IV. Necessity of Theology.The necessity of theology has its grounds:(a)In the organizing instinct of the human mind.This organizing principle is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion or apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and unify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective;[pg 016]just in proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to systematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of human inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since the truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets the deepest want of man's rational nature. Theology is a rational necessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new systems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law, that those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a theology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering. Hostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for the corruption of God's truth or in a naturally illogical structure of mind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the restraints of a complete Scriptural system.President E. G. Robinson:“Every man has as much theology as he can hold.”Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as naturally as we speak prose.“Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher.”Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means that he must attempt‘to give account of things,’as Plato said,‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’”Men often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173, satirically exhorts us:“Trust your genius; follow your noble heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the romanticists.”Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they have it.”See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.(b)In the relation of systematic truth to the development of character.Truth thoroughly digested is essential to the growth of Christian character in the individual and in the church. All knowledge of God has its influence upon character, but most of all the knowledge of spiritual facts in their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been objected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from their sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths which are best adapted to nourish the religions affections. On the other hand, the strongest Christians are those who have the firmest grasp upon the great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church are those which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can be injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical, or mistaken.Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] =“increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures the growth of the plant;cf.3 Pet. 3:18—“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”For texts which represent truth as nourishment, seeJer. 3:15—“feed you with knowledge and understanding”;Mat. 4:4—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”;1 Cor. 3:1, 2—“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk, not with meat”;Heb. 5:14—“but solid food is for full-grown men.”Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its foundation; see1 Cor. 3:10-15—“I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon.”See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon, on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.[pg 017]Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty without doctrine is a tree without roots.”Christian morality is a fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes, the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.”Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we say that it is independent of the tree?”The twelve manner of fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle:“It is the mistake and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought instead of causes.”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”(c)In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of Christian doctrine.His chief intellectual qualification must be the power clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and powerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit in converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”(Eph. 6:17), or, in other language, only as he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers. Nothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and inconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace obscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are correct and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard to God in their relations—knowing them, in short, as parts of a system. With this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is not only sin against the Revealer of it,—it may prove the ruin of men's souls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is the diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their relations to one another, and especially to the central theme of theology, the person and work of Jesus Christ.The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from“Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching. Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to“the knowledge of the truth”(2 Tim. 2:25). The preacher must furnish the basis for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is absolutely necessary to his success.Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology, or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence? Professor Blackie:“One may as well expect to make a great patriot out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere rhetorician.”The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John Henry Newman:“The false preacher is one who has to say something; the true preacher is one who has something to say.”Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss.[pg 018]If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of superficial students.”Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician's prescription; by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us. Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has.2 Tim. 2:2—“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”(d)In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety and aggressive power of the church.The safety and progress of the church is dependent upon her“holding the pattern of sound words”(2 Tim. 1:13), and serving as“pillar and ground of the truth”(1 Tim. 3:15). Defective understanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of organization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of Christian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not only an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an indispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world's conversion.The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them. The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy:“What converted the world was not the example of Christ's life,—it was the dogma of his death.”Coleridge:“He who does not withstand, has no standing ground of his own.”Mrs. Browning:“Entire intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God's garden; its trees are trees of his planting; and‘all the trees of the Lord are full of sap’(Ps. 104:16).”Bose, Ecumenical Councils:“A creed is not catholic because a council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into those forms of words.”Dorner:“The creeds are the precipitate of the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.”Foster, Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when the containing vessel receives a blow.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness.”Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”Professor Howard Osgood:“A creed is like a backbone. A man does not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a humpbacked Christian.”Yet we must remember that creeds arecredita, and notcredenda; historical statements of what the churchhasbelieved, not infallible prescriptions of what the churchmustbelieve. George Dana[pg 019]Boardman, The Church, 98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.”Schurman, Agnosticism, 151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their artillery against the citadel itself.”T. H. Green:“We are told that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who knows what the Fathers believe now?”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his endeavor for man is a delusion.”See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity, 121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.(e)In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture.The Scripture urges upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John 5:39, marg.,—“Search the Scriptures”), the comparing and harmonizing of its different parts (1 Cor. 2:13—“comparing spiritual things with spiritual”), the gathering of all about the great central fact of revelation (Col. 1:27—“which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”), the preaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim. 4:2—“Preach the word”). The minister of the Gospel is called“a scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven”(Mat. 13:52); the“pastors”of the churches are at the same time to be“teachers”(Eph. 4:11); the bishop must be“apt to teach”(1 Tim. 3:2),“handling aright the word of truth”(2 Tim. 2:15),“holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers”(Tit. 1:9).As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards's sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part, 4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”V. Relation of Theology to Religion.Theology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different spheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the sphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the universe, so religion is an effect which these same facts produce in the sphere of individual and collective life. With regard to the term“religion”, notice:1. Derivation.(a) The derivation fromreligāre,“to bind back”(man to God), is negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists; by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms asreligio,religens; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing a fuller[pg 020]knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient world.(b) The more correct derivation is fromrelegĕre,“to go over again,”“carefully to ponder.”Its original meaning is therefore“reverent observance”(of duties due to the gods).For advocacy of the derivation ofreligio, as meaning“binding duty,”fromreligāre, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a Christian writer. To meet the objection that the formreligioseems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange citesrebellio, fromrebellāre, andoptio, fromoptāre. But we reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others, are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation. For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger. Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews, Latin Lexicon,in voce; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.2. False Conceptions.(a) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God's knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not utterly ignore other elements in religion.“Feeling, intuition, and faith belong to it,”he said,“and mere cognition is one-sided.”Yet he was always looking for the movement ofthoughtin all forms of life; God and the universe were but developments of the primordialidea.“What knowledge is worth knowing,”he asked,“if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal life, and thinking is also true worship.”Hegel's error was in regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional and voluntary nature.Goethe:“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you must use your fingers.”So we can never come to know God by thinking alone.John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.”The Gnostics, Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth's maxim,“The Bible only, the religion of Protestants,”is inadequate and inaccurate; for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a fetich and a snare:John 5:39,40—“Ye search the Scriptures, ... and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.”See Sterrett, Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos., 476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.(b) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of dependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from the old rationalism to the evangelical faith.“Like Lazarus, with the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his steps,”yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks,“Emotion is impotent unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there will be emotion which is potent to persuade.”If Christianity is religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes[pg 021]life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher's passive element ofdependence, the active element ofprayer. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as theSourceof our being, but forgets that he is also ourEnd.”Fellowship and progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence; and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357. Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in. Dorner:“The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his nurse.”On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie,in voce; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570; Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.(c) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss:“I know of but two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the sense of duty within my heart.”But the mere sense of duty often distresses. We object to the word“obey”as the imperative of religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only; (2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will; (4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian a servant only, not a friend;cf.John 15:15—“No longer do I call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco). The voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of law. We object also to Matthew Arnold's definition:“Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched with emotion.”This leaves out of view the receptive element in religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142. Goethe:“Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69; Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 19.3. Essential Idea.Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect, affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving him.See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79, and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is“Sache des ganzen Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”; Dr. J. W. A. Stewart:“Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us, redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 8—“The Christian religion is (1) thekingdom of Godas a goal above the[pg 022]world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)reconciliation with Godpermitting attainment of this goal in spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in man's natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion,i. e., that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”Herbert Spencer:“Religion is ana prioritheory of the universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds:“which assumes intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe, science dealing with theHow, the phenomenal process, religion dealing with theWho, the intelligent Personality who works through the process.”Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet, as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or realization of self in a completely realized personality which unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its true life in God.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society, the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual relationship arising out of that unity of substance which constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.”See Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227; Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.4. Inferences.From this definition of religion it follows:(a) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God. False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul in God.Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity be true, it is notareligion, butthereligion. If Judaism be also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions, but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became incorporated with fables and falsities.”John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains all the lower religions.”George P. Fisher:“The recognition of certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon onProverbs 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no means naturally and universally religious. All false religions have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul's methods of dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the light of God's self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen[pg 023]religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”;cf.Acts 14:16—“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn from these vain things unto a living God”;17:22—“I perceive that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities.... What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you.”Matthew Arnold:“Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be born again?”Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism, and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates. But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity is the manifold wisdom of God.”See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 88-93. Shakespeare:“There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out”(b) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought into rational relation to each other.This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one's works and one's record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of the omnipresent Christ,“the light which lighteth every man”(John 1:9),and we see in them incipient repentance and faith, even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.Christianfellowship must have a larger basis in accepted Christian truth, andChurchfellowship a still larger basis in common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.Religiousfellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact that“God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”(Acts 10:34, 35).(c) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is“formal communion between God and his people.”In it God speaks to man, and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the people.Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.”But there is more in true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called“a whirlwind in petticoats,”[pg 024]ended one of her brilliant soliloquies by saying:“What a delightful conversation we have had!”We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship in Thomas à Kempis's dialogues between the saint and his Savior, in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe:“Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to put one's self on his level.”If this be the effect of loving and praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God! Inscription in Grasmere Church:“Whoever thou art that enterest this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself, for those who minister, and for those who worship here.”InJames 1:27—“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“religion,”θρησκεία, iscultus exterior; and the meaning is that“the external service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to be inferred.”On the relation between religion and worship, see Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.
