As Christ is the central object of knowledge in Christian experience, it follows that Christians recognize him as the primary author of Scripture. They find him speaking to them in the Bible, as in no other book. It becomes to them the word of God, given by divine inspiration, and able to make them wise unto salvation. From the deity and supremacy of Christ they proceed to faith in the unity, the sufficiency, and the authority of Scripture, and this determines their method of investigation. From the person of Christ to the word of Christ is a process often unconscious, but one better than any process of formal logic. Knowing their divine Saviour, they know the divinity of his word. His presence in human history and in the hearts of the righteous has givenunityto his continuousrevelation. The Scripture "cannot be broken," or interpreted as a promiscuous congeries of separate bits; for a divine intelligence and life throb through the whole collection. Like railway coupons, its texts are "not good if detached." We must interpret each text by its context, each part by the whole, the preparation of salvation by the fulfilment, and all the diverse contents by him who weaves all together, even Christ, the end of the law, to whom all the preliminaries point. This method gives room for the most thorough investigation of the times and ways of revelation, for recognizing the imperfection of beginnings and the variety of the product. The Bible is a gradually accumulated literature, Hebraic in form, but universal in spirit. The preexistent Christ has made all this literature one, by the influence in the sacred writers of his omnipresent Spirit. If the "historical method" would begin with this postulate of a unifying Christ, its method would be more safe and its results more sure.
Faith in an eternal and omnipresent Christ guarantees also thesufficiencyof Scripture. Here, however, there is an obvious limitation. Scripture is not sufficient for all the kinds and purposes of human science. It will not tell us the configuration of the hinder side of the moon, nor reveal the future uses of electricity. It is not with such things that Scripture deals. But in religious matters, such as our relation to God and salvation, it is sufficient as a rule of faith and practice. We may find in it all needful models and helps in the divine life, as well as all needful directions about the way to begin it. The church of Christ has alwaysfound in the Bible a safe guide for her polity and conduct, and civil government has prospered when the principles of Scripture were followed by the powers that ruled the State. Because the Christian believes the Bible to be the product of men inspired by Christ, he can send it out by the million copies as equal to the moral and spiritual needs of the world.
And because Christ is, through his imperfect agents, the real author of Scripture, we believe in its absoluteauthority. When rightly interpreted, however. It will never do to treat poetry as if it were prose, or drama as if it were history, or allegory as if it were fact. Christ can use, and he has used, all the common methods of literary composition, and he expects us to use common sense in dealing with them. But out of the whole can be evolved a consistent doctrine and an authoritative law. The one and only way of salvation is plainly that of faith in God's provision of pardon and life in Christ. In spite of many divergences, the great body of Christians throughout the ages have agreed in their recognition of the personality and the deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; of the incarnation and the atonement of Christ; of his resurrection and his lordship; of his omnipresence with his people even to the end of the world. They have expressed this agreement in the Apostles' Creed and in the hymnology of the church. But the great body of instructed Christians also believe in Christ as the Revealer of God in nature and in history; as "the Light that lighteth every man" in conscience and tradition; and as the righteous Judge who accepts in every nation those who fear God andwork righteousness, casting themselves as sinners upon the divine mercy even though they do not yet know that this divine mercy is only another name for Christ. The Bible, as a whole and when rightly interpreted, is absolute authority, because it is the word of Christ; and Christ holds each of us, as individuals, to the duty and the privilege of interpreting the Bible for himself.
It seems to me plain that this method of interpreting Scripture in the light of the Christian's experience of Christ, is not "the historical method," as it is usually employed. This latter method seems to ignore the relation of Scripture to Christ, and to proceed in its investigations as if there were no preexistent Christ to furnish its principle. It insists upon treating Scripture as it would treat any unreligious or heathen literature, and with no relation to its divine authorship. It sees in Scripture only a promiscuous collection of disjointed documents, with no living tie to bind them together, and no significance beyond that of the time in which they were written. It would treat the Bible as a man-made book, or rather, as a man-made series of books, regardless of the fact that the plural "biblia," which once represented the thought of the church, has, under the influence of the divine Spirit, become "biblion" or Bible, a singular, and a proof that Christian consciousness has not been satisfied with rationalistic explanations, but has followed its natural impulses by attributing unity to the word of Christ its Saviour. The separate "words" have been felt to constitute the one "word of God," an organic whole, which fitly represents the eternal "Word," of whom it is the voice and expression. Scripture isnot a congeries of earth-born fragments, but an organism, pulsating with divine life. The "historical method" of which I speak can never find that life, because it works only on the physical and horizontal plane, ignoring the light which comes deductively from above, and also the darkening and blinding influences which often operate unconsciously from below.
