-important question for
prayer is the conception of God in the mind of him who
is praying. Of necessity aUowance must be made for a
certain margin of error, where blind and sinful men seek
to know the holy and infinite God. But it is for us to
reduce that margin to the smaUest possible dimensions
by blending with our power of intuitive, spiritual appre
hension all the powers of ordinary hard thinking we possess.
If this is not done, then it is more than possible that
1 See Essay IV,

246 THE RULE OF LIFE
prayer may be addressed to a God who simply is not
there. An uninteUigent faith opens the door to creduhty
and superstition. " Where God is not, there are ghosts."
" Take heed," urges Prof. Royce, " lest your object of
worship be only your owra little pet infinite, that is sublime
to you mainly because it is yours." The Christian who
addresses his prayer to a God thought of as despotic, or
vengeful, or capricious, or weakly good-natured, or
anything other than the God of Jesus Christ, misses the
mark nearly as badly as the heathen with his incantations
or the Buddhist with his prayer-wheel. The conception
of God which lies beneath your praying is of crucial
importance. You cannot pray effectively unless you are
sure of God's character. But what God is and wills and
plans, what He is doing and wants us to do, how through
prayer we may co-operate vrith Him — these are things
that demand aU the thought of which our minds are
capable, and thought that concentrates on the picture of
God we see in Christ. This does not mean the whittling
down of prayer into a mere inteUectual process. Nor
does it exclude or belittle those moments of insight, those
fiashes of inspiration, those mountain-tops of open vision,
which come from time to time to every soul that is in
tune with Him. These flights of the spirit will become
more, not less possible, if behind them is the perma
nent background of a spiritual life which is mentally
disciphned. This attempt to sketch a devotional " mle of life "
may weU conclude by emphasising the simple but funda
mental necessity of guarding quiet times for spending alone
with God. We who contribute to this book are deeply
conscious — ^we share in the blame — ^how often those who
are looked to as spiritual leaders have failed in this vital
thing. A writer in a recent Contemporary Review justly
urges that " the supreme need of the Christian ministry

THE RULE OF LIFE 247
to-day is spiritualisation. The clergyman is tending to
become more and more an ecclesiastical business man."
It is vain to look for a revived and renovated Church
unless Christians generaUy, parsons and laity, are prepared
to spend more time waiting on God, abandoning if neces
sary " important " works in order to secure time for this
the most important thing of aU. The mode and place
and hour of entering His Presence may vary indefinitely ;
He is to be found whenever and wherever men seek Him —
in the sacred mysteries of the Holy Communion, in the
closed room, in the peaceful garden, in the fields or the
woods or on the hillside. The essential conditions of
uninterrupted intercourse are time and quiet. " Huny
is the death of prayer." " The spiritual reahties do not
shriek and shout, and it stiU remains tme that Jesus
comes, ' the doors being shut.' " No rales can be laid
down, but probably for most people these conditions of
time and quiet are best secured in the early moming.
Many of the finest Christians have leamed that they could
not manage without the " moming watch," and thought
it worth while to make any sacrifice to obtain it. Charles
Simeon, one of the leaders of the Evangehcal revival, from
1782 to 1836 Vicar of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, found it
hard to get up in the moming to say his prayers. He had
rooms in King's College, of which CoUege he was a FeUow ;
and he determined one day that if he failed to rise at the
hour he set himself, he would give half a crown to his
bedmaker. Next moming found him in bed arguing
vrith himself that his bedmaker needed the half-crown
much more than he did, and so his prayer appointment was
missed. Thereupon he resolved that on the next failure,
instead of giving half a crown to his bedmaker, he would
throw a guinea into the Cam, flovring by a hundred yards
from his rooms. He did miss again; and promptly
walked down to the bridge and threw the coin into the

248 THE RULE OF LIFE
river, where no doubt it remains to this day.-^ The truth
is, it is worth while emplojdng any dodge, however
homely, which will help you to say your prayers. There
is no other way in which to become and to continue
spirituaUy fit. " Would to God," once cried Samuel
Rutherford, " that aU cold-blooded, faint-hearted soldiers
of Christ would look again to Jesus and to His love;
and when they look, I would have them to look again, and
again, and fiU themselves with beholding Christ's beauty."
Those who thus seek and find God know that the
relationship may be described, vrithout irreverence or
presumption, as one of intimacy ; an intimacy which loves
to look up at Him or speak vrith Him at odd moments
and in all sorts of places — in the street, the train, the 'bus,
the office, in busy times, or among throngs of people.
Surely the God of Jesus Christ — who runs to meet the
prodigal, who loved children, who cares for flowers, who
is interested in men — must mean our relationship with Him
to be of this kind ? " Behold, no longer do I call you
servants, I have called you friends." How extraordinary
that much of " official " Christianity should have com
pletely missed this thing in God ! " Many of the religious
people I know," says " Parson John " in a letter to
" Miriam Grey " in a little pamphlet which is worth its
weight in gold,^ " many of the rehgious people that I
know, when they talk of religion, have a bedside manner,
and walk about in felt slippers. And if they speak of
God, they always tidy themselves first. But you go in
and out in all the rooms in God's house as though you
were quite at home. You open the doors vrithout
knocking, and you hum on the stairs, and it isn't always
h3mins either. My aunt thinks you are not quite reverent ;
1 The story is told in Bishop Moule's Life of Charles Simeon.
2 God in Everything (Kelly, " Ms-nu^ls pf Fellowship," No. 3,
^d, each).

THE RULE OF LIFE 249
but, then, she can keep felt slippers on her mind without
any trouble. ..."
One matter may be emphasised at this point. In this
wonderful, happy companionship, especially in the times
set apart for praying, spaces should always be kept for
silent converse. True prayer is not a monologue, but a
conversation; and it is vital that ample opportunity
should be given to Him to speak to us. It is weU to take
pains to cultivate the listening side of prayer. " The
more earnestly you are at work for Jesus," a wise man
once said, " the more you need times when what you are
tr3dng to do for Him passes totally out of your mind,
and the only thing worth thinking of is what He is doing
for you."
For everyone, whatever his duties or vocation, it remains
true that life's best work is accomplished in the " secret
place " ; there is the source and secret of the highest
kind of output. The Venerable Bede in his History
teUs the story of a chieftain who, as he faced the battle-
line of his enemies, saw a company of monks hfting up
their hands in prayer for them on a hill a httle way off.
Directing his soldiers towards the monks, he gave the
order, " Kill those men first, for they are the most
dangerous." In wielding that mighty weapon some are
more adept than others; but every common Christian
can and should know something of its use. Our several
gifts and talents, our tasks and vocations, may vary
indefinitely, but this one thing aU can do : we can bring
to God a personality to be fiUed with Himself, to be
touched, energised, set ahght by the flame of His Spirit.
Gallons of cold water vriU be poured on those spiritual
fires to put them out, but they shall bum steadily on if
they are duly fed, like the flames which Christian was
shown in Pilgrim's Progress, from the secret fount of oil
on the farther side. In one of his speeches Marshal

250 THE RULE OF LIFE
Foch has pointed out that it was, ultimately, their moral
ardour which brought victory to the AUies in 1918, as it
had done a hundred years before to the Prussians in
1814. " Bliicher, Zieten and the others," said he, " were
very far 'from being military geniuses. Their intelligence
was not of the first order, their inteUect was limited, but
the internal flame which inspired them sufficed for all."
To keep that flame alive, in the campaign for the Kingdom
of God, through every circumstance of discouragement,
despite all opposition within and without — that is the
plain duty, and the perfectly possible duty, of every
servant of Christ. To iUuminate and to facilitate that
duty is the whole point and purpose of whatever devotional
" rale of life " the Christian may be led to follow.
E. S. Woods.

XII
THE PRESENTATION OF THE GOSPEL AT
HOME
In this book an attempt has been made to set forth,
in some detail, a view of God and the Church and the
world which some of us believe belong to the essence of a
true Evangelicalism, and which does unquestionably
appeal to many of the thoughtful younger men and
women of our day. The present essay asks, and seeks
to answer, a very important question : Does the " Gospel,"
set forth in this newer and more liberal fashion,
" work " ? We who think the Bible is inspired without
being inerrant in every detail, who assert the lordship
of Christ in terms and categories other than those which
our forefathers used, who look for the coming of His
Kingdom in different ways and from another angle —
does our message contain and produce the " saving
power " (to use the old phrase) which attached to the
gospel proclaimed by Moody and Spurgeon and the great
evangehsts of bygone generations? None of us who
contribute to this book (and we know that we speak for
many others besides) have any doubt at all about the
answer. Our " Gospel " does " work." The message of
Christianity, as we understand it and endeavour to pro
claim it, does reach the hearts and consciences of men
and women to-day, and does take effect in their hves.
We would not wish to institute invidious comparisons
between this and that mode of presenting Christ. We are
tbankfuUy awc^re that God gives Himself to men through
351

252 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME
an almost infinite variety of human agency. We recog
nise that men can and do apprehend the great spiritual
verities, and experience a profound moral change, even
when those verities are presented to them in a language
and theology which, to ourselves and to others, is unreal
and unconvincing. We expect from those who differ
from us a similar recognition of indubitable spiritual facts,
even though, to them, these facts may wear an unfamihar
guise, and seem to be an unexplained result of obscure
causes. We have seen too many " passing from death
unto life " to have any doubt about the facts; and as to
the underl57ing creative causes, these, as this essay
vrill endeavour to trace, are, so we believe, bound up with
the conception of Christianity which permeates this
book. The subject of this essay is far too big a thing to be
handled in any controversial manner. We who are
writing this book feel impeUed to set down certain observa
tions about the presentation of the Gospel, not because
we want to emphasise differences from others who may
present the Gospel in other ways, but because, in our
judgment, one of the greatest needs of the time is for a
" pooling " of knowledge and experience by aU sections
of the Church, in order that the whole Church may at
last make some headway with its supremely urgent task
of evangelism, at home and overseas. Before speaking
in detail of the evangelistic message and methods of
to-day, it may be well, at the outset, to draw attention
to one absolutely fundamental condition vrithout which
there can never be any effective presentation of the Gospel
in this land or any other land. Whatever methods of
propagating Christianity may be conceived or attempted,
they are one and aU doomed to failure unless they are
backed, in the hves of the propagators, by Christian
character and Christian conduct which bear some real

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME 253
resemblance to the character and conduct of Christ
Himself. This is true both of individual Christian
witness and of the organised efforts of Christian groups
or Churches. The Church wiU never persuade the world
to " try Christianity " until the world can see the Church
gripped, permeated, dominated by the Gospel which
it advocates; in the last resort life tells far more than
argument. In the early days of Christianity it was the
fellowship, the happy brotherhood, the radiant corporate
hfe of the then Church that won the non-Christian.
And it is futile for us to think we can win men if this
spirit is absent. No verbal presentation of the Gospel
message, whatever its language or theology, can have
any effectiveness unless backed by an actual exhibition
of that attitude towards men which Christ calls " love."
In the Church of England to-day it is easier to find an
eamest preacher of the Gospel than a Church or congre
gation exhibiting a glowing, vigorous fellowship life
such as arrests and attracts and converts. " Most of
the younger generation," says one who has unique
opportunities of judging, " are outside the Churches not
because they don't care, but because the Christian
organisations are not Christian enough to meet their
need." With that proviso, the attempt may be made to indicate
some of the characteristics which, in the view and experi
ence of the writers of this book, must mark any effective
presentation of the Gospel to the men and women of
this generation.

