VIs the Church Decadent?The assertion is often made that the church is an effete institution; that its usefulness is past; that it is sinking into innocuous desuetude. That assertion has been current for a thousand years--perhaps longer; there have been many periods in which it was urged much more confidently than it is to-day. This fact would suggest caution in pressing such a judgment. Wise physicians do not hastily pronounce the word of doom. They have seen too many patients return from the gates of death. Men and women who, in their younger days, appear to have a slender hold on life, often reach a vigorous old age. The same thing is true of institutions. It is not prudent to assume that because they are ailing they are moribund.The Christian church, as we have seen, is far from being in perfect spiritual condition. Some of her symptoms are disquieting. But even as we often have good hope for our friends when their health is impaired, and find that there are good reasons for our hope, so we need not despair of the recovery of the church from the morbid conditions which we acknowledge and deplore. That the patient has a good constitution and surprising vitality is indicated by the experience of nineteen centuries. More than once, through this long lifetime, she has been in a worse way than she is to-day, but she has rallied, and returned to her work with new vigor.At the beginning of the sixteenth century her case seemed to be desperate; but heroic remedies were used, and while the cure was far from complete, and did not reach the root of the malady, there was at least a partial recovery. In England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and in America at the end of the same century, the symptoms were alarming; but she lived through those critical periods, and has done better work since than ever before.That the work of the church has been sadly misdirected; that she has often put the emphasis in the wrong place; that while she has been doing many things that were worth doing she has largely left undone the main thing she was sent to do, was made plain by our study in the last chapter. And there can be no doubt that this misdirection of her energies, and this failure to exercise her strength in normal ways, have resulted in many morbid conditions, some of which she has partly overcome, but from some of which she is still suffering.With the disorders from which the church has suffered in past generations we need not now concern ourselves. But the weaknesses and ailments of the present time demand our attention. We must know what they are that we may help to cure them. That responsibility rests upon us all. If the church is to be made whole, it must be by the intelligent and normal action of the men and women who are members of the church. We must know, to begin with, what health is, and what is disease; we must have some clear idea of what would be the normal condition of Christian society.Men sometimes mistake conditions of disease for conditions of health. In cases of nervous breakdown, patients are often spurred on, by the malady itself, to work when they ought to rest. The less able to work they are, the harder they work. They do not know that this restless activity is a sign of disease, they think it is proof of abounding vitality. And there are many ways in which morbid conditions tend to propagate themselves. The instinctive impulses of an invalid are not safe guides. Yet there are many cases in which, even if the man is not his own medical adviser, he must have an intelligent idea of what ails him, in order that he may be able to follow medical advice, and adopt the regimen which leads to health. His reason must be summoned to discern and resist his morbid impulses, and keep himself in the ways of life.Equally true is it that if the church, which is the body of Christ, is out of health, the men and women who are the members of that body must know what ails them, and how to supply the remedy. And when they summon their reason and seek to have it divinely enlightened, they are likely to discover that many of their worst disorders are conditions which they have been cherishing; that some of the things they have been most proud of are ills that they must pray and work to be rid of.1. The first and the worst of the church's infirmities is unbelief. In one of the moments of vision, when the long obscuration of his light in the future centuries was revealed to him, Jesus sadly wondered whether, when the Son of Man came, he would find faith on the earth. The pathetic query has always been pertinent. Faith is the vital force of Christianity, and the weakening of that vital force is the prime cause of all its disorders.The unbelief which brings enfeeblement and decay to the church of Christ is not, however, the kind of unbelief which the church is most apt to reprove.There is, doubtless, in the church of to-day some weakening of faith in the historical facts of the Christian religion, and in the central doctrines of the Christian creed. Science and criticism have rendered incredible some statements which once were universally accepted. Considerable revision of theological belief has been found necessary, and it is probable that in this process the hold of some upon the central verities has been relaxed.It may even be that the theories of some Christian confessors respecting the person of Christ have been modified, so that his humanity is more strongly affirmed than once it was. To some persons this change of emphasis may seem to be a serious form of unbelief.Admitting all this, however, these intellectual changes are not the principal cause of the enfeeblement of the church. These changes, however we may regard them, have affected but a small minority of the members of our churches; the great majority of them continue to hold substantially the same theological opinions that they have always held. The trouble with the church is not chiefly a lack of faith in the creeds, it is a lack of faith in Christ. And it is not a lack of faith in the metaphysical theories of Christ's person, but a lack of faith in the truth of his teaching. It is an unbelief in which the most orthodox people are quite as much involved as those who are considered heretics.The central question is not, after all, what we think about the nature of Christ. There is good reason to believe that none of the twelve apostles held, during the life of our Lord, opinions which would be regarded as orthodox concerning his person. They believed that he was a great Prophet, a revealer of God; nay, they believed that he was the Messiah, the long promised King, who was to set up his kingdom in this world. Of this they had no doubt. This was the belief that Jesus himself sought to fasten in their minds; and when he had drawn from Simon Peter a confession of this faith he cried out, "Blessed art thou, Simon son of John; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." It was this faith in him as Lord and Ruler of men, as the Founder in this world of a kingdom of righteousness and peace, on which, as he declared, his church should be builded. Such faith as this these twelve men