IV. Necessity of Theology.The necessity of theology has its grounds:(a)In the organizing instinct of the human mind.This organizing principle is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion or apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and unify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective;[pg 016]just in proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to systematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of human inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since the truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets the deepest want of man's rational nature. Theology is a rational necessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new systems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law, that those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a theology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering. Hostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for the corruption of God's truth or in a naturally illogical structure of mind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the restraints of a complete Scriptural system.President E. G. Robinson:“Every man has as much theology as he can hold.”Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as naturally as we speak prose.“Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher.”Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means that he must attempt‘to give account of things,’as Plato said,‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’”Men often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173, satirically exhorts us:“Trust your genius; follow your noble heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the romanticists.”Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they have it.”See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.(b)In the relation of systematic truth to the development of character.Truth thoroughly digested is essential to the growth of Christian character in the individual and in the church. All knowledge of God has its influence upon character, but most of all the knowledge of spiritual facts in their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been objected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from their sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths which are best adapted to nourish the religions affections. On the other hand, the strongest Christians are those who have the firmest grasp upon the great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church are those which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can be injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical, or mistaken.Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] =“increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures the growth of the plant;cf.3 Pet. 3:18—“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”For texts which represent truth as nourishment, seeJer. 3:15—“feed you with knowledge and understanding”;Mat. 4:4—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”;1 Cor. 3:1, 2—“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk, not with meat”;Heb. 5:14—“but solid food is for full-grown men.”Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its foundation; see1 Cor. 3:10-15—“I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon.”See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon, on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.[pg 017]Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty without doctrine is a tree without roots.”Christian morality is a fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes, the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.”Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we say that it is independent of the tree?”The twelve manner of fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle:“It is the mistake and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought instead of causes.”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”(c)In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of Christian doctrine.His chief intellectual qualification must be the power clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and powerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit in converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”(Eph. 6:17), or, in other language, only as he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers. Nothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and inconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace obscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are correct and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard to God in their relations—knowing them, in short, as parts of a system. With this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is not only sin against the Revealer of it,—it may prove the ruin of men's souls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is the diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their relations to one another, and especially to the central theme of theology, the person and work of Jesus Christ.The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from“Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching. Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to“the knowledge of the truth”(2 Tim. 2:25). The preacher must furnish the basis for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is absolutely necessary to his success.Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology, or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence? Professor Blackie:“One may as well expect to make a great patriot out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere rhetorician.”The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John Henry Newman:“The false preacher is one who has to say something; the true preacher is one who has something to say.”Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss.[pg 018]If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of superficial students.”Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician's prescription; by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us. Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has.2 Tim. 2:2—“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”(d)In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety and aggressive power of the church.The safety and progress of the church is dependent upon her“holding the pattern of sound words”(2 Tim. 1:13), and serving as“pillar and ground of the truth”(1 Tim. 3:15). Defective understanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of organization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of Christian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not only an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an indispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world's conversion.The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them. The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy:“What converted the world was not the example of Christ's life,—it was the dogma of his death.”Coleridge:“He who does not withstand, has no standing ground of his own.”Mrs. Browning:“Entire intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God's garden; its trees are trees of his planting; and‘all the trees of the Lord are full of sap’(Ps. 104:16).”Bose, Ecumenical Councils:“A creed is not catholic because a council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into those forms of words.”Dorner:“The creeds are the precipitate of the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.”Foster, Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when the containing vessel receives a blow.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness.”Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”Professor Howard Osgood:“A creed is like a backbone. A man does not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a humpbacked Christian.”Yet we must remember that creeds arecredita, and notcredenda; historical statements of what the churchhasbelieved, not infallible prescriptions of what the churchmustbelieve. George Dana[pg 019]Boardman, The Church, 98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.”Schurman, Agnosticism, 151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their artillery against the citadel itself.”T. H. Green:“We are told that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who knows what the Fathers believe now?”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his endeavor for man is a delusion.”See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity, 121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.(e)In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture.The Scripture urges upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John 5:39, marg.,—“Search the Scriptures”), the comparing and harmonizing of its different parts (1 Cor. 2:13—“comparing spiritual things with spiritual”), the gathering of all about the great central fact of revelation (Col. 1:27—“which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”), the preaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim. 4:2—“Preach the word”). The minister of the Gospel is called“a scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven”(Mat. 13:52); the“pastors”of the churches are at the same time to be“teachers”(Eph. 4:11); the bishop must be“apt to teach”(1 Tim. 3:2),“handling aright the word of truth”(2 Tim. 2:15),“holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers”(Tit. 1:9).As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards's sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part, 4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”V. Relation of Theology to Religion.Theology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different spheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the sphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the universe, so religion is an effect which these same facts produce in the sphere of individual and collective life. With regard to the term“religion”, notice:1. Derivation.(a) The derivation fromreligāre,“to bind back”(man to God), is negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists; by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms asreligio,religens; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing a fuller[pg 020]knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient world.(b) The more correct derivation is fromrelegĕre,“to go over again,”“carefully to ponder.”Its original meaning is therefore“reverent observance”(of duties due to the gods).For advocacy of the derivation ofreligio, as meaning“binding duty,”fromreligāre, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a Christian writer. To meet the objection that the formreligioseems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange citesrebellio, fromrebellāre, andoptio, fromoptāre. But we reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others, are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation. For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger. Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews, Latin Lexicon,in voce; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.2. False Conceptions.(a) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God's knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not utterly ignore other elements in religion.“Feeling, intuition, and faith belong to it,”he said,“and mere cognition is one-sided.”Yet he was always looking for the movement ofthoughtin all forms of life; God and the universe were but developments of the primordialidea.“What knowledge is worth knowing,”he asked,“if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal life, and thinking is also true worship.”Hegel's error was in regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional and voluntary nature.Goethe:“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you must use your fingers.”So we can never come to know God by thinking alone.John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.”The Gnostics, Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth's maxim,“The Bible only, the religion of Protestants,”is inadequate and inaccurate; for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a fetich and a snare:John 5:39,40—“Ye search the Scriptures, ... and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.”See Sterrett, Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos., 476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.(b) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of dependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from the old rationalism to the evangelical faith.“Like Lazarus, with the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his steps,”yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks,“Emotion is impotent unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there will be emotion which is potent to persuade.”If Christianity is religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes[pg 021]life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher's passive element ofdependence, the active element ofprayer. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as theSourceof our being, but forgets that he is also ourEnd.”Fellowship and progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence; and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357. Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in. Dorner:“The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his nurse.”On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie,in voce; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570; Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.(c) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss:“I know of but two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the sense of duty within my heart.”But the mere sense of duty often distresses. We object to the word“obey”as the imperative of religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only; (2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will; (4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian a servant only, not a friend;cf.John 15:15—“No longer do I call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco). The voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of law. We object also to Matthew Arnold's definition:“Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched with emotion.”This leaves out of view the receptive element in religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142. Goethe:“Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69; Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 19.3. Essential Idea.Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect, affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving him.See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79, and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is“Sache des ganzen Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”; Dr. J. W. A. Stewart:“Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us, redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 8—“The Christian religion is (1) thekingdom of Godas a goal above the[pg 022]world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)reconciliation with Godpermitting attainment of this goal in spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in man's natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion,i. e., that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”Herbert Spencer:“Religion is ana prioritheory of the universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds:“which assumes intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe, science dealing with theHow, the phenomenal process, religion dealing with theWho, the intelligent Personality who works through the process.”Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet, as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or realization of self in a completely realized personality which unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its true life in God.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society, the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual relationship arising out of that unity of substance which constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.”See Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227; Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.4. Inferences.From this definition of religion it follows:(a) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God. False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul in God.Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity be true, it is notareligion, butthereligion. If Judaism be also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions, but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became incorporated with fables and falsities.”John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains all the lower religions.”George P. Fisher:“The recognition of certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon onProverbs 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no means naturally and universally religious. All false religions have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul's methods of dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the light of God's self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen[pg 023]religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”;cf.Acts 14:16—“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn from these vain things unto a living God”;17:22—“I perceive that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities.... What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you.”Matthew Arnold:“Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be born again?”Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism, and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates. But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity is the manifold wisdom of God.”See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 88-93. Shakespeare:“There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out”(b) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought into rational relation to each other.This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one's works and one's record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of the omnipresent Christ,“the light which lighteth every man”(John 1:9),and we see in them incipient repentance and faith, even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.Christianfellowship must have a larger basis in accepted Christian truth, andChurchfellowship a still larger basis in common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.Religiousfellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact that“God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”(Acts 10:34, 35).(c) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is“formal communion between God and his people.”In it God speaks to man, and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the people.Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.”But there is more in true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called“a whirlwind in petticoats,”[pg 024]ended one of her brilliant soliloquies by saying:“What a delightful conversation we have had!”We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship in Thomas à Kempis's dialogues between the saint and his Savior, in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe:“Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to put one's self on his level.”If this be the effect of loving and praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God! Inscription in Grasmere Church:“Whoever thou art that enterest this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself, for those who minister, and for those who worship here.”InJames 1:27—“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“religion,”θρησκεία, iscultus exterior; and the meaning is that“the external service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to be inferred.”On the relation between religion and worship, see Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.