The "historical method" of Scripture interpretation, as it is often employed, ends without Christ, because it begins without him. One of its fundamental principles is that each passage of Scripture is to be interpreted solely in the light of the knowledge and intent of the person who wrote it. The One Hundred and Tenth Psalm, for example, can have no reference to Christ, because the writer knew no other than the Jewish king whose accession and whose power he anticipates. The Psalm reads, "Jehovah said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." The so-called historical critics would make any interpretation of this passage as a designed prophecy of Christ to be an unwarranted accommodation of it to a meaning which it did not originally bear, and the conclusion is that we are wrong in citing these words as an Old Testament assertion of Christ's deity. But, unfortunately for this method of interpretation, we have, in the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark, our Lord's own reference of this passage, not simply to some Jewish ruler of olden time, but to the coming Messiah, and since he was himself the Messiah, he refers it by implication to himself. He does not deny, but rather grants, a primary reference of the psalm to a son of David, for David was a king, and his son would be a king. But he also sees in the psalm a prophecy that this son of David wouldbe a king whom David would call Lord. His searching examination propounds to the unbelieving Jews the question, "What think ye of the Christ? whose son is he?" And they say, "The Son of David." He answers them by asking, "How then doth David, in the Spirit, call him Lord?" In other words, inspiration declares Messiah to be a King of kings, and a Lord of lords. Since the whole discussion is one with regard to the nature and claims of the Messiah, and since the Messiah is not a mere man like David, but is seated on the throne with Jehovah and is David's Lord, Christ's answer is an assertion of his own deity. His answer antedates, even if it did not suggest, Paul's later description of Christ, as "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." But the higher critics differ in opinion from the Lord Jesus. They extricate themselves from their difficulty by suggesting that Jesus, like other men, was subject to the errors of his time. And so, not only Christ's knowledge of Scripture and his authority as its interpreter are denied, but also his knowledge of his own nature and place in the universe. If his knowledge of things so essential be denied, what trust can we place in any other of his utterances? To those who reason in this way, Christ cannot possibly be divine—he is only a fallible man, self-deceived, and so, deceiving others. The fault of the critics lies in their presupposition. They have begun wrongly, by leaving out the primary fact in the subject they investigate, namely, that the preincarnate Christ was the author and inspirer of the Scripture which he afterward interpreted. He usedhuman agents, with their natural language and surroundings, as his instruments, but he could, on the way to Emmaus, "beginning from Moses and all the prophets," interpret to those humble believers "in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Scripture can have, and it does have, two authors, man and God, the writer and Christ; and to ignore Christ in the evolution of the Bible is to miss its chief meaning, to teach falsehood instead of truth, and, consciously or unconsciously, to deny Christ's deity.
Cannot a document have more than one author? What are the facts in other realms of art? In painting, did not Landseer get Millais to paint the human figure into the picture of his dogs? In literature, is there any more acknowledged fact than that Erckmann-Chatrian's battle-stories were the work of two writers, and not of one? The work of a single author may have two separate meanings, for Dante declares that his Divine Comedy has one meaning that is personal, and another meaning that is universal. Our extreme critics are as poor students of literature as they are of life. Their narrowness of interpretation is due to a narrowness of experience. If they knew Christ better, they would find in the Twenty-third Psalm alone enough proof to upset their theory. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," is an utterance inexplicable by merely human authorship. To suppose that even a king of Israel who had been a shepherd-boy could have written this psalm without divine inspiration, in a day when all lands but little Palestine were wrapt in a pall of heathen darkness, is to suppose that religion can exist and flourish without a God.
