Gift of
New York Tribune
1923

Our Protestant
Heritage

THREE SERMONS BY
W. WOFFORD T. DUNCAN
AT
EMORY METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
PITTSBURGH. PENNSYLVANIA

THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN
NEW YOKK CINCINNATI

Copyright, 1922, by
W. WOFFORD T. DUNCAN

X)3I

'¦I

"l^

Printed in the United States of America

4

^^

TO MY OLD FRIENDS WHO CONSTITUTED
THE CONGREGATIONS IN THREE
CHURCHES TO WHICH I HAVE GIVEN
TWENTY YEARS OP HAPPY SERVICE,
FIRST CHURCH, SOUTH NORWALK, CON
NECTICUT; SAINT John's, new ro-
CHELLE, NEW YORK, AND JANES CHURCH,
BROOKLYN; AND TO MY NEW FRIENDS,
THE PEOPLE OF EMORY CHURCH, PITTS
BURGH, FOR WHOM THESE SERMONS
WERE PREPARED, THIS LITTLE VOLUME
IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED.

CONTENTS page
The Intellectual Heritage of
Protestantism  11
The Moral Heritage of Protes
tantism  46
The Spiritual Heritage of Protes
tantism  81

ANNOUNCEMENT
These sermons were suggested by the
publication of sixty -five paid advertisements
in Pittsburgh daily newspapers announcing
Roman Catholic views of Christianity and
the church and discussing questions in dis
pute between Romanism and Protestant
ism. Protestant rebuttal by the same
method of paid advertising was, to a limited
extent, and after great hesitancy, published
by one newspaper and refused by another,
that other also discontinuing the Roman
Cathohc advertisements the moment Prot
estants attempted reply. The Protestant
people were greatly interested and an un
usual opportunity was thus afforded the
ministers to present to their own people
Protestant doctrines and ecclesiastical view
points which at another time would seem
tame or academic. Believing in the principle
that the moment of interested attention
should be seized for the impartation of

8 ANNOUNCEMENT
knowledge, many pastors have embraced
the opportimity to clarify the thinking of
their own people and such Roman Catholics
as might attend, by the emphasis of Protes
tant fundamentals without either rabid
denunciation or timid apology.
The following statement of purpose was
used to announce this series:
Our Roman Catholic Friends have made
necessary this series. They have earnestly
and publicly proclaimed in Pittsburgh
during recent weeks that Protestantism
is not scripturally nor rationally sound.
It is their privilege to express their honest
convictions, but such expression chal
lenges Protestantism to reply. The re
sponsibility for some reply is with them.
To ignore the challenge is to admit
Protestantism to be what they think it is.
We gladly embrace the opportunity they
furnish to strengthen the faith of Protes
tants, for Protestantism flourishes on full,
open, honest, and friendly discussion.
We Have No Purpose to Convert Roman
Catholics to Protestantism. There are

ANNOUNCEMENT 9
more than four times as many Protestants
and other non-Romanists in America as
there are Roman Catholics, and with
these Protestantism is concerned. How
ever, we cordially invite Roman Catholics
to attend. Protestants freely attended
the recent Paulist Fathers' lectures with
out criticism from their church, and we
invite our Roman friends to return the
compliment.
The Preacher Has Only the Kindliest
Feelings toward individual Roman
Catholics and has' no desire to disturb the
faith of the honestly devout. What he
may say in criticism of their church will
be said in the same spirit that moves him
and other Protestant ministers to freely
criticize Protestantism from time to time
as they feel that there is need.
To Believe a Lie in Any Realm is Hurt
ful. To believe a lie in religion may
entail irreparable loss. Jesus said: "/
am the Truth."

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE
OF PROTESTANTISM
Text: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free." — John 8. 32.
No age fully appreciates its indebtedness
to the past. We are evermore tempted to
walk upon the walls of our own Babylon
and say, "Is not this great Babylon which
we have built.'*" The principles of thought
and action which have been born with us,
the atmosphere of intellectual, moral, and
spiritual freedom which was breathed into
us when we became living souls constitute a
rich heritage for which we are indebted to
those who have gone before. This heritage
has come down to us because our Protestant
fathers fought on bloody fields of martial
encounter or laboriously contended on
bloodless plains of polemic strife. We do
not realize the vast difference in our lives if
we had been born in a land where the right
to think for oneself on matters religious and
11

12 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
ecclesiastical had been denied or even per
sistently challenged. We do not always
appreciate the difference between a land
where the free development of the mind in
its search for truth is promoted, and a land
where mental assimilation of prescribed re
ligious and ecclesiastical doctrines is the
aim rather than mental cultivation. It is
one thing to breathe with our birth the air
of free inquiry and research; it is quite
another thing to breathe the atmosphere of
apprehension toward anything that resem
bles intellectual adventure into realms re
ligious. It is one thing to inherit the convic
tion that the faculties of the human mind
are to be trusted and that intellectual
processes which have proved successful
when applied to physical science and com
mercial life may be applied with equal
success to the religious life, and it is quite
another thing to view with suspicion all
normal procedure of the mind in matters
religious, believing that unless there is
ecclesiastical dictation, utter confusion and
alienation from divine truth will ensue.

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 13
But our American heritage consists not
only in the fact that we now enjoy intel
lectual freedom, but in that, for many gen
erations, our fathers have enjoyed and exer
cised such freedom. If this freedom had
come only with the advent of the present
generation, then a much more limited be
quest would have been ours. You cannot
change a nation over night and the passage
from darkness to Ught is always accom
panied by the twiUght of the dawn. Though
the people that sit in darkness see a great
light, they do not pass out of the shadows
tiU several new generations have been born.
It means much, therefore, that as an Ameri
can people we receive our Protestant her
itage from generations preceding which have
also enjoyed it. There is a different situa
tion, for example, in the Philippine Islands.
The American flag floats there, it is true, but
America has inherited a state of intellectual
and moral darkness which decades of me
diaeval misrule have created, and while
constitutional American Hberty is guaran
teed to all, yet many will for a long time sit

14. OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
in the shadows because their ancestors have
not enjoyed a Protestant heritage. When
Paul after his arrest in Jerusalem told the
chief captain that he was a Roman citizen,
the captain observed, "With a great sum
obtained I this freedom," and Paul an
swered, "But I was free born." So may
every American citizen born in the free air
of Protestant liberty exclaim with gratitude,
"I was free bom !"
It is this Protestant heritage which we
propose to defend in the present series of
sermons. We have no desire to fight over
again battles of a past day, nor to revive
ancient animosities which have happily been
laid to rest. People sometimes ask: "Do
you think there will be a war in this coun
try between the Roman Catholics and the
Protestants?" and we invariably answer
"No," for we believe with Tennyson that
"the common sense of most shall hold a
fretful realm in awe." But by that common
sense we do not mean that easygoing indif-
f erentism which calls all religious strife of the
past the mere raving of religious fanaticism

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 15
and which forgets that the very opportunity
for indifference, which so many embrace, is
due to the triumph of principles for which
our fathers died. By "common sense" we
mean that distribution of intelligent con
viction to all people whereby they shall be
prompt to oppose every movement, however
subtle, which seeks to undermine the foun
dations of Protestant liberty. If such com
mon sense shall not abound, and the pulpit
and the press, because of false hberality or
fear of religious controversy, shall promote
popular ignorance of Protestant principles,
then violence and even war may result. It
is therfefore in the interest of peace and for
the prevention of religious strife that we
speak on these themes. Protestantism is
essentially democratic, and just as democ
racy cannot survive without a high degree
of inteUigence, free speech, and popular
illumination, so Protestantism asks only
that she shall have the light, that she shall
be granted the privilege of intelligent and
friendly controversy, and that for her and
for opposing systems of belief the Master's

16 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
prophecy shall be fulfilled and there "shall
be nothing covered that shall not be re
vealed and hid that shall not be known."
We come now to consider the intellectual
heritage of Protestantism. The central
truth on which it rests is the right of private
judgment; that is, the right of every man to
think as profoundly as he may and as in
dependently as he will upon every question
of life, including the most important of all
themes, namely, religion. It is well for us
to observe here that the right of private
judgment does not involve two things which
are sometimes thought to be included. It
does not include disregard of all authority.
It does not mean that when a man's private
judgment is in disagreement with the law of
the land he has a right to disobey that
law. The right of private judgment wiU not
long continue if such an interpretation be
placed upon it, for anarchy, to which such
a view would lead, is fatal to freedom of
thought. The right of private judgment
must recognize the right of the majority to
rule and the independent thinker must sub-

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 17
mit to majority rule though he utterly
disagree with the majority opinion. This
does not mean a surrender of his right to
think for himself, for that majority rule
carries with it the right of the individual to
lawfully dissent from the majority and to
use all legitimate means to change that
majority opinion by public speech and the
use of the press. Nor does the right of
private judgment mean that each man's
opinion is to be regarded as of equal value
with that of every other man on a given
subject. A man who has never studied
medicine has no right to exalt his opinion to
equal place with that of a trained physician.
But even in the realm of technical knowl
edge, where indiscriminate private judgment
might seem to be excluded, the right of
private opinion still obtains, for the un
trained individual has the right to decide
what technical authority he will accept, and
his right of private judgment may be fully
exercised in the selection of his own phy
sician. Now, the right to this free exercise of

18 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
private judgment is challenged by our
Roman Catholic friends at the point of
religion. They grant the right in other
realms, but when it comes to deciding for
oneself what is religious authority and what
authority he should accept; when it comes
to deciding what doctrines, religious and
ecclesiastical, are true and what are false, the
individual is told that he must accept that
which bears the Roman Catholic stamp of
approval and nothing else. This attitude of
Rome is defended on the ground that it
tends to promote that freedom of thought
for which we have been contending. The
Rev. Bertrand L. Conway, one of the
Paulist Fathers, in his "Question Box An
swers," a work which bears the official
approval of the Roman Cathohc Church,
says that freedom of thought in nonreligious
realms is really promoted by submission to
authority in the religious realm. He says
that in the search for truth it is a relief to
know that questions of religion are settled
by an infallible authority. The mind is thus
set free for unobstructed investigation of

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 19
other realms. Let us look at this. There are
those who say, "If the Romanist desires to
have his rehgious thinking done for him by
another, why object, since he is free to think
in other realms as he may choose.'*" But
the answer is that religion is not something
which can be separated from a man's total
life; it cannot be placed in a water-tight
compartment and dealt with as though it
had no connection with his common thought
and action. Religion is the center of his life
and relates itself to every motion of his
being. When, therefore, one is taught from
the tender years of infancy all through life,
that he must not question the authority in
religious matters of the Roman Catholic
Church, he very easily comes to accept that
authority in realms which are not distinc
tively religious. He listens to the priest and
accepts imquestioningly the authorized
Roman teaching regarding God, the soul,
and the church. But the priest does not
strictly confine his utterances to matters of
personal religion. Some day a political
campaign is on — a, mayor, a governor, a

20 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
President is to be elected. The Roman
Church has political convictions. The priest
voices those convictions. The devout Cath
olic hears that voice, and having been
trained not to question the priest in religion,
accepts what he may say concerning pohtics
and surrenders his right to independent
thought on these matters just as he does on
religious matters, and you have practical
ecclesiastical dictation in a realm where
Rome theoretically grants freedom of
thought. Life is so "inextricably mixed"
with religion that you cannot surrender the
right of private judgment in religion with
out surrendering it in the whole realm of
life. Herein lies the danger of the parochial
school. The Roman Catholic Church is
lauded for that practical devotion to reli
gious education which leads it to spend
millions of dollars for its own schools while
the public school offers free education to its
children. Senator George Wharton Pepper,^
in his excellent Yale lectures, praises the
' A Voice from the Crowd, Yale University Press publishers.