had. They would have found it difficult, probably, to assent to the Nicene Creed or the Athanasian Creed; but they believed in Jesus as Lord and King, and they believed every word of his Magna Charta found in the Sermon on the Mount; and they were ready to do what they could to establish that kingdom in this world. It is just here that the faith of the church is lacking. It believes the Nicene Creed, but it does not believe the Sermon on the Mount. It believes what men have said about Christ; it does not believe what Christ himself said. It does not accept the practical rule of life which he has laid down. It does not believe that the Golden Rule is workable in modern life. It does not believe that it is feasible to love our neighbors as ourselves. It does not believe in the kingdom of heaven as a present possibility. It expects that Christ will come, by and by, in person, with miraculous power, to revolutionize society, and that after that it will be practicable to follow the law of love, in all our human relations; but, for the present, we must let the law of competition control all our practical affairs.Of course it is not often that the teachings of Christ are directly controverted; they are generally ignored, or passed by, as "counsels of perfection" which we are to admire rather than obey. But we sometimes find arguments in which disbelief in the teachings of Jesus is distinctly justified. In a late volume, one of the great leaders of the German church elaborately contends that we cannot follow Jesus in his social teachings. "Our attitude toward the world," says Herrmann, "cannot be that of Jesus; even the purpose to will that it should be so is stifled in the air that we breathe to-day. The state of affairs is very clearly described by Naumann, who says with truth: 'Therefore we do not seek Jesus' advice on points connected with the management of the state and political economy.' But when he goes on to say: 'I give my vote and I canvass for the fleet, not because I am a Christian, but because I am a citizen, and because I have learned to renounce all hope of finding fundamental questions of state determined in the Sermon on the Mount,' we can detect a fallacy. He regards as painful renunciation what ought, on the part of the Christian, to be a free, decisive, and voluntary act."19Naumann repudiates, rather regretfully, the counsels of Jesus about economic and civil affairs, but Herrmann says that he does it light-heartedly, because he has found out that these counsels are not applicable to existing conditions.It is evident that these counsels must be rationally applied,--the spirit and not the letter of them is the essential thing; but what these teachers mean is more than this. How far they have departed from the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount is indicated by the words already quoted. The reason why Naumann does not seek the advice of Jesus in questions of public concern is that he is determined to give his vote and influence for the German fleet; and Herrmann is following the same impulse when he characterizes the call for the disarmament of the nations as a "noble folly." It is evident that the reason why these teachers feel that the way of Jesus is impracticable is that they are fully committed to the ideas of German imperialism. To conceive that nations could dispense with war is a "noble folly." And, for the same reason, they conceive that any attempt to substitute coöperation for competition in the industrial world would be disastrous to modern society. The morality of strife outranks, in their judgment, the morality of service and sacrifice. The law of Jesus may be permitted to hold some subordinate place; it will be found useful in mitigating the savagery of strife; but as the regulative principle of the industrial order it is not to be considered.The attempt of these German theologians to frame a philosophical refutation of the Sermon on the Mount gives us something of a shock; but, practically, this has been the attitude of the church in all the generations. The hopeful sign is that it does now give us a shock to have the doctrine badly stated.Through a large part of the Christian era the teaching of Jesus with respect to strife has been flouted by the church. The bitterest and most wasteful wars have been religious wars. The disciples of the Prince of Peace saw no incongruity in the settlement by the sword of such questions as whether Jesus Christ was of the same substance as the Father or of a similar substance; and whether the cup should be administered to the laity in the Eucharist or only the bread. The Thirty Years' war in Europe was a religious war. Roman Catholic theories still maintain the right of the church to enforce its teachings by the sword.All these facts show how far, through all its history, the church has departed from the teaching of Jesus. When our German theologians set themselves to prove that the Sermon on the Mount is no sufficient guide for public affairs, they have the whole history of the church behind them.Nevertheless they might have noted that the drift, for the last few centuries, has been in the direction of the teaching of Jesus. It is hardly conceivable that Christian nations should go to war to-day for the settlement of points of doctrine. Three hundred years ago the whole church thought that necessary; to-day a very large part of the church would think it horrible and monstrous. It is not very long ago that the church believed in the settlement by force of disputes between individuals. The wager of battle was supposed to be a proper and Christian way of determining the guilt or innocence of an accused person. To most of the great Christians of the fifteenth century the proposition to dispense with that would have seemed a "noble folly," just as the proposition of general disarmament now seems to some twentieth century Christians. But the church has learned that there are better ways of settling personal quarrels than the wager of battle; and it is likely to learn, after a while, that there are better ways of settling international and industrial difficulties than the way of war. The church is beginning to see that the way of Jesus is not, after all, so impracticable as it has always been supposed to be; it is beginning to discern the truth that the law of service is a stronger law than the law of strife. One of these days we shall find the church of Jesus taking its stand on the Golden Rule as the practical rule of everyday life, and insisting upon the organization of the industrial and the political order on the basis of good-will. When that day comes we shall have a right to say that the church believes in Jesus Christ. When that day comes it will be evident to all that the main cause of the church's enfeeblement through all these centuries has been her unbelief. And we shall marvel that it took her so long to find out what might there is in meekness and what force in gentleness; and that it was so hard for her to understand that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God stronger than men.2. The second of the church's chronic infirmities has been orthodoxism. Perhaps