First and foremost, there must needs be a sincere,
patient, and humble attempt to give men the real Christ.
A modem art critic has sought to explain the greatness

254 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME
of Leonardo da Vinci by saying that he " preferred reality
to any talk about it." Some such passion for reality is
essential to the task of evangehsm. It is becoming
almost a catch-word in the Churches to insist on the
need for " the preaching of Christ." Behind that phrase
lurk serious ambiguities. Many in the Churches use it
to describe what is in effect a pushing of their own ecclesi
astical theories which they have come to regard, probably
quite honestly, as an integral part of vital Christianity,
but which, to the plain person, seem extraordinarily
remote from the Jesus of Gahlee. Moreover, large
numbers of men and women to-day are in " a condition
of impenetrable fog " as to what " Christ " stands for or
means. They never really associate Him vrith the ideals
and virtues they admire; for them He is, too often, not
a real or a live being at all, but just a dim figure wor
shipped by the Churches.^ Now the first function of any
true Christian propaganda is to dispel these mists and
fogs, and, whatever the difficulties, ecclesiastical or other,
to recover the real Christ and let men see Him. It is
perfectly possible to do this. Half a century of accurate
historical investigation has satisfied aU reasonable people
as to the reliability of the documents, and any man can
see for himself what Jesus really was and did, and what
is the kind of life which He summons men to hve. Unless
there is this clear understanding of what Christ stands for
in the minds of His evangehsts and in the minds of those
who may be attracted by their message, any spiritual
movements which may be set in motion are doomed to
be of a shaUow and transitory character. The instabUity
of many " revivals," and the hmited circles which they
seem to touch, may well be due to just this lack of clear
1 Cf. The Army and Religion (Macmillan). The book is a
mine of facts about the present positioti of Christianity and the
Churches, and should be carefully studied by all Church members.

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME 255
thinking and clear understanding about Him who alone
can give religion depth and truth and permanence.
Any such endeavour to rediscover the real Christ and
present Him to men will involve a serious attempt to
distinguish the essential from the non-essential. Too
often, in the past, and sometimes in the present, those
who are drawn towards Christianity have been presented
by its spokesmen with a formidable list of dogmas they
must believe, practices they must avoid, and virtues they
must adopt. These demands show a wide variation,
from an insistence on the necessity of beheving that
Balaam's ass actually spoke, to the claim that you cannot
make sure of salvation without auricular confession or
belief in the immaculate conception or the infallibility
of the Pope. Christ does make peremptory demands of
those who propose to foUow Him, but His demands bear
little resemblance to those which religious people often
put forward in His name. To rediscover the reality of
Christ means also rediscovering the astounding simphcity
and freshness and directness of Christian faith and
Christian discipleship. It is true that to explore His mind
and to apply His ideas to the whole of human hving does
tax, and is meant to tax, the whole range of human
capacities. At the same time, the first and fundamental
result of receiving Christ is to find yourself in a region
where aU relationships, with God and with man, are
definitely and permanently simphfied ; thereafter " one
goes about the world as one who was lonely and has
found a lover, as one who was perplexed and has found a
solution." A further distinction which the new evangehsm finds
itself obhged to make, besides that between the essential
and the non-essential, is the distinction between the
essence of the Christian message and the verbal vehicles
in which, at any given time, the attempt is made to convey

256 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME
it. The Gospel which we bring to men is indeed full of
mystery and of miracle, in the strict sense of those words.
But that is no reason why our presentation of it should
not be both inteUigent and intelligible. It is not enough
to proffer to people, without variation or adequate
explanation, descriptions and definitions of the Christian
faith as the Church has always held it, however famihar
and precious such formulae may be to ourselves. It is
vital to recognise the real distinction between truth itself
and the verbal forms in which, from time to time, men
attempt to express it. To attach to particular words and
phrases a dread and final sanctity is to begin a descent
into the dreary region of shibboleth and cant and magic.
Jesus not only left nothing in writing, He even seemed to
avoid giving His disciples final verbal statements which
they might erect into formulae. He gave them not words
but Himself; His legacy to men of all time was a Spirit
and a Life. So, if we would win men, we cannot evade the
task of tr5dng to see afresh for ourselves, and so for them,
what it really means to speak of faith in God, of a life in
Christ, of a Divine Spirit-given, Spirit-guided fellowship
linking men together into a unity transcending aU the
common unities of human experience. Such a task wUl
demand of us that, open-eyed and unafraid, we put tmth
before dogma; that, ceasing to regard our Creeds as
shelters to hide in, we venture forth to bring faith and
hfe, even Christ Himself, to the testing of the keenest
contemporary thought and experience.
No other course is possible for those who have leamt
that tmth is living, not dead, is present and future as
well as past, and who, consequently, refuse to " tum hfe
into a scheme of orthodoxy." The new knowledge of
science, of history, is penetrating everywhere, and the day
has come for the Church to disentangle from her essential
message what Dean Inge calls the " indigestible slabs of

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME 257
obsolete science " which have been imbedded in it from
time immemorial. So far as the Church of England is
concemed, it is a matter for thankfulness to all who set
truth above dogma and tradition that the Convocations
of both Canterbury and York have recently^ boldly
affirmed the Church's freedom, and her duty, to investigate,
and re-investigate, the fundamentals of her faith.
It is, in any case, grovringly clear that there can never
be any successful evangehsm without such sincere
attempts to relate inteUigibly the main contents of the
Christian message to the hving needs of to-day. There
is no question of a " new Gospel " ; but, hke the house
holder who brings things new and old out of his treasury,
an evangelising Church must needs ascertain, and make
available, those essential elements in Christianity which
are specially calculated to meet the needs of the world
of its day. Above aU, we would proffer to men not a
museum religion, dissected, analysed, defined, and dead,
but a living Jesus Christ, Who has a thousand fresh ways
of relating Himself to succeeding generations.
Supposing then that we of to-day are able to make
some fresh and unhampered approach to the real Jesus
Christ, and can, in any sense, bring our contemporaries
freshly face to face with Him, what is it that we find in
Him? Above aU, what are those particular elements
in Him and in what He stands for which can satisfy the
wistful moral hunger of the modem world? AU this
book represents an attempt to give some answer to that
question. For the purposes of the present essay, three
aspects of His response to human seeking may be selected
for emphasis.
1 Summer of 1922. Compare the statement of one of the Com
mittees of the 1920 Lambeth Conference : " We have to state,
and to state in terms which are real and convincing to the mind
of our time, the fundamental truths of the Christian Revelation."
Lambeth Report, p. 118.
S

258 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME
{a) First of aU, and most important of all, in Him men
may see what God is really like. " I say. Padre," said a
soldier to a chaplain as they went up a trench together,
"what is God like? You ought to know." That is,
after aU, the most fundamental inquiry that humanity
makes of the universe. " What is God like ? " Amid
the nightmare of the War, and in all the chaos since, men
and women, staggered by what they have seen and
suffered, have been asking this question, vrith a new and
bitter poignancy, with the deep and insistent demand of
those who profoundly want to know. The question, for
our generation, is not the academic inquiry of the philo
sopher, it is the exceeding bitter cry of bewildered
minds and wounded hearts. And only in Christ is there
any answer which is satisfying. The Church, and official
exponents of religion, need to be frank about this answer.
Too often they have wrapped the whole subject up in the
dark folds of theological obscurities. Too easily they have
made their ovin assumptions as to the nature of deity,
and have then looked to see whether or no they were
applicable to Jesus Christ. A tmer theology, as many
now perceive, must begin at the other end. Jesus is,
for us, the starting point for our knowledge of God. And
to recognise that fact is to make the etemal God more
real and more available for us needy human beings.
There, in the Gospels, is the unforgettable, unapproachable
picture of Jesus — Jesus " Who went about doing good,"
in free and happy intercourse with His brother-men,
without stint and without parade giving the boon of
His friendship to ordinary men and women, with no
distinction of class, creed, or sex. God is like that. There,
on the Gross, is the spectacle of Jesus answering the
tremendous question. How far is love to go ? His love,
as His death makes plain, goes to the bitterest end and
the bottom-most depths; undismayed and undeterred.

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME 259
it pursues aU men to evU's innermost lair. God is like
that. There, during the years which foUowed, in the
throngs of the market-place, on the roads of the Empire,
in the peace of the field, men stUl found Him at hand to
help, though they saw Him not with their earthly eyes.
God is like that. Yet the word " like " is, in the end,
inadequate. Here was far more than any picture of a
God who might Himself be absent. The whole immense
happening was due to God's own initiative, it was God
Himself in action ; " God was in Christ, reconciling the
world unto Himself."
To thousands of men and women of our day all this has
come as veritable news; "new news and good news."
To find that God is not merely on the judgment throne,
but in the arena, that He cares about you personaUy
with the understanding and the persistency of father and
mother and lover combined, that His forgiveness can
reach down to your most hideous failures, that it is literally
possible to enjoy His friendship here and now, and that
He counts on you to serve His cause — this is a tremendous
discovery which, for many, is simply transfiguring aU
hfe. {b) A second feature of the Christian message which
needs reaffirmation to-day, in the face of a prevalent moral
pessimism, is the insistence of Jesus that the standard
of goodness which He demands of men, lofty as it is,
is at the same time something practicable for the ordinary
person. He certainly pitches the demand very high.
" Your goodness," He says to His disciples, " is to be of
your heavenly Father's quahty and stamp." ^ He
summons men to a way of hving, to virgin heights of love
and sacrifice, hitherto untrodden by them in experience
or imagination. But He always tells them how to chmb.
1 St. Matt. v. 48 (paraphrase by G. R. Shafto, The School of
Jesus, p. 59).

260 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME
He never severs, as men misunderstanding Him have
sometimes done. His programme from the secret of its
realisation. Man, He says in effect, can only be what
he ought to be, because God is what He is. It is incon
ceivable that you can love your neighbour as you should
unless you love God. But once God is in reality appre
hended and treated as Father, then, naturaUy and
inevitably, other men are your brothers. The goodness
He caUs men to is, in fact, infectious. Let a man only
expose himself to the influence of God, God in Christ, and
his character, by an unfailing spiritual law, begins to be
God-hke. This is a thing which needs sa3dng to-day, and in a way
which aU can understand. Too many of our generation,
says an acute observer,^ " are obsessed by the idea of the
impracticabihtyof the good." There is that in Christianity
which can utterly break that obsession — ^if only the
Churches would both show the way and proclaim it to
those who so desperately need to hear it. We, Christians
in the Churches of to-day, have shpped dovra from the
ethical levels of original Christianity. We have failed
to demonstrate the goodness which Jesus put before men,
or we have tried to explain it away as impracticable in
our modem world, or we have substituted for it a kind
of ecclesiastical holiness, a religious respectabihty, wliich
bears httle resemblance to the original article and which,
in any case, has no attractions for our contemporaries.
Yet neither the ideal nor the practice of it has been
whoUy lost. That dynamic of the Spirit which tumed
some of the scum of Corinth into Christ-hke men and
women is operative stiU, and, now as then, there is no
more effective exposition of the message of Christianity
than the complete moral transformation of a human hfe.
This behef that the real moral discovery for the Christian
1 D. S. Caurns.