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 21
Roman Cathohc Church as the one religious
group "which has perceived most clearly the
dangers of a secularized education" and
declares that he is "wholly without suspicion
respecting the motives and aims of our
Roman Catholic brethren." We have no
desire to disparage sacrificial devotion to
rehgious education wherever practiced, nor
do we wish to create unhealthy suspicions,
but we submit that we do not need to be
suspicious at all; all we need to do is to look
at the plain facts which Roman Catholics
themselves are ready to declare. They
maintain their schools confessedly to teach
Roman Cathohc doctrines. Their central
doctrine concerning the church is that its
authority in rehgion must not be questioned.
When young people graduate from these
schools that central doctrine has become a
part of their mental furnishing. If imme
diately on graduation they should be trans
ported to Italy, Spain, or some other foreign
land, then America would not need to
trouble herself about the parochial school.
But those young people remain here. They

22 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
become our trusted citizens. They are
lawyers and judges and business men, and
even pubhc-school teachers. Then when
Rome makes some deliverance on matters of
state or of international relationship, or
speaks as did the late Pope concerning the
Young Men's Christian Association, or ex
presses its opinion of Protestantism or the
hquor question, vast multitudes of our
excellent citizens recall their parochial
school training and refuse to think indepen
dently on all these questions, not because
they are distinctively rehgious questions, but
because the religious authority which they
have been taught unquestioningly to obey
has made a deliverance and they must un
thinkingly submit or be false to their
church. This is the American quarrel with
the parochial school. We do not cast sinister
suspicion on honest motives. We simply
take the plain teaching of the Roman
Catholic Church concerning rehgious educa
tion, and draw the logical inference.
We thus see that the right of private
judgment which Rome grants in nonreh-

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 23
gious realms is not a concession at all. When
she denies that right in the realm of reUgion
she is practically denying it in all realms.
Nor are we left to logical inference at this
point. She frankly admits that she does not
look with favor on the independent thinking
of the individual. Pope Benedict XV, who
has just passed to his reward, declared, "No
private person, either in books or in daily
papers or in public speeches, has a right to
act as a teacher in the church. It is well
known by aU who is the one to whom God
confided the magistry of the church; let
then the field be free for him so that he may
speak when and how he thinks suitable to
speak. It is the duty of all to Usten to him
with obsequious devotion and to obey his
words." There is no opportunity here for
the exercise of private judgment. "Obse
quious devotion" and utter obedience to the
views of another give no place to individual
opinion. This is the view taught and de
fended by Rome. In the "Question Box"
before referred to. Father Conway, in his
lectures to Protestants, defends this rejec-

24 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
tion of the right of private judgment. In
answer to the question "Is not your doc
trine of infallibility opposed to hberty of
thought?" he says, "The doctrine of mfalli-
bility is opposed to the false liberty of think
ing error, but not to the true hberty of
thinking the truth."^ This is plausible, but
not sound. It is true that no man has a
right to hold as truth that which he is
intellectually persuaded is not true, but it
is also true that every man is under obliga
tion to hold as truth that which he, in the
free exercise of his best judgment, has come
to regard as truth whether it is actual truth
or not. And, conversely, he is under no
obligation to personally hold as truth that
which he cannot see to be true. The fallacy
in Father Conway's answer appears more
clearly as he elaborates and illustrates his
position. He says, "No intelligent man
would consider himseff free to deny the fact
of wireless telegraphy."^ But the fact is that
^Question Box, Rev. Bertrand L. Conway, The Paulist
Press, p. 80.
>IMd., p. 81.

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 25
every man is perfectly free to deny the
existence of wireless telegraphy until he has
been convinced in his own mind that there
is such a thing. It is by this process alone
that the world has come to believe in wire
less telegraphy. The discoverers and inven
tors who gave us the wireless never dreamed
for a moment of convincing the world that
they were right by a declaration that they
were infalhble. They appealed to our reason,
and only as men, by the exercise of private
opinion, came to be persuaded that tele
graphic messages could be conveyed without
wires did that conviction take hold of the
race. The wireless projectors did not estab
lish schools to teach their own infallibility,
nor seek to raise up a generation that be-
heved it was wrong to question anything
they authoritatively said. They believed
they had laid hold of scientific truth and
they flung it wide to the free thought of the
world and asked men to test it for them
selves without the least insistence that be
cause the discoverers said it was true it must
therefore be so. The answer, then, which

26 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
Father Conway gives concerning freedom of
thought shows that he does not believe in
it. Indeed, he plainly says, in the same
answer, "This objection is based on the false
notion that unrestricted liberty of thought
is a good thing and that every man has a
right to think just as he pleases."^ It is here
that the issue is squarely joined between
Protestantism and Romanism. As Protes
tants we believe that unrestricted liberty of
thought is a good thing and that every man
has a right to think what he pleases. This
does not mean that it makes no difference to
Protestantism what a man thinks. The
thinking of the world is of tremendous con
cern to her, otherwise she would not make
the presses groan with the tons of literature
which she constantly distributes, nor would
she send out her preachers by the ten thou
sand to inform and inspire the minds of her
millions of people. She does care what the
people think, but she insists that she cannot,
and should not if she could, do their thinking
for them. She must teach the unthinking to
* Question Box, p. 80.

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 27
be thoughtful, she must present her facts
and arguments to all whom she can per
suade to think, but she must leave the final
determination in the hands of the individual
thinker and wait for his acceptance of her
rehgious views until they commend them
selves to his private judgment. Protestant
ism has no desire for a traditional faith. She
knows that the man who is a Protestant, and
a Christian for that matter, simply because
his father told him to be one is no more in
line with progressive Christianity than is the
man a worthy American citizen who votes
his party ticket simply because his father
did. The man who counts in church and
state exercises his right of private judgment,
and, believing that liberty of thought, un
restricted by arbitrary authority, is a good
thing, accepts the religious or political faith
that appeals to his rational and moral
faculties, and is what he is, politically and
rehgiously, by virtue of his personal decision
so to be.
The difference between the Protestant
and Roman position at this point is clearly

28 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
illustrated by the differing conceptions of
what a congregation is. The Protestant
preacher looks upon a congregation as a
jury and feels himself to be an advocate
making a plea. A lawyer pleading with a
jury knows that the final determination is
with twelve men, each one of whom must be
free to exercise his right of private judg
ment. He comes before the jury not with a
statement of authority, either personal or
judicial, but with argument and plea, hoping
to persuade twelve men to freely agree with
him. When he quotes the authority of law,
he argues that it applies to the case in hand
and trusts the jury will think likewise*^ So
comes the Protestant preacher before his
congregation. He is pleading for a verdict.
He may quote the authority of Scripture
and the words and acts of the fathers, to
gether with the laws of the church, but he
knows these avail little unless he can con
vince those before him, who exercise the
right to think as they please, that his
positions are well taken. If they are not so
persuaded, he recognizes their perfect right

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 29
to reject his argument and refuse his plea
and arise and go their way unconvinced. No
right-thinking preacher would feel that he
had won a trophy for his Master if at the
close of a sermon a man should come for
ward and say: "I have listened to your
arguments and your plea. They do not
appeal to me. I cannot believe your teach
ing; the doctrines of Christianity do not
appeal; but since you claim the authority of
high heaven and demand that I accept your
religion I wiU do so, even though my own
judgment revolts against it." To such a man
the true preacher would say, "I will be glad
to present the matter further to you until
your own judgment shall assent; but you
cannot be a follower of Jesus Christ, who
placed such tremendous emphasis on the
individual choice, and so thoroughly dis
counted traditionahsm, without reaching
the place of free and unrestricted choice of
him through the independent action of your
own mind and heart."
Now, if the Protestant conception of a
congregation is illustrated by the jury, the

30 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
Roman Catholic conception is illustrated by
a military regiment. The general of an army
does not make an appeal to the private
judgment of the soldier. He makes an appeal
to the recognition of authority. The soldier
cannot say, "That does not appeal to my
judgment and therefore I will not accept it."
He is expected to surrender his judgment to
an arbitrary authority and follow a certain
course altogether apart from his own
opinions. He belongs to the company whom
Tennyson immortalizes in his "Charge of
the Light Brigade":
"Theirs not to make reply.
Theirs not to reason why.
Theirs but to do and die."
This is true military submission to
authority. The Roman Catholic congrega
tion is not expected to reason why nor make
reply when the authorized representative
of the church speaks. The priest does not
await a verdict; he awaits obedience. It is
not reason but command that rules. Not
that the devout communicant is expected
to be thoughtless, any more than the

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 31
obedient soldier is to be unthinking, but
each is expected to adjust his thinking to
processes preconceived and authoritatively
declared. This position of the Roman Cathohc is
not one of choice but of necessity. The
superstructure of Rome cannot stand if this
foundation stone be removed. Just notice
how carefully the system is guarded at this
point. There is practically no chance what
ever for that free spirit of investigation and
individual judgment which is the glory of
our American hfe. The -death of Pope
Benedict XV has called our attention to the
papal power. For our Roman Catholic
friends in their sorrow over the death of
their official head we have the most sincere
sympathy and have been glad to remember
them in pubhc prayer this evening. Millions
of devout men and women throughout the
world have suffered bereavement and we
have no disposition to add any bitterness to
their cup of sorrow. Our reference to the
Pope is solely to the method of his election
and that of his successor. He is elected by a

32 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
college of seventy cardinals. This body has
been appointed by a Pope. In it there is not
the slightest representation of the Roman
Catholic laity. No one who is not an official
clergyman of the church can have any voice.
The Pope so elected is the supreme watch
man on the walls of Romanism. He per
sonalizes the careful system of close scrutiny
by which all activities of that church can be
seen almost instantaneously. Let a bishop
or archbishop reveal the slightest tendency
toward progressive ideas; let him advocate
the right of Roman Catholic laymen to be
heard in the official councils of the church,
let him criticize, ever so calmly, the action
of his ecclesiastical superiors, and the Pope
may remove him without delay. Further
more, the laws which govern the Roman
Catholic Church are expressive only of the
clerical mind. The lawmaking body of
Romanism has not the slightest lay repre
sentation. The rank and file of the member
ship of the church have no voice whatever
in determining what laws shall govern it.
The laws of the church in the United States

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 33
are made by the national or plenary coun
cils, three of which were held during the
nineteenth century. The voting member
ship of these councils is confined exclusively
to the bishops. The parish priesthood,
which is the most democratic element in the
clerical body, has no voice whatever, to say
nothing of the layman. Even this episcopal
legislation is subject to the approval of the
Pope. When, therefore, you eliminate
wholly the voice of the common people, ex
clude even the common priesthood, cause
the lawmaking body to consist exclusively
of bishops, make even their legislation sub
ject to the approval of the Pope, require
that he be elected by a small body composed
of cardinals whom a preceding Pope has
appointed, and then make the Pope the
absolute ruler of the whole church with no
check on his power, it is easy to see that
democracy with its attendant right of
private judgment has no place whatever in
the Roman system.
Now, Rome does not thus exclude de
mocracy simply because of choice, but from

34. OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
sheer necessity. It is evident that if she
should once admit the right of private judg
ment, her system would fall to the ground,
It has been well said that if Rome should cui
her little finger she would bleed to death,
Once throw open the doctrinal and ecclesi
astical system of Rome to common demo
cratic debate, and subject to the common
rules of research and reason her dogmatic
insistence upon divine right, and that sys
tem could not endure. Examine the reason
ing by which she supports her claim to be
the only official representative of Jesus
Christ upon earth. Father Conway is asked,
"Is not your church a spiritual despotism in
which men must surrender their private
judgment in religion to men like them
selves?"^ He replies in his official "Question
Box" that this would be the case if one sub
mitted to the authority of a church founded
by Calvin or Wesley, but it is not the case
if he surrender his reason to the Roman
Catholic Church. When we ask why this
distinction, he replies that the Calvinistic or
'^Question Box, p. 83.

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 35
Methodist Church is not authorized by
Jesus Christ, but that the Roman Catholic
Church is so authorized. When we press him
for proof he simply quotes the words of the
Master, "He that heareth you, heareth me";
"As the Father hath sent me, I also send
you"; "He that despiseth you, despiseth
me." The tremendous leap by which he
passes from logic to unsupported assump
tion he does not explain. The most fantastic
folly could be proven by similar disregard of
the common rules of logic. Now, we submit
that if the rational grounds of Rome's as
sumption of authority were subjected to the
decision of the common mind and the same
rules of reasoning observed which a lawyer
in court or a business man at a directors'
meeting must employ, the irrational char
acter of her assumption of authority would
appear and her ecclesiastical system would
either fall to the ground or undergo radical
revision. Rome is therefore fighting for her
own life when she opposes the right of
private judgment. She cannot in the very
nature of the case be friendly to this vital

36 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
element of our Protestant heritage. With all
personal friendliness toward individual
Roman Catholics and all antagonism toward
rabid rancor and persecuting prejudice, we
must not shut our eyes to the plain fact that
the right of every man to think for himself,
which is the core of democracy and of
Protestantism, is something to which Rome
can never reconcile herself so long as she
remains what she is to-day.
Behind these opposing attitudes of Ro
manism and Protestantism lie two opposite
theories of the human mind and its out-
workings. The Protestant theory of the
mind of man is that it is trustworthy and
that if the mental faculties are properly
developed and the moral and spiritual nature
ffiled with the spirit of Christ, those intellec
tual faculties will, in their free exercise, find
the truth. Jesus challenged men to this free
exercise, when he said "Seek and ye shall
find," and when he appealed to men on
multiplied occasions to exercise their reason
ing powers even with reference to his own
divinely authoritative deliverances. Now,

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 37
the Roman theory is that the free exercise of
the reasoning powers of man will lead first
to confusion and ultimately to fundamental
error. Just as the Roman distrust of the
physical endowments of the race leads her to
regard marriage as a concession to weakness
and to laud the celibate state as more holy,
so the distrust of the intellectual faculties
leads her to dictate the thinking of her
people as far as she is able. Protestantism
beheves that both the physical powers and
the intellectual faculties are trustworthy,
and that when the heart is clean their
normal exercise is not only approved but
required by God. The Protestant theory
stands well the pragmatic test of experience.
The free exercise of the mental powers does
not lead to that confusion of mind on reli
gious matters with which Protestantism is so
often charged. Father Conway tells non-
Catholics that they "cannot agree among
themselves about the most fundamental
doctrines of Christianity."® This statement
is a most thoroughgoing misrepresentation
'Question Box, p. 81.

