if ar] Pui a ay Pet Ae ute A) ea <4 WU LM ee Ass qi fg M wee HAgea tt an AN a 3 PRE i f Hy! Dh Pia i f y iy ) ee ee fe ¥ We " a Sa Waa 4 ha any 21h) TRA Ag eee ae - ai eae =>* A a ow ‘us iy isu ’ La hy cae o———) AT Bia earner OF PRINCES. LNS' a e Ys. 4 16 2 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM THE DESTRUCTIVENESS AND IRRATIONALITY OF MODERNIST THEOLOGY BY JOHN HORSCH Author of “A Short History of Christianity,” “Menno Si- mons, His Life, Labors, and Teachings,” Etc. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAMES M. GRAY, D. D. PRESIDENT OF THE Moopy BisLe INSTITUTE, CHICAGO SEcoND EDITION CHICAGO THE BIBLE INSTITUTE COLPORTAGE ASS’N 826 NortH La SALLE STREET Copyright, 1920, 1921, 1924, by Joun Horscu INTRODUCTION The Christian Century, a leading exponent of mod- ernism, says (January 3, 1924): “Christianity according to fundamentalism is one religion and Christianity accord- ing to modernism is another.” “There is a clash here as profound and grim as between Christianity and Confucian- ism. The God of the fundamentalist is one God, and the God of. the modernist is another.” ‘Which is the true Christian religion is the question to be settled by our genere:.on for future generations.” This witness is true, and for that reason it is impera- tive that young ministers, missionaries, Sunday school teachers, Christian workers generally and especially Chris- tian parents should be provided with the facts in the case and not rhetoric. When our sister republic was endeavor- ing to put down the political rebellion that threatened its life, it asked the United States for ammunition only. It had men and money, but needed that which the men could use and the money could buy. John Horsch’s book, Modern Religious Liberalism, meets that need in our pres- ent spiritual conflict. It furnishes facts. It gives the names of the men in this country who are leading the re- bellion against Bible Christianity. It locates the colleges and theological seminaries they represent. It quotes their utterances as to the Bible, God, Christ, man, sin, salvation, the future life, and incidentally divine and human govern- ment. It tells you where these utterances are found, gives you title, chapter and page where you can read them in their context. It is fair, clear, scholarly and bold. It is used as a text-book in the Pastors Course of the Moody Bible Institute, and no soldier in the ranks of the evan- gelical host today can afford to be ignorant of its contents. — James M. Gray. FOREWORD The present book was born of the conviction that the modern religious liberalism means the abandonment of the Christian faith. Modernist theology discredits and de- stroys the foundations of Christianity as Christianity has been known in all ages from the time of its origin. At the same time it discards the true basis for morality. Therefore modernism is the great menace to the Chris- tian Church and to society and the state, though it comes under a religious cloak professing to be a needed improvement on the old faith, and claiming to be called to save the Church from threatening shipwreck. By means of counterfeiting and camouflage it has gained ac- cess into not a few professedly orthodox pulpits and churches. In some instances the citadel has been sur- rendered without a struggle. Many a theological student has been deceived by the orthodox appearance of the more moderate type of modernist theology. Obviously there is need for literature exposing the great menace to the faith in a way that “he who runneth may read” and be enabled to recognize modernism when he meets it. My aim has been to set forth in plain language the true character, the destructive nature and unreasonableness of the modern religious liberalism in contrast with the evangelical faith, and the imperative need of an attitude of strict non-compromise. I have endeavored, as much as 6 FOREWORD possible, to let the representatives of liberalism speak for themselves, and have cited a few defenders of evangelical orthodoxy. The conflict is one between two irreconcilable . religious positions and in such matters it is unquestionably necessary to “call a spade a spade,” yet it has been my aim “to speak the truth in love.” For setting forth the religious position of modernist authors and institutions I have no apology to offer. If one who is halting between two opinions on these most important questions may find this book a help in making an unreserved decision for the authenticity of God’s Word, I shall feel that the book has been worth while. J. H. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I A Reticious REVOLUTION 9 II THe INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIPTURES 18 III CuHrisTIAN EXPERIENCE 34 IV Rericious CERTAINTY CONSIDERED FROM THE PoInt oF View oF MoDERNISM 43 V PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 49 VI Tue Fatuers oF LIBERALISTIC THEOLOGY 58 VII Tue Mopern Doctrine oF DIVINE IMMANENCE 62 VIII Tue BrsricaLt versus THE MODERN VIEW OF PRAYER 75 IX Tue Deity or CHRIST VERSUS THE MODERN DocTRINE OF THE DiIvINIty OF MAN 80 X SIn AND SALVATION 89 XI Two Tyres or MopERN THEOLOGY COMPARED 100 XII THe Eruicat INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION— THE LIBERALISTIC MORALITY 113 XIJTI Tue Soctat GosPeEt 127 XIV Rericious DEMocrAcy, THE DENIAL OF Gop’s SOVEREIGNTY 140 XV THe New VIeEw oF REticious EDUCATION 158 8 CHAPTER XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXITT XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII CONTENTS THE MODERNIST VIEW OF MISSIONS MopErN RELIGIous UNIONISM’ CuHurRCH DISCIPLINE VERSUS PERSECUTION HIstTor1IcAL FALSEHOODS—CONTRASTS BE- TWEEN FREEDOM AND ANARCHY IMMORTALITY SCIENCE EvoLUTIONISM Wuat Arts Our COLLEGES AND SEM- INARIES? THE IMMORALITY OF THEOLOGICAL COUN- | TERFEITING MopERN THEOLOGY IN THE LIGHT OF THE Wor.LpD WAR | THE INEFFICIENCY OF RELIGIOUS LIBER- ALISM THE FAILURE OF UNITARIANISM THE CHASM BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE New THEOLOGY INDEX PAGE 169 184 191 198 zie 216 223 230 255 315 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM — I A RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION himself a name among unbelievers by publicly denouncing the Christian faith. He considered himself an infidel and was recognized as such by the world at large. The idea that he was a Christian would have been absurd to him as well as to his contemporaries. Now a number of liberalistic theological writers have come forward with the assertion that Robert G. Ingersoll, since he advocated moral betterment and re- form, was mistaken in his own opinion of himself as concerns his religious position and his relationship to Christianity. Among those who have expressed them- — selves on this point is Dean Shailer Mathews, of the theological department of the University of Chicago, | who remarks in a magazine article that the times are past when a man like Ingersoll can be regarded as a veritable anti-Christ.1 President Faunce of Brown Uni- versity, in an article on Religious Advance in Fifty Years, says, the attacks of Robert Ingersoll “which made our fathers shiver and quake” would today be out of date and have no such effect; “Ingersoll now seems like a crusader against windmills.”? The figure is taken, as will be readily recognized, from Don Quix- ote, who fought an imaginary foe which at daybreak A BOUT a generation ago Robert G. Ingersoll made 1 The Constructive Quarterly. A Journal of the Faith, Work and Thought of Christendom. March, 1913, p. 106. 2 The American Journal of Theology. Edited by the Divinity Faculty of the University of Chicago. 1916, p. 338. 10 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM turned out to be nothing but harmless windmills. This author evidently believes that the orthodox teachings which Ingersoll attacked have had their day; to fight them now is like making war on windmills. While this is an extravagant opinion, since the liberalistic theolog- ical views are by no means so generally accepted as this author intimates, the fact remains that to representa- tives of religious liberalism the attack on the old Bible faith seems like a war on windmills—so radically does the new theology differ from the old theology which Ingersoll attacked. The modern theological liberalism takes the position © that no one can be considered an unbeliever, or non- Christian, because of his rejection of Christian doctrine. ‘No man ever lived who really disbelieved in the Chris- tian religion,’ says Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis. “Infidel to Christianity? You might as well say that a man does not believe in roses or lilies, or is infidel toward wheat and milk, and abhors apples and oranges, grapes and honey. The very. thought is absurd and self-con- tradictory.”* In other words, there are, according to this writer, no unbelievers.’ The fact is that men who advocate such views on Christian doctrine as did Rob- ert G. Ingersoll are now often considered Christians and are welcomed into the modern church. Indeed such men are holding professorships in theological semina- ties; to them is entrusted the training and education of the coming ministers of the Gospel. It should be added that religious liberalists claim also to have dis- covered that there are no heathen. Clearly these things are the consequence of a religious revolution. The fact that modernism is the result of a religious _ revolution is freely admitted by liberalistic writers.. A few of them are here quoted. Dr. Lyman Abbott, the 3 The Religious Digest, April, 1919. “NOTHING IN COMMON WITH ORTHODOXY” 1] well known liberalistic leader, says, “The old orthodoxy is right in regarding the New [Bible] Criticism as rev- ojutionary.’”* “The philosophy of religion has within the last generation undergone a revolution,” says Pro- fessor Edward Caldwell Moore, of Harvard University.® Professor Edward Scribner Ames, of the University of Chicago, speaks of “the present revolt against doctrinal theology.’® Concerning Dr. Ames’ book, The New Or- thodoxy, a Unitarian periodical, says, it advocates re- ligious conceptions which differ in no wise from those of the Unitarians, and “the new orthodoxy has certainly nothmg m common with what was formerly cherished under that name.”’’ George Holley Gilbert, a defender of modernism, speaks of “the vast transformation which the Christian faith is surely and in part silently under- going.’”’§ Professor Errett Gates, of the University of Chica- go, says: “Christianity is now being compelled to re- shape its message and redefine its essence.’® “The very conception of religion, our interpretation of spiritual processes, and even our way of conceiving the Living God and His relationship to the world, is undergoing a radical transformation,’ writes Professor Herbert Alden 4 The Theology of an Evolutionist, 1897, p. 61. In one of his more recent books Dr. Abbott has a chapter on A Religious Revolu- tion. 5 The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World, Chicago, 1919, p. 84. 6 The Biblical World. Edited by Shailer Mathews. July, 1917, p. 55. In the quotation to which this note refers, the words, re- volt against doctrinal theology are printed in type called Italics. In the original these words are not printed in such type. “Italics mine” means that Italics are used by the author of the present book, while in the original the words in question are not printed in Italics. 7 The Christian Register. A Journal of Liberal Christianity, February 20, 1919, p. 183. The editor adds that “it is for holding precisely the views set forth in Professor Ames’ book that Uni- tarians have been denied the Christian name and fellowship.” 8 The American Journal of Theology, 1910, p. 271. 9 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, edited by Gerald Birney Smith, Chicago, 1916, p. 479. Italics mine. 12 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Youtz, of the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology.’ The Unitarian theologian, Dr. George E. Ellis, in an address before the Unitarian Club of Boston, in 1882, said, “The Evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and its doc- trines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves.’ Dr. James T. Shotwell, of Colgate University, says in his book, The Religious Revolution of Today: Our problem is not to prove the existence of religious rev- olution, for that is admitted by all who give the situation any thought, and is the starting point for almost any treatment of the place of religion in modern life... a change so funda- mental that it seems to imply the overturn of the whole trend of past philosophies.12—The brand of superstition is now being placed upon many of the most cherished beliefs of our fathers.12 Dr. K. C. Anderson, pastor of a liberal church at Dun- dee, Scotland, writes: “Liberal Christianity is a radical departure from the creed of Christendom.” And again: It is well that we should be aware what a radical change is involved in the transfer from the orthodox to the liberal posi- tion.15—The important question is whether the Christian church can make the great change of belief which the acceptance of the modern critics’ Jesus would involve, and remain the Christian church. It is important that the churches of Christendom should realize the kind of Jesus the critics are presenting them with, and the vast revolution in belief which it involves18—The triumph of liberal- ism ts really a defeat, for it means the destruction of Christianity as Christianity has been known in al ages of its history A prominent modernist of Germany writes: We destroy much that was formerly accepted by Christian be- lievers. We deny the authority of the Scriptures; we see in 10 eee ake Theology, Boston, 1919, p. 4. 11 Dunning, A. E., Congregationalists in Ameren: 1894, p. 314. 12 Page 6 f. 13 The same, p. 1. 14 The Hibbert ie" vol. 8, 314. 15 The Monist, 1915, p. 46. 16 The same, p. 55. 17 The same, p. 57. Italics mine. “THE DESTRUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY” 13 Scripture both truth and error. It goes without saying that we do not consider ourselves under duty to abide by the teaching of Scripture. We do not believe the miracles which are recorded in Scripture, nay, we positively deny them. All stories of miracles contained in Scripture we believe to be either fables or allegories. We do not believe that Jesus was the Son of God; we do not believe he was God-man; we do not believe he was a perfect man; we do not believe he was free from every error, from every sin. Nei- ther his sayings nor his life are to us authoritative in every re- spect. He is to us a great prophet, like many others. ' Dr. John H. Boyd, having accepted a call to a pro- fessorship in the McCormick Theological Seminary, said in his farewell sermon to his people in Portland, “regon: I have not pleaded with you to believe in God. I have not asked you to bring your sins to be forgiven, primarily. I have not asked you to believe in the realities of the spiritual world. I have asked you to believe in yourselves, in the dignity of men, in the greatness of the human soul. I have asked you to believe in worthy character, in the worthiness of unselfish purity and manli- ness. I have believed that if you accept the teachings of Jesus Christ and become conscious of your own possibilities, you would grow out and for yourselves find God and spiritual realities. Those who can see the infinite reach of themselves can see God, can strength- en themselves, and the spiritual world is open to them. Men are what they are because of a fatal disbelief in their own divinity.13 / Are not such sentiments, expressed by a pastor of an evangelical church, evidence of religious revolution? President Cyrus Northrup, of the University of Min- nesota, Says: It seems to me that, in looking at the state of thought in the [liberalized] church in reference to its own faith, we are con- fronted by four marked changes which have grown into prom- inence in the last few years. These changes stated briefly are: First, a decay of belief in the supernatural. Second, what we may call the disintegration [the acceptance of the modern views] of the Bible. Third, new views respecting inspiration [denying the vital differences between the Scriptures and other literature]. 18 The Christian Register, (official organ of the Unitarian Church), December 11, 1919, p. 3. 14 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Fourth, loss of the sense of accountability [the breaking down of moral standards and responsibility]. These four changes are essen- tially one. They are shoots from a common root—and that root is _ doubt as to whether God ever has had any communication with men. | Under this doubt Christianity ceases to be the religion which God intended for men to cherish and becomes simply one of the religions of the world—a purely human device, like Confucianism or Moham- medanism; of no more authority than these and to be preferred to these only as its teachings are more reasonable and uplifting. This is a correct statement of the views disseminated by most of our leading theological seminaries. President Arthur Cushman McGiffert, of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, says: “Whether we lixe it or not, this [namely the new theology views of the nature of the Christian religion and of conversion] is working a revolution in modern thought, and the end is not yet.’