IV. Necessity of Theology.The necessity of theology has its grounds:(a)In the organizing instinct of the human mind.This organizing principle is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion or apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and unify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective;[pg 016]just in proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to systematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of human inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since the truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets the deepest want of man's rational nature. Theology is a rational necessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new systems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law, that those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a theology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering. Hostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for the corruption of God's truth or in a naturally illogical structure of mind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the restraints of a complete Scriptural system.President E. G. Robinson:“Every man has as much theology as he can hold.”Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as naturally as we speak prose.“Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher.”Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means that he must attempt‘to give account of things,’as Plato said,‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’”Men often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173, satirically exhorts us:“Trust your genius; follow your noble heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the romanticists.”Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they have it.”See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.(b)In the relation of systematic truth to the development of character.Truth thoroughly digested is essential to the growth of Christian character in the individual and in the church. All knowledge of God has its influence upon character, but most of all the knowledge of spiritual facts in their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been objected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from their sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths which are best adapted to nourish the religions affections. On the other hand, the strongest Christians are those who have the firmest grasp upon the great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church are those which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can be injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical, or mistaken.Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] =“increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures the growth of the plant;cf.3 Pet. 3:18—“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”For texts which represent truth as nourishment, seeJer. 3:15—“feed you with knowledge and understanding”;Mat. 4:4—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”;1 Cor. 3:1, 2—“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk, not with meat”;Heb. 5:14—“but solid food is for full-grown men.”Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its foundation; see1 Cor. 3:10-15—“I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon.”See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon, on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.[pg 017]Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty without doctrine is a tree without roots.”Christian morality is a fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes, the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.”Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we say that it is independent of the tree?”The twelve manner of fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle:“It is the mistake and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought instead of causes.”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”(c)In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of Christian doctrine.His chief intellectual qualification must be the power clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and powerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit in converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”(Eph. 6:17), or, in other language, only as he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers. Nothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and inconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace obscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are correct and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard to God in their relations—knowing them, in short, as parts of a system. With this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is not only sin against the Revealer of it,—it may prove the ruin of men's souls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is the diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their relations to one another, and especially to the central theme of theology, the person and work of Jesus Christ.The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from“Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching. Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to“the knowledge of the truth”(2 Tim. 2:25). The preacher must furnish the basis for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is absolutely necessary to his success.Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology, or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence? Professor Blackie:“One may as well expect to make a great patriot out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere rhetorician.”The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John Henry Newman:“The false preacher is one who has to say something; the true preacher is one who has something to say.”Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss.[pg 018]If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of superficial students.”Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician's prescription; by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us. Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has.2 Tim. 2:2—“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”(d)In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety and aggressive power of the church.The safety and progress of the church is dependent upon her“holding the pattern of sound words”(2 Tim. 1:13), and serving as“pillar and ground of the truth”(1 Tim. 3:15). Defective understanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of organization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of Christian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not only an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an indispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world's conversion.The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them. The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy:“What converted the world was not the example of Christ's life,—it was the dogma of his death.”Coleridge:“He who does not withstand, has no standing ground of his own.”Mrs. Browning:“Entire intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God's garden; its trees are trees of his planting; and‘all the trees of the Lord are full of sap’(Ps. 104:16).”Bose, Ecumenical Councils:“A creed is not catholic because a council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into those forms of words.”Dorner:“The creeds are the precipitate of the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.”Foster, Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when the containing vessel receives a blow.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness.”Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”Professor Howard Osgood:“A creed is like a backbone. A man does not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a humpbacked Christian.”Yet we must remember that creeds arecredita, and notcredenda; historical statements of what the churchhasbelieved, not infallible prescriptions of what the churchmustbelieve. George Dana[pg 019]Boardman, The Church, 98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.”Schurman, Agnosticism, 151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their artillery against the citadel itself.”T. H. Green:“We are told that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who knows what the Fathers believe now?”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his endeavor for man is a delusion.”See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity, 121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.(e)In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture.The Scripture urges upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John 5:39, marg.,—“Search the Scriptures”), the comparing and harmonizing of its different parts (1 Cor. 2:13—“comparing spiritual things with spiritual”), the gathering of all about the great central fact of revelation (Col. 1:27—“which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”), the preaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim. 4:2—“Preach the word”). The minister of the Gospel is called“a scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven”(Mat. 13:52); the“pastors”of the churches are at the same time to be“teachers”(Eph. 4:11); the bishop must be“apt to teach”(1 Tim. 3:2),“handling aright the word of truth”(2 Tim. 2:15),“holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers”(Tit. 1:9).As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards's sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part, 4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”V. Relation of Theology to Religion.Theology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different spheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the sphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the universe, so religion is an effect which these same facts produce in the sphere of individual and collective life. With regard to the term“religion”, notice:1. Derivation.(a) The derivation fromreligāre,“to bind back”(man to God), is negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists; by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms asreligio,religens; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing a fuller[pg 020]knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient world.(b) The more correct derivation is fromrelegĕre,“to go over again,”“carefully to ponder.”Its original meaning is therefore“reverent observance”(of duties due to the gods).For advocacy of the derivation ofreligio, as meaning“binding duty,”fromreligāre, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a Christian writer. To meet the objection that the formreligioseems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange citesrebellio, fromrebellāre, andoptio, fromoptāre. But we reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others, are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation. For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger. Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews, Latin Lexicon,in voce; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.2. False Conceptions.(a) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God's knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not utterly ignore other elements in religion.“Feeling, intuition, and faith belong to it,”he said,“and mere cognition is one-sided.”Yet he was always looking for the movement ofthoughtin all forms of life; God and the universe were but developments of the primordialidea.“What knowledge is worth knowing,”he asked,“if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal life, and thinking is also true worship.”Hegel's error was in regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional and voluntary nature.Goethe:“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you must use your fingers.”So we can never come to know God by thinking alone.John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.”The Gnostics, Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth's maxim,“The Bible only, the religion of Protestants,”is inadequate and inaccurate; for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a fetich and a snare:John 5:39,40—“Ye search the Scriptures, ... and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.”See Sterrett, Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos., 476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.(b) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of dependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from the old rationalism to the evangelical faith.“Like Lazarus, with the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his steps,”yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks,“Emotion is impotent unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there will be emotion which is potent to persuade.”If Christianity is religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes[pg 021]life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher's passive element ofdependence, the active element ofprayer. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as theSourceof our being, but forgets that he is also ourEnd.”Fellowship and progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence; and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357. Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in. Dorner:“The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his nurse.”On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie,in voce; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570; Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.(c) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss:“I know of but two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the sense of duty within my heart.”But the mere sense of duty often distresses. We object to the word“obey”as the imperative of religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only; (2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will; (4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian a servant only, not a friend;cf.John 15:15—“No longer do I call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco). The voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of law. We object also to Matthew Arnold's definition:“Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched with emotion.”This leaves out of view the receptive element in religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142. Goethe:“Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69; Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 19.3. Essential Idea.Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect, affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving him.See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79, and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is“Sache des ganzen Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”; Dr. J. W. A. Stewart:“Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us, redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 8—“The Christian religion is (1) thekingdom of Godas a goal above the[pg 022]world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)reconciliation with Godpermitting attainment of this goal in spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in man's natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion,i. e., that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”Herbert Spencer:“Religion is ana prioritheory of the universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds:“which assumes intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe, science dealing with theHow, the phenomenal process, religion dealing with theWho, the intelligent Personality who works through the process.”Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet, as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or realization of self in a completely realized personality which unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its true life in God.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society, the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual relationship arising out of that unity of substance which constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.”See Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227; Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.4. Inferences.From this definition of religion it follows:(a) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God. False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul in God.Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity be true, it is notareligion, butthereligion. If Judaism be also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions, but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became incorporated with fables and falsities.”John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains all the lower religions.”George P. Fisher:“The recognition of certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon onProverbs 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no means naturally and universally religious. All false religions have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul's methods of dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the light of God's self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen[pg 023]religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”;cf.Acts 14:16—“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn from these vain things unto a living God”;17:22—“I perceive that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities.... What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you.”Matthew Arnold:“Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be born again?”Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism, and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates. But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity is the manifold wisdom of God.”See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 88-93. Shakespeare:“There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out”(b) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought into rational relation to each other.This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one's works and one's record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of the omnipresent Christ,“the light which lighteth every man”(John 1:9),and we see in them incipient repentance and faith, even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.Christianfellowship must have a larger basis in accepted Christian truth, andChurchfellowship a still larger basis in common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.Religiousfellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact that“God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”(Acts 10:34, 35).(c) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is“formal communion between God and his people.”In it God speaks to man, and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the people.Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.”But there is more in true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called“a whirlwind in petticoats,”[pg 024]ended one of her brilliant soliloquies by saying:“What a delightful conversation we have had!”We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship in Thomas à Kempis's dialogues between the saint and his Savior, in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe:“Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to put one's self on his level.”If this be the effect of loving and praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God! Inscription in Grasmere Church:“Whoever thou art that enterest this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself, for those who minister, and for those who worship here.”InJames 1:27—“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“religion,”θρησκεία, iscultus exterior; and the meaning is that“the external service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to be inferred.”On the relation between religion and worship, see Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.
IV. Necessity of Theology.The necessity of theology has its grounds:(a)In the organizing instinct of the human mind.This organizing principle is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion or apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and unify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective;[pg 016]just in proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to systematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of human inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since the truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets the deepest want of man's rational nature. Theology is a rational necessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new systems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law, that those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a theology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering. Hostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for the corruption of God's truth or in a naturally illogical structure of mind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the restraints of a complete Scriptural system.President E. G. Robinson:“Every man has as much theology as he can hold.”Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as naturally as we speak prose.“Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher.”Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means that he must attempt‘to give account of things,’as Plato said,‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’”Men often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173, satirically exhorts us:“Trust your genius; follow your noble heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the romanticists.”Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they have it.”See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.(b)In the relation of systematic truth to the development of character.Truth thoroughly digested is essential to the growth of Christian character in the individual and in the church. All knowledge of God has its influence upon character, but most of all the knowledge of spiritual facts in their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been objected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from their sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths which are best adapted to nourish the religions affections. On the other hand, the strongest Christians are those who have the firmest grasp upon the great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church are those which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can be injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical, or mistaken.Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] =“increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures the growth of the plant;cf.3 Pet. 3:18—“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”For texts which represent truth as nourishment, seeJer. 3:15—“feed you with knowledge and understanding”;Mat. 4:4—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”;1 Cor. 3:1, 2—“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk, not with meat”;Heb. 5:14—“but solid food is for full-grown men.”Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its foundation; see1 Cor. 3:10-15—“I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon.”See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon, on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.[pg 017]Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty without doctrine is a tree without roots.”Christian morality is a fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes, the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.”Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we say that it is independent of the tree?”The twelve manner of fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle:“It is the mistake and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought instead of causes.”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”(c)In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of Christian doctrine.His chief intellectual qualification must be the power clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and powerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit in converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”(Eph. 6:17), or, in other language, only as he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers. Nothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and inconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace obscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are correct and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard to God in their relations—knowing them, in short, as parts of a system. With this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is not only sin against the Revealer of it,—it may prove the ruin of men's souls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is the diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their relations to one another, and especially to the central theme of theology, the person and work of Jesus Christ.The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from“Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching. Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to“the knowledge of the truth”(2 Tim. 2:25). The preacher must furnish the basis for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is absolutely necessary to his success.Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology, or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence? Professor Blackie:“One may as well expect to make a great patriot out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere rhetorician.”The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John Henry Newman:“The false preacher is one who has to say something; the true preacher is one who has something to say.”Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss.[pg 018]If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of superficial students.”Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician's prescription; by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us. Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has.2 Tim. 2:2—“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”(d)In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety and aggressive power of the church.The safety and progress of the church is dependent upon her“holding the pattern of sound words”(2 Tim. 1:13), and serving as“pillar and ground of the truth”(1 Tim. 3:15). Defective understanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of organization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of Christian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not only an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an indispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world's conversion.The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them. The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy:“What converted the world was not the example of Christ's life,—it was the dogma of his death.”Coleridge:“He who does not withstand, has no standing ground of his own.”Mrs. Browning:“Entire intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God's garden; its trees are trees of his planting; and‘all the trees of the Lord are full of sap’(Ps. 104:16).”Bose, Ecumenical Councils:“A creed is not catholic because a council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into those forms of words.”Dorner:“The creeds are the precipitate of the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.”Foster, Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when the containing vessel receives a blow.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness.”Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”Professor Howard Osgood:“A creed is like a backbone. A man does not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a humpbacked Christian.”Yet we must remember that creeds arecredita, and notcredenda; historical statements of what the churchhasbelieved, not infallible prescriptions of what the churchmustbelieve. George Dana[pg 019]Boardman, The Church, 98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.”Schurman, Agnosticism, 151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their artillery against the citadel itself.”T. H. Green:“We are told that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who knows what the Fathers believe now?”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his endeavor for man is a delusion.”See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity, 121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.(e)In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture.The Scripture urges upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John 5:39, marg.,—“Search the Scriptures”), the comparing and harmonizing of its different parts (1 Cor. 2:13—“comparing spiritual things with spiritual”), the gathering of all about the great central fact of revelation (Col. 1:27—“which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”), the preaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim. 4:2—“Preach the word”). The minister of the Gospel is called“a scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven”(Mat. 13:52); the“pastors”of the churches are at the same time to be“teachers”(Eph. 4:11); the bishop must be“apt to teach”(1 Tim. 3:2),“handling aright the word of truth”(2 Tim. 2:15),“holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers”(Tit. 1:9).As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards's sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part, 4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”V. Relation of Theology to Religion.Theology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different spheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the sphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the universe, so religion is an effect which these same facts produce in the sphere of individual and collective life. With regard to the term“religion”, notice:1. Derivation.(a) The derivation fromreligāre,“to bind back”(man to God), is negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists; by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms asreligio,religens; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing a fuller[pg 020]knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient world.(b) The more correct derivation is fromrelegĕre,“to go over again,”“carefully to ponder.”Its original meaning is therefore“reverent observance”(of duties due to the gods).For advocacy of the derivation ofreligio, as meaning“binding duty,”fromreligāre, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a Christian writer. To meet the objection that the formreligioseems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange citesrebellio, fromrebellāre, andoptio, fromoptāre. But we reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others, are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation. For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger. Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews, Latin Lexicon,in voce; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.2. False Conceptions.(a) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God's knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not utterly ignore other elements in religion.“Feeling, intuition, and faith belong to it,”he said,“and mere cognition is one-sided.”Yet he was always looking for the movement ofthoughtin all forms of life; God and the universe were but developments of the primordialidea.“What knowledge is worth knowing,”he asked,“if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal life, and thinking is also true worship.”Hegel's error was in regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional and voluntary nature.Goethe:“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you must use your fingers.”So we can never come to know God by thinking alone.John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.”The Gnostics, Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth's maxim,“The Bible only, the religion of Protestants,”is inadequate and inaccurate; for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a fetich and a snare:John 5:39,40—“Ye search the Scriptures, ... and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.”See Sterrett, Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos., 476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.(b) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of dependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from the old rationalism to the evangelical faith.“Like Lazarus, with the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his steps,”yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks,“Emotion is impotent unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there will be emotion which is potent to persuade.”If Christianity is religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes[pg 021]life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher's passive element ofdependence, the active element ofprayer. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as theSourceof our being, but forgets that he is also ourEnd.”Fellowship and progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence; and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357. Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in. Dorner:“The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his nurse.”On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie,in voce; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570; Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.