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME 261
is, not a faint hope of slow improvement reluctantly
extracted from a dreary disciphne, but a joyful and
audacious seizing, here and now, of. Christ's power to
make him good — this had always been one of the main
principles of " Evangehcalism." All honour to " Kes
wick " for keeping this belief alive, with its doctrine of
" holiness by faith " ; — though many of us would like to see
that doctrine set forth, there and elsewhere, with fewer
accretions and limitations, and in a language more hkely
to be understanded of the people. For there is a unique
opportunity, in our day, to proclaim to men, with perfect
plainness, what " love " means and how a life dominated
by love may be achieved.
(c) There is a third fundamental feature of original
Christianity which carries a strong appeal to the minds
of our contemporaries, and that is its message for the
social environment in which man has to live his life.
There has been in the last ten or twenty years a remark
able recovery of Christ's Gospel of " the Kingdom,"
which for a very long time has been ignored, or over
looked, in Christian thinking. This re-emergence of the
good news of the Kingdom of God has come to many of
us, especially to those of the younger generation, vrith aU
the force of a new discovery. Not that we see it, or
preach it, in any antithesis to the Gospel of individual
conversion. Rather do we regard the social and indivi
dualistic programmes as essential parts of one great
message. Keenly realising that there can be no adequate
personal Christianity in an un-Christian or a semi-
Christian setting, we seek to proclaim to men that Christ's
gift of a complete redemption is a boon not simply for their
ovwi souls, but for their whole environment — their bodies
and the physical conditions of their hves — their circle
of relationships, their work, their play, their civic and
pohtical interests, the nearer and the larger world in

262 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME
which they hve. With such a message, put intelUgibly,
sjmipatheticaUy, and vrith a combination of humihty
and certainty, we can at least get a hearing from our
contemporaries. There is a way into the heart and mind
of every generation ; and the way into the heart of ours
is to show that there is that in our religion which can
successfully grapple vrith social evils and point to the true
way of social renewal. Men give some heed to Christ
when they begin to see that His message insists on the
absolute sacredness of human personality and the binding
obligation of the law of love, and that He can actually
enable men to act on these principles ; and they vriU pay
more attention to the Church when they see her tr5dng
to think out the kind of social and industrial order which
these postulates demand, and inculcating upon her
members the duty of living accordingly.^ And, in point
of fact, this Gospel " works." When men reaUy discover
that Christ is not a sort of cold ecclesiastical lay figure
invented by the Churches, but is in fact ahve and per
sonaUy accessible, and is actuaUy concemed with their
hopes and fears, their work, their home, their family,
their town and their nation, then they, many of them,
tum Christian. Some of the more recent evangehstic
campaigns, such as the " Crusades " at Woolwich and
elsewhere, the student " campaigns " at Hamilton,
Liverpool, and Northampton, and the great simultaneous
Mission at Ipswich in October, 1921, where the message
has been proclaimed with the utmost frankness, on some
such lines as those suggested above, and where there has
been a considered and successful attempt to make an
effective impact on the community as well as to convert
individuals — those experiments afford a striking indica-
1 Reference may be made here to the Conference on Christian
Politics, Economics and Citizenship, planned for April 1924.
Literature and all particulars can be obtained from the office of
the Conference, 92 St. George's Square, London, S.W.

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME 263
tion of what may be achieved when, with all its strength,
and without reserve, with knowledge and enthusiasm and
buming hope, the Church proclaims Jesus to the people of
this land. 2.
It is probably tme to say that the opportunity for
evangelism is at least as great to-day as it has ever been
in the whole course of Christian history. Behind and
beneath contemporary materialism (flourishing in practice
while discredited as a philosophy) there are signs of an
unsatisfied spiritual hunger in all sorts of people and among
very different sections of the community. The vogue of
spiritualism, theosophy, and Christian Science is, from
one point of view, a symptom of men's groping after
something which may make life more satisfying and put
them in contact with its hidden reahties. And for many
men and women the late War meant a moral and spiritual
earthquake; the fountains of the great deep have been
opened and no more can they live contentedly on the
surface of life. They need, for the whole range of their
living, precisely that which Christianity can give. Is there
any fair probabihty that most of them wiU find it ? To
that question this essay would answer Yes, provided
that the Christianity offered is a real and hving thing,
clearly and adequately related to the actual needs and
circumstances of to-day. But this proviso at once raises
a further and a cmcial issue. Is the Church (using the
word to connote the whole of official, organised Christi
anity) giving men, or seriously attempting to give men,
this kind of vital Christianity ? Is the Church sufficiently
dominated by Jesus Christ to exhibit Him clearly to
men and to present His claims authoritatively and effect
ively to our generation ? All who have tried to proclaim
Christ to the non-Church-going mass of the people, in the

264 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME
streets or elsewhere, know weU how much this matter
counts. How often we have found the tmth of what the
Archbishop of York courageously admitted at the recent
Sheffield Church Congress, that " while rehgion attracts,
the Church repels." It is not difficult to get a sympathetic
hearing for the Christian message to-day. It is, probably,
no harder than in former days to vrin men to some real
Christian discipleship. But to bring them into any
effective and permanent fellowship with the Christian
Society, with some part of the visible Body of Christ,
this is another matter altogether, and one which presents
very serious difficulties. No enquiry which seeks to deal
at aU fuUy vrith modem evangehsm can ignore these
difficulties, and the concluding pages of this essay wiU
endeavour to indicate how, in the writer's opinion,
attempts may be made to surmount them.
{a) The first and fundamental thing is to catch some
thing of Christ's own concern for the unshepherded
multitudes ; to shake off our normal apathy and to learn
to want them. We believe, of course, theoreticaUy, in
the finality and universahty of our rehgion. From
Missionary " deputations," from the representatives of
home evangehsation societies, in church, in meeting, in
Sunday School class, we like to hear the famihar and
reiterated assertion that the Gospel must be preached
to every creature. But when we get dovra to hard,
troublesome facts, when we leave the atmosphere of
pulpit and pew for work-a-day reahties, do we — ^we, the
rank and file of the Christian Church in England — reaUy
want to share aU we have with " every creature " ? For
that is what our Master Christ commits us to. Not
throvring words at people as from a superior platform :
not an official deahng out of " the Gospel " to selected
spiritual cases, nor a largesse of it to the multitudes, with
a take-it-or-leave-it gesture ; not that, but a dehberately

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME 265
reckless sharing of all of Him that we have (which means
aU our life) with the great army of the spiritually dis
possessed. Are we prepared for that? Do we want
them on terms hke these ? We long, or say we long, for
a " revival " ; we think with a secret thrill how wonder
ful it would be if thousands of people were " converted " ;
but it may be seriously questioned whether many of us
have either visualised the means or counted the cost of
such large happenings. Do we really want these thousands
crowding our Churches, taking our seats, sharing our
worship, criticising and dislocating our ecclesiastical
machinery, making endless demands on time, thought,
money, sympathy, on love itself ?
To many of these questions common honesty has to
answer No. Would it were otherwise; but how can we
say we want them in any effective sense when the
relentless facts of a shrinking Church membership and
an alienated nation loudly proclaim the contrary? I
would not indeed for a moment minimise all the magnifi
cent work which the Church has done and is doing. What
the nation has of religious sense and moral standard
is unquestionably due in large measure to centuries of
quiet, patient work by the Church's pastors and to the
continuous leavening influence of many of her members.
But to diffuse a faint Christian atmosphere without,
and to nourish the piety of her own adherents within,
is only a part of the Church's duty, though she has often
treated it as the whole. The other part of her work,
indeed that for which she primarily exists, is to make
Christians : to bring God to the godless, hfe and peace and
hope to those who are dead in trespasses and sins ; with
a restless love to go searching for the Father's lost sons and
to bring them home again, with joy, into the Kingdom.
This is indeed " the primary business of the Church,
without which the rest avails nothing " ; and the gravest

266 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME
question for the Church to-day is not that of intemal
reform, however urgent it may seem, or of ecclesiastical
politics of any kind, but the question whether or no she
is going to put first things first, and throw her main
energies into the supremely vital work of evangehsm.
From time to time, in her long history, the Church has
caught a fresh vision of her primary duty and has
girded herself anew to its discharge, vrith beneficent and
amazing results. Is not such a retum to her fundamental
business due now? And who if not "Evangelicals,"
with aU our traditions and certainties of an available,
indispensable Christ, of a Father's yearning love, of
unfathomed human need and boundless human response,
should help the Church to this great recovery? Let us
be quite clear about it : if we isolate our reUgious hfe,
if we fail in Christ-like compassion towards the un
shepherded multitudes, if we seek to have Christ without
them — ^we shall, ultimately, lose Him. He refuses to
stay unless His friends may come in too.
..." He said, ' Thou must shelter all things if thou shelter Me
to-night.'
Quickly came the pulse of footsteps tracking down their only
friend.
In there trooped those other outcasts, blank-eyed, shiv'ring,
without end ;
These I welcomed, but when after flocks of preening fools came in,
Decked in shows, vain, cruel, shaUow, I had barred their strident
din
From the hearth where Christ was sitting with the mourners and
the poor.
Then He said, ' Those be most needy, those least loved, set wide
the door.' "
{b) What, it may next be asked, are the most effective
ways in which any rekindled evangelistic responsibihty
may be discharged ? With a revived Church, with a new
type of parson determined to put " first things first,"
vrith a converted laity eager to share their Christian

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME 267
heritage, how, in actual practice, can this desire to
propagate Christianity find efficient vent and achieve
concrete results ? As has been already pointed out, the
only finally efficient " method " is the quiet, steady,
personal witness of the individual Christian man and
woman. But over and above this there is always need
for certain organised attempts to spread the mle of Christ.
It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a real and
grovring necessity for the hammering out of new evange
listic methods. The old type of " revival meeting," vrith
its rank emotionalism, its cmde theology, and its para
phernalia of penitent form, sentimental music, and
perfervid platform appeals, is of no manner of use to
the present generation : the sane and thoughtful person
of to-day is merely confused and repelled by it. The
evangelism of our time must appeal to the head as weU
as the heart ; while refusing in any way to cheapen or to
compromise aU that Christ is and stands for, it neverthe
less can and should set forth His significance and His
claims vrith sanity and complete sincerity, vrith reality
and entire relevance to the actual conditions of hfe to-day.
It is important that the Church as a whole, and individual
Churches and congregations, should cease to regard
evangelism as a thing chiefly of " extra," abnormal
efforts and enterprises, and should treat it rather as being
wholly within the ordinary sphere of parochial tasks and
activities. To this end care should be taken that all the
parochial machinery is given a certain evangelistic bent,
the clubs and other associations being organised as much
to attract those outside as to cater for those aheady
vrithin. And opportunities should be created whereby
the Churchgoers should be able corporately to discharge
some of their spiritual obligations to their non-Church-
going friends and neighbours. At a certain church in a
middle-sized Enghsh town, where the accommodation is