° Furthermore Dr. McGiffert points out that the doctrine of divine immanence, which is now generally accepted among liberals, ascribes divini- ty to man, since it is supposed that man’s nature is one with God’s and he needs simply to awake to that fact. “This means, of course, a revolution in the old concep- tion of salvation,” this author says further, “what a man 1equires is not regeneration in the old sense, or a change of nature, but simply an awakening to what he reaily is.”*° Again this author says: We have learned, not to think of the Bible as the final and in- fallible authority and have come to see that there is no such author- ity and that we need none. The result has been a change of simply untold consequence. The conservatives who feared and opposed Biblical criticism in its early days because they saw what a revolu- tion it portended were far more clearsighted than most of the liberals who thought that it meant simply a shifting of position.21 —The chasm is deep. What is before us no one knows.22 19 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, KYA 20 McGiffert, The Rise of Modern Religious PEE: p. 206. 21 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 326. Italics mine. 22 The same, p. 332. TWO IRRECONCILABLE POSITIONS 15 One of the most noted defenders of religious liber- alism, the late Professor George Burman Foster, of the University of Chicago, said: The sum of what I have just been urging amounts to the pro- foundest change of [religious] thought known to history.282—One may say that not supernatural regeneration, but natural growth; not divine sanctification, but human education; not supernatural grace, but natural morality; not the divine expiation of the cross, but the human heroism—or accident ?—of the cross; ....not Christ the Lord, but the man Jesus who was a child of his time; not God and His providence, but evolution and its process without an ab- solute goal—that all this, and such as this, is the new turn in the affairs of religion at the tick of the clock.?4 A representative of evangelical Christianity writes in The Moravian: It is every day becoming more apparent that in our churches two irreconcilable theological drifts are forcing themselves on our attention. The one we might call the conservative or positive or evangelical position. The other we might call the liberal or specu- lative or higher-critical position. In the final analysis of these two positions the former insists on a supernatural basis for the Chris- tian religion, while the latter denies the supernatural and substi- tutes a purely natural basis. The former position has in our day found its clearest expres- sion through the Bible Institutes and training schools, through evangelistic and missionary activity; the latter through Unitarian- ism, and so-called higher criticism in many of our theological sem- inaries and liberal pulpits. Thinking people are discovering, even if rather slowly, that these two positions can never be reconciled. They have been, are, and will always be, fundamentally at war with each other, and we might just as well save our precious breath crying “Peace! Peace!” when there can be no peace. “Throughout all Protestantism,” says a recent writ- er, “especially in the colleges and theological training- schools, under the guise of ‘higher criticism’ and ‘liberal Christianity, there is being waged the most determined 5 23 The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, 1909, p. 178. 24 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 736. 16 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM and far-reaching assault upon our holy Christianity that it has ever endured since apostolic times. The Chris- tian religion, ‘wounded in the house of its friends,’ must | yet the victory over these insidious but deadly foes.” Another writer says: It is no use attempting to minimize the difference between the traditional [orthodox] view and the critical treatment of the Old Testament. The differences are immense; they involve different conceptions of the relation of God to the world, different views as to the nature of inspiration, etc. We cannot be lifted from the old to the new position by the influence of a charming literary style or by the force of the most enthusiastic eloquence. It would indeed be useless to deny or belittle the radical contrasts between the old Bible faith and relig- ious liberalism. So great and fundamental are these differences that, if the one is Christianity, the other must be something else. It has been said that modern- ism has changed all the doctrines of the old faith as held by Christendom from the beginning. The fact is, as pointed out in preceding quotations, modernism sets aside these doctrines and disowns them. Indeed, Chris- | tianity has more in common with Judaism and some ether non-Christian religions than with modernism. Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago, a prominent liberalistic leader, editor of The Journal of Religion, shows in a review that in the well known book Christianity and Liberalism, by Professor J. Gresham Machen, it is claimed that modernism “is not Christianity at all,” and that “it is fundamentally different from Christianity.” Then Professor Smith makes this remarkable admission: “If this can be made out, the absurdity of permitting liberals to go on claiming the name of Christianity [and likewise claiming the right to remain in an evangelical church] is apparent.”*5 The fact is that this can indeed be made out. The outspokenly liberalistic editor 25 The Journal of Religion, September, 1923, p. 542. THE GREATEST CONTRASTS 17 of The Christian Century, says frankly that “Christianity according to fundamentalism is one religion and Christianity according to modernism another.” There can be no doubt but that other fair-minded modernists will admit the 1ightfulness of Professor Machen’s claim that liberalism is fundamentally different from Christianity and is not Christianity at all. In fact, the most advanced modern- ists assert that the Gospels are unreliable and we do not know what Christ taught or what Christianity re- ally is. That the difference between modernism and his- torical Christianity is chasm-deep no serious thinker will deny. All this means, in the language of Professor Smith, that it is an absurdity to say that modernism is Christianity. Much as the renunciation of the old faith, on the part of modernists, is to be regretted, the most offens- ive feature of religious liberalism is that it uses, as a rule, the old Biblical expressions and claims to be Christian theology—an improvement on the old faith; —all this in the face of the fact that modernists, as we have seen, recognize the great chasm which separates them from Biblical Christianity. It is as if within a political party which was founded on the principle of a protective tariff there arose a new party which defended iree trade, but insisted on retaining the old party name and connections, advancing the excuse that the pro- tective tariff principles, when properly interpreted, mean free trade. IT THE INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES the Scriptures is taught in the Bible and is the only doctrine of Biblical inspiration that is consistent with the claims and contents of the Bible message. Its prac- tical meaning is that the Bible is infallible. This doc- — trine must not be confounded with the mechanical or dictation theory which implies the suppression of the - human element altogether. Though mechanical inspira- tion is not claimed for the Scriptures, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that, whether the holy writers com- initted to writing a direct message from God. (as did in many instances Moses and the prophets), or whether they stated truth as they, by divine illumination, saw it, or recorded what they themselves had witnessed, or other facts of history, they were in every instance mov- ed by the Holy Ghost to such extent that their writings are not subject to error. This implies the principle of verbal inspiration. The Holy Spirit guided them in the choice of words to the end that the truth was expressed and error avoided. The original manuscripts of the Scriptures were in this sense verbally inspired. Inspiration, then, must be distinguished from illum- ination. True, the holy writers were enlightened by the Holy Spirit, but illumination alone would not have en- abled them to write the infallible Word of God. Nei- ther can verbal inspiration be sufficiently accounted for on the ground that the writers were holy men. Many other Christian writers were true saints of the Lord. Toe doctrine of the plenary, or verbal, inspiration of VERBAL INSPIRATION 19 Again, it is immaterial whether all the holy writers knew at the time of their writing that the Holy Spirit was guiding them to the extent that they wrote inerr- antly. Nor can it be supposed that these writers had the ability to write infallibly at all times. All this means that the holy writers were, while they wrote the Scriptures, in a very special sense the tools of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is the result of the supernatural working of God. It is the Word of God. The old proof-text method of using Scripture is the method of Christ and the apostles. It is the only method consist- ent with Scripture teaching as to the nature of the Scriptures. The various older manuscripts of the Bible which are now in existence have numerous variations of the text, arising from the fact that copyists hardly ever do perfect work. These variations, or various readings, are not of such importance as some of the liberalistic writers would have us believe. The: comparative study of the manuscripts by competent scholars has given us a reliable Greek and Hebrew text, and our English ver- sions have been brought to a remarkable perfection. It is certain beyond a doubt that if we had the original writings, it would make no appreciable difference in the teachings of the Bible. In recent times the opinion has been advanced that the inspiration of Scripture has to do merely with the thought of Scripture. It is supposed that the writers of the books of the Bible wrote the thoughts, or the messages, that were given them of God but were not under the special guidance of God. Yet unless these writers were led by God in the choice of their words to the extent that they wrote inerrantly, we should have in Scripture not the infallible revelation of God but a mere record of revelation—a record which would be hu- man and therefore imperfect in character. “If inspira- 20 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM tion does not render the holy pete at: infallible, their nature is no longer divine but human,” says Professor George Johnson.* There are at the present time ESTATE who Shah shift the authority from the infallible Bible to the in- fallible Christ. They are of the opinion that it matters little whether or no the Bible is inerrant so long as we have Christ and His word to build upon, just as we have the word of Plato or other great men of antiquity. But the words of Plato cannot be compared with Christ’s words on point of importance. Plato did not bring to men a supernatural revelation; his writings must be judged entirely by human standards. Christ, on the other hand, taught truths that come to us as di- vine revelation. Some. of these truths cannot be veri- fied by experience or human knowledge. The fact that Christ was infallible would not give us an infallible di- vine authority if we had not the inerrant statement or record of His words and acts. What would Christ’s in- fallibility benefit us if the record which we have of Him be unreliable? It is inconceivable—is it not?—-that God would accomplish the great work of the redemption of mankind and reveal to fallen man the true way of sal- vation, and then leave us with a fallible account of it all—an unreliable record such as modernists believe the Scriptures to be. There are, then, theologians who hold the opinion that the Scriptures are not infallible, though they con- sider the words of Christ and certain other parts of the Bible acceptable. Now from this position there is but a step to the radically liberalistic view: that, since the Scriptures are not unerring, the account of Christ’s su- pernatural character, His birth, His miracles, etc., is unacceptable. This means the rejection of the Biblical account of the life of our Lord, and the acceptance of 1 The Princeton Theological Review, 1914, p. 461. AN INFALLIBLE RECORD 21 the view that we know nothing reliable about His life. Again, he who adopts such views will find that, to be consistent, he cannot hold the record of Christ’s words to be more trustworthy than the record of His miracu- lous works. It is idle to make an attempt to defend the one while disowning the other. Indeed Christ’s own words have largely reference to that which is super- natural and miraculous. One of the radical critics, Professor Karl Bornhaus- en, of Marburg, points out that soon after the doctrine of inspiration had been discarded, the Bible record of Jesus’ life and miraculous deeds was judged unaccepta- ble, and “close upon this supposition followed the criti- cism of the words of Jesus.”? Another liberalistic writ- er says rightfully, if the Bible is not held to be inerrant, “the teachings of Jesus which are recorded in the Bi- ble cannot be considered as an absolute rule of truth.”® The same writer (who is a minister in an evangelical denomination) says further: “My ultimate standard is not Christ—neither the Christ of history nor the Christ of faith; J want to know God. I want him to be my Seandard of perfection. — The standard cannot be creeds and dogmas, the Bible or any particular part of it, or the Master and His teachings.’* Thus the rejec- tion of the Bible as an inerrant authority leads to the rejection of the authority of Christ. The last mention- ed author would retain the authority of God but neg- lects to tell us what he means when he refers to God. Clearly he does not speak of God as revealed in Scrip- ture. He fails to inform us how God can be his “stan- dard of perfection,” if we do not have an authoritative revelation of God. , The term higher criticism was formerly used in an 2 The American Journal of Theology, 1914, p. 201. 8 The Biblical World, March, 1919, p. 150. 4 The same, p. 155. 22 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM acceptable sense. It meant an examination of the text of the Bible with a view of settling the date, human. authorship, purpose, etc., of its component parts. In the modern liberalistic sense higher criticism means the study of the Scriptures from the viewpoint of natural- ism. The leading principle is the denial of the super- natural character of divine revelation in Scripture. The supernatural is explained away on the assumption that it is due to mistaken ideas of the writers of the Biblical books. Modern higher criticism is also called the his- torical method of Biblical interpretation, or the histo- rical treatment of religion, since it undertakes the study of the Scriptures from the purely human historical viewpoint insisting that the history of Christ and of those who, according to Bible teaching, were used of God for special purposes, was not different in character from other human history. The critics take the posi- tion that ail that cannot be explained by human stand- ards of knowledge is unacceptable. All questions per- taining to Bible study are approached on the basis of naturalism and rationalism. In short, the modern high- er criticism is based on the denial of the divine charac- ter and authority of the Scriptures, Another term which has acquired a new meaning in liberalistic usage is “the inductive method of the study of Scripture,” as contrasted with the deductive method. The latter method accepts the Scriptures as God’s Word and, agreeable with this truth, makes its deduc- tions and conclusions. The modern inductive method, on the other hand, starts with the presumption that the Scriptures are not God’s Word in any real sense, hence no conclusions must be made as if the whole Bible were — divinely inspired; nothing must be approved on the mere authority of Scripture. The inductive method of Bible study undertakes to study Scripture, part for part, with a view of determining whether the part in question THE INDUCTIVE METHOD 23 is in any sense inspired and acceptable. The Bible is not looked upon as man’s judge, but man is supposed to be the judge of the Bible. It is readily seen that this method of study is merely another term for modern higher criticism. Modernists tell us, as already intimated, that of the contents of Scripture only that which has to do directly with the religious life of man was given of God to the Biblical writers. This means that inspiration, even in this loose sense, would not apply to Scripture narration of historical events and hence not to the record of mir- acles. If this were the correct view you might believe in the inspiration of Scripture and yet question the mir- acles. They who hold such views deny the vital im- portance of Scripture narration. They ignore the fact that the truth of Christianity depends on certain his- torical facts, such as the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Nevertheless many of those who take such an attitude would retain some of the moral and religious teaching of the Bible, Again if such theologians are asked how they sup- pose that God revealed religious thoughts to the holy writers, they answer, as a rule, that these thoughts came to them through their religious experience. In other words, they see in the Bible (or in parts of it) nothing more than a record of the religious experience of certain men, or, more correctly speaking, a more or less questionable record of what they thought they had experienced. ‘We are becoming accustomed to the use of the Bible as a book of religious experience,” says Professor Gerald Birney Smith, “rather than a super- naturally produced literature.” Now the term “relig- ious experience” is an impressive one, but, as will be pointed out elsewhere, “religious experience” has been deprived of all real meaning by the representatives of 5 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 553. 