"The testimony of Jesus," says the book of Revelation, "is the spirit of prophecy." It was the recognition of constant references to Christ in the Old Testament, that enabled the apostles to convince and convert the unbelieving Jews. The absence of this recognition is the secret of all the minimizing of Christ's attributes which is so rife in our day. Do men believe in Christ's deity who ignore his promise to be with them to the end of the world, and who refuse to address him in prayer? Could one of these modern interpreters have taken the place of Philip, when he met the Ethiopian eunuch? That dignitary had been reading the prophecy of Isaiah, "He was led as a lamb to the slaughter." "Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other?" "And Philip opened his mouth, and preached unto himJesus." Our modern critics call this an unwarranted interpretation, because Isaiah had no knowledge of Christ. And yet, John tells us that "Isaiah saw his glory, and spake of him." The critics contradict John again, when they say that we must put no meaning into Isaiah's words but that of his own time. His great prophecy of a suffering Messiah, they say, had reference only to Jehoiachin, the captive king of Judah, or to the whole Jewish nation as the afflicted people of God. Philip and the critics are evidently at variance. If we accept their method, we shall lose all reference in the Old Testament to the atonement of Christ, and all proof that the sacrifice on Calvary was that of "the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world." Reverse the process, and we can still say,
The Holy, meek, unspotted Lamb,Who from the Father's bosom cameFor me and for my sins to atone,Him for my Lord and God I own.
The Holy, meek, unspotted Lamb,Who from the Father's bosom cameFor me and for my sins to atone,Him for my Lord and God I own.
It is needless to multiply instances of this failure to interpret the Old Testament aright. Let me call attention to the effect of this method upon the interpretation of the New Testament, for the authority of the New Testament is also undermined. The system of typical interpretation, which sees in Christ the reality prefigured in Old Testament shadows, is discredited as unscientific. The whole Epistle to the Hebrews is thrown out, as a poetical clothing of "the man of Nazareth" with the fading glories of an outworn worship. The idea that the high priest of old who entered the Holy of Holies once a year not without blood, and the whole Jewish system of which this formed the central feature, were a divinely ordered prefiguration of Christ's atoning sacrifice for the sins of men—this idea is called a mere human addition to historical truth. Christ is no longer our great High Priest. His priesthood is mere metaphor, without divine warrant or authority. He is not our Prophet, nor our King, for his prophecies are not fulfilled, and his kingdom is only that of a moral teacher and example. And all this, in spite of the fact that the Epistle to the Hebrews bears upon its front the declaration that "God, who in past times spoke to the fathers through the prophets, has in these last days spoken through his Son," whom this same Epistle then proceeds to describe as the effulgence of God's glory and the very image of his substance, the Creator,Upholder, and Redeemer of the world, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.
I do not undervalue the historical method, when it is kept free from this agnostic presupposition that only man is the author of Scripture. This method has given us some information as to the authorship of the sacred books, and it has in some degree helped in their interpretation. I am free to acknowledge my own obligation to it. I grant the composite documentary view of the Pentateuch and of its age-long days of creation, while I still hold to its substantially Mosaic authorship. I say this, however, with deference, for a university president of note, when asked about the stories of Cain and Abel, replied that no such persons in all probability ever lived, but that the account was still valuable, since it taught the great moral lesson that it is highly improper for a man to murder his brother! I grant that there may be more than one Isaiah, while yet I see in the later Isaiah a continuance of the divine revelation given through the earlier. Any honest Christian, I would say, has the right to interpret Jonah and Daniel as allegories, rather than as histories. I can look upon the book of Job as a drama, while I still assert that Job was a historical character. I can see in the Song of Solomon the celebration of a pure human love, while at the same time I claim that the Song had divinely injected into it the meaning that union with Christ is the goal and climax of all human passion. In short, I take the historical method as my servant and not my master; as partially but not wholly revealing the truth; as showing me, not how man made the Scripture for himself,but how God made the Scripture through the imperfect agency of man. So I findunityin the Scriptures, because they are the work of the omnipresent and omniscient Christ: I findsufficiencyin the Scriptures, because they satisfy every religious need of the individual and of the church; I findauthorityin the Scriptures, because, though coming through man, they are, when taken together and rightly interpreted, the veritable word of God. I denounce the historical method, only when it claims to be the solely valid method of reaching truth, and so, leaves out the primary agency and determining influence of Christ.