it was the recoil of her unbelief in Christ that sent her over into the intellectual prostration of orthodoxism.Orthodoxy is defined as correct belief. But when we ask what is correct belief, orthodoxy answers: "That which is generally believed to be correct." Its demand is, therefore, conformity to current opinion. It assumes that essential truth has been sought out, registered and certified once for all and finally: this you must believe, and you must believe nothing other or more than this. Of course, then, belief must be stereotyped and stationary. There can be no growth of doctrine; no new light can break forth from God's holy word."Orthodoxy begins," says Phillips Brooks, "by setting a false standard of life. It makes men aspire after soundness in the faith rather than after richness in the truth.... It makes possible an easy transmission of truth, but only by the deadening of truth, as a butcher freezes meat in order to carry it across the sea. Orthodoxy discredits and discourages inquiry, and has made the name of free thinker, which ought to be a crown and glory, a stigma of disgrace. It puts men in the base and demoralizing position in which they apologize for seeking new truth. It is responsible for a large part of the defiant liberalism which not merely disbelieves the orthodox dogma, but disbelieves it with a sense of attempted wrong and of triumphant escape. It is orthodoxy and not truth which has done the persecuting. The inquisitions and dungeons and social ostracisms for opinion's sake belong to it."20It is evident that when for loyalty to the truth is substituted loyalty to a prescribed statement of truth, the entire moral order is subverted. Truth for me is what justifies itself to my reason and insight; to that my choices must conform; by that my conduct must be guided. To accept statements to which my judgment does not assent, which are repugnant to my reason, because others seek to impose them upon me, is in the highest degree immoral. "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind," is the apostolic maxim.Every honest man wants to know what is true, and seeks to have his character and his conduct conform to the truth. But orthodoxy insists that he shall limit his acceptance to fixed and definite statements prepared for him by others. Freedom of investigation is denied him. The limits are set, beyond which his thought must not range. If there is truth outside of the boundaries of orthodoxy, he must not reach out after it; if he does, he shall suffer the consequences.For there always is a penalty for heresy. Those who diverge from the orthodox standards are always exposed to some measure of censure or discredit. In former days the stake or the gallows was the penalty. John Huss and Michael Servetus, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were put to death on the demand of orthodoxy. It was not because they were not lovers and seekers of truth; it was because they declined to assent to the statements which authority sought to impose on them. Orthodoxy has found a great variety of methods of enforcing its demand; in recent times it does not often resort to physical coercion, but it never fails to use some kind of pressure. Those to whom orthodoxy is dearer than truth have ways of their own, even now, of making uncomfortable those to whom truth is dearer than orthodoxy. Thus it is that the progress of truth has been greatly impeded. "Ye shall know the truth," said Jesus, "and the truth shall make you free." "Ye shall know," says orthodoxism, "only the truth that has been prescribed and ticketed by authority; ye shall be taught what is orthodox, and orthodoxy shall keep you safe and sound." The entire attitude of the mind is changed, under this demand. It is no longer that of free inquiry, of open-minded search for truth; it is that of passive assent, of unreasoned submission to authority.Just to the extent to which orthodoxism succeeds in forcing its demand is progress rendered impossible. There have always been brave men to whom truth was dearer than orthodoxy, and to them we owe all the gains the church has made. "The lower orders of the church's workers, the mere runners of her machinery," says Bishop Brooks, "have always been strictly and scrupulously orthodox; while all the church's noblest servants, they who have opened to her new heavens of vision and new domains of work,--Paul, Origen, Tertullian, Dante, Abélard, Luther, Milton, Coleridge, Maurice, Swedenborg, Martineau,--have again and again been persecuted for being what they truly were--unorthodox."21The temper of coercion, physical or moral, which is an essential element in orthodoxism, always produces, in those who do not submit to it, the temper of resentment and rebellion, which largely characterizes what is known as liberalism. Those who are thus flung off into opposition are in no mood to examine fairly the truth that there is in orthodoxy. Their mental attitude is apt to be quite as unfavorable to the discovery of the truth as that of the other party. Between those who affirm, with the threat of the withdrawal of fellowship, and those who deny, with the sense of injury and oppression, the truth has a poor chance for itself in this world. The enfeeblement of the church, in all the generations, has been largely due to this cause.What orthodoxism produces when it has free course and is glorified, may be seen in the Greek church. More than any other branch of the Christian church the Greek church has put the emphasis upon orthodoxy. The natural and inevitable result has been that that church has destroyed itself and the nation whose life it has dominated and blighted. It is the Greek church that has led Russia to its doom. And it is orthodoxism that has made the Greek church a blind leader of the blind, and has plunged nation and church into the ditch together.Truth, not orthodoxy, is the sovereign mistress of the human intellect. What I must know, for my salvation, is not what everybody says, but what is true. There is old truth--truth that has nourished the lives of men in many generations; let me cling to that and feed my soul upon it. There is new truth--some fuller outshining of the great revelation of God, in nature or in human nature; let me hail that light and walk in it.It is often useful for me to know what others have believed and now believe. Not to be influenced by the consenting voices of the great and good of the past would be childish egotism. But it is always needful that my mind should be open to new truth and that I should be free to seek it. Orthodoxism restricts this right and disparages this privilege, and in doing this it has greatly weakened the Christian church.Several other sources of weakness must be treated much more briefly.3. Sectarianism is not the least among them. To a large degree it is the product of orthodoxism. Men who venture to think for themselves are driven forth from the fold of the faithful and compelled to organize in separate groups. Sometimes they are not driven out, they go out and slam the doors behind them. The seceders often claim a superior orthodoxy; their separation from the fold is an act