24 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM liberalism. In the last analysis they hold that the Bible is merely “the outgrowth of men’s thinking,” just as all other religious books.® These liberalistic theologians — teach that the religious books of the Mohammedans and pagans, as well as modern religious writings, (being also in a sense a record of religious experience) are, as concerns authority, on a par with the Bible. They see in Scripture simply “man’s enlarging thought and dis- covery of God, not God’s progressive revelation of Him- self to man.” Nevertheless they profess to believe in the inspiration of Scripture. Now such a view of in- spiration cannot be taken seriously; it is a mere make- believe. Modern theology denies the personality of the Holy Spirit; the Spirit is “conceived as energy, or force © in operation; the force or energy which pervades the world,” says Professor H. C, Ackerman, of the Theo- logical Institute at Nashotah, Wis. Hence, this writer asserts that “in the field of religious [and Biblical] in- spiration the spirit is [not a personal Being, but] that stirring imterest in ideas and ideals of God and man which leads to the discovery and foundation of the most efficient religion.’ In other words, inspiration is not the work of the divine Spirit but of the spirit of man. It is readily seen that this doctrine of inspiration is mere word-jugglery. The leading modern critics, then, do not distinguish between divine inspiration, in the sense in which this term is used when we speak of the inspiration of Scrip- ture, and the various other uses of the word inspiration. They tell us that the Scriptures are inspired in a sim- ilar sense as some poem or some new idea may prove inspiring to us. In their opinion Shakespeare and Goe- the were inspired as well as the Biblical writers. Pro- fessor Edward Scribner Ames, of the University of ® The American Journal of T henry 1917, p. 355. 7 The Biblical World, March 1919, p. 148. INSPIRATION—NOT OF DIVINE CHARACTER 25 Chicago, for example, mentions quite a number of writ- ers: Tennyson and Whittier and Bryant and Lowell and Phillips Brooks and Shakespeare and Maeterlinck and Kepler and Darwin and John Locke and William James who, in his view, should be included in the sa- cred canon of Scripture. He thinks the canon of Scrip- ture has, by the critics, been “made continuous with the ampler Scriptures of the whole spiritual develop- ment of mankind.”’® “Modern religious thinking,” says Dr. Gerald Birney Smith, “is learning to draw its in- spiration from the world in which we live.’?® George Burman Foster has asserted that a Bible greater and richer than the Christian Bible has come into existence, namely the Bible of Humanity (whatever that may mean). “In this Bible of Humanity,” he says, “we too ought to write.”*? | And again he says, the new doubt— for which Professor Foster himself stood—flung down the gauntlet to the old Bible faith with the result that “the Sacred Book was found a human book.” There- fore the Bible “had no right to rule over man. Man was the book’s judge, the book was not man’s judge.”” All these writers are entertaining agnostic, non-Chris- tian views of the Bible. William Newton Clarke, the well-known advocate of the new theology, wrote: “The authority of the Scriptures is the authority of the truth that they con- vey.’** And again: “If Christianity were not historically true, no divine aid in the composition of its scriptures could make it true.”1* Hence this author, with many other writers, rejects the authority of Scripture, substi- 8 The New Orthodoxy, p. 8&1. 9 The same, p. 69. 10 4 Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 570. 11 The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, . 292. eae A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 740 13 An Outline of Christian Theology, p. 45 14 The same, p. 38. 26 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM tuting for it the authority of truth. He persistently ig- nores the fact that the most important truths which the. Bible brings to us, are dependent on the authority of the Scriptures as God’s Word and cannot be verified in any other way. Deny the authority of the Bible and you will find yourself compelled to take the position of an agnostic in regard to these truths. Furthermore, Christianity is, as already said, grounded on certain historical facts, such as Christ’s supernatural birth, the Atonement, the resurrection, etc. To maintain these facts when the authority of Scripture is rejected, is im- possible. The Scriptures, Christ the Savior, and Chris- tianity stand and fall together. Now all the liberal critics, William Newton Clarke included, tell us that the Bible contains much that is unacceptable historically. In fact they would make the Bible one of the most un- reliable books. And then again they have the courage to tell us that the question of the inspiration and au- thority of Scripture is of no importance. Such is the modern liberalistic view of the Bible. It has been said that this view makes the Bible a huge mistake. While this is true, it is not the whole truth. If the liberalistic view be correct, the Bible would be not merely a mistake but a fraud—a pious fraud, if you like. But suppose for the moment that the Bible be merely of equal value with Shakespeare and other use- ful books in general, the wonder is then, that some of our modern critics confess surprise over the fact that the practice of daily reading the Scriptures is generally discontinued in liberalistic circles. Do they not realize that, where their own views prevail, it is asking too much that this practice be kept up? Not long age a Unitarian writer said in The Christian Register: It is still a good home to be born into, this home of the liberal faith—good in many respects: but so far as responsibility for the religiousness of the children is concerned the parents have abdicated. IS THERE DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM? fai Someone says that in the modern home the daily bath has taken the place of the morning prayer. It is better for hygiene—is it for holiness, for character? The modern liberal parent seems to reply, “Cleanliness comes before godliness and one will suffice.”—This sunset of religiousness is by no means confined to Unitarian homes nor to those of liberal orthodoxy. But it is probably most marked in homes of the liberal faith, and doubtless the liberalizing has much to do with it. William Newton Clarke has written a book in which he undertakes to show that as the supernatural and su- perhuman has faded out of his thought of the Bible and its contents, in the same degree the Bible has be- come inspiring to him. The more fully he recognized its (supposed) shortcomings, the more valuable he found the Bible to be and the more acceptable as a ve- hicle of the revelation of God. Similar assertions have been made by many liberalistic writers. The liberal critics have, in fact, generally defended this view. Says Gerald Birney Smith: “For the man of. scientific spirit criticism [even if it be of the most radically negative character] is never destructive,’® in other words, there is not such a thing as destructive criticism — the most radical of the higher critics are not doing destructive work. This view of the modern liberalists is only an evidence of their inability to consider these matters in an unbiased way. It is refreshing to notice that there are at least a few representatives of liberalism who are willing to admit that the modern higher criticism is de- structive to the value of the Scriptures. Wellhausen, the foremost radical Old Testament critic, when asked whether, if his views were accepted, the Bible would retain its place in the estimation of the people in general, said: “I cannot see how that is possible.” A Unitarian writer says: “Under the high- er criticism the religious value of the Bible tends to disappear.”'® Dr, M. J. Savage, pastor of a Unitarian 15 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 187. 16 The Christian Register, Dec. 26, 1918, p. 1236. 28 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM church in Boston has admitted: “We are gradually drifting away from the idea that the Bible has any spe- cial significance or authority.”?7 Another Unitarian © writer says: “Materialistic science and Biblical criticism have brought multitudes to the brink of despair.”** “If the whole truth is to be told,’ says a Unitarian clergy- man in New York, “and that is what I am striving to do as far as limitations of space will permit, Unitarians outstrip all others in their ignorance of the Scriptures and in their inability to appreciate the permanent value of the sacred writings.’ “The danger of liberalism now is,’ this writer remarks further “that it will discard the Bible altogether. If it does, then liberalism, as we have it, will deserve only death and the world were better off without it.”2® Dr. A. C. Dixon is responsible for the statement that when the British and Foreign Bible So- ciety gave a copy of the Scriptures to each of the grad- uates of certain universities in India on the day of their graduation, a freethinker who desired to give them an antidote to the Bible, presented them with a book on the Bible written by a well-known liberal Brit- ish clergyman. : “When destructive criticism proclaimed to the world that its purpose was to save the Bible to mankind,” writes the editor of a religious journal, “it deceived it- self and all who held its presumptions. Where the modern Bible criticism has been accepted, it has robbed the people of the substance of Scripture and left them only the husks. Its effect everywhere is to unfit the people for receiving the Gospel.” The Herald and Presbyter says: “The most serious damage to the Word of God and the church from destructive critics is not’ in their attack upon individual facts of books of the 17 Dunning, Congregationalists in America, 1894, p. 316. 18 The Christian Register, January 8, 1920, p. 22. 19 The same, August 26, 1920, p. 14. Italics mine. “INSPIRATION” MUST HAVE A MEANING Fa Bible, but in the loss of confidence in the Bible as a whole which their methods produce.””° William Newton Clarke was, as has been intimated, one of a class of theologians who lay claim to the pred- icate oi loyalty to the Scriptures, but explain that this does not mean loyalty to a theory about the Scriptures. They object to definite teaching regarding the divine character of Scripture. They do not hold to any doc- trine defining the sense in which they believe the Bible to be inspired, though, as a rule, they hold that the in- spiration of Scripture has not to do with the very words but only with the thoughts — or, speaking more correctly, with some of the thoughts—contained in Scripture. They take the position that no one has a right to insist on definitions concerning the character of Scripture, or, in other words, concerning the ground for and import of the loyalty which they demand. The case is similar to that of certain liberal theologians who profess loyalty to Christ, but insist that to consider His deity essential is to demand loyalty to a mere theory about Him. The fact is that, unless definitions are giv- en and we are permitted to know what a given state- ment about the Scriptures and about Christ really means, it is only the unthinking who can satisfy them- selves with such a position. It cannot for a moment be doubted that a weakening down on the doctrine of inspiration has a pronounced tendency of producing a modification in the acceptance of the message found in the Bible. The rejection of the doctrine of inspiration - goes together with a doctrine of salvation which differs from the Bible conception, Dr. Robert Forman Horton, a well-known British theologian, wrote :”? The real difficulty of our time, when we come to probe it, is the 20 Quoted in The Bible Champion, 1915, p. 131. 21 Contemporary Review, January, 1917, p. 54. he 30 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM dethronement of the Bible from its position of unquestioned author- ity. From the earliest period of Christianity, even in the writings of the earliest Fathers, the sacred Scriptures were held to be the standard and the test of Christian truth: nothing was to be taught as essential except what was contained in them or could be proven by them; and up to the middle of the last century the imposing fortress of the Book remained practically unquestioned and cer- tainly unbreached. No one within the borders of the Church hesi- tated to regard the Bible as effectively infallible. A quotation from any part of it carried unquestioned weight, and decisions drawn from its decretals were the settlement of all strife—[Liberal] Protestants have lost their Bible, and in losing it have lost their religion. How can they shelter in a building which is demolished or which is ever hidden by the scaffolding about it, necessary for perpetual repairs? Charles Haddon Spurgeon has said: jhe turning point of the battle between those who hold “the faith once delivered to the saints” and their opponents, lies in the true and real inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. This is the Ther- mopylae of Christendom. If we have in the Word of God no in- fallible standard of truth, we are at sea without a compass, and no danger from rough weather without can be equal to this loss with- in. “If the foundations be removed, what can the righteous do?” And this is a foundation loss of the worst kind. ~* “Let us not deceive ourselves,” says Professor John Gresham Machen, of Princeton Theological Seminary, “the Bible is at the toundation of the church. Under- mine that foundation, and the church will fall. It will fall, and great will be the fall of it.’’?? There yet remains the question of the authority of the Old Testament and its relation to the New Testa- ment Scriptures. The writer of the epistle to the He- brews, having spoken of the Old Covenant, points out that Christ “is the Mediator of a better covenant.” “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second” (Heb. 8:6,7). While as concerns inspiration there is no difference between the Old and the New Testament 22 The Princeton Theological Review, 1915, p. 351. OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT 31 Scriptures, the Bible teaches explicitly that the New Covenant surpasses and supersedes the Old and that parts of the Old Testament precepts were intended for pre-Messianic times alone. The question in what respect the New Covenant surpasses the Old is answered in the same epistle. It is pointed out that the difference arises, principally, from the fact that Christ is the Son, while Moses was the servant (3:1-6). Again the writer or this epistle says: “For the law having a shadow of things to come, and not the very image [or substance] of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto per- fect.