What sort of systematic theology is left us, when the perverted historical method is made the only clue to the labyrinth of Scripture? There is but one answer: No such thing as systematic theology is possible. Science is knowledge, and to have a system you must have unified knowledge. The historical method so called can see no unity in Scripture, because it does not carry with it the primary knowledge of Christ. It simply applies in its investigations the principles of physical science. Physical science begins with the outward and visible, not with the inward and spiritual, with matter and not with mind. Laplace swept the heavens with his telescope, but he said that he nowhere found a God. He might just as well have swept his kitchen with a broom, and then complained that he could not find God there. God is not stars, nor dust. God is spirit, and he is not to be apprehended by the senses. Laplace should have taken man's conscience and will for his starting-point. And just as physical science can find no God in the universe by the useof the forceps and the microscope, so this historical method can find no Christ in the Scriptures, because it looks there for only human agency. The result is that it finds only a collection of seemingly contradictory fragments, with no divine Spirit to harmonize them and bind them together. Its method is purely inductive, whereas its induction should always be guided by a knowledge of Christ, gained before investigation begins, and furnishing the basis for a deductive process as well. Differentiation and not harmonization is its rule, and this makes its criticism destructive rather than constructive. Many a passage is set aside, because it will not fit in with a skeptical interpretation. Christ's own words with regard to his being "a ransom for many," and with regard to his having "all power committed to him in heaven and in earth," are held to be later words attributed to him by his followers. The whole New Testament story comes to be regarded as a mythical growth, like that which gradually placed haloes about the heads of the apostles. The Gospel of John is not accepted as historical, but is said to be a work of the second century. Jesus, it is said, never himself claimed to be the Messiah, since it is only John who reports his saying to the woman of Samaria, "I that speak unto thee am he." Paul is set aside, as being the author of a rabbinical theology which has no claim upon us; and that, in spite of Christ's own declaration that there were many things which he could not teach while he was here in the flesh, but which he would teach, by his Spirit, after his resurrection, and ascension.
Prof. Kirsopp Lake, in a recent address before theHarvard Divinity School, deprecated the use of the term "theology." "Theology," he said, "presupposes divine revelation, which we do not accept." He proposed the term "philosophy," as expressive of the aim of the Unitarian school. This is honest and plain. What shall we say of those who speak of the "new emphasis" needed in modern theology, when they really mean that the preaching of the old doctrines of sin and salvation must give place to "another gospel" of cooperative Christian work? From their neglect to put any further emphasis upon "the faith once for all delivered to the saints," we can only infer that, for their structure of doctrine, no other foundation than philosophy is needed, and that they, like the Unitarians, no longer accept the fact of a divine revelation. "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ," and to lay greater emphasis upon the fruits of Christianity than upon its roots, is to insult Christ, and ultimately to make Christianity itself only one of many earth-born religions, powerless like them either to save the individual soul or to redeem society. Professor Lake is quite right: If there is no divine revelation, there can be, not only no systematic theology, but no theology at all.
What is the effect of this method upon our theological seminaries? It is to deprive the gospel message of all definiteness, and to make professors and students disseminators of doubts. Many a professor has found teaching preferable to preaching, because he lacked the initial Christian experience which gives to preaching its certainty and power. He chooses the line of least resistance, and becomes in the theologicalseminary a blind leader of the blind. Having no system of truth to teach, he becomes a mere lecturer on the history of doctrine. Having no key in Christ to the unity of Scripture, he becomes a critic of what he is pleased to call its fragments, that is, the dissector of a cadaver. Ask him if he believes in the preexistence, deity, virgin birth, miracles, atoning death, physical resurrection, omnipresence, and omnipotence of Christ, and he denies your right to require of him any statement of his own beliefs. He does not conceive it to be his duty to furnish his students with any fixed conclusions as to doctrine but only to aid them in coming to conclusions for themselves. The apostle Paul was not so reticent. He was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, but rather gloried in it. He even pronounced his anathema upon any who taught other doctrine. It is no wonder that our modern critics cry, "Back to Christ," for this means, "Away from Paul." The result of such teaching in our seminaries is that the student, unless he has had a Pauline experience before he came, has all his early conceptions of Scripture and of Christian doctrine weakened, has no longer any positive message to deliver, loses the ardor of his love for Christ, and at his graduation leaves the seminary, not to become preacher or pastor as he had once hoped, but to sow his doubts broadcast, as teacher in some college, as editor of some religious journal, as secretary of some Young Men's Christian Association, or as agent of some mutual life insurance company. This method of interpretation switches off upon some side-track of social service many a young man who otherwise would be a heroic preacher of theeverlasting gospel. The theological seminaries of almost all our denominations are becoming so infected with this grievous error, that they are not so much organs of Christ, as they are organs of Antichrist. This accounts for the rise, all over the land, of Bible schools, to take the place of the seminaries. The evil is coming in like a flood, and the Spirit of the Lord will surely raise up a standard against it. But oh the pity! that money given by godly men to provide preachers of the gospel should be devoted to undermining the Christian cause!