of judgment on those they leave behind. The responsibility for these divisions sometimes rests more heavily on those who go out, and sometimes on those who stay in. On the one side or the other, often on both sides, pride of opinion is a main procuring cause. Sometimes men go out because they desire to hold fast in peace the truth which they have found, and sometimes they are thrust out because they will not permit those who are within to hold fast in peace the truth which is their inheritance.The ambition of leadership also figures largely. Men who are not able to control the church to which they belong are often tempted to lead away a faction in which they may be more conspicuous. Satan, according to the Miltonic mythology, was the founder of the first sect; and his philosophy was that it was better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. The leaders of many of the sects have had a similar inspiration.It would not be true to say that all schisms have sprung from selfishness: they have often originated in a larger vision of the truth, and their testimony, which has cost them many sacrifices, has enlarged the thought and enriched the life of the whole church.It must, however, be admitted that selfishness, in the forms of ambition and pride of opinion, has had more to do with the multiplication of sects than love of the truth or loyalty to the Master. The existence of such numbers of organizations, differing from one another only in the most trivial particulars, cannot be reconciled with the plain principles of Christian morality. There is no justification, in reason or conscience, for the existence of so many sorts and kinds and classes of Christian disciples. Even if we could admit the wisdom of the larger divisions, what excuse can be offered for the endless subdivisions? What possible need can there be for thirteen different kinds of Baptists, and twelve kinds of Mennonites, and eleven kinds of Presbyterians, and seventeen kinds of Methodists, and twenty-three kinds of Lutherans? Could any rational man maintain that these multitudinous variations on a single string represent distinctions that are useful?The rivalries and competitions which these sectarian divisions promote are the scandal and the curse of Christendom. The sectarian procedure habitually and brazenly sets aside the Golden Rule and pushes partisan interest, with very slight regard for fairness or equity. Churches are all the while doing to other churches what they would not like to have other churches do to them. "Every church for itself, and the angels take the hindmost," is the sectarian motto. The competition which exists in the ecclesiastical realm is almost always cutthroat competition; it destroys property and crowds out rivals with merciless purpose.No argument should he needed to show that the existence of such a spirit and tendency in the church must cripple its power and impede its growth. The sect spirit is the antithesis of the Christian spirit; the sectarian propaganda is an attack upon the fundamental principle of Christianity, which is unity through love. The superior loyalty of every true Christian is due to the kingdom of God. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness!" What makes a man a sectarian is the fact that he loves his sect more than the kingdom of God, and is willing that the kingdom of God should suffer loss in order that his sect may make a gain. Sectarians are doing this very thing, all over the land, every day.How great have been the injuries suffered by the Christian church through the existence of this antichristian spirit of sect it would be difficult to estimate. How alien it is to the spirit of Jesus Christ one does not need to point out. It is simply amazing that the followers of him who prayed, in his last prayer, that his disciples might all be one, in order that the world might believe in his divine commission, should imagine that they can be pleasing Christ while they persist in these childish divisions.Some sense of the shame and sin of sectarianism has, of late years, been getting possession of the mind of the church, and the tendencies toward unity are stronger now than the tendencies toward division. Splits and secessions are rare in these times; movements toward unity are multiplying. All this is hopeful, but many generations of toil and sacrifice will be required to recover for the church the ground she has lost by the ravages of sectarianism.4. Only one more cause of the enfeeblement of the church can be mentioned here; that is her too close reliance upon the principles and forces of the material realm. She too often forgets whence her help must come; she is too willing to go down to Egypt for her allies instead of trusting in the Lord of Hosts. She cannot always understand that she is safer and stronger when she puts her entire reliance on moral and spiritual forces; when she refuses to sacrifice truth for the revenues of the rich or the friendship of the strong.The church is probably suffering more from this cause at this day than she has ever suffered in any former period. She lives in the midst of the abounding marvels of the materialistic civilization; she sees how much is accomplished through the use of material forces; and the spirit of the time gets into her brain and blood, and she begins to think that money and the things that money can buy are the most essential conditions of her growth and usefulness. Therefore she makes such friendships and adopts such policies as will bring to her the revenues she thinks she must have for the prosecution of her work. And thus her vision is dimmed for the truth she needs to see, and her arm is weakened for the work she has to do.No influence so insidious as this, and none so fatal, has ever assailed the Christian church. She is passing through her greatest temptation. It is Mammon who has taken her up into an exceeding high mountain and shown her the kingdoms she wants to conquer and the glory she hopes to win, and is saying to her: "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me!" May God grant her the grace to answer "Get thee behind me, Satan; I hear the voice of one who said: Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."That the church has suffered serious injury and enfeeblement from the causes we have considered,--from her lack of faith, from her subjection to orthodoxism, from the ravages of sectarianism, from her entanglements with Mammon, no one can deny. But that these evils are tending to increase is not evident. There is reason rather to hope that they are all on the wane, unless it be the last.That the church is far from being in perfect spiritual condition we will all admit. But that she is growing worse rather than better we need not believe. Most of these maladies are of long standing, but they are less acute now than once they were, and there is better hope of recovery. Above all, we may say that the church knows to-day what ails her better than she ever knew before, and that she may therefore more intelligently proceed to apply the needful remedies.What kind of treatment is called for will be the subject of the next discussion.