38 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
of Protestantism. The fact is that all the
great Protestant denominations are in essen
tial agreement on the fundamental doctrines
of Christianity. All believe in the deity of
Christ, the inspiration of the Scriptures,
salvation through the crucified Redeemer,
the resurrection of Jesus, the gift of the
Holy Spirit, institutional Christianity as
represented by the Christian Church, the
immortality of the soul, reward and pxmish-
ment after death. Not only does Protes
tantism agree on the fundamentals, but on
methods of work it is essentially one. The
"Federal Council of the Churches of Christ
in America" is a union movement in which
all the large denominations of Protestant
ism unite. United Protestantism promotes
evangelism, has adopted a social creed, and
is working to promote home and foreign
missionary activities of an evangelistic, edu
cational, and philanthropic character. Even
in the secondary realm of church polity
there is unity, for clergymen and laity pass
easily from church to church, with mutual
recognition of ministerial orders and lay

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 39
membership in harmony with the prayer of
Jesus "that they all may be one." Now, this
unity of Protestantism means much more
than a similar unity in Roman Catholicism,
for it is a spontaneous unity. Protestantism
has no Pope, no college of cardinals set on
, its walls to detect the slightest dissent and
immediately correct it. The Protestant
churches have been more eager for religious
liberty than for rehgious unity. They have
invited the fullest discussion and have
encouraged, as some think excessively, the
disposition to form new church organiza
tions out of small groups which differ from
the main body on matters which seem to
them important. Yet with all this free
exercise of the right of private judgment
Protestantism finds itself to be essentially
one on the fundamentals of Christianity and
even on multitudes of matters which are not
ftmdamental. Is not this genuine scriptural
unity? Do we not claim supernatural super
vision of the Old Testament writers because
so many different books came from the
minds of so many different authors who were

40 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
widely separated and who started with no
purpose to produce one harmonious volume?
The absence of plan to unite reveals the
unifymg power of truth. Why not, then,
credit Protestantism with similar super
natural guidance when, with no purpose to
agree, the different denominations have come
to such essential agreement? This is surely
high testimony to the trustworthiness of the
intellectual faculties of man. The search for
truth, when undertaken with pure motive
and unfettered mentality, is surely approved
of God and brings the seeker into harmony
with him who is the Spirit of truth. We are
not here, even by inference, disparaging the
necessity of a divine revelation, for the end
of that revelation is to renovate the moral
nature of man, emancipate his mind from
the bondage which sin of the heart always
imposes, and set him free to seek the truth.
This leads us to the practical question
which is agitating Romanism and Prot
estantism alike to-day. Should the historical
textbooks in the public school be rewritten?
The unwillingness of Rome to tru^t the in-

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 41
tellectual nature of man makes her suspi
cious of every scientific historian. Her
conception of an historian is that he shall be
a man who has submitted to the authority
of the Roman Catholic Church and who
writes as an apologist for that church and
as a propagandist for Romanism. Prot
estantism does not want an historian to be
either an apologist or a propagandist. She
wants him to lay bare the actual facts of
history without reference to the help or hurt
which those facts may occasion any cause.
Protestantism is, therefore, in complete
sympathy with the policy which the public
school has thus far followed in seeking
accuracy of statement and reliability of
authorship above all else in the historical
textbooks which are placed in the hands of
youth. Rome gives abundant evidence that
she does not believe in this policy. One of
her latest apologists, Edward Ingram Wat-
kin, in his book Som£ Thoughts on Catholic
Apologetics, quoted by Professor Henry C.
Sheldon, of Boston University, says: "Of
the great thinker^ who have acknowledged

42 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
the authority of the church, the majority
have been, and are, men of metaphysical
rather than of historical minds, men who
prize the static element of experience more
than the dynamic. Moreover, among the
ancients (with few exceptions) and in the
Middle Ages, history was in a very poor con
dition, since the historical sense, as we
understand it, was simply nonexistent. The
apologist ought in all honesty to admit this."
This has long been the contention of Prot
estants. They have known many cases
where Roman Catholicism has approved his
torical statements which were made by meta
physical apologists for Rome rather than un
biased scientific historians. Professor David
S. Schaff quotes a number of historical in
accuracies which have been proclaimed as
truth, due doubtless to the dominance of the
metaphysical over the historical cast of
mind which Watkin admits in Roman
Cathohc historians. The present manhood
and womanhood of France were taught in
their youth that the Huguenots were trai
tors to their king, Louis XIV, and that in

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 43
emigrating from France they despised their
native country.
The historical sense was certainly lacking
in the historian who prepared those Roman
Catholic textbooks. Those Roman Catholic
prelates in Washington last fall who pro
nounced the Irish people "the most apostolic
race in history," and Mayor Curley, of
Boston, who described the Pilgrim Fathers
as a company of "tramps," were hkewise
sadly lacking in the historical sense of ac
curacy. Father Conway in his "Question
Box" shows a sad disregard of historical
accuracy when he states on page 121 that
Protestant success in reaching pagan nations
"has been ridiculously small, as its own
ministers testify," and then quotes from
articles written in the Fortnightly Review and
the Nineteenth Century in the year 1888 and
an article in the "Dubhn Review," written
ia January, 1889. If Father Conway has not
read anything concerning the success of
Protestant missions since 1888 or 1889, he
certainly cannot speak with historical accu
racy on the subject. Yet the book in which

44 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
this is found is given to non-Catholics in 1921
as a present-day answer to their inquiries!
In view of the manner in which our Ro
man Cathohc friends handle the sacred
treasures of historical truth, Protestants are
justified in viewing with alarm their pro
posal to rewrite the historical textbooks for
our public schools.
It is not easy to ascertain truth. It is
difficult to be historically accurate. The
question has been raised "Can we tell the
truth?" We need to join all the forces that
make for truth and rebuke every tendency
to erroneous statement and historical mis
representation. The Church of Christ
should be ever the piUar and ground of
truth. Protestantism does not profess to
have been faultless in fidehty to truth, but
she does claim to have fostered independent
thinking on the part of the individual and to
have cultivated a disposition to protest
against arbitrary dogmatism. Having pro
moted these forces, she has encouraged a
spirit which tends to correct her own mis
takes. She has thus ever been a thorn in the

THE INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE 45
side of every institution claiming immunity
from criticism and arrogating to itself dog
matic authority. It is a pity when a great
church which claims to be the representative
of Christ on earth discourages independent
thinking and critical research, for these have
not only contributed greatly to the ascer
tainment of scientific truth, but they are
plainly corrective of a thousand shams
which have plagued the world. The dis
position to falsify is alarmingly prevalent.
AU genuine progress hes along the path of
truth. Truth is the emancipator, says the
One who is the truth. The Protestant
heritage of truth and the right of the indi
vidual to search for it, unhampered by
ecclesiastical dogmatism and regardless of
consequences, must be maintained if the
church and the nation shall press forward to
God's goal of triumphant truth; for, as
Bryant sings
"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again:
The eternal years of God are hers;
But error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshipers."

II
THE MORAL HERITAGE OF
PROTESTANTISM
Text: "And herein do I exercise myself, to have always
a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men." —
Acts 24. 16.
The moral heritage of Protestantism is
closely allied to the intellectual heritage.
We saw that the corner stone of the intellec
tual heritage was the right of private judg
ment. We find that the moral heritage like
wise has a comer stone: it is liberty of
conscience. Just as the Protestant insists
that a man has the right to think for himself
and refuse to accept as intellectually sound
that which does not seem reasonable to his
own mind, so the Protestant also claims that
a man has a right to refuse to believe any
thing to be right until his own conscience
shall approve it. We hold that the determin
ing factor in morals is the vigorous exercise
of a man's conscience just as the determining
46

THE MORAL HERITAGE 47
factor in intellectual hfe is the free exercise
of the individual mind. The right of private
judgment and the right to free exercise of
one's own conscience go hand in hand.
Liberty of conscience, like the right of
private judgment, needs a certain degree of
qualifying definition. What is this con
science for whose liberty we stand? Some
will answer that it is the voice of God in the
soul of man. This answer is too general. If
by "the voice of God" is meant that every
specific course which the conscience ap
proves is that which is right in the abstract
and is in every particular what God would
have the individual do, we cannot accept
the definition. For conscience approves the
conduct which the individual thinks is right
and even when the individual is wrong, but
honestly thinks he is right, conscience ap
proves. Thus the pagan mother thinks it is
right to cast her child into the sacred river
as an act of devotion, and her conscience
approves an act which in itself is abhorrent
to God. It cannot be said that her approv
ing conscience is the voice of God speaking

48 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
in favor of child murder. And yet God does
most certainly approve of the sacrificial
obedience of the individual to his honest
convictions. The fact is that conscience is
the voice of the moral nature speaking its
approval of conduct which is in harmony
with that individual's honest convictions.
That moral nature is itself the medium
through which God speaks to man, so that
the motions of the moral nature are pro
duced by God even though their expression
by the conscience may not accurately repre
sent the divine mind. Perhaps the best
illustration is found in the radio broadcast
ing which is now occupying the popular
mind. When we listen at the receiving end
we sometimes hear very imperfectly the
voice of a speaker. We cannot understand
clearly what he says. Indeed, we may mis
understand him and conclude that he is
saying just the opposite of that which is on
his lips. The fault is with our receiving set
which is the work of an amateur and does
not permit the speaker to be heard dis
tinctly. But the fact is that whatever we do

THE MORAL HERITAGE 49
hear through that receiver is caused by the
speaker at the other end whose exact mean
ing is distorted because of the imperfect
instruments which we use. So with the
conscience. It is imperfect until it has had
Christian enlightenment and training, and
the voice of God which speaks through the
moral nature cannot be distinctly heard nor
correctly understood until the medium of
communication is perfect, but it is still true
that whatever movements are stirring in the
moral nature of the individual are occa
sioned by God who is seeking to express him-
seK clearly to our minds and hearts. In a
limited sense it may therefore be said that
conscience is the voice of God, but in the
unlimited sense of the exact conveyance to
the individual of the thought and will of the
Divine Being, it is not his voice. It will thus
be seen that in emphasizing the right of the
individual to the free exercise of his con
science we are not excusing any disregard of
such guidance and help as the church and
the Bible furnish. While his conscience is to
be his guide, he is under obhgation to en-

50 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
lighten that conscience by every means at
his command, and the church is one of the
divinely appointed luminaries on the road
to righteousness which he cannot afford to
ignore. Again it must be remembered that liberty
of conscience means the right to give con
science its fullest exercise. The freedom
which it needs is the freedom to act, not to
be passive. A man has no right to ask that
his conscience be freed from the domination
of others simply that he may enslave it
himself. The liberty of conscience for which
our fathers fought was the liberty to scruti
nize every moral demand with the utmost
moral diligence to ascertain if its demands
were those of God. The indolent conscience,
the sleeping conscience can know no true
liberty and is entitled to none.
Regarding conscience, then, as the voice
of that moral nature through which God
seeks to speak, and understanding its free
dom to be the opportunity of unrestricted
search for moral right, let us pause for a
moment and see how great is this moral

THE MORAL HERITAGE 51
heritage and how vital a part it has had in
shaping the free institutions of America.
The Pilgrim Fathers gave us our Ameri
can institutions. It has become popular in
some circles to-day to discount the Pilgrims
and to tell us how much more highly we
have thought of them than we ought to
think. It is quite true that our American
institutions, in exactly their present-day
form, did not come over in the Mayflower,
but it cannot be denied that the nearest ap
proach to those institutions in all the world
of that day was made by the Pilgrim Fathers
when they founded and promoted Plymouth
colony. Bancroft says substantially that the
document drawn up and signed in the cabin
of the Mayflower was the most advanced
statement of constitutional democracy then
extant. The germ of this constitutional
hberty was found in the Pilgrims' insistence
on hberty of the individual conscience. The
quarrel of these men with the English gov
ernment was concerning the divine right of
kings. The ruling monarchs of that day
insisted that the king reigned by divine

52 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
right and that to dissent from his dictum
was to array oneself against God. The
Pilgrims denied this. In so doing they broke
with the Anglican Church as well as the
state, for episcopacy was the bulwark of
royal autocracy, and the two stood or fell
together. Because of this protest against
ecclesiastical and royal autocracy the Pil
grims were persecuted. Having much in
common with the Puritans, the Pilgrim
Fathers were much more definite in the
claim that no king and no ecclesiastic had a
right to supplant the individual conscience.
They became the protestants of the Puri
tans, went to Holland, were more thor
oughly indoctrinated in the sanctity of
conscience by the teaching of their pastor,
the Rev. John Robinson, and, as Silvester
Home put it, took so seriously the teaching
of Robinson that government should be
founded on the free exercise of the intensffied
and instructed conscience, that they, one
day, rose up and fled to America that they
might make the great experiment. Here
they formed a government of the people.