(c) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss:“I know of but two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the sense of duty within my heart.”But the mere sense of duty often distresses. We object to the word“obey”as the imperative of religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only; (2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will; (4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian a servant only, not a friend;cf.John 15:15—“No longer do I call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco). The voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of law. We object also to Matthew Arnold's definition:“Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched with emotion.”This leaves out of view the receptive element in religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142. Goethe:“Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69; Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 19.3. Essential Idea.Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect, affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving him.See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79, and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is“Sache des ganzen Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”; Dr. J. W. A. Stewart:“Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us, redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 8—“The Christian religion is (1) thekingdom of Godas a goal above the[pg 022]world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)reconciliation with Godpermitting attainment of this goal in spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in man's natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion,i. e., that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”Herbert Spencer:“Religion is ana prioritheory of the universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds:“which assumes intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe, science dealing with theHow, the phenomenal process, religion dealing with theWho, the intelligent Personality who works through the process.”Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet, as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or realization of self in a completely realized personality which unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its true life in God.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society, the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual relationship arising out of that unity of substance which constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.”See Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227; Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.4. Inferences.From this definition of religion it follows:(a) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God. False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul in God.Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity be true, it is notareligion, butthereligion. If Judaism be also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions, but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became incorporated with fables and falsities.”John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains all the lower religions.”George P. Fisher:“The recognition of certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon onProverbs 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no means naturally and universally religious. All false religions have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul's methods of dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the light of God's self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen[pg 023]religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”;cf.Acts 14:16—“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn from these vain things unto a living God”;17:22—“I perceive that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities.... What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you.”Matthew Arnold:“Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be born again?”Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism, and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates. But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity is the manifold wisdom of God.”See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 88-93. Shakespeare:“There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out”(b) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought into rational relation to each other.This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one's works and one's record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of the omnipresent Christ,“the light which lighteth every man”(John 1:9),and we see in them incipient repentance and faith, even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.Christianfellowship must have a larger basis in accepted Christian truth, andChurchfellowship a still larger basis in common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.Religiousfellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact that“God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”(Acts 10:34, 35).(c) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is“formal communion between God and his people.”In it God speaks to man, and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the people.Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.”But there is more in true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called“a whirlwind in petticoats,”[pg 024]ended one of her brilliant soliloquies by saying:“What a delightful conversation we have had!”We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship in Thomas à Kempis's dialogues between the saint and his Savior, in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe:“Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to put one's self on his level.”If this be the effect of loving and praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God! Inscription in Grasmere Church:“Whoever thou art that enterest this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself, for those who minister, and for those who worship here.”InJames 1:27—“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“religion,”θρησκεία, iscultus exterior; and the meaning is that“the external service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to be inferred.”On the relation between religion and worship, see Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.
IV. Necessity of Theology.The necessity of theology has its grounds:(a)In the organizing instinct of the human mind.This organizing principle is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion or apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and unify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective;[pg 016]just in proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to systematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of human inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since the truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets the deepest want of man's rational nature. Theology is a rational necessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new systems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law, that those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a theology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering. Hostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for the corruption of God's truth or in a naturally illogical structure of mind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the restraints of a complete Scriptural system.President E. G. Robinson:“Every man has as much theology as he can hold.”Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as naturally as we speak prose.“Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher.”Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means that he must attempt‘to give account of things,’as Plato said,‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’”Men often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173, satirically exhorts us:“Trust your genius; follow your noble heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the romanticists.”Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they have it.”See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.(b)In the relation of systematic truth to the development of character.Truth thoroughly digested is essential to the growth of Christian character in the individual and in the church. All knowledge of God has its influence upon character, but most of all the knowledge of spiritual facts in their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been objected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from their sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths which are best adapted to nourish the religions affections. On the other hand, the strongest Christians are those who have the firmest grasp upon the great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church are those which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can be injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical, or mistaken.Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] =“increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures the growth of the plant;cf.3 Pet. 3:18—“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”For texts which represent truth as nourishment, seeJer. 3:15—“feed you with knowledge and understanding”;Mat. 4:4—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”;1 Cor. 3:1, 2—“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk, not with meat”;Heb. 5:14—“but solid food is for full-grown men.”Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its foundation; see1 Cor. 3:10-15—“I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon.”See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon, on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.[pg 017]Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty without doctrine is a tree without roots.”Christian morality is a fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes, the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.”Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we say that it is independent of the tree?”The twelve manner of fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle:“It is the mistake and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought instead of causes.”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”(c)In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of Christian doctrine.His chief intellectual qualification must be the power clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and powerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit in converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”(Eph. 6:17), or, in other language, only as he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers. Nothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and inconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace obscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are correct and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard to God in their relations—knowing them, in short, as parts of a system. With this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is not only sin against the Revealer of it,—it may prove the ruin of men's souls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is the diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their relations to one another, and especially to the central theme of theology, the person and work of Jesus Christ.The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from“Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching. Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to“the knowledge of the truth”(2 Tim. 2:25). The preacher must furnish the basis for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is absolutely necessary to his success.Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology, or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence? Professor Blackie:“One may as well expect to make a great patriot out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere rhetorician.”The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John Henry Newman:“The false preacher is one who has to say something; the true preacher is one who has something to say.”Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss.[pg 018]If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of superficial students.”Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician's prescription; by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us. Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has.2 Tim. 2:2—“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”(d)In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety and aggressive power of the church.The safety and progress of the church is dependent upon her“holding the pattern of sound words”(2 Tim. 1:13), and serving as“pillar and ground of the truth”(1 Tim. 3:15). Defective understanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of organization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of Christian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not only an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an indispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world's conversion.The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them. The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy:“What converted the world was not the example of Christ's life,—it was the dogma of his death.”Coleridge:“He who does not withstand, has no standing ground of his own.”Mrs. Browning:“Entire intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God's garden; its trees are trees of his planting; and‘all the trees of the Lord are full of sap’(Ps. 104:16).”Bose, Ecumenical Councils:“A creed is not catholic because a council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into those forms of words.”Dorner:“The creeds are the precipitate of the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.”Foster, Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when the containing vessel receives a blow.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness.”Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”Professor Howard Osgood:“A creed is like a backbone. A man does not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a humpbacked Christian.”Yet we must remember that creeds arecredita, and notcredenda; historical statements of what the churchhasbelieved, not infallible prescriptions of what the churchmustbelieve. George Dana[pg 019]Boardman, The Church, 98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.”Schurman, Agnosticism, 151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their artillery against the citadel itself.”T. H. Green:“We are told that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who knows what the Fathers believe now?”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his endeavor for man is a delusion.”See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity, 121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.(e)In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture.The Scripture urges upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John 5:39, marg.,—“Search the Scriptures”), the comparing and harmonizing of its different parts (1 Cor. 2:13—“comparing spiritual things with spiritual”), the gathering of all about the great central fact of revelation (Col. 1:27—“which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”), the preaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim. 4:2—“Preach the word”). The minister of the Gospel is called“a scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven”(Mat. 13:52); the“pastors”of the churches are at the same time to be“teachers”(Eph. 4:11); the bishop must be“apt to teach”(1 Tim. 3:2),“handling aright the word of truth”(2 Tim. 2:15),“holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers”(Tit. 1:9).As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards's sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part, 4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”
The necessity of theology has its grounds:
(a)In the organizing instinct of the human mind.This organizing principle is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion or apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and unify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective;[pg 016]just in proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to systematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of human inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since the truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets the deepest want of man's rational nature. Theology is a rational necessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new systems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law, that those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a theology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering. Hostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for the corruption of God's truth or in a naturally illogical structure of mind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the restraints of a complete Scriptural system.