The assertion is often made that the church is an effete institution; that its usefulness is past; that it is sinking into innocuous desuetude. That assertion has been current for a thousand years--perhaps longer; there have been many periods in which it was urged much more confidently than it is to-day. This fact would suggest caution in pressing such a judgment. Wise physicians do not hastily pronounce the word of doom. They have seen too many patients return from the gates of death. Men and women who, in their younger days, appear to have a slender hold on life, often reach a vigorous old age. The same thing is true of institutions. It is not prudent to assume that because they are ailing they are moribund.
The Christian church, as we have seen, is far from being in perfect spiritual condition. Some of her symptoms are disquieting. But even as we often have good hope for our friends when their health is impaired, and find that there are good reasons for our hope, so we need not despair of the recovery of the church from the morbid conditions which we acknowledge and deplore. That the patient has a good constitution and surprising vitality is indicated by the experience of nineteen centuries. More than once, through this long lifetime, she has been in a worse way than she is to-day, but she has rallied, and returned to her work with new vigor.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century her case seemed to be desperate; but heroic remedies were used, and while the cure was far from complete, and did not reach the root of the malady, there was at least a partial recovery. In England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and in America at the end of the same century, the symptoms were alarming; but she lived through those critical periods, and has done better work since than ever before.
That the work of the church has been sadly misdirected; that she has often put the emphasis in the wrong place; that while she has been doing many things that were worth doing she has largely left undone the main thing she was sent to do, was made plain by our study in the last chapter. And there can be no doubt that this misdirection of her energies, and this failure to exercise her strength in normal ways, have resulted in many morbid conditions, some of which she has partly overcome, but from some of which she is still suffering.
With the disorders from which the church has suffered in past generations we need not now concern ourselves. But the weaknesses and ailments of the present time demand our attention. We must know what they are that we may help to cure them. That responsibility rests upon us all. If the church is to be made whole, it must be by the intelligent and normal action of the men and women who are members of the church. We must know, to begin with, what health is, and what is disease; we must have some clear idea of what would be the normal condition of Christian society.
Men sometimes mistake conditions of disease for conditions of health. In cases of nervous breakdown, patients are often spurred on, by the malady itself, to work when they ought to rest. The less able to work they are, the harder they work. They do not know that this restless activity is a sign of disease, they think it is proof of abounding vitality. And there are many ways in which morbid conditions tend to propagate themselves. The instinctive impulses of an invalid are not safe guides. Yet there are many cases in which, even if the man is not his own medical adviser, he must have an intelligent idea of what ails him, in order that he may be able to follow medical advice, and adopt the regimen which leads to health. His reason must be summoned to discern and resist his morbid impulses, and keep himself in the ways of life.
Equally true is it that if the church, which is the body of Christ, is out of health, the men and women who are the members of that body must know what ails them, and how to supply the remedy. And when they summon their reason and seek to have it divinely enlightened, they are likely to discover that many of their worst disorders are conditions which they have been cherishing; that some of the things they have been most proud of are ills that they must pray and work to be rid of.
1. The first and the worst of the church's infirmities is unbelief. In one of the moments of vision, when the long obscuration of his light in the future centuries was revealed to him, Jesus sadly wondered whether, when the Son of Man came, he would find faith on the earth. The pathetic query has always been pertinent. Faith is the vital force of Christianity, and the weakening of that vital force is the prime cause of all its disorders.
The unbelief which brings enfeeblement and decay to the church of Christ is not, however, the kind of unbelief which the church is most apt to reprove.
There is, doubtless, in the church of to-day some weakening of faith in the historical facts of the Christian religion, and in the central doctrines of the Christian creed. Science and criticism have rendered incredible some statements which once were universally accepted. Considerable revision of theological belief has been found necessary, and it is probable that in this process the hold of some upon the central verities has been relaxed.
It may even be that the theories of some Christian confessors respecting the person of Christ have been modified, so that his humanity is more strongly affirmed than once it was. To some persons this change of emphasis may seem to be a serious form of unbelief.
Admitting all this, however, these intellectual changes are not the principal cause of the enfeeblement of the church. These changes, however we may regard them, have affected but a small minority of the members of our churches; the great majority of them continue to hold substantially the same theological opinions that they have always held. The trouble with the church is not chiefly a lack of faith in the creeds, it is a lack of faith in Christ. And it is not a lack of faith in the metaphysical theories of Christ's person, but a lack of faith in the truth of his teaching. It is an unbelief in which the most orthodox people are quite as much involved as those who are considered heretics.
The central question is not, after all, what we think about the nature of Christ. There is good reason to believe that none of the twelve apostles held, during the life of our Lord, opinions which would be regarded as orthodox concerning his person. They believed that he was a great Prophet, a revealer of God; nay, they believed that he was the Messiah, the long promised King, who was to set up his kingdom in this world. Of this they had no doubt. This was the belief that Jesus himself sought to fasten in their minds; and when he had drawn from Simon Peter a confession of this faith he cried out, "Blessed art thou, Simon son of John; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." It was this faith in him as Lord and Ruler of men, as the Founder in this world of a kingdom of righteousness and peace, on which, as he declared, his church should be builded. Such faith as this these twelve men had. They would have found it difficult, probably, to assent to the Nicene Creed or the Athanasian Creed; but they believed in Jesus as Lord and King, and they believed every word of his Magna Charta found in the Sermon on the Mount; and they were ready to do what they could to establish that kingdom in this world. It is just here that the faith of the church is lacking. It believes the Nicene Creed, but it does not believe the Sermon on the Mount. It believes what men have said about Christ; it does not believe what Christ himself said. It does not accept the practical rule of life which he has laid down. It does not believe that the Golden Rule is workable in modern life. It does not believe that it is feasible to love our neighbors as ourselves. It does not believe in the kingdom of heaven as a present possibility. It expects that Christ will come, by and by, in person, with miraculous power, to revolutionize society, and that after that it will be practicable to follow the law of love, in all our human relations; but, for the present, we must let the law of competition control all our practical affairs.