268 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME
limited and the services are weU attended, the experiment
is being tried of occasional special services for " non-
Churchgoers." These services are held at the usual
hour on a Sunday evening, and the regular Church
members have the double duty of bringing " outsiders "
and of surrendering their seats to them or to other
strangers, and indeed of taking the risk of finding no room
for themselves at all. The experiment is proving success
ful. " Outsiders " come in large numbers, and the
regular members, responding gamely to the opportunity,
are finding out in a new way how much more blessed it is
to give than to receive.
Over and above such attempts as these, there will
always be room for efforts on a larger scale. To these
some reference has already been made.^ With regard to
the actual method pursued in such larger enterprises,
one or two points may be briefly noted here. One such
point concems the importance of the " united front."
If in any given town a big-scale attempt is to be made,
not merely to convert individuals, but to make a definite
Christian impression on the town as such, then all the
Christian forces of the tovsm, Anglican and non-Anglican,
must take concerted action and go " over the top "
together. Another point worth emphasising is the
importance of open-air work, and dinner-hour meetings
in shops and factories, meetings which have httle or
nothing of the " service " character about them, but
at which there is ample scope for question and answer.
The writer was taking part in a recent campaign where
night after night, for two or three hours in succession,
questions poured in from men and women who reaUy
wanted to know what Christianity has to say to, and can
do for, common, work-a-day living. But very few of
these questioners would be willing to come into a church
^ See p. 262.

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME 269
and be harangued from a pulpit. The Church must go
to them if it wants them to hear the Christian message.
Again, any kind of evangelising " campaign," with many
Churches and campaigners co-operating, demands long
and careful previous preparation, evangelists and speakers
who can " get there " vrith a chance crowd, and a very
carefully planned " foUow-up " — a sequel which will
provide immediate expression, individual and corporate,
for the newly kindled Christian hfe, and which wiU seek
quickly to bring those touched into effective membership
of the Christian society.
The last sentence raises a question, which, referred to
already in this essay needs only a word of re-emphasis
as the essay closes. Suppose that we Christians of
to-day can succeed in inducing a majority of our feUow-
countrymen to pay any attention to what the Christian
Gospel has to say : suppose, further, that the grace of
God, acting through us or through others, should convert
any considerable proportion of them — ^have we, in the
Christian Church, a home to receive them, a feUowship to
hold them, a society, a programme, a compeUing joint
adventure, to attract and satisfy and utUise all which they
want to offer to the service of God? It is not possible,
as things are at present, to answer that question with a
confident affirmative; and untU we can so answer it, it
is to be feared that any new evangehstic impulse wUl be
relatively ineffective. But, assuredly, the re-creative,
renovating process is even now at work, moved by the
hands of Him that maketh aU things new, and the Church
shaU yet provide a satisfying famUy and feUowship life
for the chUdren of God in the world — a feUowship with
class and race distinctions broken down ; a feUowship with
a Sacrament as vride as the love of Christ; a feUowship
which shall give men a worship real, uphfting, beautiful,
sincere; a feUowship of ardent campaigners for the

270 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL AT HOME
Kingdom of God; a feUowship in which the tests of
orthodoxy shaU be less concemed vrith correctness of
creed than with Christ-likeness of life. The time is fuUy
ripe for aU of us who foUow Christ to fling ourselves into
the adventure of proclaiming His message to a needy
world, not because we can yet see the ultimate issues of
our task, but because we believe in the Church that is to
be, and because we know that the purposes of God's
Kingdom are marching on towards final victory.
E. S. Woods.

XIII
THE PRESENTATION OF THE GOSPEL ABROAD
It has been the chief glory of the Evangehcal party in
the Church of England that it has from the first set in the
forefront ofj its programme the evangehsation of the
world. That sense of spiritual buoyancy and joy, which
has been the fmit of the Evangelical experience at its
best, has had as its characteristic outcome a desire to
bring this same experience to others, whether at home
or abroad. On the whole it is tme to say that the sup
porters of the great Evangehcal societies at home, and
their Missionaries abroad, have shown an infectious
enthusiasm in the work of Foreign Missions which has
reacted for good upon the whole Church.
The special marks of the Evangehcal party which have
impressed themselves upon all great societies which it
has created, and through which its organised work is
carried on, are weU knovra. They are in the main a
definite and clear-cut doctrine of the Atonement, a behef
in the complete infaUibility of Holy Scripture, a behef
in the universal necessity of definite conversion, and a
whole-hearted opposition to the sacrificial conception
of the Holy Communion service, and generaUy to the
formal and cereinonial in worship.
With regard to some at any rate of these points many
of the men and women who to-day inherit the old Evan
gehcal tradition find themselves in an anomalous position.
They admire the great achievements of the Evangehcal
party at home and abroad; its enthusiastic devotion to
271

272 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD
its ideals; its hatred of formahty and archaism, its zeal
for the conversion of the world, and its courageous
Christian witness. They have in many cases an affection
for its name, and almost a famUy feeUng vrith regard to
the great organised societies through which its work has
been done. They have no desire to tum their backs upon
Evangehcahsm. But they are unable to subscribe to
all the articles of its intellectual and theological creed,
and they definitely believe that many of its protests have
lost their significance and value, that many of its positions
are no longer tenable, and that by frankly abandoning
such positions it would strengthen enormously its appeal
to the men and women of to-day, would gain new hfe
and vigour from its contact vrith aU that is most vital
and hopeful in their outlook, and would lose none of its
real effectiveness, whether at home or abroad.
It is not necessary to describe the conditions of life
and thought in England which have led to this new
attitude. That has been done by others. No one can
read the various studies of the rehgious outlook of our
soldiers during the War; no one can come into touch
with the temper of the men, and perhaps even more of
the women of our Universities; no one can read the
annual reports of such a society as the Student Christian
Movement, with its unique opportunity for gauging the
rehgious thought and outlook of the students of Great
Britain to-day, without realising that a great change has
taken place. Bishop Gore's recent sketch of the attitude
of the average man towards religious questions is extra
ordinarily iUuminating in this connection; and it has
to be remembered that, if he is specially thinking of
those who have drifted away almost entirely from the
Christian faith, the same influences have left their mark
upon those who definitely regard themselves as Christians,
and as Evangehcals. It is no longer possible for them to

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD 273
look at things with their fathers' eyes. They wish to
follow in their fathers' steps; they wish to devote their
lives whole-heartedly to the cause of Christ; they are
looking, and often looking with grovring impatience, to
organised Christianity, the Christianity of the Churches
and of the Societies, to know whether they are to be
welcomed and set to work, or whether they are to be
held aloof and frowned upon. For such men and women
the battle for the recognition of Higher Criticism as
an approved method has been fought and won. Many
questions are, of course, undecided; many provisional
decisions vrill doubtless have to be revised; but if the
method itself is to be called in question, if the generaUy
accepted conclusions are to be counted as heretical,
these men and women are lost to the Church. They have
come to regard questions of ritual as in the main matters
of temperament, education, and taste. They refuse to
be bound by the grave-clothes of controversies which for
them are dead, and the significance which their elders
find in colours and positions and special nomenclatures
they cannot understand. They are not sacerdotahsts ;
they hate all that savours of superstition ; but the Holy
Communion means more to them than it did to their
fathers, and they feel that the bare negations of extreme
Protestantism are as untme as, and almost more perilous
than, the extravagances of the advanced Catholics.
They desire with aU their hearts the reunion of Christen
dom, but they recognise that if they are to induce Presby
terians and Congregationalists and Baptists to confess
that they are not separated on essentials from members
of the Church of England, then the parties within the
Anghcan Church itself wiU have to make mutual
recognitions which are bound to soften the edges and
moderate the manner of their ovra disputes. The
estabhshment of the National Church Assembly and the
T

274 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD
Report of the Lambeth Conference have marked an epoch.
There can be for these men and women no retum to
pre-war conditions.
It is not unnatural that many, who recognise that it is
not possible to put the clock back in England, should yet
hope that at least on the mission field the principles for
which the Evangehcal party has stood so manfuUy in
the past should be preserved in their original purity.
And indeed it cannot be denied that young native Churches
which have been taught and trained up in such principles
must inevitably suffer real distress and confusion when
they find that beliefs and ideas which they have accepted
without question are not held in the same reverence,
or are not expressed in the same way by some of their
teachers to-day. It is not to be wondered at if that
desire not to offend Christ's little ones, which has so
often led the preacher, and stiU more the conscientious
Sunday school teacher in England, not to utter all that is
in his mind, should incline the mission authorities to
exercise every care, that only those in whose theology
they have the completest confidence should be entrusted
with the grave responsibility of preaching the Christian
Gospel in foreign lands.
There are many who have advocated precisely the same
attitude in political matters. How often have we heard
it said that we have committed a grave blunder in aUowing
explosive Western ideas of liberty to be introduced among
the politically backward peoples of the East ? And there
can be httle doubt that these ideas have caused much
trouble in the East, and vrill cause more. Yet we know
that we could not have kept them out even if we had
wanted to, and few of us in our hearts believe that we
ought to have excluded them even if we could.
If any attempt is made to exclude from missionary
service aU except those who are vriUing to conform to

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD 276
the rigid standards of the orthodox Evangelicalism of
fifty years ago, it wiU mean that the Evangehcal party
will have increasingly to look outside the Universities
for recruits, and even so it will not find it easy to secure
in any numbers the kind of men and women that it wants.
For the new generation cannot be ralUed under the
banners of the old. The demand for a fresher, freer
outlook is in the air; it is in the blood of the younger
manhood and womanhood of Christendom, and the future
is with them.
How far the Church can go in welcoming this spirit
is a matter for very anxious though sympathetic con
sideration. It is happily evident that the Bishops at
home are not prepared to countenance a too rigid appeal
to authority, nor yet to discourage the reverent application
of the strictest scientific methods to the examination of
religious and theological questions. But it cannot be
too clearly stated that you cannot have a temper like
this at home without seeing its reflection in the Church's
work abroad. Missionaries will continue to press out
who carry on in their fullness the old traditions, but they
must be prepared to welcome as colleagues and to share
the task of leadership with those men and women in our
Universities who have felt the full force of the modem
currents, and who in the main reflect in their own persons
the general outlook of the Church which sends them
forth. And indeed, even if the societies were to determine
thus strictly to confine their choice of missionaries, it
would not be possible completely to preserve the rising
native Churches from the complications and difficulties
with which Christianity is confronted at home. There
are, of course, stUl vast territories into which education
has not yet penetrated, and where the missionary can
erect almost impassable thought barriers around his