President E. G. Robinson:“Every man has as much theology as he can hold.”Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as naturally as we speak prose.“Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher.”Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means that he must attempt‘to give account of things,’as Plato said,‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’”Men often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173, satirically exhorts us:“Trust your genius; follow your noble heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the romanticists.”Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they have it.”See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.
President E. G. Robinson:“Every man has as much theology as he can hold.”Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as naturally as we speak prose.“Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosopher.”Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means that he must attempt‘to give account of things,’as Plato said,‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’”Men often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173, satirically exhorts us:“Trust your genius; follow your noble heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the romanticists.”Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they have it.”See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.
(b)In the relation of systematic truth to the development of character.Truth thoroughly digested is essential to the growth of Christian character in the individual and in the church. All knowledge of God has its influence upon character, but most of all the knowledge of spiritual facts in their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been objected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from their sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths which are best adapted to nourish the religions affections. On the other hand, the strongest Christians are those who have the firmest grasp upon the great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church are those which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can be injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical, or mistaken.
Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] =“increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures the growth of the plant;cf.3 Pet. 3:18—“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”For texts which represent truth as nourishment, seeJer. 3:15—“feed you with knowledge and understanding”;Mat. 4:4—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”;1 Cor. 3:1, 2—“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk, not with meat”;Heb. 5:14—“but solid food is for full-grown men.”Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its foundation; see1 Cor. 3:10-15—“I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon.”See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon, on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.[pg 017]Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty without doctrine is a tree without roots.”Christian morality is a fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes, the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.”Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we say that it is independent of the tree?”The twelve manner of fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle:“It is the mistake and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought instead of causes.”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”
Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] =“increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures the growth of the plant;cf.3 Pet. 3:18—“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”For texts which represent truth as nourishment, seeJer. 3:15—“feed you with knowledge and understanding”;Mat. 4:4—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”;1 Cor. 3:1, 2—“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk, not with meat”;Heb. 5:14—“but solid food is for full-grown men.”Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its foundation; see1 Cor. 3:10-15—“I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon.”See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon, on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.
Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty without doctrine is a tree without roots.”Christian morality is a fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes, the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.”Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we say that it is independent of the tree?”The twelve manner of fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle:“It is the mistake and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought instead of causes.”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”
(c)In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of Christian doctrine.His chief intellectual qualification must be the power clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and powerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit in converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”(Eph. 6:17), or, in other language, only as he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers. Nothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and inconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace obscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are correct and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard to God in their relations—knowing them, in short, as parts of a system. With this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is not only sin against the Revealer of it,—it may prove the ruin of men's souls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is the diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their relations to one another, and especially to the central theme of theology, the person and work of Jesus Christ.
The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from“Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching. Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to“the knowledge of the truth”(2 Tim. 2:25). The preacher must furnish the basis for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is absolutely necessary to his success.Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology, or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence? Professor Blackie:“One may as well expect to make a great patriot out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere rhetorician.”The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John Henry Newman:“The false preacher is one who has to say something; the true preacher is one who has something to say.”Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss.[pg 018]If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of superficial students.”Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician's prescription; by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us. Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has.2 Tim. 2:2—“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”
The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from“Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching. Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to“the knowledge of the truth”(2 Tim. 2:25). The preacher must furnish the basis for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is absolutely necessary to his success.
Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology, or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence? Professor Blackie:“One may as well expect to make a great patriot out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere rhetorician.”The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John Henry Newman:“The false preacher is one who has to say something; the true preacher is one who has something to say.”Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss.[pg 018]If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of superficial students.”Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician's prescription; by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us. Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has.2 Tim. 2:2—“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”
(d)In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety and aggressive power of the church.The safety and progress of the church is dependent upon her“holding the pattern of sound words”(2 Tim. 1:13), and serving as“pillar and ground of the truth”(1 Tim. 3:15). Defective understanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of organization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of Christian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not only an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an indispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world's conversion.
The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them. The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy:“What converted the world was not the example of Christ's life,—it was the dogma of his death.”Coleridge:“He who does not withstand, has no standing ground of his own.”Mrs. Browning:“Entire intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God's garden; its trees are trees of his planting; and‘all the trees of the Lord are full of sap’(Ps. 104:16).”Bose, Ecumenical Councils:“A creed is not catholic because a council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into those forms of words.”Dorner:“The creeds are the precipitate of the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.”Foster, Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when the containing vessel receives a blow.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness.”Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”Professor Howard Osgood:“A creed is like a backbone. A man does not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a humpbacked Christian.”Yet we must remember that creeds arecredita, and notcredenda; historical statements of what the churchhasbelieved, not infallible prescriptions of what the churchmustbelieve. George Dana[pg 019]Boardman, The Church, 98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.”Schurman, Agnosticism, 151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their artillery against the citadel itself.”T. H. Green:“We are told that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who knows what the Fathers believe now?”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his endeavor for man is a delusion.”See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity, 121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.
The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them. The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy:“What converted the world was not the example of Christ's life,—it was the dogma of his death.”Coleridge:“He who does not withstand, has no standing ground of his own.”Mrs. Browning:“Entire intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.”E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God's garden; its trees are trees of his planting; and‘all the trees of the Lord are full of sap’(Ps. 104:16).”
Bose, Ecumenical Councils:“A creed is not catholic because a council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into those forms of words.”Dorner:“The creeds are the precipitate of the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.”Foster, Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when the containing vessel receives a blow.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness.”Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”
Professor Howard Osgood:“A creed is like a backbone. A man does not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a humpbacked Christian.”Yet we must remember that creeds arecredita, and notcredenda; historical statements of what the churchhasbelieved, not infallible prescriptions of what the churchmustbelieve. George Dana[pg 019]Boardman, The Church, 98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.”Schurman, Agnosticism, 151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their artillery against the citadel itself.”T. H. Green:“We are told that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who knows what the Fathers believe now?”George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his endeavor for man is a delusion.”See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity, 121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.
(e)In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture.The Scripture urges upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John 5:39, marg.,—“Search the Scriptures”), the comparing and harmonizing of its different parts (1 Cor. 2:13—“comparing spiritual things with spiritual”), the gathering of all about the great central fact of revelation (Col. 1:27—“which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”), the preaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim. 4:2—“Preach the word”). The minister of the Gospel is called“a scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven”(Mat. 13:52); the“pastors”of the churches are at the same time to be“teachers”(Eph. 4:11); the bishop must be“apt to teach”(1 Tim. 3:2),“handling aright the word of truth”(2 Tim. 2:15),“holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers”(Tit. 1:9).