THE MORAL HERITAGE S3
The town meeting where all might speak,
and not the royal chamber, was the place
where laws were made. The church and
state were separated in that nonchurch
members might vote. Miles Standish, who
never joined the church, exercised the fran
chise. The persecution of the witches with
which the Pilgrims have been charged, did
not occur in their colony but in that of the
Puritans, who were the aristocrats among
the colonists. Though the Pilgrims were
plain country folk, they believed thoroughly
in popular education. Here, then, are
American institutions in embryo — separa
tion of church and state, popular education,
legislation by the people, aversion to perse
cution, opposition to ecclesiastical as well as
royal autocracy, all these resting on the
foundation stone of liberty of conscience.
This is our American heritage: this is our
Protestant heritage. Those who do not ap
preciate the one discount the other. It is
not surprising that Roman Catholicism pre
fers "The Star-Spangled Banner" to our
national anthem, since the latter sings con-

54 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
cerning the "land of the Pilgrims' pride"
and evermore reminds us of our inherited
opposition to ecclesiastical as well as mon
archical rule.
Our Roman Catholic friends are taught
that liberty of conscience as we understand
it is not a good thing. When viewed from
the standpoint of individual exercise it has
received the papal denunciation, being
characterized as man's madness and not his
right. "Liberty of conscience is liberty of
perdition" is a quotation from Roman
Catholic sources. It is true that in the lec
tures to Protestants we find quotations
which indicate the opposite view. We read
that Pope Innocent III declared that "what
ever is done contrary to conscience leads to
hell,"^ and that Saint Thomas said, "He who
acts against conscience sins."^ But even in his
appeal to Protestants the Roman apologist
reveals a different understanding of obe
dience to conscience from that which Prot-

' Question Box, p. 91.
« md., p. 92.

THE MORAL HERITAGE 55
estantism maintains. The Romanist always
has in mind a conscience which has already
yielded itself to the authority of the church,
and which has been instructed that the
Roman Catholic Church is the sole mouth
piece of God on earth. A conscience so
instructed can only point to the church, and
its warning is always against departure
from the teachings of that church, just as
the conscience of the heathen woman warns
her against departure from heathen prac
tices in which she has been instructed from
infancy. It is quite another thing to approve
the action of a conscience which has been
taught to freely exercise itself regarding
every question, even the authority of the
church and of the Scriptures. Such free
exercise of conscience Rome does not ap
prove, as appears from further study of the
same lectures to Protestants by Father
Conway to which we have frequently re
ferred. He says that if we were to "allow
reason, subject as it is to public opinion,
caprice, passion, prejudice, to speak in its
own name, the whole basis and sanction of

66 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
the moral order would at once disappear."
He is here answering a question concerning
conscience as a sufficient guide for man. He
defines conscience as "reason," telling us
what is good or bad, and he plainly means
that if conscience were left to act with per
fect liberty, the basis of the moral order
would disappear. Here is definite opposition
to the free exercise of conscience. It is
honest opposition, no doubt, but opposition
due to a false moral philosophy which Rome
persistently teaches. Her teaching invari
ably is that there can be no healthy moral
development without imquestioning sub
mission to arbitrary religious authority.
Her position on this subject is still more
clearly set forth when she speaks concerning
the right of the Roman Catholic Church to
command the temporal power for the teach
ing and enforcement of her doctrines. Her-
genrother declares: "The church rejects the
principle of free investigation which makes
reason the judge over God's utterances and
'Question Box, p. 5.
* Sacerdotalism in the Nineteenth Century, Henry C. Sheldon,
p. 34. Eaton & Mains.

THE MORAL HERITAGE 57
her own teaching office. . . . She rejects
in principle the freedom of all worships.
Freedom of worship is in itself an evil."*
Devivier, speaking of liberty of conscience,
liberty of the press, liberty of education,
says: "They are false in principle. The
Catholic rehgion alone is true and binding
upon aU men, and this religion is identified
with the Roman Catholic Church." He
adds : "Neither the church nor the state can
be taxed with intolerance and tyranny when
they seek, as they did in the Middle Ages to
regulate the exercise of the human will, and
to diminish for men the facilities for evil and
thus prevent them from risking their happi
ness and welfare."^ This is surely ecclesi
astical paternahsm which has no place in
modern democracy and which abhors liberty
of conscience. These official statements of
the Roman attitude toward the free exercise
of conscience need to be kept in mind when
Pauhst Fathers tell non-Catholics that
Roman Catholicism believes in the exercise
of conscience.
iJbid., p. 36.

58 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
Now, the failure to give the conscience of
the individual full liberty leads to the sub
stitution of the law of expediency for the
law of moral right. Only as we keep the
conscience in the ascendency and grant it
freedom to press its persistent question, con
cerning every proposition, "Is it right?" will
we be saved from the entanglements of
casuistry which are fatal to wholesome
moral attitudes. If service to an institution,
however worthy, shall come to be regarded
as of greater value than obedience to the
clear demands of conscience, then the rule
of expediency masters us. This is the point
at which Romanism endangers our moral
heritage. The promotion of the interests of
the church is more precious to her than
strict obedience to the voice of conscience.
Thus while she probably would not directly
ask an individual to do wrong in defense of
the church, yet many are without doubt led
to this course in practical life because of her
teaching. Take a few illustrations.
Among the advertisements which ap
peared in Pittsburgh newspapers recently

THE MORAL HERITAGE 69
was one which defended the doctrine of the
infallibility of the Pope and sought to make
the practice of ascribing inerrancy to an
individual or an institution appear perfectly
normal in the common practices of life. An
analogy between the papacy and the Su
preme Court of the United States was
drawn. It was stated that the Supreme
Court is infallible. This, of course, is entirely
contrary to the fact. The Supreme Court is
final, but not infaUible, and there is a vast
difference between finality and infallibility.
That great court is the last resort in law, but
it has never claimed to be infallible. Indeed,
it practically asserts its own fallibility in
many of its decisions, for often one third of
its own members criticize the opinion of the
two thirds, which opinion is the final deci
sion. Lawyers outside the court by no means
regard it as inerrant and freely agree with
its minority opinion, but all, whether in
agreement or otherwise, accept its majority
decision as the last word on that particular
case. The finality of the Pope is not a
serious matter; it is his claim to infallibility

60 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
that causes moral damage. This claim the
Roman Catholic Church makes for itself,
teaching American children in its parochial
school catechism that "to believe the Cath
olic Church is to believe God himself." No
analogy to this arrogant assumption ap
pears anywhere in human institutions of
government which are not despotic. It is
utterly unfair, then, to ascribe to our great
federal court of last appeal an attitude of
legal arrogance which would lead it to pro
nounce even its imanimous decisions as
utterly inerrant and destitute of any possi
bility of legal flaw. Now, we contend that
to advertise to the world that the claim of
Romanism to infallibility is precisely paral
leled by our Supreme Court when there is
not a vestige of analogy, and to confuse the
popular mind by a subtle disregard of the
fundamental distinction between finality
and infallibility, is to be governed by ex
pediency and not by the rule of conscien
tious right.
Take another instance. In the same series
of advertisements the Roman Catholics

THE MORAL HERITAGE 61
make official claim that one of the sons of
their church, CamiUus by name, was the
founder of the Red Cross. The popular
mind would immediately conclude that this
was the great international organization
which we have always understood was
founded by Jean Henri Dunant, of Geneva,
Switzerland, who, moved by the unneces
sary suffering which he witnessed at the
battle of Solferino in 1859, started an agita
tion which led to the so-caUed Geneva Con
vention, out of which the Red Cross societies
grew. This is the Red Cross which Clara
Barton founded in its American form and
for which the American people gave so
generously and so cheerfully during the
World War. Now, we are told that the real
originator was an obscure Roman Catholic,
unknown to the general encyclopedias, liv
ing in the latter part of the sixteenth century,
who estabhshed an organization for the care
of the sick and the poor. Professor Schaff,
who calls attention to this matter and who
has investigated it thoroughly, says that he
does not find even in the great German Ro-

62 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
man Catholic Encyclopedia any intimation
that CamiUus was connected with any kind of
Red Cross organization, or that he ever made
any provision for the care of the wounded on
battle fields. Here, then, is an attempt to
make a man who did nothing more than
organize a local sick-benefit order and
administer local charitable relief funds the
originator of the present international and
world-famous Red Cross society. The law
of expediency is in operation again rather
than the law of conscientious right. It is
altogether expedient that the Roman
Church shall have the credit due the founder
of the Red Cross, but it is altogether wrong
that the popular mind should be confused
and filled with error by statements which
are not historically sound.
Take, if you will, the condemnation of the
Young Men's Christian Association by the
late Pope Benedict XV, in which he de
clared that it was corrupting the morals of
young men. The popular impression from
such an official deliverance was that the
Association was really damaging the moral

THE MORAL HERITAGE 63
life of manhood. This, of course, was not
the thought of the Pope, for he could not
have been so woefully misinformed as to
make such an egregious blimder. What he
doubtless meant was that the Young Men's
Christian Association was teaching young
men to think independently, to study ques
tions from the standpoint of conscientious
determination of what was right, and there
fore leading them to discount the claims of
the Roman Church to speak as the voice of
God in morals and religion. In that sense
the Association was and is assuredly chang
ing the mental attitude of youth in such a
way as to "corrupt" pure Romanism. If the
Pope had said just that, his word would
have little effect in prejudicing the popular
mind of uninformed Romanism against the
"Y." That would have been the course of
truth, but it would not have been expedient
for Roman Catholicism.
Now, we maintain that the failure of
Romanism to put the emphasis on the free
exercise of the conscience through its failure
to teach that the insistent question of the

64 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
moral nature, "Is it right?" must be heard
above all inquiries concerning what is ex
pedient has led to a lowering of moral stan
dards wherever Romanism has held sway.
There are certain lines of conduct which
Romanism has approved in the past and
which it approves to-day to which Protes
tantism is most decidedly opposed. Take
the matter of persecution. Rome has per
sistently taught that in the interest of its
church those who oppose it should be dealt
with severely. Hence she has a long record
of persecution. Now, we are well aware of
the fact that Rome through some of her
modern appeals to non-Catholics denies any
torture or death to have been inflicted by
the authority of the church, and we are also
aware that Protestantism in the past has at
times been guilty of persecution, out of
which fact Romanists make the largest
capital. But let us examine these points.
Let us see whether Rome has ever officially
authorized persecution.
Cardinal Gibbons in his "Faith of our

THE MORAL HERITAGE 65
Fathers," an authorized Roman Catholic
publication, says that in all of his reading he
has not found that the Roman Catholic
Church has officially authorized suffering or
death in the case of conscientious objectors
to the Roman Creed. Surely, the Cardinal
was familiar with the words of Pope Leo X,
who in his buU condemning Luther in 1520
declared that the burning of heretics was
according to the wiU of the Holy Spirit. He
must have known that Pope Innocent III
in 1215 officiaUy instituted the Inquisition,
that Pope Sextus IV sanctioned the Spanish
Inquisition, that Pope Paul IV was at the
head of the Roman Inquisition. Victor
Duruy, the French historian, in his chapter
on "The Cathohc Restoration," credits four
great Popes — ^Paul III, Paul IV, Pius V, and
Sixtus V — with saving Italy to Roman
Catholicism after it had lost one half of its
empire through the Reformation. He says:
"As individuals were executed, likewise
books were burned. These means obstinately
pursued were successful. Roman Catholi
cism was saved in the peninsula, but at what

66 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
a price !"* But when Cardinal Gibbons comes
to the Spanish Inquisition he protects the
church by holding Spanish royalty, and not
the Roman Church, responsible for that
refinement of cruelty. He seems, however,
to forget that church and state were
most perfectly united in those days and
whatever the state did, especially for the
promotion of religion, is that for which the
church must bear its full share of responsi
bility. If Rome did not approve the
cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition, she
should at least have openly and positively
denounced them, but do we find any
Pope condemning the Spanish king for
those cruelties as Ambrose condemned the
cruelties of Theodosius in the fourth cen
tury? If the Roman Catholic Church in the
sixteenth century was the same true church
of Christ that existed in the fourth century,
why did not the reigning Pope rise and
openly condemn the royal inquisitor and
say, as did Ambrose, "If you imitate David

8 Duruy's General History of the World, Thomas Y. Crowell
& Co., publishers. Review of Reviews. Vol. ii, p. 328.

THE MORAL HERITAGE 67
in crime, imitate him in repentance" ? When
it comes to the massacre of Saint Barthol
omew's Day Cardinal Gibbons has another
way of excusing the Roman Catholic
Church. He says that the reason the Pope
caused a Te Deum to be sung when he heard
of the slaughter of the Protestants on that
awful night in Paris was because he thought
it was simply the overthrow of traitors who
had been plotting the life of the rightful
ruler, and the Pope ordered a song of praise
in recognition of the triumph of loyalty over
treason! But the Cardinal did not explain
how it happened that in addition to the
song of praise which the Pope ordered he
also required that a medal be struck off
having on one side the image of the Pope
and on the other a representation of the
destroying angel, with the words, "Massacre
of the Huguenots." We have no desire to
hold humane and kind-hearted Roman
Catholics responsible to-day for what their
ecclesiastical ancestors did in darker ages
gone, but we do hold them responsible for
failing to acknowledge the colossal crime

68 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
which the church committed and for at
tempting to so explain away the plain facts
of history as to make it appear that Rome
was perfectly guiltless of persecuting her
opponents even unto death. We are forced
to the conclusion that the reason why her
apologists do not make complete acknowl
edgment of her grievous fault and confess
that the church sinned and sinned most
shamefully, is that she still holds that if it
should appear that the church again needed
such measures to defend herself, she would
be justified, even in this enlightened age, in
resorting to similar practice. When we hear
one of her apologists saying three centuries
after the Inquisition that "Neither church
nor state, which are bound together upon
the basis of divine law, recognizes toler
ance," and when Joseph Hergenrother,
trusted member of the Vatican and author
ized Roman Cathohc historian, says, "The
authorization of every form of worship is a
grave injustice in purely Catholic countries
like Spain and South America," then we
have reason to fear that Rome has not yet

THE MORAL HERITAGE 69
repudiated her former faith in the efficiency
and moral rectitude of persecution. If
authorization of differing forms of worship
is a "grave injustice" in Roman Cathohc
countries, then why may she not use the
strong hand of the law to exclude non-
Catholics who worship God according to the
dictates of their own conscience? Indeed,
we are not left to inference here. Another
defender, Granderath, says: "The principle
that she possesses the power of outward
punishment the church naturally cannot
surrender. Meanwhile, though she holds
fast her principle, in applying it she takes
account of the conditions of the time."^ If
this be correct, perhaps those who insist
that the Roman Catholic Church is utterly
im-American, since she does not grant the
right of every man to worship God according
to the dictates of his own conscience, are
not as rabid on the subject as we have often
supposed. But what about Protestant persecutions?
' Sacerdotalism in the Nineteenth Century, Henry C. Sheldon,
p. 36. Eaton & Mains.