276 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD
people; but such areas are being rapidly restricted, and
there are comparatively few large centres of population
in which the missionary's is the only voice through
which the thought of the West is mediated. It is pro
bably tme that the modem missionary is too much
disposed to concentrate on the large tovras, and yet
there hes behind this tendency a tme instinct. For as
in the Roman Empire, so to-day in Asia, Christianity
is being chaUenged by the educated classes, and they are
in touch, more or less, with the currents of thought in
the West. We cannot keep out the literature of Europe,
nor can we prevent the young manhood from the East
from going to see and leam for itself in Britain and
Germany and America; and it would be little short of
disastrous if the representatives of Christianity abroad
were men and women who were beheved to be unconscious
of, or irreconcilably opposed to, ideas which are becoming
the commonplace of even moderately conservative
thinkers in the Church at home.
At any rate, whether we hke it or not, there is no escape
from the fact that in various ways the spirit and temper
of religious thought in England are being, and must
inevitably be, reflected in the mission field to-day; and
unless the Missionary Societies are ahve to the significance
of this fact, they vrill inevitably find that their hold upon,
and their appeal to, that adventurous spirit in the Church
which is the very life-blood of its overseas enterprise wiU
weaken and be lost.
Not only, however, is it inevitable that the rehgious
outlook of the West should be reflected in the mission-
field and in the temper of the men and women who offer
for foreign service, but the very circumstances and
conditions of his work, especiaUy among the educated
classes, force upon the missionary, with an insistence
not easily appreciated at home, problems of theology and

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD 277
of conduct which have little more than an academic
interest for' many of the Christian people who are the
most ardent supporters of foreign missions. The study
of Comparative Religions, when it is undertaken at all,
is too often little more than an exercise in setting the
worst elements in non-Christian faiths in contrast with
Christianity at its highest. The daily and year-long life
in a non-Christian country, alongside of men and women
who display varieties of character and of piety as diverse
as can be found in Christian lands, forces the more
thoughtful missionary to re-examine his presuppositions
and his imtested prejudices, in order that he may feel
that his message is securely rooted in the tmth itself.
It is almost inevitable that such a re-examination should
lead, sometimes tentatively, sometimes with sohd con
viction, to positions with which people who have never
faced as living issues the particular problems with which
the missionary has to deal find it hard to sympathise.
In the presence of the brilliant star-strewn skies, the huge
mountain ranges, the mighty rivers, and above aU the
age-long culture of Asia, our little controversies, our party
war-cries, our national prejudices assume a very smaU and
petty look. This should not breed in us an impatience of
all strongly held convictions, nor yet that easy acquies
cence in aU religious beliefs, however incompatible and
however degraded, which often passes for the spirit of
tolerance to-day, but it should create in us a deeper
sympathy, a determination, if we cannot agree with the
answer, at least to understand the question, and an effort
to escape from the t5a'annyof secondhand and preconceived
judgments into that vrise freedom of the spirit which
St. Paul calls having the mind of Christ.
These influences affect insensibly the outlook of the
man or woman who has spent years in trying to under
stand the characteristic spirit of the East, and to rid his

278 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD
own mind of purely local and national bias, and he
naturally finds that in the process his theological ideas are
being modified. He feels that he must have a message
which is capable of meeting the actual situation with
which he is confronted. It is not that he has to change
his faith. He has to develop sides of it which are imphcit,
but dormant, in the faith of the majority of his feUow
Christians in the West.
He finds that he needs to vriden his conception of God.
He must proclaim a God who loves all mankind equaUy
and like a Father, a God who is no respecter of persons,
but who accepts in every nation him that feareth Him
and worketh righteousness. It is true that the vision
of hundreds of thousands of our feUow creatures being
daily, and for no fault of their own, projected into an
eternity of punishment has acted as a -powerful motive
to missionary endeavour in the past. We can see this
motive at work in the letter written from Oxford to his
father by Mr. Gladstone at the time when he believed
that he was being caUed to the Christian Ministry. Who,
if he really believed in the truth of such a picture, could
refrain from devoting his life to saving at least some
from so awful a doom ? And yet what a travesty of the
love of God ! The moral conscience of mankind revolts
against such a conception, and, accepting the great words
that "God is hght, and in Him is no darkness at aU," vriU
not tolerate the ascription to Him of conduct which in a
human being it would be impossible to justify or defend.
It is not the least of Dr. Farquhar's contributions to the
solution of missionary problems that in the introduction
to his Crown of Hinduism he deals so wisely and courage
ously with this question. It is not our business to attempt
to prove that aU non-Christian religions are of the devil,
their Gods a lie, and their prophets false. We are to
reveal to aU men the trae character of the Being after

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD 279
whom, many even in their degraded fashion, are feeling
and to whom they ignorantly (and often with what
pitiful ignorance !) give their worship. The missionary
cannot face his hearers to-day with any more narrow
conception than this.
And if his conception of God must be large enough to
embrace all mankind, so must be his thought about the
Church. We need to realise that, because we refuse to
believe that Hinduism, Mohammedanism, and Buddhism
are as true for the peoples of the East as Christianity
is for ourselves, it does not foUow that we are justified
in trpng to tum them into Welsh Calvinistic Methodists,
Scottish Presbyterians, or members of the Church of
England — stiU less into C.M.S. or S.P.G. Christians. It
is well sometimes even in rehgious matters to preserve a
sense of humour.
Again, as representatives of Western Christendom, we
have to approach the foUowers of the great rehgious of
the East in a spirit of humility. Granted that the East
is at the present time largely bhnded by political prejudice,
yet the fact remains that it has passed judgment upon our
Western civilisation. It has weighed us in the balance
and found us wanting. The European to-day, whether in
Govemment, in trade, or in the Church, has to develop
a new S3nnpathy, a new sensitiveness, a new under
standing. It is not the business of the missionary to
plunge into politics, but, in India at any rate, he must
remember that he is not a representative of the Govem
ment; and he may at any time have to raise his voice
courageously, if he detects signs of injustice or exploitation
or wrong.
He needs above aU to develop a greater sensitiveness
to the feehngs of the native Christians among whom his
hfe is cast. There can be no doubt that the European
missionary has kept his hand too heavily upon the

280 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD
Churches of the East. No time must be lost by the
Societies in reviewing and readjusting the relationship
between Church and Mission. The missionary, however
exceUent his intentions, cannot break away from the
system of which he forms a part.
The attitude of mind which I have attempted to
describe is becoming more and more characteristic of the
modem missionary. Like the Scribe, whom our Lord
commends, he tries to bring out of his treasure things
new and old, not attempting to sweep away all that is
in the minds of his hearers and to build afresh, but seeking
to relate his message, as all vrise teachers must, to those
ideas and experiences which touch the deepest springs
of their hearts. There are, of course, in every class and
people individuals who are seeking passionately for
personal salvation, for union vrith God, for freedom from
the overwhelming sense of sin and for rehef from its
daily tyranny. To these the good news of the peace and
salvation offered to mankind in Christ crucified wiU make
an immediate appeal. It must be our first aim to seek
out, by our preaching and our visiting, through the
circulation of hterature, and especially of the Bible, such
souls as these ; and happy is the man to whom comes the
supreme joy of finding and leading them to the Saviour.
But the great majority of those with whom he is brought
into contact have not reached this stage, and vrith them
he will have patiently and wisely, in the mission-field as
at home, to explore the most hopeful lines of approach.
For it is by different routes and through different ex
periences that men find their way to that sense of deep
personal need, that sense of sin and worthlessness,
which must always be the essential condition for the
understanding and for the reception of spiritual blessing.
It is not always through the preaching of a Nathan
that a man is brought to know and tP hate hi§ own sin-

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD 281
fulness. Job, Isaiah, St. Peter, St. Paul — it was along
different lines that they were brought to their knees in
penitence. If the messenger of the Gospel in Asia to-day
is to quicken men to the same sense of need, he must be
ready to take them as he finds them, and to build
on existing foundations if he can. The English boy will
generaUy admire Christ as Hero before he knows Him as
Saviour, and the missionary who is in touch with the
intellectual and political ferment which is stirring amongst
the educated classes of India, China, and Japan wiU often
discover that it is through the setting forth of the Gospel
of the Kingdom that he will most surely find his way to
the deep places of men's hearts.
It is one of the unfortunate results of the national
spirit which is sweeping over Asia to-day that it seems
to exclude all sense of a world-wide vision, and to con
centrate aU attention on narrower issues. When the
national outlook dominates all thought, it makes rehgion
itself largely a national matter, and regards as dis
loyalty the suggestion of any change. But if the ideal of
the Kingdom, a world-wide fellowship of all mankind as
children of God, can be made to grip the imagination,
it opens the door to the presentation of that faith which
alone has at its very centre the conception of universal
brotherhood. It is possible that the League of Nations
may be a powerful means of quickening this idea into
vigorous life.
Any man who has been seized by this ideal of the King
dom, and can be led to see it as God's design and pur
pose for mankind, and to feel the beginning of personal
responsibUity with regard to its establishment, must
inevitably be faced sooner or later vrith the problem of
sin— his ovra sin, and the sin of others ; for it is manifest
that sin and selfishness are the great obstacles to the
coming of the Kingdom ; and when we reach this point,

282 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD
the application of the Christian message becomes more
personal and searching. For it is at this point that
many tum back in despair, and it is here that we must
show what is Christ's way, God's way — the buUding
up of His Kingdom in His own time through men and
women who have brought their hves, their failures, their
defeats to Him, and have through Christ found forgive
ness and release and the new power of service. It is
here that the actual teaching of the Bible vriU become
most vital. It is not necessary to present it as a magical
book. It will speak by its own supreme power, and not
the less convincingly if it be aUowed to speak for itself.
The message of the great prophets will drive home the
ideas which have been dwelt upon, and wiU open the way
for the unfolding of the great central truths of the faith,
and the presentation of Christ as fulfilling the age-long
aspirations of mankind, as the only hope, either for the
regeneration of the individual or for the rebuilding of
society. And here indeed the missionary is on strong
ground. It is trae that there are not many signs of a
rapid movement among the educated classes of Asia
into the Christian Church. For, alas ! there is httle in
the Christian Church as they see it to attract them. But
Christ is vrinning His way in Asia. He makes a marveUous
appeal to the Eastern heart, and His life and His teaching
are taken again and again as the standard by which
Christendom itself is judged.
But if this be so, then the missionary must be able to
set forth the Christian Church as the Divine Society
through which God's great purpose for the world is to
be achieved. And to what a pitiful state of things he
must point I China, India, Japan, Africa ! In each wiU
be found shreds and patches of the Church of Christ. In
Ireland, Protestant and Cathohc in deadly feud; in
Europe, Christian nations barely kept in harmony even