— For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (Heb. 10:1, 4). Those sacrifices were shadows and types pointing to Christ and were fulfilled in Him. The blood of the typical sacrifices covered sin; the blood of Christ cleans- es from sin. In the Old Covenant the law was written on tables of stone; in the New it is written in the be- liever’s heart (Jer. 31:33; II Cor. 3:3). The nature of the Old Covenant law was partly conditioned by the people’s hardness of heart, as will be further shown. For the New Covenant the promise is, “I will take a- way the stony heart...and give you an heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26). Our Lord says, that he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than His own fore- runner who was not a member of the New Covenant (Luke 7:28). In various instances He dwells upon the superiority of the New Covenant. He also points out differences between His own precepts and certain points of the Mosaic law. “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). Again, some of the Ten Commandments have ac- quired a new meaning through the interpretation of the 32 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM perfect Teacher. According to New Testament teach- ing hatred is a transgression of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” (commit murder). The com-_ mand, “Thou shalt not steal,’ according to Christ’s teaching, and in the light of Paul’s words, Rom. 1:14, means far more than it did under the Old Dispensation. God’s children, being saved by Him, are debtors to all men. The closer to God they live, the more they will realize their indebtedness. Unless they meet it accord- ing to their ability, they transgress the command, “Thou shalt not steal.” This is the Christian version of this commandment. In the Old Testament law were incorporated cer- tain precepts touching various usages which had been in vogue in Israel before the giving of the law. Some © of these usages were left to Israel because of “the hardness of their hearts” (Matt. 19:8; Mk. 10:1-12). The Lord Jesus said to the Jews: “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives.” The supposition that the permission of divorce in the Old Covenant did not have the divine sanction, is groundless. The regulations regarding this matter are a part of the inspired record. And this is not the only instance in which the hardness of heart of Israel was taken into account in God’s dealings with them. He had promised to drive out the Canaanites in a miraculous manner (Ex. 23:27-30; Deut. 7:20-22). They lacked the needed faith, however, hence it fell to them to use the sword. Aind not only did God permit them the use of the sword, but He gave them pertinent laws and precepts and promised them success in their wars. When later the people demanded a king “like all, the nations,” the Lord said unto Samuel: “Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them” (I Sam. 8:7). THE SCRIPTURES AN INSEPARABLE WHOLE _ 33 They had not lived in the faith and had not permitted God to lead them and be their ruler. They had reject- ed the Lord and, in consequence, conditions obtained which made the election of a king necessary. So the Lord Himself chose a king for them (I Sam, 10:24; 12: 13). Indeed, through His foreknowledge of these things He had given them in the Mosaic law precepts concerning the rule of a king (Deut. 17:14-20). The question, Why did God not give Israel the law of the New Covenant instead of giving consideration, in some respects, to their hardness of heart—this ques- tion is identical with the query why the Redeemer was not given at the time of Moses, or earlier. While a number. of reasons may be given why God has made with Israel a covenant such as the Mosaic, giving them a law dealing with types and shadows as a special preparation for the coming of the Savior, the fact should be kept in mind that human opinion does not go far in such matters. Martin Luther’s answer to a similar question may be worth quoting. When asked “what God may have been doing in the long eternity before the creation of the world,” his reply was: He was sit- ting in a birch-grove and was cutting rods to chastise those who raise such useless questions. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are an inseparable whole. The Old Testament Scriptures are the foundation, the foreshadowing and promise of the New. The New Testasnent is the fulfillment of the Old. In so far as the precepts of the Old Testament were intended for pre-Messianic times alone, they are not applicable to the Christian church. But the fact remains and cannot be too strongly emphasized, that though God’s revelation in Scripture is of a progressive character, the whole Bible is God’s inspired Word. III CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE say, their religious thought is founded on experi- ence. This, it must be admitted, is an impressive claim. Experience is a matter not to be trifled with, unless it has to do with trifling things. Obviously an RR sx tir stigions of modernism sometimes experience may be of great or little value, depending © entirely on its nature and content, that is to say, on the question what it is that has been experienced. When we are told that a religion is established on experience, we first of all ask for definitions. What do modernists mean when they speak of religion and religious experience? There is a host of liberal religionists in our day to whom religion is nothing more than a means to social welfare. The late Auguste Sabatier, Dean of the Prot- estant faculty of theology in the University of Paris, a notable leader of liberal religious thought, wrote a large volume in defence of what he speaks of as “the religion of the spirit.” And what would you suppose is his definition of the religion of the spirit which he advocated? It is, according to his own words, altruism. Professor Josiah Royce, of Harvard University, taught that Christianity is simply a sentiment of loyalty. Pro- fessor Edward Scribner Ames says,’ “Religion is an ex- traordinary enthusiasm for a cause.” Many writers have, as we shall see elsewhere, explained religion to be nothing beyond morality. Professor Roy Wood Sellars, of the University of Michigan, gives this defi- nition: “Religion is loyalty to the values of life.” This writer explains that any one who “throws himself 1 The New Orthodoxy, p. 94. MODERNIST DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION = 35 whole-heartedly into some field,” such as Socialism, art, etc., “has found that concrete and living salvation which ideal effort always brings to man. He is filled with the spirit of consuming loyalty to what he val- ues.’”? In the opinion of these writers religion is nothing more than endeavor for social welfare, altruism, moral- ity, loyalty, enthusiasm. Now it is true that experi- ence has proven the desirability of these things. Every person of sound mind, be he Christian, Jew, Moham- medan, pagan, rationalist, or what not, will admit that these qualities are to be desired; that they are better than their opposites. This is apparent to every one of commonsense. As far as we are aware we have no score with liberalism on this point. The point on which we differ is, that we do not recognize these qual- ities as the essence of Christianity. If faith in these things were the sum and substance of the Christian faith, it would follow that intelligent people the world over are, wittingly or unwittingly, representatives of the Christian religion. If Christian experience were nothing beyond the conviction that these qualities are desirable, why speak of Christian experience at all? lt may be worth while, in passing, to notice that the definitions of religion offered by modern liberalism show the truth of the words of a prominent modernist who said: “Ours is a time of religious confusion and upheaval.” Sometimes a comparison of such defini- tions with other statements of the same writers brings striking evidence of the existing confusion. Take, for example, Dr. Ames’ definition of religion as “an extra- ordinary enthusiasm for a cause.” This author says in another instance: “It is commonly accepted today that man is incurably religious’;* yet it is not probable 2 The Next Step in Religion, p. 221, 3 The New Orthodoxy, p. 10. 36 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM that, in Professor Ames’ opinion, man is incurably giv- en to a cause. Again it is not clear how man can be said to be incurably religious, if the ‘view of modern ™ psychologists is accepted, viz., that man’s soul is only a development of the animal “mind” and that there is no specific religious instinct. We are told by repre- sentatives of religious liberalism, that “religious instinct consists rather in a particular direction and organiza- tion of the various instinctive capacities for social liv- ing.”’* If this view of the liberalistic religious psychol- ogists is accepted it is difficult to see, we repeat, how man can be supposed to be incurably religious. Dr. George Willis Cooke, a noted liberalistic theo- logian has recently published a large book on The Se- . cial Evolution of Religion in which he defines religion as “the trend and aim of our present collective mind.” Professor Roy Wood Seilars, as' we have seen, defines religion as loyalty. This writer says further; “Such at- titudes and expectations as prayer, worship, immortali-_ ty, providence [i. e., God], are expressions of the pre- scientific view of the world. But as man partly out- grows, partly learns to reject the primitive thought of the world, this perspective and these elements will drop from religion.’® Here, then, is godless, prayerless, spiritless, earthly, materialistic religion — confusion forsooth. Albrecht Ritschl, the father of liberalistic theology, held that the Christian religion (as he taught it) is es- tablished on experience. His views on the points un- der consideration have been accepted by many repre- sentatives of the religious liberalism. It is therefore in order to inquire more closely into his position. As 4 Coe, A Social Theory of Religious Education, p. 141. 5 The Next Step in Religion, p. 6. Professor Sellars is a mem- ber of the Unitarian Church. He was one of the principal speakers _ at the Annual Western Unitarian Conference, held in May, 1920, in Minneapolis. MODERNIST RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 37 has been pointed out elsewhere, he denied not only the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures and the de- ity of Christ, but also the plan of salvation, as taught in Scripture. He disowned the most essential funda- mentals of the Christian faith, He reduced the Chris- tian religion to morality; he made morality the center and constructed his theology from the point of view of ethics. Nevertheless he appealed to religious experi- ence as his authority for what he held to be the Chris- tian religion. Ritsch] defended strange ideas, however, concerning the nature of Christian experience, though he would found his theology on it. Since he disowned the deity of Christ, he rejected the idea of an imme- diate relation to Christ for the Christian. He express- ly disowned the thought of entering into such relation by personal faith, or conversion. He held that a belief of having personally obtained grace and_ salvation through Christ was out of place. In short, a real per- sonal relation to God and having fellowship with Him (1 John 1:3) he believed to be “mysticism” which he bitterly detested. Sifted down to its substance, Ritschl and his followers believe Christian experience to be a conviction of the excellency of morality. No one doubts the desirability of morality, but the question is: Does such a conviction deserve the name ef Christian experience? A noteworthy article under the title of The Relig- ton of Experience has been published by a Unitarian clergyman. The article is remarkable because it is a striking illustration of the incredibly elusive and de- ceptive way in which the term religious experience is used by modern liberalists. The writer of the said ar- ticle declares that religion should be based, not upon God but “upon the strength and worth of man,” and that man should realize “that all that he has is the re- sult of his own effort.” Man should “not depend upon 38 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM some supernatural power for wisdom, or recognize this power as the source of all his blessings.” Now this writer asserts further that the view which he defends — which in plain words is rank atheism — “is the uni- versal experience of man throughout the ages”’® Of such a position it may be said that it is eae and religious experience gone mad. The fact has often been overlooked that man is an essentially religious being. One of the liberalistic writers has said, as already noted, that man is incur- ably religious. If this is true, as it probably is, it fol- lows that every man has some sort of religious experi- ences, be they ever so worthless. The most degraded pagan has some satisfaction from his religion. He has a feeling of uneasiness unless he follows his erring con- science. The reason is that his conscience, though originally God-given, has become a tool of the powers of darkness. Most Christian believers will realize that before their conversion they were not without religious sentiments and feeling. It is a generally known fact that there are Christian professors who are not really Christians at heart, but they may have religious ex- periences of some sort. Though man is naturally religious and hence has naturally some sort of religious experiences, be they ever so vague, it does not follow that his natural relig- ious faculties will enable him to ascertain the saving divine truth and find the way of salvation. The fact is that the most religious persons are often spiritually blind, as witness the zeal of some of the heathen de- votees of India and other lands. In consequence of man’s natural sinfulness the powers of darkness are playing havoc with his natural religiousness and religious experiences. Therefore religious experiences, based on natural “universal” religion, do not furnish an adequate 6 The Christian Register, March 13, 1919, p. 1. DOUBT IS HARMFUL 39 foundation for establishing religious truth. Any religious experimenting on the basis of mere natural religion does not bring satisfactory results. The vital religious questions cannot be solved in this way. Modern religious liberalism undertakes, by the study of religion from a natural viewpoint, and experi- menting along the line of religious psychology, to es- tablish religious truth. The results are destructive even to natural religion. The most thorough-going liberalists now, as we have seen, identify religion with morality. They disown all religion except in so far as they give to morality the name of religion. The study of natural religion for the purpose of finding a foundation or norm for religious truth is the wrong thing also for the reason that such experimenting im- plies an attitude of doubt or indifference toward God’s Word. To doubt the Christian truth is always the wrong course. Be the doubter ever so honest, the fact re- mains that doubting the truth regarding salvation leads into darkness, not into light. Hence the necessity of differentiating between experimental and experiental religion or, in other words, between religious experi- menting and Christian experience. Christian experience, to be worthy of the name, pre-supposes Christian faith. Such experience is ex- cluded where the fundamentals of the faith are treated with indifference, or denied. Discounting the truth of the Gospel makes Christian experience impossible. De- ny the deity of Christ and the Atonement and you de- stroy the possibility of true Christian experience. Again, accept the Gospel message unreservedly and you will ‘experience a great change of mind and heart. If your faith is steadfast, the reality of this change will become more and more clear to you. The change is the result of personal faith in Jesus Christ — not of follow- 40 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM ing a natural impulse but of giving heed to the prompt- ing of the Holy Spirit. It is not mere development of natural religious powers, but is of a supernatural char- | acter—not your own work but the work of God. Christian experience, then, is the consciousness of a supernatural personal relation to God, the realiza- tion of being right with God, being His child, through the great work of Christ. Let no one suppose that this means simply belief in the popular doctrine of the fa- therhood of God. On the contrary, it means a realiza- tion of the contrast between being God’s child by re- _ generation and being His child in the sense as taught by modernism, namely in the sense that you were flis child before your conversion. True Christian experi- ence brings the firm conviction of the reality of the great redemption. wrought by Christ; of the reality «! personal salvation through Him. : Christian experience results in victory over sin, as well as victory over the adverse experiences, disap- pointments and tragedies of human life. And this is a point on which modern liberalism is totally failing. We quote here a remarkable statement by Dean Fenn, of the Divinity School, Harvard University, a Unitari- an minister. He says: We must seriously raise the question whether [religious] lib- eralism can bear the weight of the tragedies of human experience. Does not its amiable faith in inherent goodness appear but ghastly mocxery when confronted by the facts of life?