Of course it is not often that the teachings of Christ are directly controverted; they are generally ignored, or passed by, as "counsels of perfection" which we are to admire rather than obey. But we sometimes find arguments in which disbelief in the teachings of Jesus is distinctly justified. In a late volume, one of the great leaders of the German church elaborately contends that we cannot follow Jesus in his social teachings. "Our attitude toward the world," says Herrmann, "cannot be that of Jesus; even the purpose to will that it should be so is stifled in the air that we breathe to-day. The state of affairs is very clearly described by Naumann, who says with truth: 'Therefore we do not seek Jesus' advice on points connected with the management of the state and political economy.' But when he goes on to say: 'I give my vote and I canvass for the fleet, not because I am a Christian, but because I am a citizen, and because I have learned to renounce all hope of finding fundamental questions of state determined in the Sermon on the Mount,' we can detect a fallacy. He regards as painful renunciation what ought, on the part of the Christian, to be a free, decisive, and voluntary act."19
Naumann repudiates, rather regretfully, the counsels of Jesus about economic and civil affairs, but Herrmann says that he does it light-heartedly, because he has found out that these counsels are not applicable to existing conditions.
It is evident that these counsels must be rationally applied,--the spirit and not the letter of them is the essential thing; but what these teachers mean is more than this. How far they have departed from the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount is indicated by the words already quoted. The reason why Naumann does not seek the advice of Jesus in questions of public concern is that he is determined to give his vote and influence for the German fleet; and Herrmann is following the same impulse when he characterizes the call for the disarmament of the nations as a "noble folly." It is evident that the reason why these teachers feel that the way of Jesus is impracticable is that they are fully committed to the ideas of German imperialism. To conceive that nations could dispense with war is a "noble folly." And, for the same reason, they conceive that any attempt to substitute coöperation for competition in the industrial world would be disastrous to modern society. The morality of strife outranks, in their judgment, the morality of service and sacrifice. The law of Jesus may be permitted to hold some subordinate place; it will be found useful in mitigating the savagery of strife; but as the regulative principle of the industrial order it is not to be considered.
The attempt of these German theologians to frame a philosophical refutation of the Sermon on the Mount gives us something of a shock; but, practically, this has been the attitude of the church in all the generations. The hopeful sign is that it does now give us a shock to have the doctrine badly stated.
Through a large part of the Christian era the teaching of Jesus with respect to strife has been flouted by the church. The bitterest and most wasteful wars have been religious wars. The disciples of the Prince of Peace saw no incongruity in the settlement by the sword of such questions as whether Jesus Christ was of the same substance as the Father or of a similar substance; and whether the cup should be administered to the laity in the Eucharist or only the bread. The Thirty Years' war in Europe was a religious war. Roman Catholic theories still maintain the right of the church to enforce its teachings by the sword.
All these facts show how far, through all its history, the church has departed from the teaching of Jesus. When our German theologians set themselves to prove that the Sermon on the Mount is no sufficient guide for public affairs, they have the whole history of the church behind them.
Nevertheless they might have noted that the drift, for the last few centuries, has been in the direction of the teaching of Jesus. It is hardly conceivable that Christian nations should go to war to-day for the settlement of points of doctrine. Three hundred years ago the whole church thought that necessary; to-day a very large part of the church would think it horrible and monstrous. It is not very long ago that the church believed in the settlement by force of disputes between individuals. The wager of battle was supposed to be a proper and Christian way of determining the guilt or innocence of an accused person. To most of the great Christians of the fifteenth century the proposition to dispense with that would have seemed a "noble folly," just as the proposition of general disarmament now seems to some twentieth century Christians. But the church has learned that there are better ways of settling personal quarrels than the wager of battle; and it is likely to learn, after a while, that there are better ways of settling international and industrial difficulties than the way of war. The church is beginning to see that the way of Jesus is not, after all, so impracticable as it has always been supposed to be; it is beginning to discern the truth that the law of service is a stronger law than the law of strife. One of these days we shall find the church of Jesus taking its stand on the Golden Rule as the practical rule of everyday life, and insisting upon the organization of the industrial and the political order on the basis of good-will. When that day comes we shall have a right to say that the church believes in Jesus Christ. When that day comes it will be evident to all that the main cause of the church's enfeeblement through all these centuries has been her unbelief. And we shall marvel that it took her so long to find out what might there is in meekness and what force in gentleness; and that it was so hard for her to understand that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God stronger than men.
2. The second of the church's chronic infirmities has been orthodoxism. Perhaps it was the recoil of her unbelief in Christ that sent her over into the intellectual prostration of orthodoxism.