70 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
As stated above, we make no attempt to
deny the historical facts nor apologize in any
way for them. We insist that wherever and
whenever Protestantism undertook to pro
mote its doctrines or advance its enterprises
by means of persecution, it sinned with a
high hand against humanity and God. This,
however, we have to say for Protestantism,
that whenever she has practiced persecution
she has stultified herself. She has had no
theory which has been fundamental to her
claims as a genuine Christian Church which
has supported any of her persecuting prac
tices. Luther insisted on the right of private
judgment and direct access to God. He
also insisted that "it is contrary to the will
of the Spirit that heretics should be
burned." If, therefore, he favored the perse
cution of the Jews, as is claimed, he was in
consistent with himself and acted in flat
contradiction of the Protestantism for which
he stood. The Puritans of New England,
not the Pilgrim Fathers, persecuted the
witches and Roger Williams because they
still held to the anti-Protestant theory of

THE MORAL HERITAGE 71
the right of the church to use the temporal
power to enforce its doctrinal beliefs. The
Puritans were not purged of the poison of
high-church Anglicanism when they came to
America. Anglicanism had never utterly
broken with the Romish theory. Its quarrel
has not been with the Roman theory so
much as with the Roman application of that
theory. Such a theory led the Protestant
Puritans to act inconsistently with their own
Protestant principles. As Protestantism
purges herself of every vestige of the Roman
theory and comes to regard the church
simply a means to an end, holding that the
end is the absorption of the spirit and ethical
power of Jesus in individuals and in society,
in that proportion does persecution come to
be abhorrent to the Protestant mind and
practically impossible of practice. Thus is
it that true Protestantism has rebuked the
partial Protestantism of John Calvin. He it
is who has been caUed "The Protestant
Pope" and whose severity of administration
in Geneva led to the saying, "Many more
tears have been shed under Calvin than

72 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
were ever shed over him." Calvin sanctioned
the execution of one Michael Servetus, who,
by the way, was a patron of a Roman
Cathohc archbishop for twenty years, and
whom Roman Catholicism was ready to
convict on the very evidence which John
Calvin furnished against him. Servetus,
however, escaped from his jailer and avoided
Roman Catholic execution for his heresy by
a very narrow margin. Then he came to
Geneva. Calvin accomplished what Rome
tried to do and could not. We have no
apology whatever to make for Calvin any
more than we would have had for Rome if
she had succeeded. We are glad that modern
Protestantism has inscribed over the grave
of Calvin its own protest against his de
ficient Protestantism in the following words:
"Huguenots in Geneva, true sons of the
Reformation, recognizing the benefits of
Calvin's life and teachings, hereby repudiate
his crime, which was the crime of his age."
Thus Protestantism reveals a different atti
tude toward persecution. We submit that
the moral standards of Protestantism grow-

THE MORAL HERITAGE 73
ing out of a recognition of the right of every
man to the free exercise of his conscience
are higher than those which Romanism can
ever have while she distrusts the moral, as
she does the inteUectual nature of man and
insists that he cannot be trusted with free
moral exercise but must be guided by
authoritative compulsion.
In conclusion, we look at the general
moral conduct which Romanism begets in
her people. It is no slander to say that
countries in which Romanism is supreme
have low standards of living. South Amer
ica, Mexico, Spain, Austria, and France have
different standards of moral life from Eng
land and America. It cannot be the climate,
nor the form of government, nor lack of
opportunity. Rome has had abundant
chance in these lands, and if submission of
the conscience to authority rather than its
free exercise produces a higher type of moral
life, human conduct in these countries
should be at its best. On the contrary,
Roman Catholic countries are sadly illit
erate and immoral. In some parts of South

74 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
America illegitimacy of birth runs as high
as fifty-seven per cent. This is not due to
any inherent immorality in the people but
to the mercenary spirit of Romanism, which
demands high fees for the marriage cere
mony and tolerates moral laxity rather than
ecclesiastical irregularity. In Spain when
Rome completely controlled the educational
system sixty-eight per cent of the population
was iUiterate and in Italy the iUiteracy ran
as high as ninety-three per cent. When the
Italian government took control illiteracy
was reduced one half. Rome had her oppor
tunity with France. At last the educational
system was taken from her. She violently
protested, but her loss of control benefited
France in the reduction of iUiteracy from
fourteen to five per cent.
In Mexico Romanism has been in power
for centuries. Only in recent years has
Protestant influence been felt in the slightest
degree. When she had perfect control ninety
per cent of the population could not read
nor write, and even to-day Mexico is at
least sixty per cent iUiterate. Indeed, the

THE MORAL HERITAGE 75
educational budgets for aU Latin America,
with its eighty-five million people, are not
much larger, we are told, than for the one
city of New York, which has less than six
miUions. IUiteracy and immorality go hand
in hand. No one expects to find the moral
standards of Christian civilization in South
America. There hbertines and renegades
from justice expect to find their paradise.
Why should this be so? Roman Catholicism
has been in South America longer and has
had much greater control than has Protes
tantism in North America. If she is the
only authorized Church of Christ on earth
and her moral teaching is according to the
mind of God, why, then, has her type of
Christianity been such a colossal moral
faUure? The low moral standards of the
people relate themselves directly to the
Roman Church. A Protestant bishop, ob
serving unusual debauchery on a church
feast day, inquired as to the particular reli
gious festival which was being observed, and
received the reply, "This is the feast of the
Holy Ghost"! This type of rehgion lowers

76 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
moral ideals. A college dean in Brazil wrote,
"It is with great sadness that I witness the
steady decrease in the number of unselfish,
idealistic, genuine men."*
When we come to our own country we
find that, in spite of the fact that there are
numbers of Roman Catholic people who
are individuaUy high-minded and morally
strong, Romanism as such does not bring to
us moral uplift. We desire to give Roman
Catholicism credit for every good she does,
and we deplore that narrow bigotry which
can see nothing in her worthy in the least of
praise, but with aU charity we must admit
the sad fact that the moral forces which are
struggling to make Jesus King in aU realms
of life do not receive any decided impetus,
to say the least, when Romanism moves
into a community. How much of Sabbath
observance is promoted by Roman Cath
olics? How much strength is given by
Romanism to the cause of political right
eousness when decent citizens fight corrupt
pohtical organizations and try to elect men,
' Eric M. North, The Kingdom and the Nations, p. 166.

THE MORAL HERITAGE 77
themselves Roman Catholics, who stand for
high ideals and insist that Roman philan
thropic institutions shall be subject to the
same official scrutiny as that which other
denominations cheerfully accept? How
much support does clean government re
ceive from Romanism in such a crisis? How
were movements for moral uplift of young
people promoted when Sunday night enter
tainments were provided for them in beer
gardens, where hquor freely flowed, before
prohibition came? How much help did the
cause of prohibition receive from the Roman
Cathohc Church as such? There were
groups of Roman Cathohcs who helped
greatly, and noble leaders appeared from
time to time, but the church officially and
as a whole hindered rather than helped. A
Roman Cathohc priest, the late Father
Thomas McLoughlin, of New RocheUe, New
York, stated pubhcly in our hearing that
when Archbishop Ireland asked the Pope
for his blessing on the Archbishop's Total
Abstinence Society, the Holy Father said to
him, "Do you mean that any one who joins

78 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
your society must give up even the drinking
of wine?" "Yes," said Ireland, "that is
what it means." "Then," said the Pope, "I
should think a person, for such self-denial,
should have some kind of a blessing." Here
was the papacy's answer to total abstinence.
It should be an occasion of humiliation to
Rome to realize that in the greatest moral
reform of the century the Roman Catholic
Church as such has had no part, and that
Protestantism is the only ecclesiastical body
that deserves any credit in effecting the
legal banishment of this age-long curse.
We conclude where we began. The moral
conduct of a people reflects its moral educa
tion. Rome teaches that the conscience
must not be trained to independent action.
She seeks to bear the moral burdens of her
people and thus retards their moral growth.
Our moral heritage lifts the conscience to
high place and calls upon the individual to
bear his own moral burden. The church can
aid him by teaching a sound moral philos
ophy and by showing the moral disintegration
which compliance with the law of expediency

THE MORAL HERITAGE 79
brings. To preserve that moral heritage we
must guard against that Jesuital casuistry
which justifies the means if the end be
worthy. Such faulty moral conceptions may
be ours in spite of our hatred of Jesuitism.
Dr. Frederick H. Wright, pastor of the
American Church in Rome and connected
with a Protestant publishing house, was
offered a manuscript for publication by an
Itahan of high character and positive
Protestant convictions. He was a man of
decided abihty and the manuscript con
tained beautiful stories for children which
had high literary worth. On reading it, how
ever, it was discovered that it was shot
through with Jesuitical teaching. It repre
sented a httle boy protecting his sister in a
brotherly way, but always with some false
hood which resulted in benefit to the girl.
The Protestant publishers told the author
they could not print it while it contained
that Jesuitical moral distortion. The author
was indignant and insisted that he hated
Jesuitism and its teachings as much as the
pubhshers. He was led at last to see that he

80 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
was still unconsciously holding to the false
philosophy of Jesuitism with which he had
been indoctrinated in youth while he had
broken utterly with the system. He elim
inated the objectionable elements; the book
published was among the best in the litera
ture of moral education, and was intro
duced into the government schools by the
minister of education.
Thus we see how easily we may hold the
false moral philosophy of Rome while we
repudiate Romanism. There must be care
ful guarding at this point, for our moral
heritage will not be maintained by mere
denunciation of the Roman Catholic Church
but by a humble and persistent effort, sup
ported by divine help, to avoid repetition of
the moral blunders by which Rome en
dangers the moral heritage of Protestantism
and of free America.

Ill
THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE OF
PROTESTANTISM
Text: "For there is one God, and one mediator between God
and men, the man Christ Jesus." — 1 Timothy i. 5.
As the right of private judgment underhes
the intellectual heritage of Protestantism
and liberty of conscience the moral heritage,
so the right of direct access to God is the
foundation stone of our spiritual heritage.
If we beheve that man can approach God
directly and that no human intermediary is
necessary for the f uUest intimacy of the soul
with God; if we take the words of the text
to mean what they say and permit no inter
pretation which would justify a human
priest coming between the soul and the
divine Christ, then we have no need of the
elaborate system of spiritual ministration
which the Roman Catholic Church provides.
The confessional, penance, extreme unction,
purgatory, as weU as the Roman attitude
81

82 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
toward the use of the Scriptures, all rest
upon the theory that man needs a human
intermediary, that he cannot know God
satisfactorily if he approach him directly,
and that the divinely appointed way is by
means of a human priest who is clothed
with divine authority to pronounce forgive
ness of sins and to decide whether or not the
soul has reached a state of acceptabUity
with God.
Protestantism rejects this view. She holds
that a man can and should come into direct
and immediate relation with God — that
Jesus Christ is the one Mediator, and that
he is qualified to be such because he is God
incarnate. Protestantism refuses to believe
with those who originaUy promoted the
worship of the Virgin Mary, that the deity
of Jesus is so exalted that he cannot enter
with complete sympathy into perfect fellow
ship with weak and sinful men as could
someone who is entirely human and yet
occupies a imique relation to the Incarnate
Christ as did his earthly mother.
This is one of the fundamental principles

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 83
of Protestantism, and, like those which we
have previously considered, requires a cer
tain degree of explanation. Because Protes
tants reject a human intermediary, we do
not on that account disregard all human
agencies in bringing about a direct and
personal relation of the soul with Christ.
There are several things in this connection
which seem to be simUar, but which are
essentiaUy distinct. There is a decided dif
ference between introduction and interven
tion. When you introduce one person to
another you bring together those who have
been strangers. You do not, however, stand
between them after they are introduced, but
retire and leave them to relate themselves
directly to each other. The Protestant
Church believes in the human agency of
introduction, and its ministers and laymen
are busy bringing people to Jesus as Andrew
brought Peter. They introduce their friends
to Christ, as without this process of human
introduction multitudes would never know
him. But when the introduction has been
effected, it is the duty of the one so intro-