__......A religious doctrine which cannot bear the weight of the heart-breaking dis- asters of life will prove a broken reed piercing the hand of him who leans upon it. Every fall is a fall upward — tell that to a man who by his own sin has fallen from a position of honor and power into deep and damning disgrace.7 While the message of religious liberalism, with its impotent God of law and natural force, is but “ghastly mockery” to him who seeks salvation from sin and 7 The American Journal ef Theelegy, 1913, p. 516. REALITY OF SALVATION 4] divine power to uphold him in the crushing experiences of life, the acceptance of the Christian message, on the other hand, (resulting in Christian experience) is fully adequate to his needs. The actual realization of the living God and of a blessed personal relation to Him necessarily brings the conviction that He is doing the very best for His child even in the disappointments which He may permit to befall him; and that trials wit! in the end result in great blessing, if they are berne as they ought. This answers also the question, How may I know that the Bible is God’s Word: Liberalism says, you should treat the Bible not as a divine message but as any human book. Modernism proposes that we exam- ine the Bible, one part after another, in a critical spir- it, to find whether it is acceptable. This means that you should appoint yourself a judge over the Bible, in- stead of approaching it with a willingness to be judged by it. Christian faith, on the contrary, says: If your own brains were sufficient to enable you to find the way of life and accomplish your own salvation without supernatural divine aid; if you were able to set up a standard by which the Bible is to be judged, there would be no need for the Scriptures. The Bible comes to you with a message. The mes- sage, if true, is of incomparable value. You are called upon to experience the truth of the message. It con- sists of truths, or doctrines, concerning God and His nature, man and his condition, the way of salvation, etc. You are bidden to believe and fully accept the message. There are excellent reasons for believing that ihe message is true. The most convincing reason, perhaps, is that Christianity will do for you what it claims to do. If you are conscious of personal sin and of an unsatisfactory relation to God, Christianity of- fers a way for fully removing the burden of sin and 42 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM guilt and giving you a deep consciousness of a vital relationship to God, the relation of a child to his loving father. The Christian message points out a way to. make you abound in the fruits of the spirit. You wili be enabled to lead a life of victory over sin and over the adverse conditions and failures of life. When the real tests come which prove the modern conceptions of God and of religion to be utterly inadequate, the old Bible faith will make you “more than conqueror.” It will turn your defeats into victories. It will make you the stronger spiritually and morally for adverse ex- periences. True Christian experience will also cure you of the worldly-wise idea that the endeavor to improve social conditions is the essence of Christianity and is of great- er importance than maintaining the proper personal relationship to God and bringing others into such rela- tionship. Unless your Christian faith is mere show and pretence, you will clearly see that it is the greatest treasure which you possess. You would willingly give your earthly possessions and social advantages for your faith. You are fully convinced that you can render no greater service to your fellow-man than to get him to accept the Christian message and enjoy the blessings of salvation. It will become clear to you that working for the personal conversion of men is the most impor- tant service you can render to the community and to society —that above all else society needs truly con- verted Christians to prevent the destruction and chaos that is threatening it. IV RELIGIOUS CERTAINTY CONSIDERED FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF MODERNISM the instance of Christian experience, again before us the question of the nature of Christianity. We have seen that modernism in general offers an ethical interpretation of Christianity. The essence of Chris- tianity is held to be morality. If this view were correct, Christian assurance would simply mean the certainty that morality is a good thing. Concerning this there can be no question. While it is supposed by representa- tives of modernism that, considered from their own viewpoint, all moral and religious truth is relative, or in other words, there is no absolute moral truth, yet it is a fact that all reasonable men and women agree on the desirability of general morality. GS ie insta of Christian assurance, we have, as in Among the modernists who accept the ethical inter- pretation of religion, believing that morality is the one essential thing, there are those—as for example the So- cieties for Ethical Culture—who do not desire to be known as religious, or Christian, and have done away with all theology. Others again, namely the Unitarians and other representatives of the so-called liberal Chris- tianity, claim to be religious and approve of some sort of theology, or some modern substitute for theology. It may be safely said that the ethical culture societies never speak of religious assurance, and we may assume that, as this term is used by representatives of the so- called liberal Christianity, it refers to the assurance they have for their theology. For though the message of the more radically liberalistic churches does not appreciably 44 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM differ from that of the societies for moral culture, the liberalistic churches hold fast to the Christian name and hence cannot consistently renounce all Christian theol- — ogy. Their theology may be thoroughly modernized, that is to say, they may reject all the fundamentals of the Christian faith and treat all questions of doctrine and theology as entirely secondary and non-essential matters, nevertheless they have a right to the name of a religious society only to the extent that they adhere to some sort of theology. The Unitarians and other relig- ious liberals, in passing, are inconsistent on the question of theology. On the one hand it is their boast to have no theology, and on the other they maintain theological seminaries, they engage in public worship and desire to be recognized as religious societies. Without any doubt, when liberalists speak of religious assurance, they have reference to the question what assurance there may be for their theology. There is no need of dwelling here further on the fact that all religious liberals are agreed in the rejection of the inspiration and authority of Scripture. Disowning the Scriptures, they cannot consistently fall back on Scripture as an authority for a theology which they may defend. Now a generation or less ago the representa- tives of the liberalistic theology generally accepted re- ligious experience as a substitute for Scripture authority, They held that religious experience is sufficient ground or authority for modern theology. However, to accept this view is frankly to admit to be agnostic (“not know- ing”) about all that lies beyond the range of experience. “As a result,” says President McGiffert, of Union The- ological Seminary, “agnosticism touching many matters, formerly deemed fundamental, has come to be the com- mon attitude on the part of religious men; and even of theologians,.”? 1 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p 325. Italics mine. AN INADEQUATE FOUNDATION 45 In more recent years the leaders of religious liberal- ism have been led to realize the impossibility of build- ing a theology on religious experience. Says Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago: But further reflection showed that experience cannot be taken simply as a store house from which permanent conclusions may be drawn.2—-When the appeal to religious experience is acted upon, there emerge certain perplexities which are somewhat confusing. Whose “experience” shall we take as the source of our religious exposition? What is to prevent the agnostic from setting up his “experience” as the norm?...... Where, now, is the true experience to be found ?3 Other liberalistic religious leaders have expressed themselves to the same effect. They confessedly realize that religious experience is not an adequate ground for theology. Now, since they have eliminated both Scrip- ture and experience as a religious authority, what, then, is the foundation for the new theology? The answer is that there is no adequate foundation and, strange as it may seem, not a few modern theologians have asserted that their theology really needs no foundation. They say, as has been pointed out, that the new theology is in essence a method rather than a system of doctrine. They are of the opinion that there is no absolute relig- ious truth, which means that there is no religious truth that is true in itself, true under all circumstances and conditions. All religious truth, they say, is relative or subjective, meaning that it is in fact not true, though for practical purposes it is considered well to let it pass. | Theology, therefore, is to be used rather than accepted as true. Hence the question of religious assurance is superfluous. Indeed there is no occasion to speak of as- surance with reference to a proposition that is not claim- ed to be true. The question whether a religiousness which confessedly lacks assurance or evidence may 2 The same, 1910, p. 217. 3 The same, 1912, p. 594. 46 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM prove satisfactory to those who accept it, is left to the reader’s consideration. | Lest it be supposed that we are overstating the case and that it is impossible that intelligent people accept a proposition which is, by its own advocates, not supposed to be true, a number of liberalistic writers are further quoted on the point in question. A well-informed writ- er points out that “the view of truth as purely personal or relative” is largely accepted today.* “We have come to a place where the very life of religion is threatened by a sickening sense of relativism,’ says a writer in a prominent theological magazine.® Dean Fenn, of Har- vard University, testifies: That the acceptance of the liberalistic view of Jesus “is incompatible with religious certainty and finality, the liberal is perfectly well a- ware.’*® “Liberalism can develop a consistently strong position” said a speaker in a liberal religious congress, “only as a basis of faith shall be discovered” aside from the basis of evangelical faith.? Professor Gerald Birney Smith points out that “there is no more fundamental need today” than that a way be found of formulating religious faith anew; and in the same connection he speaks of “a burden that is fast becoming unendur- able.”’* The same author speaks of “the agony of un- certainty which is so prevalent in our day.”® He says further: “But thoughtful men and conscientious people are painfully aware that as yet nothing of a strong, pos- itive character has come to take the place of the older type of theology.”?® This author, though here he de- sires something “of a strong, positive character,” has in other instances used language showing that he agrees 4 The Unpopular Review, July-September, 1918, p. 100. 5 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 84. 6 The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 514. 7 The same, 1911, p. 499. 8 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 549. 9 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 607. 10 The same, p. 606. THE AGONY OF UNCERTAINTY 47 with Professor Roy Wood Sellars who says: “The church must give up the idea that tt can teach final truth on any subject,....the ministers cannot give a final statement a- bout anything." Therefore, so Professor Sellars argues, the church should devote itself to purely humanitarian en- deavors. (Compare p. 226 of the present book). Clearly, then, modernism is devoid of the most 1m- portant part, namely a foundation. Could there be a more striking evidence of its secondary non-vital char- acter? And must it not be assumed that people who do their own thinking will eventually realize the unreason- ableness of such a theology? An American President is credited with the saying that “you cannot fool the people all the time.” But some of the liberal theolo- gians are seeking a foundation for their position. And what sort of a foundation do they seek? Evidently not one of supernatural character, for they, in principle, re- ject supernaturalism inclusive of divine revelation as given in Scripture. The attempt to find a foundation, outside of Scripture, for the shreds of Christian theology which they may desire to maintain, is evidently futile. Science is silent on the points in question. The hope that something may “turn up” which may serve this purpose is indeed pathetic. It is not unlike the expecta- tion of the shepherd who came to a goldsmith to inquire about the value of a big lump of gold. Asked if he had one, he replied, no, but he hoped to find one. How strange that in an age which boasts of its enlighten- ment there are those who will accept a theology which its representatives are laboring to maintain without a foundation. It has been shown elsewhere that there is a close connection between Christian assurance and the experi- ence of salvation in the Bible sense. However the fact needs emphasis that Christian experience is made pos- 11 The Christian Register, July 29, 1920, p. 7 seq. Italics mine. 48 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM sible only through God’s Word. Various writers have expressed the opinion that the nature and interpretation of religious experience is a secondary ‘matter and that any. one who claims to have some sort of experience through Christ is to be given the hand of fellowship, without regard to his position as to doctrinal points. But so long as Scripture teaching concerning personal salvation is to be taken seriously, the fact must be rec- ognized that Christian experience, to be genuine, must be based on the fundamental truths concerning the per- son and work of Christ. If He is not the divine Savior in the Biblical sense; if the Bible doctrine of the Atone- ment and salvation through Christ fis not true to fact — or, in other words, if these truths are denied — then there cannot be true Christian experience though there may be religious experience of some sort. Therefore the assertion that experience alone is the important matter without regard to the interpretation or meaning of such experience, is unacceptable. It is generally known that there are those who, while repudiating the fundamentals of the faith, profess Christian experience. It is, therefore, necessary to inquire into their interpre- tation or definition of experience: Is it of a Scriptural character? The foundation of Christian assurance is God’s Word, which is confirmed by Christian experience. V PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY ascertain, without the aid of divine revelation, the truth concerning man, his existence, his relation to the universe and his destiny. Philosophy, iit is worthy of notice, is older than the Christian religion. The fa- mous philosophers Plato and Aristotle, of Greece, lived in the fourth century B. C. Among modern philoso- phers Henri Bergson, of France, and Rudolf Eucken, of Germany, deserve mention. The most striking thing about philosophy, perhaps, is the great variety of opinion among its representatives or, in other words, the unre- liability of their conclusions. Says Leslie Stephen: Be veers, wi may be defined as the attempt to State any proposition in which all philosophers agree, and I will admit it to be true; or any one that has a manifest balance of authority, and I will agree that it is probable. But so long as every philosopher flatly contradicts the principles of his predeces- sors, why affect certainty? The father of modern philosophy, the Frenchman Descartes (1596-1650), owes his fame to a theory of knowledge which he defended. According to this the- ory the true basis for philosophy is man’s self-conscious- ness. Descartes doubted everything except his own ex- istence. From the basis of his existence and self-con- sciousness he attempted to prove the existence of God and the external world. He made his own self-con- sciousness — i.e. himself —the center and basis of all. Ail existence, he believed, is mental and what is not known does not exist. He actually supposed that what he did not apprehend had no existence. This strange 50 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM theory has been accepted by philosophers in general.? But from this starting point they have arrived at a great diversity of conclusions. Inadequate as such a founda- tion seems, there is, apparently, no better one for a structure which in principle rejects divine revelation, as does philosophy. Philosophy, it should be noticed, cannot take the place of the Scriptures as a basis for the Christian faith. This fact is recognized by philosophers in general. Christian theology, or, in other words, the statement of the Christian faith, is founded on divine revelation as given in Scripture. Scripture, being divinely inspired, is the only true basis for theology. And without the ac- ceptance of divine revelation and without Scriptural — theology, a church worthy of the Christian name could not be maintained. Philosophy, even if it be the so- called philosophy of religion, could not take the place of theology for the church. The assertion has been made, by the more moderate of the representatives of modernism, that the individual religious feeling, or the religious consciousness, can be made the foundation for a Christian theology. In other words, just as philosophy is based on self-consciousness, so the attempt is made to establish a theology — or, more correctly, a religious philosophy —on religious self-consciousness. This means that Scripture authority is to be superseded by the principle that each man should be a law and authority unto himself. But it is clearly impossible to build a. Christian theology on no other ground than religious consciousness. It is hardly nec- essary to repeat here that religious conceptions and con- sciousness may be unsound and deceptive. Not even upon Christian religious consciousness alone could a 1 Concerning this theory of knowledge and its uncertainty compare Santayana, Winds of Doctrine, pp. 13, 40, 55; Anglican Theological Review, vol. I, p. 50. - NO DOCTRINE HELD ESSENTIAL 51 Christian theology be established, and it is quite out of the question to establish it upon non-Christian religious consciousness. This means that to reject the Scriptures as the authoritative record of divine revelation is to dis- card the only valid foundation for Christian theology. ,, Modernism, rejecting the authority of Scripture, is ier out an adequate foundation, as will be further shown elsewhere. The content of Christian theology is Christian doc- trine or dogma. Generally speaking dogma is doctrine based on authority, rather than on direct proof. Chris- tian dogma is the doctrine of the Christian church found- ed on God’s Word. The modern aversion to Christian dogma is due to the rejection of the authority of Scrip- ture. Obviously the consistent thing for the religious liberalists, who deny the inspiration of Scripture, is to reject all dogmatic teaching and ascribe to doctrine lit- tle, if any importance. It is worthy of notice that sci- ence, except in so far as it accepts the Scripture record, is not consistent if it offers dogmatic teaching, One of the characteristics of modernism is that no_ doctrine is held to be essential, or as a dogma. Chris- tian doctrine is either rejected outright, or treated as a secondary matter. Professor Gerald Birney Smith shows that the older liberalism rejected all dogmas ex- cept three, namely the doctrines of God, freedom of the will, and immortality. Then this writer proceeds to say that the new theology does not hold to any dogma what- ever.” Neither the three dogmas just mentioned nor other doctrines are considered essential to the modern re- ligious liberalism. “There is still altogether too much of the older feeling,” says Professor Smith, “that the re- sult of Biblical study should be to establish an absolute- ly true and unchanging system of theology.’