Orthodoxy is defined as correct belief. But when we ask what is correct belief, orthodoxy answers: "That which is generally believed to be correct." Its demand is, therefore, conformity to current opinion. It assumes that essential truth has been sought out, registered and certified once for all and finally: this you must believe, and you must believe nothing other or more than this. Of course, then, belief must be stereotyped and stationary. There can be no growth of doctrine; no new light can break forth from God's holy word.
"Orthodoxy begins," says Phillips Brooks, "by setting a false standard of life. It makes men aspire after soundness in the faith rather than after richness in the truth.... It makes possible an easy transmission of truth, but only by the deadening of truth, as a butcher freezes meat in order to carry it across the sea. Orthodoxy discredits and discourages inquiry, and has made the name of free thinker, which ought to be a crown and glory, a stigma of disgrace. It puts men in the base and demoralizing position in which they apologize for seeking new truth. It is responsible for a large part of the defiant liberalism which not merely disbelieves the orthodox dogma, but disbelieves it with a sense of attempted wrong and of triumphant escape. It is orthodoxy and not truth which has done the persecuting. The inquisitions and dungeons and social ostracisms for opinion's sake belong to it."20
It is evident that when for loyalty to the truth is substituted loyalty to a prescribed statement of truth, the entire moral order is subverted. Truth for me is what justifies itself to my reason and insight; to that my choices must conform; by that my conduct must be guided. To accept statements to which my judgment does not assent, which are repugnant to my reason, because others seek to impose them upon me, is in the highest degree immoral. "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind," is the apostolic maxim.
Every honest man wants to know what is true, and seeks to have his character and his conduct conform to the truth. But orthodoxy insists that he shall limit his acceptance to fixed and definite statements prepared for him by others. Freedom of investigation is denied him. The limits are set, beyond which his thought must not range. If there is truth outside of the boundaries of orthodoxy, he must not reach out after it; if he does, he shall suffer the consequences.
For there always is a penalty for heresy. Those who diverge from the orthodox standards are always exposed to some measure of censure or discredit. In former days the stake or the gallows was the penalty. John Huss and Michael Servetus, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were put to death on the demand of orthodoxy. It was not because they were not lovers and seekers of truth; it was because they declined to assent to the statements which authority sought to impose on them. Orthodoxy has found a great variety of methods of enforcing its demand; in recent times it does not often resort to physical coercion, but it never fails to use some kind of pressure. Those to whom orthodoxy is dearer than truth have ways of their own, even now, of making uncomfortable those to whom truth is dearer than orthodoxy. Thus it is that the progress of truth has been greatly impeded. "Ye shall know the truth," said Jesus, "and the truth shall make you free." "Ye shall know," says orthodoxism, "only the truth that has been prescribed and ticketed by authority; ye shall be taught what is orthodox, and orthodoxy shall keep you safe and sound." The entire attitude of the mind is changed, under this demand. It is no longer that of free inquiry, of open-minded search for truth; it is that of passive assent, of unreasoned submission to authority.
Just to the extent to which orthodoxism succeeds in forcing its demand is progress rendered impossible. There have always been brave men to whom truth was dearer than orthodoxy, and to them we owe all the gains the church has made. "The lower orders of the church's workers, the mere runners of her machinery," says Bishop Brooks, "have always been strictly and scrupulously orthodox; while all the church's noblest servants, they who have opened to her new heavens of vision and new domains of work,--Paul, Origen, Tertullian, Dante, Abélard, Luther, Milton, Coleridge, Maurice, Swedenborg, Martineau,--have again and again been persecuted for being what they truly were--unorthodox."21
The temper of coercion, physical or moral, which is an essential element in orthodoxism, always produces, in those who do not submit to it, the temper of resentment and rebellion, which largely characterizes what is known as liberalism. Those who are thus flung off into opposition are in no mood to examine fairly the truth that there is in orthodoxy. Their mental attitude is apt to be quite as unfavorable to the discovery of the truth as that of the other party. Between those who affirm, with the threat of the withdrawal of fellowship, and those who deny, with the sense of injury and oppression, the truth has a poor chance for itself in this world. The enfeeblement of the church, in all the generations, has been largely due to this cause.
What orthodoxism produces when it has free course and is glorified, may be seen in the Greek church. More than any other branch of the Christian church the Greek church has put the emphasis upon orthodoxy. The natural and inevitable result has been that that church has destroyed itself and the nation whose life it has dominated and blighted. It is the Greek church that has led Russia to its doom. And it is orthodoxism that has made the Greek church a blind leader of the blind, and has plunged nation and church into the ditch together.
Truth, not orthodoxy, is the sovereign mistress of the human intellect. What I must know, for my salvation, is not what everybody says, but what is true. There is old truth--truth that has nourished the lives of men in many generations; let me cling to that and feed my soul upon it. There is new truth--some fuller outshining of the great revelation of God, in nature or in human nature; let me hail that light and walk in it.
It is often useful for me to know what others have believed and now believe. Not to be influenced by the consenting voices of the great and good of the past would be childish egotism. But it is always needful that my mind should be open to new truth and that I should be free to seek it. Orthodoxism restricts this right and disparages this privilege, and in doing this it has greatly weakened the Christian church.
Several other sources of weakness must be treated much more briefly.