84 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
ducing to retire and let the individual intro
duced deal directly with his God. The
Roman priest not only introduces, but inter
venes. He stands between the soul and
Christ. It is true that he teaches the com
municant to pray more or less directly to
God, but in the great transactions of re
pentance and forgiveness he insists that he
must remain as the intermediary, dictating
the penance and informing the penitent
when he is actuaUy forgiven of God. Not
only so, but the Romanist confoimds inter
pretation with intervention. Protestants
believe that the human minister and layman
should interpret God to men, hence aU the
agencies of preaching and teaching which
Protestantism provides, but interpretation
is a very different thing from intervention.
The interpreter at best is only a temporary
expedient and anticipates direct communi
cation. Recently there came to Pittsburgh
a distinguished Japanese. He was the guest
at dinner on one occasion of a group of
citizens and Sunday-school workers. After-
dinner addresses were made in his honor

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 86
which he could understand only through an
interpreter, for he could not speak a word of
English. At length he responded to the
fehcitations of the speakers and spoke for
half an hour in Japanese. We could not
understand a word he said. Then his inter
preter arose and for another half hour told
us what the guest had been saying. That
interpreter came between us and the dis
tinguished visitor and in a sense was for us
an intermediary. But that mediation was
only temporary. AU present realized that it
was most vmsatisfactory and could never
remain as a permanent means of communi
cation. If we were to have long continued
and satisfactory feUowship with that man,
he must either learn to speak Enghsh or we
must learn to speak Japanese. So with the
interpretation of God to the soul of man by
the agency of the church. In so far as she
may interpret God to man and in that way
stand between God and the soul. Protestant
ism insists that the process is whoUy tem
porary and is intended to operate only until
the individual learns the medium of com-

86 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
munication with the Divine; then the in
terpreter, in so far as he has been an inter
mediary, must retire, else his presence will
be an impertinence. We repeat that every
agency of Protestantism which may be cited
as a parallel to the confessional — ^personal
interviews with converts, the private in
struction given by class leaders, Sunday-
school teachers and pastors — must be inter
preted in the light of the fundamental prin
ciple of Protestantism, namely, that the
human agency operates alone for purposes
of introduction and interpretation, but
never in the sense of permanent interven
tion. When the man has once found Christ,
all intermediaries must depart. The agencies
of the church are useful to him without
doubt, knowledge of God and his way he
must seek, and the church is ordained to
help him there, but all must be regarded as
merely contributory to that intimate, per
sonal fellowship of man with his Maker, of
the soul with his Saviour which receives
such rapturous emphasis in the Bible and in
the literature of the saints. It would have

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 87
been an insult to have proposed human
intervention between David and his Divine
Shepherd in that experience of which he
sings when the Lord is his Shepherd and he
knows he cannot want. The earthly life of
our Lord reveals an intimacy of personal
feUowship with his disciples which suffered
no breakage when those men came to know
him as their Lord and their God. Paul deals
directly with Jesus and is evermore seeking
to lead the people of his time into a fellow
ship just as intimate and just as directly
personal as was his. The saints of primitive
Christianity would have scorned the sugges
tion of a priestly intermediary. Listen to
Clement of Alexandria, a Christian Father
of the second century whom Jerome pro-
noimced the most learned of men. He pre
sents in his great hymn "Shepherd of Tender
Youth" the thought of direct access to God
which the early church counted so precious.
He sings:
"Thou art the great High Priest;
Thou hast prepared the feast
Of heavenly love;

88 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
While in our mortal pain
None calls on thee in vain.
Help thou dost not disdain,
Help from above."
Even when we come down to the Dark Ages
we find the saints who shine as stars in the
midnight gloom, show that light comes
through direct touch with God. In his great
hymn, "Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts"
Bernard of Clairvaux speaks the language
of direct approach of the soul to God:
"Thy truth unchanged hath ever stood;
Thou savest those that on thee call;
To them that seek thee, thou art good.
To them that find thee, all in all."
Protestantism insists on this right of
direct access to God which has yielded such
precious fruit of spiritual experience and
conduct and at this point comes into colh-
sion with Roman Catholicism. In making
this contention we are dealing with a vital
principle and not simply with a particular
form of religious devotion which might be a
matter of personal taste or educational
preference. Much is being said to-day con-

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 89
cerning the evil of religious intolerance and
with the condemnation of it we are in
heartiest accord. A local newspaper quoted
recently on its front page the words of one
Napoleon HiU, who says, "If we must give
expression to intolerance, we should not
speak it, but write it — write it on the sands
near the water's edge." He says that in
tolerance is the greatest sin, and he hopes
that when he gets to heaven he will find no
Jews nor Gentiles, no Catholics nor Prot
estants, but only human souls and brothers.
Mr. Hill and his friends might charge us
with intolerance in speaking as we do on
these disputed themes, but our contention
is that in so speaking we are working by
another method toward the same goal of
broad charity which he seeks. To get rid of
intolerance we must eradicate the roots as
weU as trim the branches. In insisting on
the right of direct approach to God we main
tain that we are seeking to destroy a tap
root of intolerance. Intolerance is promoted
not only by those who practice it but by
those who suffer it. Intolerance, like other

90 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
crimes of despotism, has gone when its
victims have refused to suffer it. Let us ask
why have men endured it? The answer is,
because of certain advantages which they
felt the promoters of intolerance could alone
provide, and so great were those advantages
that men were willing to pay the price
which the intolerant exacted. This is true
to-day in industrial realms. There are
workingmen who have endured the intol
erance of certain capitalists because only by
such endurance could they keep their posi
tions and have steady work. They felt the
possession of steady employment was worth
the price of submission to intolerance. The
same is true if we reverse the situation.
Labor organizations when in control of a
situation have often been intolerant to
employers, and many a manufacturer or
builder has smarted beneath the require
ment of labor leaders, yet has endured the
smart rather than suffer a strike which
would have crippled his business. The point
is that many advantages accrue to men at
the hand of the intolerant, and for the sake

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 91
of those advantages people submit to radical
wrongs. One way to correct this intolerable
situation is to remove those advantages
from the hand of the intolerant. Once let
men see that they have no advantage to
gain in submitting to the lash of despotism,
and they will rise and refuse to suffer further.
Now, Rome has always had it in her
power to promote and maintain intoler
ance. She has always taught her people
that it is of immense spiritual advantage to
obey her commands. She has thoroughly
imbued the minds of her communicants
with the idea that the power of spiritual
life and death was in her hand. She
has insisted that she had power to reach
into the invisible and lay hold on God and
that she could reach into the invisible of a
man's soul and control his spiritual relations
with God. This is the meaning of the con
fessional. The priest hears the confession
and determines what type of penance wiU
bring the soul a state of acceptability with
God. When the penance has been performed
acceptably to the priest, then he professes to

92 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
be able to reach into the invisible and ascer
tain how God feels toward the soul of that
penitent, and his priestly absolution or
refusal to absolve is the direct message
from God whom he alone has been able to
reach. Extreme unction rests on the same
assumption of spiritual advantage to the
individual. The priest hurries to the death
bed of a communicant, not to pray with him
and give him spiritual comfort only, but to
do something for him in relation to God and
to the unseen world which he claims cannot
possibly be done for him outside the Roman
Catholic Church. So when a man dies, the
same hold on the unseen in its relation to
the departed soul is asserted by Rome. She
still has her hand on the spiritual hfe of the
individual, and until friends of the departed
provide certain masses those friends are told
that the departed cannot come to a satis
factory spiritual state even though his spirit
has passed from earth. Now, here is a series
of tremendous advantages which Rome pro
fesses to give to her obedient children. Once
let them believe that she holds these spir-

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 93
itual advantages in her hand, and men will
endure extreme intolerance rather than
imperU them. The rehgious life is, after aU,
most precious to men, and they do so highly
esteem spiritual good, in spite of all seeming
indifference and even hostility to it, that
they have revealed a readiness to pay almost
any price for what they believed to be
genuine religious advantage. Here is Rome's
strangle hold on her people. They have
been taught in the most impressionable
years of hfe that she, and she only, has in her
hand the power of spiritual hfe and death.
Believing that she can save their souls or
condemn them to everlasting death, men
who exercise independence regarding every
other question, wiU bow their souls at this
shrine of spiritual autocracy, and Roman
Cathohcs, on whom their church has but a
slender hold during health and hfe, will, on
the approach of death, return to what they
conceive to be the ark of spiritual safety.
Often a pastor has been surprised to find
Roman Cathohcs who attended his church
services, evidently preferring them to their

94 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
own, go back to Romanism when death
drew near and seek the ministrations of a
priest, lest their soul should suffer as it
crossed the dark vaUey.
We submit, then, that if Rome had always
shown the spirit of kindness and had been
most tender-hearted in her dealing with
friend and foe; if she had utterly eschewed
persecution and repudiated aU disposition to
use the temporal power for the promotion of
her rehgious enterprises, even then she
would be a despotism, though a very benev
olent one, and thus out of sympathy with
our American institutions. But when we
know that Rome has by her official dehver-
ances and her authorized acts displayed the
spirit of an intolerant despot , justifying her
self on the ground that she must show no
leniency toward those whom she conceives
to be wrong, then we see that intolerance
with her is not an accident nor the practice
of a few unauthorized agents who have
falsely spoken in her name, but belongs to
the very essence of her teaching concerning
the relation of the soul to God.

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 95
Now, we have reached the very core of
Protestantism. The ground of Luther's
protest was spiritual. He had personally
come into direct relation to God through
justifying faith. He found he had no need of
the elaborate system of intervention be
tween God and the soul which was practiced
by Rome. In the light of this new experience
he went forth and protested against many
abuses in conduct which were practiced in
the name of the church and in which protest
he expected to be supported by the Pope
himseff. It was an occasion of great grief
when he found that he had to resist the
Pope. He had been an ardent advocate of
the papacy. He says, "I was then a monk
and a mad papist, ready to murder any
person who denied obedience to the Pope."
His position of protest was taken only after
deep heart -searching and at great cost to
himself. He says, "O with what anxiety and
labor, with what searching of the Scriptures
have I justffied myself in conscience in
standing up alone against the Pope!" It was
a great blow to him to discover that the

96 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
moral irregularities against which he pro
tested were countenanced by the Pope, but
stUl greater to find that the papal teaching
concerning the soul's relation to God was
contrary to the Scriptures, to the experience
of the saints, and to the teaching of the
primitive church.
Now, this assumption of spiritual control,
like her position on the right of private
judgment and the liberty of conscience, is
one which Rome must hold if she shall
maintain her system. Let her cease for a
generation, even a decade, to teach that she
has control of the souls of men; let her
tolerate independent and free approach of
the soul to God and the consequent lack of
necessity for penance and extreme unction;
let her teach, as does Protestantism, that
the spiritual ministrations of the church are
only for the edification and comfort of the
souls of men, but do not represent an actual
power to determine the spiritual status of
the individual, and the Roman system as it
now stands will disintegrate.
Since, then, this doctrine of spiritual con-

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 97
trol through authorized intervention is so
vital to Romanism, let us see on what
grounds it rests. There are three realms in
which Rome professes to find justification.
The first of these is the realm of Scripture.
She quotes certain passages from the New
Testament and interprets them as giving
her this spiritual authority. The first and
chief of these are the passages in Matthew
and in John concerning "binding" and
"loosing" and the remission of sins. Jesus
said to his disciples, "Whatsoever ye shall
bind on earth shaU be bound in heaven, and
whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shaU be
loosed in heaven." Again, on the first Easter
Sunday evening, when Jesus met with his
disciples, he said, "Whose soever sins ye
remit, they are remitted unto them; and
whose soever sins ye retain, they are re
tained." Now, the Roman Catholic inter
pretation of these words is that Jesus was
here committing to the Roman Church as
it now stands the exclusive right to pro-
noimce forgiveness of sins. The claim, of
course, is that Jesus was giving to the

98 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
apostles as the official head of the church
this right which was to be passed on to their
successors, and as Rome claims exclusive
rights in apostolic succession, she maintains
that she forgives sin to-day by authority
divinely conferred on her at that time.
Of course, there is here that same logical
leap for which Rome is famous by which she
ignores all rules of evidence and substitutes
unwarranted assumption for proof. There
is not the remotest evidence that Jesus had
a church organization of any kind in mind
when he thus spoke, and it is a wild flight of
the imagination to suppose that he was
prophetically looking at the Roman Cath
olic Church as it is to-day and was singling
it out from all the other churches of Chris
tendom, with their vast numbers and record
of at least equal Christliness, and saying
that this particular denomination of Chris
tians, and this alone, should have the right
to forgive sins. If Rome interpreted these
words to mean that all Christian churches
were meant by Jesus, we would not accept
such a view, but when she says that the

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 99
Master meant to single her out and give to
her the exclusive privilege of forgiving sin,
the proposition is so utterly untenable that,
had it not gathered to itself a certain aroma
of sanctity, it would long since have been
rejected as sacrUegious or positively ridicu
lous. There is even no evidence that Jesus
was speaking to the future church at all.
He was speaking only to his followers con
cerning their right to represent him in the
organization of a church. "Binding" and
"loosing" were farmliar terms in such con
nection. But even if they were here author
ized to become the official teachers of his
doctrine and organizers of his church, there
is no intimation that he would pass over to
them his own forgiving prerogative. Fur
ther, it is reasonable to conclude that, as
they were charged with the founding of the
first church organization, their commission
related to that particular task and would
expire with their death. In any case, it is
against aU reason to believe that Jesus was
here passing over to a little group of his
foUowers his own right to deal directly with