* “A new 2 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 190. 3 The same, p. 200. Sf MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM theology of this dogmatic sort,” nS says further, “would not really mark much advance.” It may sound unbelievable but it is a fact that the ‘religious liberalists hold the method of theology, rather than its content, to be of principal importance. Pro- fessor Smith insists that liberalistic theology is a meth- od rather than doctrine or a doctrinal system.’ Profess- or John Wright Buckham, of the Pacific School of Re- ligion, Berkeley, Cal., says: “It is not doctrine at all, whether old or new, that is fundamental, but faith.”® What is meant by “faith,” however, as the word is used here by this author, is impossible to know. Professor. Herbert A. Youtz, of Oberlin Theological Seminary, a representative of modernism, says: “We evoke Jesus’ authority, not to justify our form of faith but rather to justify the faith itself.” One of the Unitarian period- icals, according to the testimony of its editor, cham- pions faith but “not faith in any particular thing [doc- trine] about which others may have their doubt, but faith im faith ttself”’®> So modernism does not advocate a particular doctrine, or form of faith, but “faith itself.” Such statements may seem profound to the unthinking but, unless “faith itself” is defined and has a real mean- ing, these statements do not mean anything worth while. For illustration: the Unitarian church paper just men- tioned, though professing to stand for “faith itself,” opens its columns to those who flatly deny the very ex- istence of God — an evidence that “faith itself,” as used by the said editor, does not refer to the Christian faith. Many liberal writers have expressed the opinion that definite doctrine and theology is a matter of very little if any, consequence. Professor George Cross, of Roches- 4 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 201. 5 The same, p. 201. The Biblical World, October, 1914, p. 275. 6 The Biblical World, April, 1915, p. 215. T The Enlarging Conception of Cod. 1914, p. 148. 8 The Christian Register, April 3, 1919. INDIFFERENCE IN DOCTRINAL QUESTIONS 53 ter Theological Seminary, for example, thinks “there is something of greater worth to Christian churches than the doctrinal beliefs they hold.”® Lyman Abbott wrote: § “There is as little danger of undermining religion by new [modern] definitions of theology as there is of blot- ting out the stars from the heavens by a new astrono- my.”?° “If we seek to keep Christian doctrine unchang- ed,” says Walter Rauschenbusch, “we shall ensure its abandonment.”!! And again this writer says: “The sav- ing power of the church does not rest on its doctrine.”!” A Unitarian minister points out that he ceased to be- lieve the inerrancy of the Scriptures, the deity of Christ and the personality of God. “Little by little it dawned upon me,” he observes further, “that faith is not found- ed on heliefs about things. Faith is founded on the essential structure of the universe, and is an essential characteristic of man and of all other life.’?* Dr. John Herman Randall, until recently a Baptist minister, says: “My own conviction is that if all the creeds and dogmas and paraphernalia of the churches in Christendom today could be set aside....nothing would be lost.’”2* “Dog- ma is dead,” says the editor of a prominent paper. Many liberalistic writers have expressed themselves similarly. “For a generation now we have been preaching that experience is the great thing, and not creed;...we are losing the creed that alone can produce an experience higher than the vagaries of idiosyncracy,” writes the British theologian Peter Taylor Forsyth.*® _ Now, if doctrine is of secondary importance: if method instead of doctrine and truth is the principal thing in 9 The American Journal of Theology, 1919, p. 143. 10 The Theology of an Evolutionist, 1897, p. 3. 11 4 Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 7. 12 The same, p. 129. 138 The Christian Register, October 31, 1918, p. 12. Italics mine. 14 The Biblical World, April, 1916, p. 268. 15 The London Quarterly Review, vol. 123, p. 194, 54. MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Christian theology, it follows that there cannot be any- thing that may be spoken of as the essence of Christian- ity in any real sense. This is freely admitted by repre-_ sentatives of religious liberalism. To ask what is the essence of Christianity, thinks Professor Shirley Jack- son Case of the University of Chicago, is to show that you misconceive the real nature of the modern religion.*® It has no essence, no real, absolute truth, either as con- cerns religion, or morals.17 In our rapidly changing civilization, says Professor Gerald Birney Smith, “abso- lutes are out of place.”1® This means that liberalism has no positive teachings. The denial of all positive relig- ious thought is, in fact, the principal characteristic of modern liberalism. The consequence is that the church, to the extent that it has been liberalized, has become an — agency to spread agnosticism. A number of years ago, Dr. Arthur Sachs, Professor in the University of Breslau, a Jew, wrote: | ‘ Every liberalistic religion carries in its bosom the germ of death. A religion without dogma is a creature of the imagination which under no circumstances is able to give to individual man, much less to the human family, the necessary anchor-hold in this life and the hope for perfection in the beyond. At the moment it becomes “liberal,” it begins to degrade into a mere philosophy. No system of philosophy has yet been able to satisfy the supernatural longings of man, and we may confidently prophesy that philosophy will always fail in this respect, for every philosophy originates in the human brain while religion represents a gracious divine revela- tion. Modern religious liberalism has really only one dog- ma and consequently knows just one heresy. Liberal- ism denies the opinion that there iis positive religious truth. From this viewpoint a person is heretical to the extent that he may believe that there is absolute relig- 16 The Christian Register, April 18, 1918, p. 15. The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 541. 17 Compare pp. 46 and 226 of the present book. 18 4 Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 558. UNREASONABLE MODERNIST DOGMA 55 ious truth. But this new dogma is unreasonable. When liberalists say, there is no positive religious truth, they make an assertion which is absolutely incapable of proof. Clearly this position is one of unreasonable dogmatism. Professor Gerald Birney Smith has rightly said that neg- ative dogmatism is “as unjustified as positive dogma- tism.”?® A Christian teacher or minister who teaches nothing dogmatic concerning the Christian fundamentals takes the position that there is no absolute truth as to these points. Such a teacher stands for negative dog- matism while positive dogma is not acceptable to him. This negative dogmatism is quite common in liberalistic circles. John H. Holmes says rightfully: “Even those radical churches which have freed themselves from all theological bonds, have gone to the other extreme of setting up a structure of denial which ts just as exclusive as any of the creeds of Christendom.’ Not a few liberalistic theologians have thought that loyalty to Jesus is the one thing essential and is a sub- stitute for Christian theology. But loyalty to Jesus does not necessarily mean a religious attitude. Some of the anti-religious, atheistic Socialists of Europe profess loy- alty to Jesus. They believe Him to have been a great social reformer. “The social gospel arouses a fresh and * warm loyalty to Christ wherever it goes, though not always a loyalty to the church,” says Walter Rauschen- busch; “it is believed by trinitarians and unitarians a- like.”?? But can there be loyalty to Christ without a recognition of His divine nature? True loyalty to Him is based on the truth regarding Him, or in other words, on theology. This is generally denied in modern liber- alistic circles. President McGiffert, for example, says: “T am not talking here of the origin and nature of Jesus 19 The same, p. 539. 20 Unity, May 22, 1919, p. 140. 21 4 Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 148. 56 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Christ.....All this is of secondary importance.”?? On the beats Principal Alfred Ernest Garvie, of New College, London, has well said: “The doctrine of the de-. ity of Christ has been much under debate in recent years. ~ The Christian church cannot accept the denial of that doctrine [that is to say, the church cannot turn Unitari- an] without the sacrifice of its inmost life.”?? Dr. Henry W. Clark says: “Christ’s revelation has now been min- imized down to a few inspiring ideas and His work re- duced to be the application of these ideas, by word and example, to the lives of men.”?* In other words, the setting aside of creed and theology has robbed the church “. (in so far as the church has been liberalized) of its di- vine Christ. Of the Redeemer, by atonement, iit has | made a savior by teaching, leaving it to every man to - redeem himself by following the ideal. | Notwithstanding all that liberalists have said in dis- paragement of doctrine and creed they must be aware that the shreds of Christian theology which they have retained are their only ground for their claim to the Christian name. If they discarded all theological pre- tense, their lot would not differ from that of the Eth- ical Culture Societies. Pathetic indeed it is to see the representatives of modern religious liberalism bending their energies upon finding a foundation, or an excuse, for some sort of theology to which they may lay claim. They have thought that such an excuse could be found in the fact that they treat all matters of docrine as sec- ondary, unimportant. But to teach Christian doctrine as a secondary mat- ter is clearly unjustifiable. Take for example the doc- trine of Christ, His person and His work, as taught jin 22 The American Journal of Theology, 1911, 23 The Christian Certainty Amid the Modern pare. 1910, 24 aheeat Orthodoxy, 1914, p. 285. WORTHLESSNESS OF MODERNIST THEOLOGY 57 Scripture. If this doctrine is true, if Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come into the world to make atonement for the sin of the world, then this is the most stupendous fact in history. Were it not true, we should be com- pelled to say it is the greatest of falsehoods. It is im- possible to treat this doctrine as a secondary matter. If it be not accepted, it must be rejected. The same is true of other doctrines, such as that of God, of the plan of salvation, of the immortality of the soul, and of Bible doctrine in general. It may, of course, be replied that liberalistic theology is substantially a denial of the doctrines of Christianity and what liberalists have retained of Christianity has been revolutionized and modernized. But such denial and “modernization,” even if it were justifiable, is not a secondary matter; it is obviously a matter of primary concern. Furthermore, since the theology which modern liberalists teach has no essential doctrines, it cannot be of any real worth. Indeed a theology which holds its own doctrines as secondary, non-vital opinions, and which teaches that the church should doctrinally not stand for anything specific and should have no doctrinal test — such a theology cannot be taken seriously. In the eyes of those who do their own thinking it is a crea- tion of human dreams. A theology of such nature is destined to fail in its self-appointed task of successfully apologizing for its own pitiable existence. VI THE FATHERS OF LIBERALISTIC THEOLOGY is generally held to be the principal forerunner of liberalistic theology. Strange as his particular teachings may appear to us, religious liberalism consid- ers Schleiermacher one of the greatest theologians. The reason is that he was the first Christian teacher whose system of theology makes Bible authority superfluous. He taught that knowledge and belief are not vital to religion; hence the acceptance of the Bible is not essen- tial; there is no real need of it. The proper foundation for religion, or religious truth is, in his opinion, not the Scriptures but the natural religious consciousness or feeling. Not only did he exclude belief from the sphere of religion but he held that action also does not really belong to it. Feeling is, in his opinion, the one essential thing in religion. Notwithstanding Schleiermacher and the host of those who recognize him as a theological leader, the fact remains that religion, when it lacks knowledge and acceptance of the truth, on one hand,’ and a consistent life, on the other, is an exceedingly weak thing, if it is not a mighty instrument of evil. Albrecht Ritschl, the father of modernism (1822- 1889) did not accept Schleiermacher’s thought that feel- ing is the one thing in religion that is essential. How- ever, he agreed with Schleiermacher on the point that — feeling, instead of the Scriptures, is the foundation for religious faith, or the source of religious truth. He teaches that the facts on which theology is based are to be sought in religious consciousness or feeling, and no- \ Ts German theologian Schleiermacher (1768-1834) MODERNIST TEACHINGS ON FUNDMENTALS 59 where else. As for the Scriptures he denied their in- spiration and authority. The follower of Ritschl seeks God and theological truth in himself. He says, he finds “an indefinite and indefinable feeling which he believes to be God.” He thinks, it can be rightfully said that God is good and hence God must be personal, for only a person could be good. Ritschl, therefore, teaches the existence of a personal God. Fundamental as this doc- trine is, it is not an exclusively Christian teaching; there are other religious systems, such as the Jewish and Mo- hammedan, that teach the personality of God. Ritschl rejected the deity of Christ but thought that Jesus was a religious genius, a religious hero who had progressed so far in moral and spiritual attainments that he has to the Christian “the value of God.” But the idea that someone or something that is not God should have the value of God is unacceptable from the Christian viewpoint; it is, on the contrary, distinctly pagan. Ritschl speaks of Jesus as divine but flatly de- nies His divine nature. He also denies His miraculous birth, His miracles, His resurrection. On the atone- © ment of Christ he wrote a large work in which he de- fends a doctrine which leaves out the cardinal points of the substitutional sacrifice of Christ. The immortality of the soul is treated in his theology as an indifferent matter, The most objectionable feature of Ritschlianism is its twofacedness. It uses the old words and names with new meanings; the negative liberal thought is clothed in the old orthodox expressions. It comes in the old garb but in content and meaning it differs radically from the old doctrines. The real differences between Ritschlian- ism and the old Bible faith are in substance and content, rather than in form and appearance. While retaining a semblance of Christian theology, Christian doctrine is either substantially changed or rejected outright. In a 60 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM word, it is a denial of the essential Christian truth com- ing in the cloak of a pious vocabulary. The most nota- ble representative of Ritschlianism in America was Wil- | liam Newton Clarke. | In more recent years a new and more radical type of liberalistic theology has come into vogue. It is called the historical, or historico-religious, method. The rep- resentatives of this radical rejection of Christian truth agree with Schleiermacher and Ritschl in disowning the Scriptures as an authority or source of religious truth. Instead of taking religious consciousness or feeling for their starting point, however, they make the general his- tory of the religions of the world the point from which Christianity is to be explained. They start from the supposition that, just as the pagan religious systems are the product of natural growth and evolution, Christian- ity also, as well as Judaism, is a natural development ‘and not the result of a supernatural divine revelation. If Christianity be better than some other religions, they say, the difference is in degree and not in kind. Not only do they deny the specific truths of the Christian re- ligion but they reject the supernatural. They abandon religious thought so far as it has to do with the super- natural. While the Ritschlians think they find God within themselves, the most advanced representatives of the historical method have a pantheistic conception of God. They teach that the human mind is a part of God and that God is immanent in the world in such manner that it is impossible to distinguish between God and man. They believe, therefore, what the Ritschlian finds in himself and supposes to be God is only his own mind and feeling. It is worthy of notice that this most advanced type of modernism has to no small extent discarded the vo- cabulary of Christian doctrine or theology. Some of its representatives frankly admit that the theological coun- SO-CALLED HISTORICAL METHOD 61 terfeiting of the more conservative modernists is un- called-for. One of the leading men representing the his- torical method is Professor Troeltsch, of Berlin. In the liberalistic seminaries Ritschlianism is giving place to radical liberalism. Says Dean Shailer Mathews, “Bar- ring a few significant exceptions, theological seminaries throughout the Protestant world are committed to the historic-critical study of the Bible.”