3. Sectarianism is not the least among them. To a large degree it is the product of orthodoxism. Men who venture to think for themselves are driven forth from the fold of the faithful and compelled to organize in separate groups. Sometimes they are not driven out, they go out and slam the doors behind them. The seceders often claim a superior orthodoxy; their separation from the fold is an act of judgment on those they leave behind. The responsibility for these divisions sometimes rests more heavily on those who go out, and sometimes on those who stay in. On the one side or the other, often on both sides, pride of opinion is a main procuring cause. Sometimes men go out because they desire to hold fast in peace the truth which they have found, and sometimes they are thrust out because they will not permit those who are within to hold fast in peace the truth which is their inheritance.
The ambition of leadership also figures largely. Men who are not able to control the church to which they belong are often tempted to lead away a faction in which they may be more conspicuous. Satan, according to the Miltonic mythology, was the founder of the first sect; and his philosophy was that it was better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. The leaders of many of the sects have had a similar inspiration.
It would not be true to say that all schisms have sprung from selfishness: they have often originated in a larger vision of the truth, and their testimony, which has cost them many sacrifices, has enlarged the thought and enriched the life of the whole church.
It must, however, be admitted that selfishness, in the forms of ambition and pride of opinion, has had more to do with the multiplication of sects than love of the truth or loyalty to the Master. The existence of such numbers of organizations, differing from one another only in the most trivial particulars, cannot be reconciled with the plain principles of Christian morality. There is no justification, in reason or conscience, for the existence of so many sorts and kinds and classes of Christian disciples. Even if we could admit the wisdom of the larger divisions, what excuse can be offered for the endless subdivisions? What possible need can there be for thirteen different kinds of Baptists, and twelve kinds of Mennonites, and eleven kinds of Presbyterians, and seventeen kinds of Methodists, and twenty-three kinds of Lutherans? Could any rational man maintain that these multitudinous variations on a single string represent distinctions that are useful?
The rivalries and competitions which these sectarian divisions promote are the scandal and the curse of Christendom. The sectarian procedure habitually and brazenly sets aside the Golden Rule and pushes partisan interest, with very slight regard for fairness or equity. Churches are all the while doing to other churches what they would not like to have other churches do to them. "Every church for itself, and the angels take the hindmost," is the sectarian motto. The competition which exists in the ecclesiastical realm is almost always cutthroat competition; it destroys property and crowds out rivals with merciless purpose.
No argument should he needed to show that the existence of such a spirit and tendency in the church must cripple its power and impede its growth. The sect spirit is the antithesis of the Christian spirit; the sectarian propaganda is an attack upon the fundamental principle of Christianity, which is unity through love. The superior loyalty of every true Christian is due to the kingdom of God. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness!" What makes a man a sectarian is the fact that he loves his sect more than the kingdom of God, and is willing that the kingdom of God should suffer loss in order that his sect may make a gain. Sectarians are doing this very thing, all over the land, every day.
How great have been the injuries suffered by the Christian church through the existence of this antichristian spirit of sect it would be difficult to estimate. How alien it is to the spirit of Jesus Christ one does not need to point out. It is simply amazing that the followers of him who prayed, in his last prayer, that his disciples might all be one, in order that the world might believe in his divine commission, should imagine that they can be pleasing Christ while they persist in these childish divisions.
Some sense of the shame and sin of sectarianism has, of late years, been getting possession of the mind of the church, and the tendencies toward unity are stronger now than the tendencies toward division. Splits and secessions are rare in these times; movements toward unity are multiplying. All this is hopeful, but many generations of toil and sacrifice will be required to recover for the church the ground she has lost by the ravages of sectarianism.
4. Only one more cause of the enfeeblement of the church can be mentioned here; that is her too close reliance upon the principles and forces of the material realm. She too often forgets whence her help must come; she is too willing to go down to Egypt for her allies instead of trusting in the Lord of Hosts. She cannot always understand that she is safer and stronger when she puts her entire reliance on moral and spiritual forces; when she refuses to sacrifice truth for the revenues of the rich or the friendship of the strong.
The church is probably suffering more from this cause at this day than she has ever suffered in any former period. She lives in the midst of the abounding marvels of the materialistic civilization; she sees how much is accomplished through the use of material forces; and the spirit of the time gets into her brain and blood, and she begins to think that money and the things that money can buy are the most essential conditions of her growth and usefulness. Therefore she makes such friendships and adopts such policies as will bring to her the revenues she thinks she must have for the prosecution of her work. And thus her vision is dimmed for the truth she needs to see, and her arm is weakened for the work she has to do.
No influence so insidious as this, and none so fatal, has ever assailed the Christian church. She is passing through her greatest temptation. It is Mammon who has taken her up into an exceeding high mountain and shown her the kingdoms she wants to conquer and the glory she hopes to win, and is saying to her: "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me!" May God grant her the grace to answer "Get thee behind me, Satan; I hear the voice of one who said: Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."
That the church has suffered serious injury and enfeeblement from the causes we have considered,--from her lack of faith, from her subjection to orthodoxism, from the ravages of sectarianism, from her entanglements with Mammon, no one can deny. But that these evils are tending to increase is not evident. There is reason rather to hope that they are all on the wane, unless it be the last.
That the church is far from being in perfect spiritual condition we will all admit. But that she is growing worse rather than better we need not believe. Most of these maladies are of long standing, but they are less acute now than once they were, and there is better hope of recovery. Above all, we may say that the church knows to-day what ails her better than she ever knew before, and that she may therefore more intelligently proceed to apply the needful remedies.
What kind of treatment is called for will be the subject of the next discussion.