What is the effect of this method of interpretation upon the churches of our denomination? It is to cut the tap-root of their strength, and to imperil their very existence. Baptist churches are founded upon Scripture. Their doctrine of regenerate church-membership, and of church ordinances as belonging only to believers, presupposes an authoritative rule of faith and practice in the New Testament. In controversy with other denominations we have always appealed "to the law and to the testimony," and we have declared that, if other faiths "speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them." We have held that the authority of Scripture is not an arbitrary authority, but that the ordinances have so much of meaning that to change their form is to destroy them altogether. We stand for immersion as the only real baptism, not because much water is better than little water, but because baptism is the symbol of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, and the symbol also of our spiritual death, burial, and resurrection with him. When we are "buried with him inbaptism," we show forth his death, just as we show forth his death in the Lord's Supper. To change the form of the Lord's Supper so as to leave out all reference to the breaking of Christ's body and the shedding of his blood, would be to break down one great visible monument and testimony to Christ's atoning death, and to destroy the Lord's Supper itself. And to change the form of baptism so as to leave out its symbolism of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, is to break down another great visible monument and testimony to Christ's essential work, and to destroy the ordinance of baptism. Only the surrender of belief in the authority of Scripture, and a consequent ignoring of the meaning of baptism can explain the proposal to give us our requisition of immersion. The weakness of our denomination in such cities as New York results from the acceptance of the method of Scripture interpretation which I have been criticizing. We are losing our faith in the Bible, and our determination to stand for its teachings. We are introducing into our ministry men who either never knew the Lord, or who have lost their faith in him and their love for him. The unbelief in our seminary teaching is like a blinding mist which is slowly settling down upon our churches, and is gradually abolishing, not only all definite views of Christian doctrine, but also all conviction of duty to "contend earnestly for the faith" of our fathers. So we are giving up our polity, to please and to join other denominations. If this were only a lapse in denominationalism, we might call it a mere change in our ways of expressing faith. But it is a far more radical evil. It is apostasy from Christ and revoltagainst his government. It is refusal to rally to Christ's colors in the great conflict with error and sin. We are ceasing to be evangelistic as well as evangelical, and if this downward progress continues, we shall in due time cease to exist. This is the fate of Unitarianism to-day. We Baptists must reform, or die.
What is the effect of this method of interpretation upon missions? I have just come from an extensive tour in mission fields. I have visited missionaries of several denominations. I have found those missions most successful which have held to the old gospel and to the polity of the New Testament. But I have found a growing tendency to depend upon education, rather than upon evangelism. What would Peter have said on the day of Pentecost, if you had advised him not to incur the wrath of the Jews by his preaching, but to establish schools, and to trust to the gradual enlightenment of the Jewish nation by means of literature? He might have replied that our Lord made it his first duty to "make disciples," and only afterwards to "teach them to observe all things which he had commanded." Christian schools and Christian teaching are necessary in their place, but they are second, not first. Our lack at home of the right interpretation of Scripture, and our fading knowledge in experience of the presence and power of Christ, have gone from us round the world. Some boards are sending out as missionaries young men who lack definite views of doctrine. These young men, having nothing positive to preach, choose rather to teach in the English language, in schools where English is spoken, rather than preach in the native languagewhich requires a lifetime of study. When they teach, they cannot help revealing their mental poverty, and disturbing the simple faith of their pupils. Having no certainty themselves, they can inspire no certainty in others, for "if the trumpet gives no certain sound, who will arm himself for the battle?" These unprepared and inefficient teachers may become themselves converted through their very sense of weakness in presence of the towering systems of idolatry and superstition around them. But if they are not so converted, they will handicap the mission and paralyze its influence. Some of our best missionaries have said to me, "The Lord deliver us from such helpers!" No man has a right to go, and no board has a right to send, as a missionary, one who has not had such a personal experience of Christ as will enable him to stand against this unscientific and unchristian method of Scripture interpretation.
This so-called "historical method" has effects on the missionary cause at home, as well as in the lands far away. "How shall they preach, except they be sent?" The sending of missionaries is dependent upon the zeal and liberality of the churches in our land. But how can one who is not sure that Jesus ever uttered the words of the Great Commission urge the churches to fulfil that command of Christ? How can one who has never felt his own need of an atonement adjure his brethren, by Christ's death for their sins, not to let the heathen perish? How can one who has had no experience of Christ as a present and divine Saviour, have power to stand against the rationalism and apathy of the church? This methodof Scripture interpretation makes evangelism an enterprise of fanatics not sufficiently educated to know that Buddha and Confucius were teachers of truth long before the time of Christ. Can we more surely dry up the sources of missionary contributions, than by yielding to the pernicious influence of this way of treating Scripture? We have gone far already in the wrong direction. Our churches are honeycombed with doubt and with indifference. The preaching of the old gospel of sin and salvation seems almost a thing of the past. People have itching ears that will not endure sound doctrine. The dynamic of missions is love for Christ, who died to save us from the guilt and power of sin. Modern criticism has to a large extent nullified this dynamic, and if the authority of Scripture is yet further weakened, we may look for complete collapse in our supplies both of men and of money. In fact, the faith and the gifts of many converts from among the heathen already so far exceed the average faith and gifts of our churches at home, that the time may come when Burma and the Congo may have to send missionaries to us, as we are now sending missionaries to the land where the seven churches of Asia once flourished.