? In general it may be said that the more moderate liberals represent some type of Ritschlian theology while the more radical representatives of liberalism follow the so-called historical method. 1 The Biblical World,‘ November, 1920, p. 554. VII THE MODERN DOCTRINE OF DIVINE IMMANENCE , Scriptures the foremost tenet in modern liberal- istic theology is the dogma of the immanence of God. We speak of it as a dogma for the reason that the representatives of religious liberalism are quite dogmat- ic in teaching this unproved theory. The immanence of God means that God is in character not distinct from the world but is a part of the world. God is supposed to be the force or energy which has developed the world through the natural process of evolution. Prayer to God is, without question, uncalled-for where this defini- tion is accepted. It may be in order here to notice that the Scriptures teach that God is a personal Being or, in other words, a Being possessing will and intelligence. Hence He is immeasurably more than mere force or law. The God whom the Bible reveals is the almighty Creator, Pre- server, and Governor of the universe. Instead of the modern doctrine that God is the force or energy pervad- ing nature, the Bible teaches God’s omnipresence. This means that God is present and —at least in a degree — active in all parts of the universe. Yet He is transcend- ent to the universe or, in other words, He is not a part . of the universe, but is a personal Being. Natural law, life-force, etc., is not God but is the result of His cre- ative work. B scivie the rejection of the inspiration of the Concerning God’s activity in the universe it is clear that He may work through natural causes. Just as man BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF GOD 63 may make nature do his bidding by working in agree- ment with nature’s laws, or by bringing a higher natural law into play where a more inferior law is active, God as the omnipresent almighty Ruler of the universe may to an infinitely greater degree make natural law serve His purposes. And again, He who created nature and its laws may do that which requires more than a direc- tion of natural forces. He may, in a given case, sus- pend the laws of nature and do that which is superior to and beyond the power of natural law. To say with the critics that the result of any suspension of natural law would under existing conditions mean a greater degree of evil than of good, is to consider the matter from a purely human viewpoint. In God’s sight a miracle would not be a miracle if it did not accomplish His pur- pose or, in other words, if it caused that which is con- trary to His plans. As for the divine work of grace in the human heart, it is not the result of the working of the forces of nature. It is of supernatural character, the result of the direct working of God. Strange to say, modernists have commonly asserted that the Bible teaches an absentee (deistic) God who, after accomplishing the work of creation, left the world to its fate except for some miracles which were compar- atively few and far between, This is an example of the unreliability of some of the liberal writers. The Bible conception of God is not deistic but emphatically and consistently theistic. ' The modern doctrine of divine immanence is founded not on Scripture but on the theory of evolution. The thought that God is a part of the world is merely a feature of evolutionism, President McGiffert, of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, it is worthy of notice, testifies that “the modern doctrine of divine immanence owes its prevalence, in part, at least, to the very conception of evolution to which naturalism in theology 64 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM is largely due.” This means that the theory of divine immanence is founded, at least in part, on another mere assumption, namely the modern doctrine of evolution. _ The doctrine of divine immanence has revolutionized theology wherever it has been accepted. It means, as has been pointed out in a preceding paragraph, that “God is not thought of as separate from the universe but rather as its immanent law.’”? ‘The old conception that God...is distinct from our human life” must give way to “the religious belief that he is immanent in hu- manity,” says Walter Rauschenbusch.? As defined by the late Professor. Royce of Harvard University, the content of all finite minds is included in God’s own con- sciousness and will. The individual self is an identical part of the Divine Self.* “The divine is no more sep- arate and aloof; it is within and organic with the hu- man.’°® “God is considered as the soul of the world, the spirit animating nature, the universal force which takes the myriad forms of heat, light, gravitation, electricity and the like.”® In other words, God is merely a sacred X name for all existence. “As God is immanent in the life of man, divine revelation comes from within, not from ¥ without,” i.e. not from the Bible.*. The spirit of God is, identical with the spirit of man.® “In the new theology,” says Principal Alfred Ernest Garvie, “the distinction between God and man, which morality and religion alike demand, is confused, if not altogether denied.’” 1 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 323. 2 Professor William Adams Brown, in The Harvard Theolog- ical Review, 1911, p. 16. 3 Professor Walter Rauschenbusch, in A Theology for the So- cial Gospel, p. 178. : 4 The Reformed Church Review, 1917, p. 543. 5 McGiffert, The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, 1915, p. 121. 6 The same, p. 201. T The same, p. 204. 8 Foster, The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Ex- istence, p. 144. 9 The Christian Certainty Amid the Moral Perplexity, p. 138. DENIAL OF SUPERNATURAL 65 The doctrine of divine immanence then means that God and the world are identical—two names for the same thing. God is supposed to be the world-energy, the natural law.’ It would follow that the whole world is the expression of the divine force. Hence the world throughout, and all that is or takes place, is supposed to be of divine character. There is therefore no room for the Christian conception of sin, nor for a divine plan of salvation. Modern religious liberalism teaches that there is a “unity of force or of substance, making all things the expression of one all-pervading energy or of one all-embracing divine being.”?° “The doctrine of di- vine immanence, so widely current in these days, has served to bridge the old chasm between nature and the supernatural] and to make them completely one.’ “The first and most striking characteristic of the new theology,” writes Professor William Adams Brown of the Union Theological Seminary, “is its view of the world as a unity. The contrast between nature and the supernatural, which was fundamental for the old theol- ogy, has. disappeared.”?? Says a theological writer, R. H, Dotterer: Liberal theologians have emphasized the immanence of God and have said that al] events are supernatural since all are pro- duced by, or are particular expressions of, the immanent God. The difficulty of this procedure is however that, in thus preserving the right to use the word God, we are in danger of so impoverishing the idea of God that it becomes of little value as a religious con- ception.13 “Divine immanence” says a liberalistic writer, “means the surrender of the old view of miracles, and with it of , the necessity of believing that such events have hap- 10 McGiffert, The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 20. 11 President McGiffert, in The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 323. 12 The Harvard Theological Review, 1911, p. 14. 13 The Reformed Church Review, 1917, p. 546. \ 66 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM pened.”** In short the doctrine of divine immanence is an arch-enemy of Christian truth, Nt) A number of theologians, e. g. William Newton Clarke, have undertaken to defend the transcendence of God — which means that God is not identical with the world —as well as His immanence. This, however, fails to solve the difficulty. God’s immanence, unless the ex- pression is devoid of all signification, means that He is the world energy, the one force in the universe. It means that there is no difference between natural and supernatural; that everything is a miracle of God (or rather that there is no miracle) ; that all that happens is good, being the result of the great universal law or force. To say that God, besides being immanent, is also transcendent, does not solve these difficulties. The as- sertion that He is both transcendent and immanent pre- sents the gravest mental obstacles. “Merely to say that God is immanent and also to say that He is transcend- ent and personal as well as immanent, does not solve the difficulty,” observes Ray H. Dotterer, “any more than to say that a certain geometrical figure is round and also has four right angles will remove the self-con- tradiction from the notion of a square circle.’’® In an article published in a religious magazine, Bishop Francis J. McConnell points out some, in his opinion, good effects of the doctrine of divine immanence, but thinks the believer in this doctrine “is not always sure of just where to stop,” and that there is “but an easy step or rather an easy slip [from this doctrine] to a be- lief in pantheism which allows no scope for the self- determination of free individuals.” “By an easy glide,” this writer says, the believer in divine immanence “slips 14 The Hibbert Journal, July, 1914, p. 739. 15 The Reformed Church Review, 1917, p. 546. The fact must be recognized, however, that immanence is sometimes inaccurately used for omnipresence. DIFFICULTIES INVOLVED IN IMMANENCE 67 over into the belief that human souls are just flowing forms of divine activity.” “Just how to make the dis- tinction here,” Bishop McConnell ‘says further, “is a problem for the trained metaphysician, but the distinc- tion must be made, at least practically, if we are to pre- serve religious values in their moral significance.”!® In a similar way President McGiffert freely admits the grave obstacles in the way of accepting both the im- manence and the transcendence of God. He speaks of “the serious difficulties involved in immanence” when the attempt is made to combine it with the Christian be- lief in God.**7 “Between a God who is beyond the world of matter and a God who is immanent in, and absorbed by, the world of matter, yawns a fatal chasm,” says Dr. Henry Berkowitz.*® Bistop McConnell thinks, as we have seen, that this is a problem for the metaphysician or, in other words, for the philosopher to solve. But that the philosophers should ever agree in offering a solution of this problem is out of the question. Granted, for the sake of argument, that they did, it is needful to remember that what they might have to offer us, would be merely their opinion which from the nature of the case would be incapable of proof. We should not lose sight of the fact that suc- ceeding philosophers would differ from them and that their opinion woud not give us an adequate foundation for our Christian faith. And is it not generally realized that philosophy does not even pretend to furnish us such a foundation? The more practical question, however, is, What are we to do so long as philosophers are engaged in the at- tempt to reach a decision and to make the distinction that is supposed to enable us to hold the doctrine of di- 16 The Constructive Quarterly, March, 1913, p. 133, 17 The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 220 18 The Biblical World, October, 1917, p. 216. 68 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM vine immanence as well as the doctrines of the Christian faith? If we depended on the philosophers, we should at the present time be necessarily at sea in this all-im-_ portant question. We should unquestionably be gliding and slipping down the awful decline called divine imma- nence. True, we may accept some solution of our own invention just because it may suit our fancy. But this would not be worthy of intelligent persons. Clearly to settle such questions would be to assume the role af a pope. To accept either metaphysics or popery as the ground for a religious faith would be to build on a foun- dation of sand. The doctrine of divine immanence, as held by the “ representatives of the more radical religious liberalism, is merely a form of religious naturalism. It leaves no room for a theology. “As God is in alf there is,” says President McGiffert again, “to explain religion biolog- ically or psychologically [i. e., naturally] does. not make it any less divine.”?® But to explain religion naturally is not theology but religious philosophy. ‘Professor Kirsopp Lake is quite right: If there is no divine rey- elation, but only natural religion, there can be not only no systematic theology but no theology at all.”2° Con- sidered from this viewpoint there can, in other words, be no Christianity, unless Christianity be defined as nat- ural religion, Religious naturalism destroys and obliterates all dif- “ferences between theology and religious philosophy; it means, in a word, the suicide of theology. That the representatives of the new theology persistently refuse to recognize this is a remarkable fact. Despite their at-. tempted natural explanation of ali religion, they under- take to maintain —to keep alive by artificial means — 19 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 323. 20 Strong, Tour of the Missions. Observations and C onclusions, p. 109. | ; A MAKE-BELIEVE THEOLOGY 69 some sort of theology. Some of the modernists have freely admitted that a church cannot live without a the- ology. But the theology which they make such desperate efforts to maintain is, by their own confession, a second- ary matter and is built on utterly inadequate ground. If the church needs a theology, will a mere make-believe, sailing under a theological flag, suffice? It is well to re- member that many of those who accept the modern religious views see no need for a church. People who do their own thinking and refuse to be led blindly must eventually realize that a church which needs a theology of such nature to give it an excuse for existence, can not be taken seriously. The more advanced type of modernism, though as a rule it does not openly deny the existence of God, is practically atheistic. Its God is, as has been shown, a force from which all potencies are supposed to have come, a mere energy which has neither volition nor free- dom and is not the master but the servant of nature. Religiously considered belief in such a god is of no val- ue. It is a source of weakness rather than of strength. Idolatry is always a curse, even if the idol be the force inherent in matter. And it does not remedy the matter in the least when liberalists say that you are free to believe in any God you like and to hold that God is transcendent, if you desire. This is making the exist- ence of God a matter of mere opinion and of secondary importance. It is assigning a secondary place to God. It means, in the last analysis, that He exists only as an idea in the minds of people. Sometimes religious liberalists identify God with hu- manity, as has been pointed out. “I worship God through Man,” says Professor William A. McKeever, of the University of Kansas. “To know God is first to know Man and to know Man is to worship the divinity in him. — Man is my best expression of Deity, and so I Me 70 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM bow reverently at this shrine.’”