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD 283
through the exhaustion follovring upon the War. Truly
the need of the hour is for the knitting up of the rent seams
of the Church of Ohrist !
The Lambeth Conference has done a great service to
the cause of foreign missions by its restatement of their
trae aim. We Anglicans at any rate have no excuse if we
do not leam the lesson. In the Lambeth Conference
Report it is laid dovra that the aim of the foreign work of
the Church is not to establish in foreign lands branches of
the Church of England; the aim is to plant national
branches of the Catholic Church. If this ideal is to
become regulative, it wiU necessarUy produce a profound
effect upon the plans and methods of the missionary
societies. For consider for the moment what is involved in this
ideal. It means that English people (and of course the
same principle holds good for aU the nations which are
engaged in foreign missionary work) are to try to establish
in Africa and in Asia Churches as truly expressive of the
national and racial characteristics of their peoples as
are the Anglican and Presbyterian Churches of England
and Scotland. When we consider how we have impressed
our own national characteristics upon the political
administration of the subject nations of the British
Empire, when we remember how the Enghshman carries
his habits about with him wherever he goes, and how
rarely he can be happy unless in his exile he can surround
himself with a little England of his own making, we can
realise in some degree the extreme difficulty with which
he is faced when he sets himself to produce in a foreign
land " a national branch of the Catholic Church." Indeed
the demand made by such an ideal is tremendous, and it
is not surprising that we foreign missionaries have fallen
far short of it, that we have in the main reproduced in
the foreign field groups of Christians who display in

284 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD
their forms of worship, in their Church architecture, in
their evangelistic methods, and even in their ecclesiastical
outlook, the characteristics, not only of the nation and
the Church from which they have come, but also of the
particular party in that Church with which they may be
identified. It is the great merit of the Lambeth pronouncement
that it holds fast to that conception of national rehgious
independence.which was secured for us at the Reformation,
and at the same time insists upon the importance of the
recovery of that ideal of the one Catholic Church which
we have aUowed for too long to pass into the background
of our thoughts and plans.
All these considerations constitute an insistent call to
the Evangelical party to re-examine its basis, and in
particular to adopt a more liberal attitude in relation
to the foreign missionary work which it supports. Hitherto
it has been able to recruit missionaries who have on
the whole conformed to its strict conditions; to organise
congregations which in their beliefs and modes of worship
have reproduced faithfuUy what they have been taught ;
and even to secure the appointment of Bishops who,
in its opinion, would ensure that a particular diocese
would retain the desired character. But this, at least
in anything hke the same degree, is no longer possible.
Unless the Evangehcal party is going to tum its back
upon the Universities, unless it is going deliberately to
countenance the perpetuation of the present divisions
in the mission-field, and either to abandon the native
Churches, or to continue to subject them to a rigid
alien control which they are beginning increasingly
to resent, it must adapt itself to the changed con
ditions, cease to regard all the old tests as the unvar3dng
marks of genuine Evangelical Christianity, and seek in
ways more suited to the new conditions to make its

PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD 285
special and invaluable contribution to the evangelisation
of the world.
It will have to be wiUing to continue to make grants
to Churches which demand the fuUest freedom of experi
ment in forms of worship and ritual, and in which the
seat of authority has been transferred from the English
Committee room to the local Diocese. It will have to
set its missionaries free to apply the methods of historical
criticism to aU sacred Scriptures, and to teach its generaUy
accepted conclusions, in order that the evident inspiration
of the Bible may shine out by its own light, and that
Christianity may gain the tremendous advantage of
being the one religion that fearlessly invites the applica
tions of the most rigorous scientific, phUosophical and
historical tests. It must be prepared to see much greater
emphasis laid upon the gospel of the Kingdom, to use all
its influence to ensure that trae Christian principles
shaU govern the Empire's relations with the weaker
peoples of the world, and to show ungrudging sympathy
with aU movements which aim at the physical and social,
as well as the religious welfare of the people. It must
be prepared to recognise essential unity in Christ with
people and parties who express their loyalty to Him in
unfamihar ways, and, while honestly combating what it
holds to be errors, must find room for them in its conception
of the Catholic Church.
And if in these and other ways the Evangehcal party
wUl have to be prepared to see and to welcome develop
ments which our fathers would have felt bound to oppose,
where are we to look for that special Evangelical con
tribution which it is stiU ours to give ?
We shaU stand for that wide interpretation of the
Catholic Church which characterised the utterances of
the Lambeth Conference, and shaU set ourselves to oppose
any attempt to narrow this interpretation ; and we shaU

286 PRESENTATION OF GOSPEL ABROAD
at the same time do everything in our power to bring
about reunion on this basis, whether in the mission-field
or at home. WhUe recognising that particular details
of ritual have in many cases lost their original doctrinal
significance, and that there wiU always be temperaments
to which colour and music make a special religious appeal,
we shall maintain our watchfulness against tendencies
to aUow ceremony to conceal reaUty, or to let machinery
and system crash out the spiritual hberty of the Church.
We shall bear unhesitating testimony to our conviction,
based upon the experience of the Christian Church in
all ages, and not least upon the experience of men and
women to-day, that, whatever be the Christology which
gives the greatest intellectual satisfaction to a particular
age, it must, if it is not to rob the Christian faith of its
characteristic features, be capable of expression in terms
of the coming of the Godhead into manhood in the person
of Jesus Christ as a unique act of grace for us men and for
our salvation; and that, however the mystery of the
Atonement be explained, it will be shorn of its saving
power unless it can interpret the Cross of Cavalry as the
symbol and pledge of the free and unmerited forgiveness
offered to sinful men at the cost of the suffering of God
Himself, and as opening the way through faith to
reconciliation and union vrith Him.
If in this way the Evangelicals, whUe holding fast the
essential principles which have been the real source of
their strength from the first, are able to take their courage
in both hands, and place their confidence, not in certain
tests of their own framing, but in the power of the Holy
Spirit who is the Spirit of truth, they can face the future
vrithout fear, for they still have in the good Providence
of God great service to render to the Church of Christ,
and through the Church to aU mankind.
A. W. Davies.

XIV
THE FUTURE OF
THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT
One who attempts to assess the value and to prophesy
the future of a religious movement may fairly be asked to
state at the outset his own position. This essay must be
regarded as expressing the individual standpoint of one
who is in fundamental sympathy with the religious views
and aspirations of the other contributors to the present
volume. But, because it embodies personal opinions, I
wiU briefly indicate their nature and how they have been
formed. I am an Evangelical, tout court. The religious hfe of
my forbears was made by the Evangehcal Revival.
Something in the texture of my mind, which is probably
the result partly of heredity and partly of early training,
makes me proud to belong to the great Evangelical
tradition. I believe that my Evangelical convictions
are not the result of prejudice or thoughtless bias. I have
sought to be not wholly unfamiliar either vrith modern
science or with the investigation of the origins of Christ
ianity and of the books of the Bible by the methods of
hterary and historical criticism. Yet I am certainly not,
in the Roman Catholic sense of the term, a Modernist.
I have read a certain amount of Catholic apologetic —
enough to convince me that I am not, and can never
become, a Catholic in the common sectarian meaning
of that word. I am, in short, convinced that for trae
religious inspiration and insight we must rely on the
Gospel, the good news of Christ. 287

288 FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT
In the New Testament, and not in customs or practices
of the Church, we must find the unalterable standards of
Christian morality and the principles by which they shall
be enforced. We must settle questions of Christian wor
ship and of ecclesiastical organisation by an appeal to
the Spirit of Christ, and not by the authority of patristic
or mediaeval theories. Our faith must be faith in Christ,
in Jesus of Nazareth, God's incarnate Son, the Holy
and Righteous One, Who rose from the dead : the faith
in Him which we reach after careful and thoughtful
examination of the records of the New Testament. The
mass of theological speculation which led to the Summa
of St. Thomas Aquinas has no binding authority upon us.
Ecclesiastical and doctrinal traditions, even when fortified
by Concihar decisions, we can ignore, unless they commend
themselves to our reason when, in the light of the best
knowledge and thought accessible to us, we study the
Bible. Such, I take it, is Evangelicalism. It is Christianity
in its most simple and purest form, free from accretions,
marvellously alive because it has escaped from the clutch
of the dead hand of the past. I believe that such Evangeli
calism is in the future destined to become the religion
of the world.
Yet it seems difficult to deny that in England for the
last half century Evangehcahsm has been losing ground.
Many members of the most powerful party in the Church
scom it, though most of their grandparents belonged to
the tradition which they disown. A significant instance
of disunion within Evangelicalism itself is the threatened
disruption of the greatest of Evangehcal Missionary
Societies. One hears it asserted that either Modernism
or Catholicism wiU capture the English Church. Some
pessimists prophesy an ultimate concordat between these
two movements, which vriU end in a gorgeous Catholic

FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 289
ritual combined vrith pure scepticism entrenched behind
formulae which none but fools or bigots wiU take seriously.
Evangelicals can safely disregard such prophecies. Eng
lish religion is too honest to suffer such a fate. Enghsh
Modernism is not like the abortive movement in the Roman
Church of which Tyrrell and M. Loisy were prominent
leaders. Between it and Catholicism there is no possibihty
of alliance : vrine and oU wiU not mix. Moreover,
English Modernism is not a creed, not a system — it is
a method of studying, of accurately studying, the founda
tions and development of the Christian faith. It is the
product of an era of change and wUl vanish when its work
is done.To understand the present weakness and latent strength
of English Evangehcalism, let us briefly trace its history.
We can see the first beginnings, no doubt, in Wycliffe's
outwardly unsuccessful movement. EssentiaUy he pro
tested against the abuses of the later mediaeval Church.
How grave those abuses were, how immeasurably far
that Church was from the Christian ideal, a study of
impartial historians wiU reveal. The services were in
Latin ; the Bible was virtually unknown ; the preaching
orders were a byword; corruption was rampant. The
LoUard attempt at reform was suppressed, but through
the fifteenth century the spirit of divine discontent hved
on. Then came the Renaissance, the great humanist
movement which set free the spirit of man. Human
thought broke loose from the oppressive authority of the
mediaeval Church : the leaders of the new era rejected
scholasticism. Scholasticism was, and is, an elaborate philosophico-
rehgious scheme of thought. It was Christian in origin :
in fact, it nominally rested on a formal acceptance of the
plenary inspiration of Scripture, though by casuistry
awkward consequences of this idea were avoided.
u

290 FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT
incorporated a certain amount of Greek phUosophy
(imperfectly apprehended Platonism rather than the real
Plato) and some bad science. It pretended to justify
doctrines and types of worship which were pagan rather
than Christian, and it offered a formal defence of theories
which in practice led to gross evils. The Church by the
exercise of its power crushed opposition to this monstrous
creation. Men might think, but the conclusions of their
thought were prescribed.
The Renaissance was a successful mental revolt from
Scholasticism. Men won freedom, freedom to study the
great literature of Greece, freedom to investigate the
Bible, freedom to criticise conupt developments of
Christian doctrine, freedom to assaU abuses upheld by
ecclesiastical tyranny. The Bible was translated and
circulated by the newly discovered art of printing. The
Reformation began.
Let us be fair to the Catholics and admit that at the
Council of Trent the worst practical abuses of the mediaeval
Church were abohshed or mitigated. But Catholicism
kept an elaborate doctrinal system which, in its entirety,
no reasonable man can now accept. We simply cannot
breathe the atmosphere in which this system was
developed. It is to us, as it was to some of the great
humanists four centuries ago, a needless complication of
Christianity ; its philosophy partiaUy obsolete, its science
worthless. Evangelicals may well bear in mind words
which Colet, the Reformation Dean of St. Paul's, spoke
to Erasmus, apropos of St. Thomas Aquinas :
" Why do you extol him to me ? If he had not been
exceedingly arrogant, he would not with such rashness and
such pride have defined everything ; and unless his spirit
had been somewhat worldly, he would not so have con
taminated the whole teaching of Christ with his profane
philosophy."

FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 291
It is evident that Deans of St. Paul's in the past have
known the art of clear and decisive statement.
Enghsh Churchmen, whether they hke it or not, are
heirs of the Reformation; Evangelicals are right to be
proud of the fact. But the Reformation was primarily
moral and spiritual, not inteUectual. Its first leaders
were certainly men of open minds and constructive
abihty. Luther, for instance, criticised the Bible with a
freedom which extreme Protestants to-day prefer to
ignore. There was, moreover, in the Reformed Churches
a sympathy with intellectual progress which was after
wards lost. The Roman Church in the early part of the
seventeenth century persecuted GaUleo for sapng that
the earth was not the fixed centre of the universe. His
view was, to Christian thought, revolutionary; far more
revolutionary than the later biological doctrine of evolu
tion. It was contradicted by passages in the Bible and
by statements in the Creeds ; its philosophical implications
were serious, as the speculations of Giordano Bruno
showed. The Roman Church bumed Bruno for heresy;
but the Reformed Churches were protected from simUar
mistakes by their progressive sympathies. They had the
good sense not to start a quarrel between religion and
science at the end of the sixteenth century.
Unfortunately, a period of reaction came. UninteUi
gent veneration for the Bible, such as Luther would
never have countenanced, grew up. In this country, at
the beginning of the nineteenth century, Evangehcalism
was dominant. It was of enormous moral and spiritual
value to the community. It was fmitful in good works ;
it produced most admirable types of piety. But it had
created a scholasticism of its own, a narrow scheme of
conversion, regeneration, and sanctification. It feared
the march of the mind of man ; it was intolerant of new
ideas. Its exponents a century ago bitterly attacked the

292 FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT
then new science of geology, as a study of Bampton
lectures of the period shows. They shunned phUosophical
speculation. "They were content with their own closed
scheme of thought. And the tragedy has been that
Evangelicalism, with its supremely fine spiritual vitality,
was in this state of inteUectual poverty at the beginning
of a century in which human thought was to progress with
unexampled rapidity.
As Dean Church indicates, in his book on the Oxford
Movement, the Evangehcals failed because they " were too
limited and narrow in their compass of ideas to found a
powerful theology." The leaders of the Oxford Movement
saw the weakness of the theology in which they them
selves had been educated. They felt that hberal thought,
by which they meant the new ideas fermenting around
them, was a force to be feared. So they tumed to the
great Christian writers and thinkers who flourished before
the collapse of Classical civiUsation, hoping to find in the
creeds and in early theological speculation an ark of safety
against the coming deluge. The men to whom they
tumed for help had, in a manner satisfactory to human
thought of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, worked
out a theory of the Church and a Christian philosophy.
Some of their best work is certainly of permanent value.
But such an appeal to antiquity as the Tractarians made
was essentially reactionary. If the Greek and Latin
Fathers were guided by the Holy Spirit, the same guidance
must assuredly be conceded to those who might seek the
Spirit's aid in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The successors of the Tractarian leaders have found
their position increasingly difficult. Anxious to avoid
the confession of inteUectual bankruptcy, they have often
tumed for fresh credit to some theory of the infaUible
Church, or the infallible Council, or the infalhble Creed.
Many have retumed to the scholasticism which their

FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 293
forefathers repudiated, and rest uneasily on the threshold
of the Latin Church.
Some of our Anglo-Cathohcs try to make a synthesis
of scholastic theology and modem knowledge. The
result is a conglomeration of ideas which, until a generation
ago, was never to be found in the mind of any single
human being, a conglomeration which, it is safe to say,
vriU not exist in the mind of any human being a generation
hence. Not merely details of scholastic theory, but some
of its fundamental postulates, are irreconcilable with
modem conceptions. Moreover, scholasticism is tough :
one of those tough morsels which must be swaUowed whole,
at the risk of subsequent indigestion. Tyrrell died of it.
We need at the present time not a modified but a new
Catholicism, a true S3mthesis of the Gospel and modem
knowledge. Those who denounce us for wishing to change
the faith may be reminded that the greatest of modem
Anglo-Catholics would have been bumt as a heretic by
the mediaeval Church at the zenith of its power ; and some
opinions which he rightly holds would have been most
certainly condemned by every (Ecumenical CouncU. Yet,
as we think of him and of many others in the Cathohc
wing of the English Church, we must honestly confess
that in them there is an enthusiasm for social and inter
national righteousness which puts many of us to shame.
A degenerate Evangelicalism normaUy tends to become
selfishly centred on the individual and his class, or
narrowly patriotic. The loyalty to Christ's ideals which
the best Anglo-Catholics evince continues to give their
movement strength and power. But its unstable basis,
its inteUectual weakness, will be its undoing.
The future lies vrith modem Evangelicalism. We go
back to the Gospel and take as our basis the ethical and
spiritual Revelation of Christ. We rest on the sure and
certain conviction that that Revelation wiU justify itself

294 FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT
by its appeal to all that is finest in human nature. Christ,
we affirm, had the words of Etemal Life. To Him men
must go, for they can only go elsewhere and fare worse.
His teaching as to the nature of God, as to man's duty
and destiny, we confidently affirm to be the truth. On
the Gospel we build the Christian faith. This, we main
tain, is the old Evangehcal position. We seek to convert
men, to tum them to Christ, to persuade them to foUow His
example, to obey His precepts, to see in the power of His
Spirit the only hope of the regeneration of mankind.
So vriU men love Him and know Him to be both Lord and
Saviour. All else in Christian worship and dogma is
subsidiary to this. Much of it is important, but com
pared vrith the central nucleus of our faith, as we have
just stated it, it hardly matters.
Further, the modem growth of knowledge has done
nothing to cast doubt on the fundamentals of Evangeli
calism. The appeal to humanity of Christ and of His
teaching cannot lose its force so long as man remains
man; the more he develops his higher faculties the
stronger does the appeal become. As we seek to interpret
the plan of the universe in the hght of our knowledge of
the origin of man and of human nature, the value and
validity of Christ's revelation become not less but more
certain. And criticism of the New Testament records,
however destmctive in some ways it may appear to be,
leaves us in no doubt as to Christ's teaching, in no doubt
as to His own absolute loyalty to His message. Histori
caUy and psychologically, Evangehcalism rests on sure
foundations. Many, of course, will at once object that Evangehcalism
as thus presented is incomplete. It contains no theory
of the Church and the ministry. Only implicitly does it
involve a doctrine of the Person of Christ. What must
be our attitude to the doctrine, adumbrated by St. Paul,

FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 295
perfected in the Fourth Gospel, and finally expressed in
terms of a philosophy of substance in the Nicene Creed ?
And there are a dozen important issues involved in the
fact that the progress of natural science has revolutionised
the outlook of humanity since the time of Christ. No
less important to many Christians appear to be the
conclusions as to authorship, date, and thistworthiness of
the various books of the Bible which have been reached
by modem literary and historical criticism.
As regards all such questions our course is clear. We
must, in confident reliance on our main Evangehcal
principles, follow wherever the pursuit of truth may lead
us. We must put an end to the so-caUed quarrel between
science and religion. We must be determined not to have
the sort of divorce between religion and secular knowledge
to wbich the rejection of modem scholarship wiU assuredly
lead. We must not merely allow, but welcome, attempts
of modern Christian philosophers to restate the doctrine
of the Person of Christ, confident that He, who for
humanity is both Lord and Saviour, is also uniquely
related to God. We need not feel fettered by tradition
as we work out such a theory of the Church and the
ministry as we deem most congraous to the mind of
Christ. Let us, in short, do what the early Tractarians ought to
have done : tum, not to the past, but to the future, and
welcome the gifts of the Holy Spirit to modem thought.
We need not despise the Christian tradition; but, in
freedom, we vriU use it and, if necessary, re-mould it in
the service of Christ. Do we fear the consequences?
Then, assuredly, we are not worthy to be heirs of the
Renaissance and the Reformers; we are not worthy
to preach Christ to the children of the New Renaissance
of our ovvn era.
At the risk of provoking controversy among us, it is

296 FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT
necessary to mention two grave hindrances to sound
progress which we must overcome. Evangelicals have
to purge their faith from a species of idolatry and from a
form of heresy. They must abandon both Bibliolatry
and Apolhnarianism.
In common vrith practicaUy aU Evangelicals, I per
sonally have much sympathy with Bibholatry. The
books of the Bible contain such rich spiritual insight, they
are so uniquely valuable to us all, that we are naturally
distressed when the Bible seems to be disparaged. But it
is our duty to study it both reverently and intelhgently.
We must not worship it as infalhble : our attitude must
be that of such great Evangelical pioneers as St. Paul and
Luther. The Apostle had no New Testament. His Bible
was the Jewish Bible ; and one of his great contributions
to Christianity was his criticism and rejection of what was
to Jews of his time the most sacred element of the Old
Testament — ^the Law. His principle was summarised
in the great saying, " the letter killeth, but the Spirit
giveth life." That principle should be ours, as it was
certainly Luther's. Let me quote a passage from one
who knows his Luther and values the evangelical tradition
— Dr. Glover. In his book, Jesus in the Experience oJ
Men, he says :
" Luther, like other men re-bora in that new age, read
the Scripture with new eyes. Here are some of his
conclusions. He denied the Mosaic authorship of part of
the Pentateuch; he said that Job was an allegory and
not history ; he called the book of Jonah childish ; ^ he
maintained that the Book of Kings was a thousand paces
ahead of Chronicles; and that the Epistle of James is
' an epistle of straw ' ; and of the author of Ecclesiastes
he said that ' he has neither boots nor spurs, but rides
in his socks.' " 1 He was wrong in so doing.

FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 297
Why should modem Evangehcals be afraid to foUow
the example of St. Paul and Luther ? Why do some of
them refuse to accept the conclusions of. scholars who
analyse the Scriptures as they would analyse other ancient
documents? Many, I fear, believe, as against St. Paul,
that the letter giveth life; that salvation comes through
behef in verbal inspiration. But inability to keep a
balanced hold of the two-fold fact that Jesus was both
God and man is the main cause of their dislike of the
critical investigation of the Bible.
As is weU known, modem scholars are persuaded that
httle in the Pentateuch can be ascribed to Moses, that the
iioth Psalm was not written by David, that the Book
of Jonah is not history but allegory. They thus contradict
behefs which, if the Gospels accurately record His sa3dngs,
were apparently held by Jesus. Therefore, it is argued,
modem scholarship must be rejected, for the Lord made
no mistakes. Now this view, common though it be, is
fundamentally heretical. The Lord Jesus Christ was both
God and man. He was tmly God, and so had perfect
moral and spiritual understanding; but He was also
truly man with a human mind. He was not an apparent
man with a Divine mind. Such a behef is a kind of
docetism condemned as the Apolhnarian heresy. As
against this heretical opinion, St. Luke records that " He
grew in wisdom and stature." The Lord Himself said
that it was not given to Him to know when the end of
the age should come. As man. His mind was formed by
His education. He accepted the usual inteUectual outlook
of the Jews of His time on science, hterature, and history.
We do not behttle Christ by accepting such traths, pro
vided that at the same time we insist that in His moral
perfection and spiritual knowledge He was traly God.
A lady lately wrote to teU me that Jesus was " the great
superscientist." I suggested in reply that there was no

298 FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT
authority for her view in the New Testament, or in the
Creeds, or in any unambiguous Concihar decision; and
that it seemed to me to have no moral or rehgious value.
She was a naive ApoUinarian.
Evangelicals must reject this heresy. It seems to
magnify the majesty of Christ, but in reality it makes Him
inhuman. A docetic inhuman Christ we cannot preach.
Without human darkness the Cross is deprived of its
element of utter tragedy. " My God, my God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me ?" The words are those of the human
Saviour, of Him who was both God and man, dpng for
His righteousness.
A short time ago I heard it said that Evangehcahsm
had three enemies : hterary criticism, natural science,
and philosophy. I maintain that its three most powerful
aUies are literary criticism, natural science and philosophy :
its enemies are the forces of worldly indifference, super
stitions, ignorance, and fear. For too long Evangelicals
have been afraid. We have not believed that the Holy
Spirit in our own time would glorify Christ. So when new
ideas, new discoveries, have been presented to us, it has
been repeatedly and falsely said that, if these things are
true, our faith is vain.
The service of Christ now, as always, needs the contrite
heart, the reverent spirit, and the open mind. When
scholars put forward the results of patient and amazingly
skilful investigation, we must not ignorantly denounce
their work as impious rationahsm. When men of science
reach a fuUer understanding of the nature and develop
ment of the universe, it is folly to cry out immediately
that such discoveries lead straight to infidelity. When
a philosopher uses modem concepts to explain ancient
formulae, which by the lapse of time have become little
more than shibboleths, it is unfair to brand him as a
traitor.

FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 299
Ours is an age of change because it is an age of progress.
Not all that is new is trae ; yet, if we denounce everything
that is new at a time of rapid intellectual advance, we
shall in the end become enemies of the trath. We need to
take the Lord's advice : " Let wheat and tares grow
together for a time." When a new idea comes to us with
the impressive authority of some group of specialists, we
ought vrith open minds to investigate its consequences for
faith. Because Christ is the Light of the World we shall
invariably find that, if it is trae, it strengthens the Gospel
message. We then become able to preach Christ more
effectively, because we are led to discard some super
stition which, though we did not know it, dimmed the
brightness of His glory.
In these statements, I am, as the present volume
indicates, briefly describing the standpoint of the younger
Evangehcals. We affirm with all the emphasis we can
command that the right use of criticism, science, and
philosophy will not disintegrate Evangehcal Faith.
Modem Evangehcals remain trae to the moral and
religious teaching of Christ. They are in no danger of
becoming Unitarians. They can give stronger reasons
than their spiritual ancestors for believing in God the
Father, in the Deity of Christ, in human immortality, in
the Atonement. And the future is vrith them.
Consider, for example, the results of modem literary
and historical criticism. Is it any loss to know that the
book of Jonah is an aUegory written some 300 years before
Christ ? Surely its value for us resides in its message of
God's universal love to aU mankind. Can it be contended
that literal belief in Jonah's whale led Christian ministers
during the War to preach more effectively God's merciful
loving-kindness to Jerusalem and Nineveh, London and
Berlin? But such teacliing is supremely Christian. To
take another instance : need we resent the knowledge that

300 FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT
the Book of Daniel was written shortly after 170 B.C.
to encourage Jews groaning under the oppression of
Antiochus Epiphanes? We gain by knovring that it
belongs to a mass of apocalyptic literature, in which sym
bolism and veiled predictions referred to the epoch in
which the writers hved, and not to the distant future.
Think of the energy that has been given to attempts to
discover the whole course of Christian history embedded
in Daniel and the Book of Revelation. Such attempts
have always failed. Moreover, they have had no spiritual
value : they have led to spiritual loss, for they have
distracted men from their paramount duty of preaching
the Gospel of Christ. Behef in the immediate approach
of the End of the Age is the product of a pessimism that
despairs of regenerating mankind by the spread of the
Gospel of Christ.
Similarly in the New Testament it is no loss to know that
the so-caUed Second Epistle of Peter was probably written
some seventy years after the Apostle's death. It is a
gain to think that the Pastoral Epistles are " much-edited
fragments " of letters of St. Paul, for in them are many of
the texts used by ecclesiastical partisans to perpetuate our
unhappy divisions. Other such texts, in the main, come
from the first Gospel. There again modem scholarship
helps us by revealing that in its present form that Gospel
is apparently due to an unknown Christian Jew, who
incorporated St. Matthew's very early coUection of
sayings of Christ with other material which in part is of
less value. The use of Old Testament prophecy in this
Gospel cannot always be defended. We gain by admitting
that it is the product of Rabbinical methods of exegesis,
and not due to a man who^m Jesus Himself had trained.
Let us tum to modem science. The earth, so men of
science teU us, was flung out of the sun hundreds of
millions of years ago. It graduaUy cooled. Water and

FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 301
air were formed upon its surface. Where the warm water
touched the warm earth, hfe appeared in a very primitive,
possibly ultra-microscopic, form. Since then a hundred,
and possibly a thousand, milhon years have passed, during
which hfe has become progressively more complex. Plants
and animals evolved. From a worm in the sea-mud came
the fishes. From them came the amphibians. From
them the mammals. From some ape-hke stock a miUion
or so years ago came primitive man; and we are here
to-day. Does this scheme do away with God ? Is there in it any
argument against human immortality or the existence of
the soul ? Is it in any way hostile to the teaching of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Surely not. Surely there
was no life in primeval white-hot matter, no knowledge
in the plant, no morality in the fish, no spiritual percep
tion in the ape. God has been at work aU the time,
creating new things, slowly making man to be His child.
Throughout evolution God's creative activity has never
ceased. In fact, the Holy Spirit is Giver of hfe and Lord
of life. Lord of evolution. The old phrase of the Creed
has a value which Christians never fuUy recognised until
after Darvrin. And the soul of man exists just because
man is a moral and spiritual being. God has made
man to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him. Man is
man, whatever his origin. It is sheer folly to say that,
because man has evolved from some ape-like stock, he is
not fundamentaUy different from an ape. Evangehcals
need not take such folly seriously untU a group of monkeys
buUd a Westminster Abbey, or work out the dynamics of
the solar system.
As regards the immortality of the soul, we assert that the
strongest argument in its favour is stiU that used by
Christ. Man differs from aU other animals in that he
knows, and to some extent can create, goodness, beauty,

302 FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT
and trath. He can thus know and serve God : for these
are qualities of God, etemaUy valuable, and therefore
eternally existing with Him. And God is not the God of
the dead : He is the God of the living. By putting on
the righteousness of Christ Jesus, man puts on immortahty.
In brief. Evangelicalism, truly based as it is on Christ's
profound insight into the nature of man, need have no
fear of scientific discovery. The psychology of its great
representatives, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Calvin, Wesley,
is essentially a unity. Behind it lies such a wealth of
Christian experience that we can rest confident in its
inherent soundness. In cunent psychological speculation
there are many extravagances. Careful experiment and
observation wiU cause them to be discarded and in the
process of research new facts of great importance may be
discovered. But the fact of conversion and its supreme
value wiU remain : the power which comes from faith in
Christ no theory can dissipate.
FinaUy, as Evangelicals, we must recognise that we need
the help of modem philosophy if we are to have a fuUer
understanding of that central fact of our belief, the
Incamation. This august mystery has never been ade
quately — or, at any rate, successfully — discussed since
the rise of modem phUosophy. The Nicene formula
asserts that Christ is " of one substance with the Father."
But to-day we think in terms of personality, not of sub
stance. And the modem use of the term " person "
differs from that of antiquity. We can hardly preserve
the doctrine of the Trinity and escape tritheism, if we
refuse permission to Christian phUosophers to use modem
concepts as they re-formulate the Nicene faith. Their
success vriU probably be but partial ; but it wiU be a great
gain if educated men and women realise that the doctrine
of the Trinity only appears ridiculous when it is misunder
stood,

FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 303
Our phUosophers also must be encouraged to work at
the problem of the Atonement. Evangelicals for the most
part have, during recent generations, been too content
to repeat consecrated formute. The consequence is that
our younger men and women, who earnestly seek and
find atonement through Christ, are simply puzzled by the
traditional language used in many a pulpit. Quite
commonly Student Movement leaders have to meet the
inquiry : " What do they {i, e. the Evangelical clergy)
mean by such phrases as ' saved by the precious blood,'
' washed in the blood of the Lamb,' and so forth? "
These young people, moreover, are repelled by teaching
which seems to imply that whosoever after a life of sin
merely asserts that Jesus died for him wiU gain everlasting
life. " Surely," they say, " salvation does not come by
repetition of a magical formula." Evangelicals must be
careful to meet these objections, to emphasise that the
redemptive work of the Cross was the fulfUment of the
redemptive work of the Life. They must distinguish
between belief which may be arid and faith which is
active in goodness, which uplifts, inspires, transforms.
All suffering for righteousness has a redemptive power, and
Christ's suffering is uniquely redemptive because of the
perfection of His righteousness. But he who would be
redeemed by the Cross must be prepared to take up the
Cross and follow Christ. He who would be washed in
the blood of the Lamb must remember that the naUs and
spear which caused that blood to flow are symbols of the
renunciation which he must also make in Christ's service.
Its opponents vrill rightly say that modem Evangelical
ism is combative. A movement could not fail to have
this quality which sought to free the message of Christ
from magic and superstition. But in loyalty to Christ
its leaders must attack vrithout misrepresentation and
defend without bitterness, They must remember that

804 FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT
magical religious conceptions are morbid growths which
naturaUy appear during a period of spiritual degeneration.
Superstitions remain and revive when changes in human
thought are rapid and revolutionary. Education, com
mon sense, and the mere passage of time vriU put an end
to many a superstition which is now a nuisance ; and when
men have trae spiritual understanding they recoil from
magic and magical sacramentalism.
Evangehcals can be joyous, courteous controversiahsts,
because they need not fear the future. If they wiU be
both honest and eamest, rich in the life of the spirit and
alert to the claims of the mind, they wiU in the present
century write an inspiring chapter in the history of the
English Church.
E. W. Barnes.

THE ENO