Whence has come this so-called "historical method" of interpreting Scripture? I answer: It was "made in Germany." German scholarship for a century past has been working almost exclusively on the horizontal plane, and has been ignoring the light that comes from above. The theology of Great Britain and of America has been profoundly affected by the application of its evolutionary and skeptical principles. In Germanyitself the honesty of every Scripture writer has been questioned, and every sacred document has been torn into bits. When the all-pervading presence and influence of Christ in the Bible is lost sight of, and its separate fragments are examined to discover their meaning, there is no guide but the theory of evolution; and evolution, instead of being the ordinary method of a personal God, is itself personified and made the only power in the universe. The regularities of nature, it is thought, leave no room for miracle. There is no divine Will that can work down upon nature in unique acts, such as incarnation and resurrection. A pantheistic Force is the only ruler, and whatever is, is right. Goethe led the way in this pagan philosophy, and German universities have been full of it ever since. It is painful to see how German theologians and ministers have been won over to the ethics of brute force and the practical, deification of mere might in human affairs. The New Testament has been interpreted as justifying implicit obedience to "the powers that be," even when they turn the Kaiser into a military despot and his people into unresisting and deluded slaves. An exaggerated nationalism has taken the place of human solidarity, and a selfish domination of the world has become the goal of national ambition. All the atrocities of this war might have been spared us, if the nations of which Germany is the most conspicuous offender had derived their ethics and their practice from the divine love which rules above, rather than from the seeming necessity of competing with the nations around them. A new interpretation of Scripture is needed to set the world right. But asGermany will never be convinced that the worship of Force is vain, until she sees herself plunged in defeat and ruin, so the advocates of this so-called historical method will never make deduction a primary part of their procedure, and will never take the eternal Christ as their key to Scripture interpretation, until Christ himself shall by a second spiritual advent enter into their hearts and dissipate their doubts, as he did when he showed himself to Paul on the way to Damascus.
I have tried to point out the inherent error of the method to which I have been objecting, and to show its ill effects upon systematic theology, upon our theological seminaries, upon our Baptist churches, and upon our missionary work abroad and at home. I have intimated that the influence of this perverse treatment of Holy Writ may be seen even in the present internecine conflict in which the professedly Christian nations are engaged. I shall very naturally be asked what remedy I propose for so deep-seated and widespread an evil. I can only answer that I see no permanent cure but the second coming of Christ. But do not misunderstand me. I am no premillennarian of the ordinary sort. Indeed, I am as much a post-millennialist, as I am a premillennialist. I believe that both interpretations of prophecy have their rights, and, believing also as I do that Scripture is a unity and that its seeming contradictions can be harmonized, I hold that Christ's spiritual coming precedes the millennium, but that his visible and literal coming follows the millennium. I therefore look for such a spiritual coming into the hearts of his people, as shall renew their faith, fulfil their joy, and answer to the predictionof "the rapture of the saints." In other words, I look for a mighty revival of religion, which will set the churches on their old foundation, and endow them with power to subdue the world. This war seems to me God's second great demonstration of man's inability to save himself, and his need of divine power to save him. As the ancient world and its history were God's demonstration of human sin, and of man's need of Christ's first advent, so this war is God's proof that science and philosophy, literature and commerce, are not sufficient for man's needs, and that Christ must again come, if our modern world is ever to be saved. "In the fulness of time" Christ's first advent occurred. "In the fulness of time" Christ's second advent will occur. But not until humanity, weary of its load, cries out for its redemption. "How long, O Lord, how long?" "It is not for us to know the times which the Father has set within his own authority." But it is ours to believe in Christ's promise, and to pray for its speedy fulfilment. And so, I beg you to join with me in the one prayer with which our book of Scripture closes, namely, "Lord Jesus, come quickly!"