As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards's sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part, 4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”
As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards's sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part, 4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”
V. Relation of Theology to Religion.Theology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different spheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the sphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the universe, so religion is an effect which these same facts produce in the sphere of individual and collective life. With regard to the term“religion”, notice:1. Derivation.(a) The derivation fromreligāre,“to bind back”(man to God), is negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists; by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms asreligio,religens; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing a fuller[pg 020]knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient world.(b) The more correct derivation is fromrelegĕre,“to go over again,”“carefully to ponder.”Its original meaning is therefore“reverent observance”(of duties due to the gods).For advocacy of the derivation ofreligio, as meaning“binding duty,”fromreligāre, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a Christian writer. To meet the objection that the formreligioseems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange citesrebellio, fromrebellāre, andoptio, fromoptāre. But we reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others, are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation. For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger. Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews, Latin Lexicon,in voce; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.2. False Conceptions.(a) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God's knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not utterly ignore other elements in religion.“Feeling, intuition, and faith belong to it,”he said,“and mere cognition is one-sided.”Yet he was always looking for the movement ofthoughtin all forms of life; God and the universe were but developments of the primordialidea.“What knowledge is worth knowing,”he asked,“if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal life, and thinking is also true worship.”Hegel's error was in regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional and voluntary nature.Goethe:“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you must use your fingers.”So we can never come to know God by thinking alone.John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.”The Gnostics, Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth's maxim,“The Bible only, the religion of Protestants,”is inadequate and inaccurate; for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a fetich and a snare:John 5:39,40—“Ye search the Scriptures, ... and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.”See Sterrett, Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos., 476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.(b) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of dependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from the old rationalism to the evangelical faith.“Like Lazarus, with the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his steps,”yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks,“Emotion is impotent unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there will be emotion which is potent to persuade.”If Christianity is religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes[pg 021]life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher's passive element ofdependence, the active element ofprayer. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as theSourceof our being, but forgets that he is also ourEnd.”Fellowship and progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence; and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357. Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in. Dorner:“The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his nurse.”On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie,in voce; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570; Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.(c) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss:“I know of but two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the sense of duty within my heart.”But the mere sense of duty often distresses. We object to the word“obey”as the imperative of religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only; (2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will; (4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian a servant only, not a friend;cf.John 15:15—“No longer do I call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco). The voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of law. We object also to Matthew Arnold's definition:“Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched with emotion.”This leaves out of view the receptive element in religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142. Goethe:“Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69; Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 19.3. Essential Idea.Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect, affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving him.See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79, and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is“Sache des ganzen Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”; Dr. J. W. A. Stewart:“Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us, redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 8—“The Christian religion is (1) thekingdom of Godas a goal above the[pg 022]world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)reconciliation with Godpermitting attainment of this goal in spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in man's natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion,i. e., that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”Herbert Spencer:“Religion is ana prioritheory of the universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds:“which assumes intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe, science dealing with theHow, the phenomenal process, religion dealing with theWho, the intelligent Personality who works through the process.”Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet, as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or realization of self in a completely realized personality which unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its true life in God.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society, the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual relationship arising out of that unity of substance which constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.”See Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227; Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.4. Inferences.From this definition of religion it follows:(a) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God. False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul in God.Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity be true, it is notareligion, butthereligion. If Judaism be also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions, but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became incorporated with fables and falsities.”John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains all the lower religions.”George P. Fisher:“The recognition of certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon onProverbs 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no means naturally and universally religious. All false religions have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul's methods of dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the light of God's self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen[pg 023]religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”;cf.Acts 14:16—“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn from these vain things unto a living God”;17:22—“I perceive that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities.... What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you.”Matthew Arnold:“Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be born again?”Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism, and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates. But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity is the manifold wisdom of God.”See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 88-93. Shakespeare:“There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out”(b) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought into rational relation to each other.This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one's works and one's record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of the omnipresent Christ,“the light which lighteth every man”(John 1:9),and we see in them incipient repentance and faith, even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.Christianfellowship must have a larger basis in accepted Christian truth, andChurchfellowship a still larger basis in common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.Religiousfellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact that“God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”(Acts 10:34, 35).(c) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is“formal communion between God and his people.”In it God speaks to man, and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the people.Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.”But there is more in true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called“a whirlwind in petticoats,”[pg 024]ended one of her brilliant soliloquies by saying:“What a delightful conversation we have had!”We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship in Thomas à Kempis's dialogues between the saint and his Savior, in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe:“Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to put one's self on his level.”If this be the effect of loving and praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God! Inscription in Grasmere Church:“Whoever thou art that enterest this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself, for those who minister, and for those who worship here.”InJames 1:27—“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“religion,”θρησκεία, iscultus exterior; and the meaning is that“the external service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to be inferred.”On the relation between religion and worship, see Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.
Theology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different spheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the sphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the universe, so religion is an effect which these same facts produce in the sphere of individual and collective life. With regard to the term“religion”, notice:
1. Derivation.(a) The derivation fromreligāre,“to bind back”(man to God), is negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists; by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms asreligio,religens; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing a fuller[pg 020]knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient world.(b) The more correct derivation is fromrelegĕre,“to go over again,”“carefully to ponder.”Its original meaning is therefore“reverent observance”(of duties due to the gods).For advocacy of the derivation ofreligio, as meaning“binding duty,”fromreligāre, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a Christian writer. To meet the objection that the formreligioseems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange citesrebellio, fromrebellāre, andoptio, fromoptāre. But we reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others, are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation. For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger. Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews, Latin Lexicon,in voce; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.
(a) The derivation fromreligāre,“to bind back”(man to God), is negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists; by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms asreligio,religens; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing a fuller[pg 020]knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient world.
(b) The more correct derivation is fromrelegĕre,“to go over again,”“carefully to ponder.”Its original meaning is therefore“reverent observance”(of duties due to the gods).
For advocacy of the derivation ofreligio, as meaning“binding duty,”fromreligāre, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a Christian writer. To meet the objection that the formreligioseems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange citesrebellio, fromrebellāre, andoptio, fromoptāre. But we reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others, are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation. For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger. Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews, Latin Lexicon,in voce; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.
For advocacy of the derivation ofreligio, as meaning“binding duty,”fromreligāre, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a Christian writer. To meet the objection that the formreligioseems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange citesrebellio, fromrebellāre, andoptio, fromoptāre. But we reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others, are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation. For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger. Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews, Latin Lexicon,in voce; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.
2. False Conceptions.(a) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God's knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not utterly ignore other elements in religion.“Feeling, intuition, and faith belong to it,”he said,“and mere cognition is one-sided.”Yet he was always looking for the movement ofthoughtin all forms of life; God and the universe were but developments of the primordialidea.“What knowledge is worth knowing,”he asked,“if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal life, and thinking is also true worship.”Hegel's error was in regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional and voluntary nature.Goethe:“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you must use your fingers.”So we can never come to know God by thinking alone.John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.”The Gnostics, Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth's maxim,“The Bible only, the religion of Protestants,”is inadequate and inaccurate; for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a fetich and a snare:John 5:39,40—“Ye search the Scriptures, ... and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.”See Sterrett, Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos., 476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.(b) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of dependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from the old rationalism to the evangelical faith.“Like Lazarus, with the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his steps,”yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks,“Emotion is impotent unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there will be emotion which is potent to persuade.”If Christianity is religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes[pg 021]life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher's passive element ofdependence, the active element ofprayer. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as theSourceof our being, but forgets that he is also ourEnd.”Fellowship and progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence; and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357. Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in. Dorner:“The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his nurse.”On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie,in voce; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570; Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.(c) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss:“I know of but two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the sense of duty within my heart.”But the mere sense of duty often distresses. We object to the word“obey”as the imperative of religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only; (2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will; (4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian a servant only, not a friend;cf.John 15:15—“No longer do I call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco). The voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of law. We object also to Matthew Arnold's definition:“Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched with emotion.”This leaves out of view the receptive element in religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142. Goethe:“Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69; Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 19.
(a) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.
In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God's knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not utterly ignore other elements in religion.“Feeling, intuition, and faith belong to it,”he said,“and mere cognition is one-sided.”Yet he was always looking for the movement ofthoughtin all forms of life; God and the universe were but developments of the primordialidea.“What knowledge is worth knowing,”he asked,“if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal life, and thinking is also true worship.”Hegel's error was in regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional and voluntary nature.Goethe:“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you must use your fingers.”So we can never come to know God by thinking alone.John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.”The Gnostics, Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth's maxim,“The Bible only, the religion of Protestants,”is inadequate and inaccurate; for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a fetich and a snare:John 5:39,40—“Ye search the Scriptures, ... and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.”See Sterrett, Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos., 476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.
In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God's knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not utterly ignore other elements in religion.“Feeling, intuition, and faith belong to it,”he said,“and mere cognition is one-sided.”Yet he was always looking for the movement ofthoughtin all forms of life; God and the universe were but developments of the primordialidea.“What knowledge is worth knowing,”he asked,“if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal life, and thinking is also true worship.”Hegel's error was in regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional and voluntary nature.
Goethe:“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you must use your fingers.”So we can never come to know God by thinking alone.John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.”The Gnostics, Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth's maxim,“The Bible only, the religion of Protestants,”is inadequate and inaccurate; for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a fetich and a snare:John 5:39,40—“Ye search the Scriptures, ... and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.”See Sterrett, Studies in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos., 476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.
(b) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of dependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.