100 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
the souls of men. If that were what he
meant, the apostles certainly did not so
understand him, for they were continuaUy
referring penitent persons directly to him
for the settlement of the soul's problems.
Peter on the Day of Pentecost tells the
inquirers to repent and be converted in
order that their sins may be blotted out.
He does not assume to blot them out. Paul
tells the Philippian jailer to believe on
Jesus and he will be saved. He does not
pretend to personally retain or remit sins.
He is not intervening between the jailer and
Christ, but simply pointing out the way of
salvation, as any layman might do. John
says that if we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins. The plain
meaning is that anyone may confess directly
to Christ and find forgiveness. No one
would ever have thought of reading into it
the implication of an intervening priest ex
cept for the purpose of maintaining a theory.
Indeed, the whole spirit of the New Testa
ment is a protest against the thought of a
human intermediary. The system of priestly

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 101
intervention in Old Testament times is sup
planted "by the new and living way."
Christ is now the great High Priest. Men
may come boldly to the throne of grace. The
Epistle to the Hebrews proclaims in nearly
every hne the doctrine of the priesthood of
believers. For a human priest to stand be
tween the believer and Christ is to copy
the Old Testament and to revive the sys
tem which has been completely "done
away." "And every priest standeth daily
ministering and offering oftentimes the same
sacrffices, which can never take away sins:
but this man, after he had offered one
sacrffice for sins forever, sat down on the
right hand of God. . . . For by one offering
he hath perfected forever them that are
sanctified." Hence follows the comforting
exhortation which is made possible only by
an utter elimination from the gospel plan of
the ministrations of an intervening human
priest. Listen to its emphasis of the personal
right of the individual to come directly to
God: "Having therefore, brethren, bold
ness to enter into the holiest by the blood of

102- OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
Jesus, by a new and hving way which he
hath consecrated for us, through the veil,
that is to say his flesh; and having an high
priest over the house of God; let us draw
near with a true heart in fuU assurance of
faith." It would be difficult to conceive of
words more plainly declaring the complete
rejection of the priestly system of human
intervention in the soul's discovery of and
fellowship with its divine Lord. If those men
who heard Jesus say, "Whose soever sins ye
remit, they are remitted" had understood
him to mean that they were to establish a
system of priestly intervention such as
Romanism maintains to-day, then the New
Testament as we have it would never have
been written and a church founded by
apostles so believing would have denied the
Epistle to the Hebrews a place in the canon.
Moreover, any interpretation of the
Master's words which makes them to mean
that only eleven men and their successors
should have the right to pronounce divine
forgiveness, is in direct opposition to the
spirit the Master continually displayed. He

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 103
was evermore condemning a rigid literalness
and a mechanical formalism. He positively
refused to be shut up in spiritual matters to
any ecclesiastical system. The form was
nothing with him; the substance was every
thing. He was constantly finding men and
women outside ecclesiastical regularity who
were better than those who were within. He
insisted that strict observance of prescribed
ceremoniahsm could not save a man. He
said he would not be able to recognize many
who had prophesied in his name and in his
name cast out devUs, because their spirit
was not right. How, then, can we think of
such a Teacher passing over for all time to a
httle group of men an authority in the for
giveness of sjns which he himseff would no
longer exercise, so that no one could be for
given, however worthy, unless he had the
seal of this httle group or its authorized
successors? If the Roman interpretation is
true, we are shut up to the conviction that
Jesus actually divested himself of the for
giving prerogative and bestowed it on those
few apostles and their successors. If Rome

104 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
once granted that Jesus might forgive sins
without using the apostles and the Roman
Church, then her whole system would fall,
for she would have to admit that in Protes
tantism Jesus might forgive men directly
even though in Romanism he forgives them
only through priestly intervention. This
would remove aU the exclusiveness which
belongs to the Roman system and would
cause it to disintegrate. We maintain, then,
that there is not the least warrant in the
New Testament for the supposition that
Jesus, when he spoke to the apostles about
remitting and retaining sins, intended to
give even them the exclusive right of for
giveness much less that he mtended to con
fine that right to the Roman Church or to
any other particular church for its exclusive
exercise. But the theological aspect of this assump
tion is equaUy opposed to the Roman
theory. The accepted theological view of
God represents him as a Spirit dealing with
the spirits of men. God is regarded as
9n?nispient. ^e se^rqhes th^ reins and the

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 105
hearts of men. Here, then, comes a penitent;
he feels the burden of sin and seeks forgive
ness. When he comes to the priest his
sincerity has to be put to the test. The
priest professes no supernatural penetration
into the soul of the supphant. The penance
imposed is the test. If the penitent performs
the penance required, the priest concludes
that he is sincere and then pronounces him
forgiven. Here two elements enter which
do not accord with Christian theology.
There is the element of time. Why should
God, who knows the human heart and who
is a Father, delay his pardon of a repentant
soul until a priest has had time to put that
penitent to a test? The test is required only
because the priest is human and thus devoid
of omniscience which the great High Priest
possesses. Why should God be supposed to
restrain his fatheriy eagerness to forgive his
repentant son simply to accommodate the
slowly moving priest? But there is also the
element of fallibility. The priest does not
know whether the communicant is sincere
QV not, He test^ him by penauce, That test

106 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
may not discover the real status of the soul.
Many a man has done penance whose heart
is not sincere. The priest, however, cannot
discover this and is liable to be deceived.
But acting on his best judgment he thinks
the suppliant genuine and says "I absolve
thee." Now, as a matter of fact, he is not
absolved. The priest and the church have
forgiven him, but God has not done so. The
whole matter then reverts back to the direct
relation of the soul to God. Where the
penitent is sincere and the priest has not
made a mistake, God forgives and the priest
is unnecessary. Where the priest is mistaken
and pronounces absolution, the man has not
been forgiven and the church has uninten-
tionaUy, but nevertheless in reality, pro
nounced a lie in the name of God. In order
to make priestcraft, at its best, harmonize
with theology, we must eliminate its dis
tinctively Christian view of the Divine and
look upon God as possessed of those pagan
characteristics which made him subject to
human manipulation and attributed to him
the weaknesses of faulty man.

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 107
But when we come to the rational an
alogies by which Roman Catholic teachers
attempt to defend the practice of priestly
intervention, we find that they are equally
unsatisfactory. We quote again from Father
Conway's Pauhst Lectures to non-Catholics
since they represent the most plausible in
terpretations of Romanism. The failure of
Rome to promote direct dealing of the soul
with God is justffied by citation of cases in
common life where the indirect method is
employed. A case is supposed where the
President of the United States should learn
of irregularities in the Philippine Islands
and commission twelve men, clothed with
fuU judicial powers, to go over and inves
tigate. In this case those men would be
authorized to act for the President, and
those whom they would adjudge guilty
would be recognized as guilty by the United
States; likewise those acquitted would be
declared innocent just as truly as if the
President himself were there in person. Now,
the faUacy of this argument lies in the use
of an imperfect analogy. The analogy be-

108 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAoi
tween the President of the United States
and the Divine Being fails at the point of
supernatural powers. The President sends
a commission to investigate and act because
he is ignorant of the situation and cannot
leave the White House to personally attend
to the matter. God needs no such commis
sioners as the priests presume to be, since he
himself knows all the facts better than any
ecclesiastical commissioners, and he is pres
ent, dealing directly with the individual,
when any question of guilt or innocence
arises. Again, argument for priestly intervention
is made by an analogy of the army general
and the private soldier. The question is
asked, "Why does not a soldier report for
duty directly to the commanding general?"
The answer is that it is not the duty of a
commanding general to receive individual
reports of private soldiers. No general was
ever appointed to that high office and then
assigned to camp-gate duty, where he might
check up the return of soldiers who might
h^^ve been off on leave. That is the task of

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 109
a sergeant or some other subordinate officer.
But the forgiveness of sins is not a subor
dinate task, it is the divine prerogative of
the Almighty, and for him to assign such a
task to a subordinate would be for him to
surrender his high office of Judge and
Saviour. The analogy utterly fails when it
compares God's exclusive right of forgive
ness with an inferior task to which a high
official could not give himself without
dereliction of duty.
Likewise the analogy fails between a
governor and a tax-coUector for the same
reason. Father Conway asks, "Why does
not a citizen pay his taxes directly to the
governor of his State?" The plain answer
is because the governor is elected to be a
governor and not to be a tax-collector. When
the citizens elect a man as governor they
have not the remotest suspicion that he will
devote his time to collecting taxes. That is
no part of the gubernatorial function. He
will, of course, have general supervision of
the financial transactions of the State, but
the voters expect him to appoint a local

110 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
internal revenue collector and not perform
the duties of that office himself. The Ro
manist does not seem to be able to see that
forgiveness of sins is a superior and not a
subordinate task. The opponents of Jesus
raised at least once a righteous inquiry when
they asked, "Who can forgive sins but God
alone?" And Jesus accepted their chaUenge
when he forgave sins as evidence of his
deity. For him to delegate this exclusively
divine function to a human being would not
be the assignment of a subordinate task to
a subordinate officer, but it would be the
transference of a divine prerogative to a
mere man.
Now the spiritual heritage of Protestant
ism is a firm behef in the direct access of the
soul to God and in forgiveness of sins as an
attribute of God which he cannot delegate
to a man. Consequently, Protestantism has
no place in its creed or theology for a human
intermediary. It opposes spiritual media
tion not only because it beheves it utterly
contrary to the New Testament, but also
because of the practical evils which it

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 111
generates. The whole trend of Christian
progress is away from the idea of an inter
mediary. Superstition is a relic of the theory
of intervention. Omens and signs and doc
trines of devils are fostered by the notion
that there are subordinate intermediaries
between God and human life. Popular
superstitions grow on this root. People
hesitate to look at the moon over the left
shoulder lest it indicate impending evil. The
midnight wail of a house dog is regarded as
an advance messenger announcing the ap
proach of death. Fortune-teUers and the
spiritualistic frauds who "peep and mutter"
are aU of the nature of intermediate forces
between the Source of spiritual power and
the human soul. How grandly these
wretched superstitions are swept away as
soon as we stress the glorious doctrine of
Jesus that God as loving Father comes into
closest and most immediate relation with
the individual. "Even the hairs of your
head are all numbered." "Your Father
knoweth that ye have need of aU these
things." "Lo! I am with you alway." "I

112 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
will not leave you comfortless; I wiU come
to you." "Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid." These sublime
statements of the immediacy and imma
nence of God banish the superstitious f oUy
that God would use the moon or the house
dog or the spirituahstic faker as a medium
of communication between himself and his
loved child. The loving mother will not per
mit a competent and sympathetic nurse to
come between her and her child. How much
less wiU God, whose love passeth the love
of women, tolerate the intervention of
superstitious and erratic media between
himseff and his own!
Not only does superstition follow on the
heels of spiritual intervention, but an un
wholesome secrecy is also developed. Rome
has a standing quarrel with freemasonry,
and at least one ground of its opposition is
that masonry requires secrecy of its mem
bers. But Rome seals the lips of aU her
priests and excuses them in withholding
even knowledge of crime which the state
should possess. Freemasonry is not a con-

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 113
fessional in any sense, and her secrets are
not those of human conduct and law viola
tion such as Rome receives and carefuUy
conceals, but those of mere regulations of an
organization which anyone may know who
becomes a member. The confession of
wrongdoing in the ear of a church which
promises never to divulge, does not lead
toward that openness and moral illumina
tion for which Jesus was always contending.
The Master insisted that truth leads to the
light and that there is nothing secret that
shaU not be made manifest. The secretive
spirit, the disposition to enshroud life in
dark mystery, the hatred of public view and
the love of sheltering dark where shrewd
manipulations may be effected without fear
of pitUess publicity are not productive of a
sound morality nor a healthy spiritual life.
Protestantism seeks the light and disparages
all agencies of darkness. Her insistence on
the right of every man to know, on the right
of every conscience to assert itself and call
to its bar aU processes of life, and its open
profession of aUegiance with Him who is the

114 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
Light of this world and with whom is no
darkness at aU, make it utterly unsym
pathetic with the kind of secrecy which
Roman Catholicism begets and fosters.
Take a concrete case. Gipsy Smith in a
recent evangelistic sermon told of an
awakened conscience with which he was
called to deal. In an after meeting he found
a woman in great spiritual agony. He told
her there must be some wrong which she was
not willing to acknowledge. She said there
was, and then told him that she had been a
false witness in a famous court case wherein
her testimony had ruined the reputation of
an innocent man. The Gipsy told her that
she must make acknowledgment and restitu
tion. She said she could not bear the shame
it would involve. But he said to her, "What
am I to do? You have told me; I cannot
retain a guilty silence and let this innocent
man go on bearing a moral reproach." At
last through prayer and conference she was
brought to a state of willingness and then
to a state of personal peace. The acknowl
edgment was made, the man was pubhcly

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 115
and legally acquitted of blame, and a victory
for righteousness recorded in heaven and on
earth. Now, suppose that confession had
been made to a Roman Catholic priest, what
would have resulted? That woman, while
she might have suffered penance and re
ceived at length annoimcement of Rome's
forgiveness, might still have left that moral
stigma on the innocent man and the weight
of injustice would have rested on the courts
and the community. The priest could never
have assumed the high level of moral recti
tude and have declared, as did the Gipsy,
"I cannot remain sUent and share your
guUty secret." It is not necessary to say
that the moral progress of the world de
mands that everywhere the attitude of the
Gipsy prevail and that the course officially
required of the priest makes for every kind
of retrogression. This heritage of light and
moral rectitude which despises that moral
shielding which begets moral weaklings,
must be maintained and promoted if we are
ever to rid the world of its social, commer
cial, industrial, pohtical, and religious