"The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." Yes, a candle, but a candle not yet lighted, a candle which will never be light nor give light, till it is touched by a divine flame. So said Doctor Parkhurst. Was his interpretation of Scripture correct? He drew from the proverb the conclusion that man has a religious nature, not in the sense that he is actually religious, but only in the sense that he has a capacity for religion. Doctor Parkhurst would say that man is actually religious only when he knows the true God and worships him in spirit and in truth. To that God he is by nature and by sinful habit blind. He can be light and give light, only after God has enlightened him by special revelation. His nature is a candle unlighted, until God touches it with his divine flame.
What is the truth in this matter? The months I have spent in these heathen lands have made deep impression upon me, and the problem of heathenism has loomed up before me as never before. When one sees thousands prostrating themselves in a Mohammedan mosque and chanting in unison their ascription of greatness to God, or when one sees a Hindu devotee so absorbed in his prayer to a senseless idol that he is unconscious of the kicks and shouts of the passers-by, one comes to realize that man must have a god. The religious instinct is a part of his nature. It ismore than a mere capacity for religion. It is active as well as passive. In some sort the candle is already burning. It burns at certain times and places with a fierce and demonic glow. When I saw in Calcutta, so recently the capital of India, a priestess of the temple of Kali, cutting into bits the flesh and entrails of sheep in order that the poorest worshiper might have for his farthing some bloody fragment to offer at the shrine of that hideous and lustful and cruel goddess, I felt sure that, though the candle is burning, it is not always because it has been touched by a divine flame. There are other powers than God's at work in this universe. Doctor Parkhurst's explanation of the Scripture text is not sufficient. He acknowledges only a part of the truth. The candle is giving already a dim and lurid light. Man is blindly worshiping, groping in the dark, bowing to imaginary deities, the products of his own imagination, the work of his own hands.
We must go even farther than this, and concede that here and there among these crowds of worshipers there may be one who is a sincere seeker after God and, according to the light that he has, is trying honestly to serve him. I do not mean a selfish service of ignorant and earthly passion, but a service prompted by some elementary knowledge of the true God, gained by contemplation of his works in nature or from the needs of his own soul revealed in conscience. Surely there was truth and sincerity in the worship of Socrates, of Epictetus, of Marcus Aurelius. The patriarchs had knowledge of God and walked with God, long before Christ came. And Scripture itself declares that in every nation he that fears God andworks righteousness is accepted by him. David Brainerd found among the American Indians a man who for years had separated himself from the wickedness of his people, and had devoted himself to doing them good. Now and then our missionaries find a heathen whose strivings after God have been prompted by a sense of sin, and whose worship must have been accepted by the God of love. Though there is "none other name given among men whereby we may be saved," we cannot doubt that every man who feels himself to be a sinner, and casts himself upon God's mercy for salvation, does really though unconsciously cast himself upon Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and so joins himself to Christ by the teaching and power of Christ's Spirit, as to be saved in some measure from the dominion of sin here and from the penalty of sin hereafter.
I am a believer in the unity, the sufficiency, and the authority of Scripture—in its unity, when the parts are put together in their historical connections and with the key to their meaning furnished us in Christ; in its sufficiency, as a rule of religious faith and practice; and in its authority, when rightly interpreted with the aid of the Holy Spirit. So I am prepared to find in the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans the true philosophy of heathenism, and the reconciliation of the otherwise seemingly conflicting utterances of Scripture with regard to the religious nature of man. I learn that God made man upright, and endowed him with at least a childlike knowledge of himself. But early humanity sought out many inventions, did not wish to retain God in its knowledge, and substitutedfor the true God creatures of its own imagination. In other words, the scriptural explanation of heathenism is found in an original ancestral sin, in which the human race departed from the true God and gave itself up to the worship, first, of impersonal nature-powers, and then, of the polytheistic personifications of these powers which naturally followed.
Modern heathenism is the result of an abnormal and downward evolution. Many students of comparative religion have forgotten that evolution is oftener to lower forms than to higher. Many a species in the history of life has first become degenerate, and then has become extinct. The shores of time are strewn with wrecks, and one of these wrecks is human nature. Paul gives us only the logical and moral interpretation of a biological fact, when he declares that in consequence of man's departure from God, God gave man over to the dominion of his own passions, in order that the shame and guilt of his vile affections might awaken his conscience and lead him to cry for mercy and redemption. Modern heathenism, still surviving in this age of enlightenment, shows how sin can blind the intellect and harden the heart. When men worship demons of cruelty and lust instead of God, they reveal the depravity as well as the ignorance of human nature in its downward evolution. The candle has been lighted indeed, but it has been touched with the flames of hell.