In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from the old rationalism to the evangelical faith.“Like Lazarus, with the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his steps,”yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks,“Emotion is impotent unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there will be emotion which is potent to persuade.”If Christianity is religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes[pg 021]life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher's passive element ofdependence, the active element ofprayer. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as theSourceof our being, but forgets that he is also ourEnd.”Fellowship and progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence; and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357. Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in. Dorner:“The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his nurse.”On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie,in voce; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570; Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.
In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from the old rationalism to the evangelical faith.“Like Lazarus, with the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his steps,”yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks,“Emotion is impotent unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there will be emotion which is potent to persuade.”If Christianity is religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes[pg 021]life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.
Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher's passive element ofdependence, the active element ofprayer. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as theSourceof our being, but forgets that he is also ourEnd.”Fellowship and progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence; and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357. Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in. Dorner:“The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his nurse.”On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie,in voce; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570; Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.
(c) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.
Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss:“I know of but two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the sense of duty within my heart.”But the mere sense of duty often distresses. We object to the word“obey”as the imperative of religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only; (2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will; (4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian a servant only, not a friend;cf.John 15:15—“No longer do I call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco). The voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of law. We object also to Matthew Arnold's definition:“Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched with emotion.”This leaves out of view the receptive element in religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142. Goethe:“Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69; Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 19.
Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss:“I know of but two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the sense of duty within my heart.”But the mere sense of duty often distresses. We object to the word“obey”as the imperative of religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only; (2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will; (4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian a servant only, not a friend;cf.John 15:15—“No longer do I call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco). The voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of law. We object also to Matthew Arnold's definition:“Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched with emotion.”This leaves out of view the receptive element in religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142. Goethe:“Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69; Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 19.
3. Essential Idea.Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect, affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving him.See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79, and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is“Sache des ganzen Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”; Dr. J. W. A. Stewart:“Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us, redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 8—“The Christian religion is (1) thekingdom of Godas a goal above the[pg 022]world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)reconciliation with Godpermitting attainment of this goal in spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in man's natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion,i. e., that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”Herbert Spencer:“Religion is ana prioritheory of the universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds:“which assumes intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe, science dealing with theHow, the phenomenal process, religion dealing with theWho, the intelligent Personality who works through the process.”Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet, as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or realization of self in a completely realized personality which unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its true life in God.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society, the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual relationship arising out of that unity of substance which constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.”See Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227; Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.
Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect, affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving him.
See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79, and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is“Sache des ganzen Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”; Dr. J. W. A. Stewart:“Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us, redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 8—“The Christian religion is (1) thekingdom of Godas a goal above the[pg 022]world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)reconciliation with Godpermitting attainment of this goal in spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in man's natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion,i. e., that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”Herbert Spencer:“Religion is ana prioritheory of the universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds:“which assumes intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe, science dealing with theHow, the phenomenal process, religion dealing with theWho, the intelligent Personality who works through the process.”Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet, as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or realization of self in a completely realized personality which unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its true life in God.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society, the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual relationship arising out of that unity of substance which constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.”See Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227; Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.
See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79, and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is“Sache des ganzen Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”; Dr. J. W. A. Stewart:“Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us, redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 8—“The Christian religion is (1) thekingdom of Godas a goal above the[pg 022]world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)reconciliation with Godpermitting attainment of this goal in spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in man's natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion,i. e., that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”
Herbert Spencer:“Religion is ana prioritheory of the universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds:“which assumes intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe, science dealing with theHow, the phenomenal process, religion dealing with theWho, the intelligent Personality who works through the process.”Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet, as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or realization of self in a completely realized personality which unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its true life in God.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society, the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual relationship arising out of that unity of substance which constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.”See Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227; Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.
4. Inferences.From this definition of religion it follows:(a) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God. False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul in God.Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity be true, it is notareligion, butthereligion. If Judaism be also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions, but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became incorporated with fables and falsities.”John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains all the lower religions.”George P. Fisher:“The recognition of certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon onProverbs 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no means naturally and universally religious. All false religions have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul's methods of dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the light of God's self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen[pg 023]religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”;cf.Acts 14:16—“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn from these vain things unto a living God”;17:22—“I perceive that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities.... What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you.”Matthew Arnold:“Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be born again?”Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism, and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates. But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity is the manifold wisdom of God.”See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 88-93. Shakespeare:“There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out”(b) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought into rational relation to each other.This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one's works and one's record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of the omnipresent Christ,“the light which lighteth every man”(John 1:9),and we see in them incipient repentance and faith, even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.Christianfellowship must have a larger basis in accepted Christian truth, andChurchfellowship a still larger basis in common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.Religiousfellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact that“God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”(Acts 10:34, 35).(c) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is“formal communion between God and his people.”In it God speaks to man, and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the people.Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.”But there is more in true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called“a whirlwind in petticoats,”[pg 024]ended one of her brilliant soliloquies by saying:“What a delightful conversation we have had!”We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship in Thomas à Kempis's dialogues between the saint and his Savior, in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe:“Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to put one's self on his level.”If this be the effect of loving and praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God! Inscription in Grasmere Church:“Whoever thou art that enterest this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself, for those who minister, and for those who worship here.”InJames 1:27—“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“religion,”θρησκεία, iscultus exterior; and the meaning is that“the external service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to be inferred.”On the relation between religion and worship, see Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.
From this definition of religion it follows:
(a) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God. False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul in God.
Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity be true, it is notareligion, butthereligion. If Judaism be also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions, but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became incorporated with fables and falsities.”John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains all the lower religions.”George P. Fisher:“The recognition of certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon onProverbs 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no means naturally and universally religious. All false religions have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul's methods of dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the light of God's self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen[pg 023]religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”;cf.Acts 14:16—“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn from these vain things unto a living God”;17:22—“I perceive that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities.... What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you.”Matthew Arnold:“Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be born again?”Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism, and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates. But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity is the manifold wisdom of God.”See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 88-93. Shakespeare:“There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out”
Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity be true, it is notareligion, butthereligion. If Judaism be also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions, but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became incorporated with fables and falsities.”John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains all the lower religions.”George P. Fisher:“The recognition of certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”
Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon onProverbs 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no means naturally and universally religious. All false religions have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul's methods of dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the light of God's self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen[pg 023]religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”;cf.Acts 14:16—“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn from these vain things unto a living God”;17:22—“I perceive that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities.... What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you.”
Matthew Arnold:“Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be born again?”Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism, and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates. But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity is the manifold wisdom of God.”See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 88-93. Shakespeare:“There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out”
(b) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought into rational relation to each other.
This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one's works and one's record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of the omnipresent Christ,“the light which lighteth every man”(John 1:9),and we see in them incipient repentance and faith, even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.Christianfellowship must have a larger basis in accepted Christian truth, andChurchfellowship a still larger basis in common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.Religiousfellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact that“God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”(Acts 10:34, 35).
This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one's works and one's record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of the omnipresent Christ,“the light which lighteth every man”(John 1:9),and we see in them incipient repentance and faith, even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.Christianfellowship must have a larger basis in accepted Christian truth, andChurchfellowship a still larger basis in common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.Religiousfellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact that“God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”(Acts 10:34, 35).
(c) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is“formal communion between God and his people.”In it God speaks to man, and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the people.
Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.”But there is more in true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called“a whirlwind in petticoats,”[pg 024]ended one of her brilliant soliloquies by saying:“What a delightful conversation we have had!”We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship in Thomas à Kempis's dialogues between the saint and his Savior, in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe:“Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to put one's self on his level.”If this be the effect of loving and praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God! Inscription in Grasmere Church:“Whoever thou art that enterest this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself, for those who minister, and for those who worship here.”InJames 1:27—“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“religion,”θρησκεία, iscultus exterior; and the meaning is that“the external service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to be inferred.”On the relation between religion and worship, see Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.
Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.”But there is more in true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called“a whirlwind in petticoats,”[pg 024]ended one of her brilliant soliloquies by saying:“What a delightful conversation we have had!”We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship in Thomas à Kempis's dialogues between the saint and his Savior, in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe:“Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to put one's self on his level.”If this be the effect of loving and praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God! Inscription in Grasmere Church:“Whoever thou art that enterest this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself, for those who minister, and for those who worship here.”InJames 1:27—“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“religion,”θρησκεία, iscultus exterior; and the meaning is that“the external service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to be inferred.”On the relation between religion and worship, see Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.