116 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
wrongs and pave a path of spiritual sunlight
for Him who is the brightness of his
Father's glory.
We close this series of discourses with an
emphasis of the constructive note which we
have tried to sound all through. We can
only drive out darkness with light and only
truthful affirmations can drive out noisome
negations. Over against Rome's elaborate
system of intervention we desire to place in
clear light the glorious directness of an
experimentally authenticated gospel. Each
Roman Catholic institution or sacrament
founded on the principle of spiritual media
tion has its counterpart in Protestantism
founded on the principle of d'ree?t approach
to God. Look at these. y
Here is the confessional. Many li^omanists
find spiritual comfort therein which is not
to be condemned, but over against the con
fessional and whatever peace it may bring
we place the rich experience of justification
by faith through direct access to God by
Jesus Christ, which Protestantism has pro
claimed and experienced through the cen-

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 117
turies. Charles Wesley came to justifying
faith when he came to know Christ through
full surrender of himself directly to the
Saviour and went out with a new song in his
heart which God had directly placed there
and which prompted him to half a century
of singing which has charmed the hearts of
miUions since his day. The hymnody of the
confessional is certainly not large, to say
the least. In other words, men have not
found so rich and joyous a religious expe
rience through confession to an earthly
priest, obedience to his demands for pen
ance, and the reception of his forgiving
pronouncement, "I absolve thee," as they
have through direct approach to God and
simple faith in Jesus Christ the great high
priest. The exaggerated figures which
Charles Wesley uses in a stanza said to have
been written to describe his joy in forgiveness
through justifying faith stand out in contrast
with the almost stoical reception of forgive
ness through the confessional. Wesley sings :
"Fully justified I, I rode on the sky.
Nor envied Elijah his seat.

118 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
My soul mounted higher than a chariot of fire,
The moon, it was under my feet."
Or take the doctrine of penance. Protes
tantism knows nothing of penance chiefly
because it rejects the artificial view of good
works which Rome maintains. We never
set men to doing things simply to test their
sincerity, and therefore we have no place
for pilgrimages and artfficial mortffications
of the flesh which have no value in them
selves. We believe that worthy conduct is
so valuable and there is so little time for the
doing of aU that should be done, that we
never ask men to perform the intrinsically
useless tasks of penance. We beheve that
genuine faith in Jesus which brings a man
to immediate relation with his Lord will
stimulate in him a desire to imitate his
Master in going about doing good. We are
concerned with the spirit in which a man
does good deeds. We count it of little worth
for him to give and toil and suffer simply
that he may earn the approval of the
church, if in his soul there be no moving
impulse to feUowship with his loving Lord

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 119
in the supreme task of building his king
dom. We therefore tend to promote a more
joyous practice of the art of Christian hving.
Christian hving comes to be a joyous pro
cedure. The Protestant learns not only to
sing with Paul and Silas when in the agonies
of persecution, but he cultivates the more
natural joy which comes from viewing all
life as a vast field of service wherein he
walks in personal and immediate feUowship
with his Master day by day as a colaborer
with God.
The Bible thus becomes to the Protestant
a handbook of life to which he goes each day,
not as to a catechism to learn stiff doctrines,
but as to a fountain from which he may take
refreshing draughts of the water of life. The
Bible is a devotional book to him. He com
mits a passage to memory, not that he may
recite it in a confirmation class or a con
fessional, but that he may "meditate on it
day and night" for the strengthening of his
new life in Christ which came when he be
came a new creature through justifying
faith. Hence he must have a copy of the

120 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
Bible for himself. He must read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest its truth; and
while he does not despise the instruction
which the church and the Bible class may
give, yet that instruction will be of little
value unless he be a constant and devo
tional reader of the Book. Now, while
Roman Catholics in this country are per
mitted to read the Bible, it is no use denying
that the personal perusal of the Book has
never been encouraged by Rome, and in
multitudes of instances has been positively
prohibited. There is nothing in aU Roman
ism corresponding to the British or the
American Bible Society, and the activities
of these agencies for the encouragement of
individual reading of the Scriptures is de
cidedly opposed by the Roman Catholic
Church. Protestantism offers the open
Bible, without note or comment, and has
been enabled to raise up a church of Bible
readers. Its saints are not found handling a
cross nor counting beads, but reading and
meditating upon the inspired Word of God
untU their experience voices itself in the

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 121
language of Holy Writ, "O how love I thy
law! . . . Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,
and a light unto my path."
Nor has Protestantism need of the sacra
ment of extreme unction. This is not simply
a means of spiritual comfort to the dying,
it is an insistence on the need of the priestly
intermediary for the soul's triumphant exit
from this world. The Protestant minister
goes also to the deathbed, but he goes only
to pray for and with the dying and help
them to find Christ as an immediate Pres
ence to the soul. If they have already found
him, he need only administer spiritual com
fort, and in any case the Protestant pastor
regards the ministrations at the deathbed of
far less value than those bestowed in health
when the mind is unclouded by the confu
sion of physical break-down. The priest is
more eager for deathbed ministration than
the Protestant, not because more sym
pathetic, but because of the demands of his
theory. That theory insists that serious
spiritual loss will ensue to saint as well as
sinner unless the priest can intervene be-

122 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
tween that soul and God just before it
passes into eternity. The Protestant is
eager that every man shall know Christ
personally before that hour, and then he
needs no one but his Divine Redeemer as
the night of death draws nigh.
Protestantism gives to the world its
triumphant deathbeds, not because of any
priestly ministrations, but because it leads its
people into a conscious, personal acquaint
ance with Him who has abolished death
and brought life and immortality to light
through the gospel. It teaches its men to so
live that when death draws nigh they may
have direct access to the Great High Priest
whether or not there be any earthly friend
near by to pray. It teaches them to sing:
"Thy stroke, O death, terror of the world, I hail;
'Twill snap my bonds and set me free.
Free to wing the vasty realms of being.
Inbreathe the freshest air of life
And bask me in the sunlight of eternal day."
Its aU-sufficiency for hfe as well as death is
Jesus, whom the soul may reach directly

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 123
and immediately. Thus Charles Wesley
sings as he approaches the dark valley:
"In age and feebleness extreme,
Who shall a helpless worm redeem?
Jesus, my only joy thou art,
Strength of my failing flesh and heart.
O let me catch a smile from thee
And drop into eternity."
Thus, discarding all necessity for an inter
vening priest at death. Protestantism cer
tainly has no need for any such after pas
sage into the other world. Purgatory is
the attempt of the Roman Church to hold
the souls of men in its power after they
have left this world. It is perhaps the
least reasonable of aU Rome's doctrines.
To suppose that God defers all direct
dealing with the souls of men, even after
they have passed into the other world, until
a human priest has adjusted certain trans
actions with the friends of the departed
on this side the grave would be absurd if
it were not so serious. How contradictory
that a soul passed into God's unseen world
must await a message which God is sup-

124 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
posed to send back to an earthly priest
before it can come to direct dealings with
the Saviour! If there should be such a
place as purgatory, surely God would be
nearer to it than a priest living on this
earth. What reason can justify behef in
the theory that God, to whom the soul has
gone, cannot deal with that soul directly
and dispose of his case until human priests
on this side have received word from God,
acted in his stead and sent word back again
to that soul in the unseen ? Nothing but the
exigencies of a theory, or the purpose to
retain control over men in this life by pre
tending to keep that hold even after death,
could ever justify reasonable men in believ
ing such a preposterous and contradictory
doctrine. How far removed is the New
Testament conception! There we read,
"Absent from the body, present with the
Lord"; "To-day shalt thou be with me in
paradise" — ^not purgatory. Surely, that
dying thief had no human intermediary.
Only the Saviour and himself were in that
transaction, and though he was deep dyed

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 125
in sin the Master's forgiveness and infusion
of new life sufficed to save him, and there is
not the remotest suggestion of purgatorial
purging but immediate entrance into par
adise. It is this view of death which
Protestantism maintains. It is this saving
triumph over the fear of death which
Protestantism has been instrumental in
promoting. Thus Wesley, the Protestant,
says as he draws near the close of life, "The
best of all is, God is with us." Thus Cook-
man, the Protestant, sings as the sun goes
down, "Sweeping through the gates, washed
in the blood of the Lamb." Thus Moody,
the Protestant, rephes when asked how it is
with him in the hour of death, "Earth is
receding, heaven is opening; God is calling,
I am going home." These men needed no
extreme unction, they needed no purgatory;
they had done no penance, but their lives
had blossomed with good deeds and their
only confessional was the place of prayer
where they did "acknowledge and bewail
their manifold sins and wickedness" directly
to Him who is able to save unto the utter-

126 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
most all that come unto God by him, for
they had found the one Mediator between
God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.
The need of Protestantism to-day is that
she shall understand the importance to the
world of her own promotion and that she
shaU openly defend herself. It is far easier
to criticize Protestantism than it is to
criticize Romanism. The Roman Church
severely rebukes all her critics. For this
reason she has scarcely any within her own
ranks, and she succeeds in silencing many
critics without. As a consequence, many of
the critics of the Roman system are those
whose courage has degenerated into a kind
of rabid rashness, and as they have but little
reputation for intellectual poise to lose, they
say many things which a more reputable
but equally strong antagonist of Rome
would hesitate to utter. Many a man, there
fore, who sees the folly and un-Americanism
of the Roman system, hesitates to speak be
cause he prizes so highly his own reputation
for moral sanity and brotherliness. Not
only so, but Protestantism has a genius for

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 127
independent criticism and finds great satis
faction in pointing out her own faults. While
this is wholesome, it may lead us to excess.
Like any other good it is subject to per
version. Consequently the deficiencies of
Protestantism receive excessive advertising
while her fundamental excellencies are often
obscured. Just reflect on the condemnation
which Protestantism received at the hand
of BUly Sunday. Much of the criticism of
individuals and churches was deserved, but
the condemnation as a whole was a wild
exaggeration. The critic himself was a loyal
Protestant, and if he had once trained his
guns of fiery invective on the faults of
Romanism, her ecclesiastical structure
would have looked like the cathedral at
Rheims after its desecration. But he did not
do so. It was often remarked that the
Roman Cathohc Church was the only thing
he did not criticize. His ministry in New
York city was received by multitudes of
Romanists. They, of course, heard his ring
ing gospel messages, but they also heard his
condemnations of Protestant ministers and

128 OUR PROTEiSTANT HERITAGE
church members, and without a word of
suggestion that Rome was equally incon
sistent, they could only conclude that
Protestantism was very much of a failure
to say the least. Lesser evangelists have
pursued the same course. Nearly all mag
azine articles and public addresses breathe
the free air of Protestant inquiry and criti
cism and the total impression left on Roman
Catholics who never hear their own church
criticized within its own ranks is that
Protestantism is a broken reed. Moreover,
there has been a fatuous notion in the minds
of many popular speakers and writers that
the best way to cure Rome's wrongs is to
conciliate her, and Protestant ministers
have often gone out of their way to laud
Romanism and set her up as an example to
Protestant churches. But Rome only makes
these mistaken brethren her dupes. She
publishes their conciliating remarks in her
attacks on Protestantism and by implica
tion holds these men up to ridicule for stay
ing in a church which is so far below the
heights which Romanism has reached! It

THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE 129
is futile to try to conciliate Rome, just as it
is useless and wicked to indulge in vitupera
tion and slander. What is needed is that we
shall speak the truth with sanity and with
soberness, that we forsake the temporizing
policy of timidity whereby we have con
demned Protestantism with faint praise;
that we honestly acknowledge the indebted
ness of American freedom of mind, of con
science and of religion to Protestantism and
soberly see the inherent hostility of official
Romanism to such liberty; that we cease
extenuating Rome's low ideals of life on the
ground that she reaches thereby the rougher
elements of society and that we plant our
feet firmly on the truth that it takes the
highest to reaUy reach the lowest; that we
recognize the endeavor of Protestantism to
build the kingdom of God on earth, in social,
industrial, and political realms, while we see
that Rome is chiefly occupied with buUding
her own institution and getting men into
another world, and that, finally, while we
shall cease to "see red" whenever Romanism
is mentioned, we shaU come to see that

130 OUR PROTESTANT HERITAGE
Protestantism is the only form of Chris
tianity which enables us to "see white" as
we search among the dark problems of the
day for genuine solution.
We have no desire to discount whatever
is good in Romanism. Her behef in the deity
of Jesus, the inspiration of the Scriptures,
and the atoning work of the Saviour is to
be commended. We differ in the interpre
tations of these truths. We have tried in
this series to build rather than to puU down,
and we have sought in our condemnation of
what we feel to be wrong to follow the
poet's vision of the "waster" and the
"builder," praying the Great Head of the
church that soon the whole dream may
come to be true —
"I look, aside the mist has rolled.
The waster seems the builder too;
Upspringing from the ruined old
I see the new!
" 'Twas but the ruin of the bad.
The wasting of the wrong and ill;
Whate'er of good the old time had,
Is living still."

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 08837 7537