When God made man in his own image, it was only wheat that he sowed in his field. The evil decision of man has furnished the tares, and their history has been a history of downward evolution. But side byside with this downward evolution there has been an upward evolution of divine grace. The tares have been suffered to grow, but only that there might be demonstrated the power of the wheat to root them out. And from the very beginning Christ has been the author and principle of the true evolution. He who created the race has been its Preserver, Instructor, and Saviour. Humanity, in its warring and its lust, would long since have become extinct, if it had not been for the presence in it of a divine Life and Light. That life and light were the life and light of the preincarnate Christ. He is "the light that lighteth every man," and "his life was the light of men." Jonathan Edwards did not go too far, when he recognized in all natural beauty and goodness the work of Christ. The sunset clouds were painted by the hand of Christ, and it is he whose glory is celebrated by the cannonading of the autumn storm over the grave of summer. All the light of conscience is his light; all the progress of science is his revelation. It was he who led the children of Israel by a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, and who thundered and lightened from Sinai at the giving of the Law. "The Rock that followed" the chosen people through the wilderness and gave them drink "was Christ." Every reform within the bounds of heathenism has been due to him. Confucius and Buddha, so far as they uttered truth, were his messengers. He has never left humanity without a witness to the power and goodness of God. While men have been seeking an unknown God, he has been that very God whom they were seeking, and it is he who has incited them to feel after himand find him. His light has shined in the darkness, and the darkness has comprehended it not, though in him we live and move and have our being.
So there is evolution of good, side by side with the evolution of evil. We may recognize truth in heathen systems, while we deplore their errors, for Christ himself is the Truth. It is the single grain of truth in these systems that has given them all their power. They never could have maintained their hold upon the world, if they had not appealed to some good instincts of the human heart. A coin made wholly of lead will never pass for a dollar. It must have a little washing of silver to give it any sort of currency. But it is a counterfeit, for all its silver washing. So these heathen systems have their grain of truth, but they are false and soul-destroying all the same. Let us recognize candidly the grains of truth which they contain, for these are witnesses to the indwelling Christ who has not left humanity wholly to itself. And let us make these grains of truth our gateways of access to the heathen heart, while we show the heathen the larger and fuller truth as it is in Jesus.
Christ alone can solve the problems of the world and reconcile the warring elements of humanity. He is our peace, who hath made Jew and Gentile one, having broken down the middle wall of partition, and having made of the twain one new man, reconciling both to God through the blood of his Cross. He can make all sects, all parties, all castes, all nations one; because in him are all the elements of truth which each possesses, without any mixture of their errors.In him there will be no longer barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, male nor female, for he will bind all together by virtue of their union with himself. The Hindu, for example, has the truth of God's immanence, but he turns it into falsehood by denying the correlative and equally important truth of God's transcendence, making God to be a mere nature-force without personality, while Scripture recognizes in God both immanence and transcendence, sees God in all things and through all things, yet above all things. The Hindu has also the truth of God's incarnation, but he turns it into error, by denying the permanence of that incarnation, the divine incarnation in Krishna or Buddha being only a temporary assumption of humanity which he leaves behind him when he reascends to his heaven, while Christ takes our human nature into perpetual union with himself and makes it sit down with him upon his throne. The Moslem, on the other hand, believes in God's unity and transcendence, but denies his immanence. His God is far away, not only physically but also morally, for he is without justice or love. The Moslem holds stoutly to the truth of God's personality; but he denies the manifestation of that personality in Christ, and also Christ's personal presence with all believers. Only Christ can break down the middle wall of partition between Hindu and Moslem, for he alone has the all-inclusive truth that will unite them both. And so of all divisions of caste, of color, of party, of denomination, and of nationality, for he alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, supremely and absolutely fitted to be the Bringer of Peace to the world.
There is yet another reason why Christ alone can save. Let us remember always that error is the result of sin, and that before the power of sin can be broken, the penalty of sin must be removed. In the heart of man is an inextinguishable sense of guilt, and an equally inextinguishable thirst for reparation. It is the forebodings of conscience that make death terrible. Blind the eyes and harden the heart, if you will. The accusations of conscience will be like writings in invisible ink, that come out clear and threatening in times of introspection and of sober judgment. As Shakespeare says,