?4 But, as Professor Roy Wood Sellars, of the University of Michigan, observes, “humanity is not an object to be worshiped”; hence, this liberalistic writer concludes, “the very attitude and .im- plications of worship must be relinquished.’** Profess- or Gerald Birney Smith says: “The worship of God in a democracy will consist in reverence for those human values which democracy makes supreme.”?* So modern- ism offers the alternative of either relinquishing all wor- ship, or of worshiping a god of human creation. A number of recent writers have defended the opin- ion that atheism is on the decline and that there are few men in our time who deny the existence of God. It is true that it has become the fashion for the most radical unbelievers to profess belief in God. Even rank mater- ialists like the late Professor Ernst Haeckel of Jena, lay claim to faith in God. Some of Haeckel’s followers have organized themselves as a society claiming to be of religious nature. Not only do they profess faith in God but they, in their own opinion, exalt God to the highest eminence, since they assert that God is everything — the only substance, the only force in existence. We shall here quote a few more of the definitions of God given by modern religious liberals. Dr. John H. Dietrich, a Unitarian minister of the city of Minneapolis, after, expressing the view that the ortho- dox church has failed, writes: How different it might be with the world today, had religion based itself upon the strength and worth of man.— How different the world might be today, if religion, instead of teaching man to depend upon some supernatural power for wisdom and to recognize this power as the source of all his blessings, had boldly declared that all he had was the result of his own effort. This virile and human religion needs today to be declared—the religion that looks * for no help or consolation from without, but finds it in the indom- itable spirit of Good, of God, in man himself—man the doer, the Man and the New Democracy, p. 94. The Next Step in Religion, p. 7. Italics mine, 1 3 The Biblical World, November, 1919, p. 634. RELIGIOUS ATHEISM 71 helper, the strengthener, the comforter; the religion which trans- fers men’s efforts from seeking help from heaven whence no help comes to a firm and confident reliance upon themselves in whom lies the possibility fo all things.*4 Professor Gerald Birney Smith speaks of God as “the spiritual forces of the world in which we live,”’*® “the unseen forces of the universe.”””° According to the late Professor Royce, God is the immanent “spirit of the community.””’? The British liberal theologian R, J. Campbell says: “God is my deeper self and yours too; he is the self of the universe.’** A writer in a British theological magazine thinks God is to be conceived as “the Common Will of all living creatures.’2® John Her- man Randall holds that substance, reality, spirit, God, self are synonymous.*® President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University, defends the view that “God is the truth, virtue, beauty, of man” and the real atheist is only he “who denies these attributes to man.’”*? “Do you ask me whether God is simply the spirit of humanity? I re- ply that God is essentially and simply just that,” says Frank Carleton Doan.*? “God and the world are not distinct in kind,” thinks Professor Simon N. Patten.?* A noted writer in a British magazine says that the church of today “is developing a worship of humantty.”** A writer in The Journal of Religion points out that 2 omen “many voices today join in the chorus: ‘Glory to man in the highest,’ and religion is regarded as a purely human undertaking, humanly initiated and humanly consum- 24 The Christian Register, March 13, 1919, 25 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 537. 26 The same, p. 511. 27 The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 638. 28 The same, 1910, p. 254. 29 The Hibbert Journal, October, 1914, p. 155 ff. 30 Humanity at the Cross Roads, 1915, pp. 174, 184. 31 Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology, vol. I, p. 285. 82 In his book, Religion and the Modern Mind; quoted The Princeton Theological Review, 1910, p. 168. 83 The Social Basis of Religion, p. 81. 34 The Biblical World, May, 1917, p. 300. 72 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM mated. Thus religion avoids scholastic theology and be- comes quite democratic. For God the King is over- thrown; and positivism [modernism] does not dally long with the fancy of God as president.” “Our city has a personality,’ says Professor Edward Scribner Ames; “each state has an individuality, and every nation is personified through a definite face and figure. Is it not just as natural to sum up the meaning of the whole of life in the person and image of God??? The modern- ism of the more radical type regards God as wholly im- + manent in human life here and now, and as having no other existence than as a guiding principle of human life. All this means, as Professor Roy Wood Sellars, of the University of Michigan, has pointed out, that man- — kind, in so far as it has been religiously modernized, “is outgrowing theism [1. e., the belief in God] in a gentle and steady way until it ceases to have any clear mean- ing.” With the fading of this belief, this writer says, “man will be forced to acknowledge that he is an earth- - child whose drama has meaning only upon earth’s bos- om.’ To those who entertain such views “God be- comes a mere figure of speech,” to quote Professor George R. Dodson, of Washington University. It has become fashionable in our time, says this author, “to \ disguise a practical atheism under theistic phrases’’?* The God of modernism is not the real power controlling the universe, God is considered a mere idea, a symbol for certain facts of human experience. The full-fledged modernism is atheistic. And we are seriously told by leading representatives of religious liberalism, that the question of atheism is an entirely secondary matter., Since all doctrine is considered non-vital, the doctrine of 35 The New Orthodoxy, p. 50. 36 The Next Step in Religion, p. 127. 387 The Christian Register, October 2, 1919, p. 15. GODLESS MODERN RELIGION 73 God must share the common fate. “Liberalism is build- ing a religion that would not be shaken even if the very thought of God were to pass away,” says the Unitarian theologian Curtis W. Reese.*® It is seen, then, that we have fallen upon days when the confession of belief in God often has no real mean- ing, or it may have a meaning that is altogether unac- ceptable. To know whether the profession of belief in God is more than empty words, it is necessary to ask for defini- tions. Often it is the case that persons of liberal trend object to the request for a definition. They, in many instances, refuse to let you know what they are talking about.. They take the position that one view of God is about as good as another and it matters little what con- ception of God is accepted. A certain writer, in answer to this opinion, says poignantly: “When we say, ‘Oh, yes, we both believe in God, to me He is Life Force; to you Jehovah,’ we know in our hearts that we are simply conniving at the draining of all definite meaning from the word, in order to confuse the issue and keep the peace.’’*® If one comes to believe that there is an inher- ent force in matter as we find it, and that this immanent life-force is the source of all potencies, then there is no God, and there is no use concerning one’s self about Him. Professor George R. Dodson has well said, a minister or professor who holds, as some do today, that God is a concept of the mind, and nothing more, “should state his position without camouflage. He should say to the laymen: ‘You are wrong in your faith. God is nothing objective. He is merely an idea in the mind. He does not exist, although for pragmatic [practical] purposes it is well for you to act as if He did.’”*° 38 Unity, August 12, 1920, p. 329. 39 The Unpopular Review, July-September, 1918, p. 97. 40 The Christian Register, June 17, 1920, p. 15. 74 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Again this writer says: Now it is open to any man to use language as he pleases; he ‘may keep the name of religion for human strivings when he has ceased to believe in God; he may even use the name of God when he means nothing more than a blind, groping cosmic energy or a concept of the mind. But if his sincere purpose be to promote clearness of thought and mutual understanding, it would seem to be better to frankly avow atheism than to dress it in religious garb. If there really is no God...... if we are being pushed up and on by some blind, groping, cosmic force...... by all means let us know it and endure it as well as we can. The last thing we desire is to be deceived. Is it not an appalling fact that the more radical lib- eralism politely bows God out of existence? For insti- tutions, sailing under a theological or churchly flag, to spread practical atheism may be regarded as unobjec- tionable from the modern liberalistic viewpoint. Con- sidered from the Biblical point of view it is decidedly immoral in character, as will be further shown elsewhere. Practical atheism in the seminaries means not only dis- aster to the church, but to society and the state as well. VIll MEL Ee BIBLICAL VERSUS THE MODERN VIEW ORGRRAY ER modern conception of it there is a vital difference. The Scriptures teach that God, the Creator and Ruler of the world, hears and answers prayer. Besides God’s answer to particular petitions, the greatest benefit is derived from prayer-fellowship with God. Prayer is laying hold of the fountain of strength that is in Him. True prayer not only moves God but it moves man through divine power. Prayer, particularly the secret prayer, is, besides the use of God’s Word, the greatest of the means of grace. Prayer may consist, then, of petition or praise, or it may be the still secret prayer of the heart. True prayer is a child-like thing and yet it must be learned in the school of the Holy Spirit. It is communion with God on the ground of the Atonement of Christ. The princi- pal elements of the higher type of prayer are self-sur- render, the desire that the self-life cease and God have His way. True prayer is a pestilence to doubt regarding God’s Word and to spiritual uncertainty. The truly prayerful heart is in a state of blessed experience of the Spiritual realities. Modernism, on the other hand, denies the manifesta- tion of supernatural divine power in prayer. It denies that God is moved by prayer; in fact it denies that there is a God who answers prayer. When modernists tell us that prayer moves man, they do not mean that man is moved by divine power, but by power which he himself B tiecers the Bible doctrine of prayer and the 76 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM possesses and which he exercises in prayer. “The men- tal state of peace, exultation, and resolution which issue upon the exercise of prayer are due to the release of con- scious tension,”? says Professor Theodore Gerald Soares of the University of Chicago. Man’s hope and courage, they say, are hightened by his expectation of help through prayer, therefore he is benefited by it. The modernist prays not with the expectation of being heard but in order that his hope and courage may be increased through the exercise of prayer. | Modernists have given some curious definitions of prayer. According to President G. Stanley Hall, of — Clark University, prayer is communion “with the deep- er racial self within us.”?. Another theological writer thinks, prayer is “the conversation of the lower with the higher self.”* George Burman Foster says: “The only prayer which we have a moral right to pray is precisely the prayer which after all we ourselves must answer.” The purpose of prayer, this author thinks, is “to fill us with hope and confidence and courage, so that we do in our own strength what men so often idly entrusted to the gifts or to the activities of some god-spirit apart from life.’’4 The question is here again pertinent. Is there no other way by which modernists may obtain hope and confidence than by praying, when they admit that there will be no answer to prayer except such as emanates from themselves? Is such prayer not a strange and un- reasonable attempt to this end? It is indeed, and is so recognized by an increasing number of modernists. Professor Edward Caldwell Moore, of Harvard, is righ? 1 A Guide to the Study cf the Christian Religion, p. 672. 2 Jesus, the Christ, in the Light cf Psychology, vol. II, p. 504. - 3 The Biblical World, June, 1917, p. 385. + The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, Pp. 4o MODERNIST SELF-EXALTATION 77 when he says, liberalists “have minimized the function of worship.”> Says a Unitarian preacher: I thought we Unitarians had reached the conclusion that things are done in this world by human effort and not by divine inter- vention....Once we transfer men’s efforts from seeking help from heaven, whence no help comes, to a firm and confident reliance upon ourselves, success is assured.6 Professor Edward Scribner Ames, in his radically liberalistic book, The New Orthodoxy, points out that the divine is now believed to be within the human. The immanence of God renders the old view of prayer and worship inconsistent. “For the modern man_ standing erect in his pride of power, the old ceremonial full of © passivity and surrender is the symbol of a dying age.’” Considered from the viewpoint of modern liberalism Professor Ames is right. If God is not a personal Being, but an immanent force, and if man “in his pride of pow- er” needs no God, then he ought to cease to worship. Prayer and worship are inconsistent from this viewpoint. It has been shown elsewhere that the Ethical Cul- ture Societies have discarded prayer while liberalistic churches have retained it in their public meetings. These churches would lose the last vestige of an excuse for maintaining the name of a church if they discarded pray- er entirely. Both the atheistic Unitarian preacher re- ferred to in a preceding paragraph, and Professor George Burman Foster followed the custom of offering prayer, when they conducted religious meetings. Their excuse is that belief in God is not essential to prayer. It must be admitted that it is the natural thing for man to wor- ship something. If he refuse to worship God he will find himself worshiping the creature. Idol worshipers may get some satisfaction from their worship. Need it be said that this cannot be compared with true Christian 5 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 8. 8 The Christian Register, June 13, 1918, p. 5. 1 The New Orthodoxy, p. 117f. Italics mine. 78 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM worship — that there is a world of difference between prayer that is practically atheistic (questioning the ex- istence of a God who answers prayer) and the true wor- ship of God? Religious liberalists say, then, as a rule, that they derive benefit from prayer and are therefore justified in offering prayer. But the question remains, can there be an acceptable excuse for addressing their prayer to God when they deny that there is a God who answers pray- er? Obviously the representatives of liberalism have not found it possible to formulate prayers to be address- ed to the object of their worship, hence they address — their prayers to God. If they addressed them to the powers from whence they expect benefit through prayer, the unreasonableness of liberalistic prayer would read- ily be recognized. In fact, it is strange indeed that the liberal theologians expect us to accept the modern view of prayer and yet keep on praying. It is as‘if a physi- cian would disclose to his patient the great value and the true nature of bread pills. While it is true that for certain nervous disorders bread pills may prove benefi- cial to those who take them for medicine, no normal per- son would continue to use bread pills after he has learn- ed what they are made of. Unless there is an Objective Reality to which prayer is addressed —a God who hears and answers prayer — it will be the unthinking that may be found praying. When it is recalled that “the foundation truth of the new theology is the fundamental unity of God and man,” as an eminent new theology writer says, and that the modern immanent God is identified with man, it is clear-’ ly seen, that considered from this viewpoint, George Burman Foster is right when he Says, nO prayers are an- | swered except by man. In the last analysis liberalistic worship is the worship of man, or of humanity, under the guise of the worship of God. “The non-human world is un- MAN AS AN OBJECT OF WORSHIP 79 worthy of our worship,” says Bertrand Russell,® indi- cating that he with many others has made humanity his god. But is man worthy of worship? Is it reasonable that he place himself on the pedestal, “standing erect in the pride of his power,” and worshiping himself? Is not man, in fact, the most needy creature? Is not man’s self-worship a striking proof of his own depravity and of his blindness in things spiritual? What excuse is there in our enlightened land for the idolatrous worship of humanity ?— How exceedingly small is man when he consents to become the object of worship. Deny the existence of a personal, almighty God and there can be only idolatrous worship, degrading in its effects and unworthy of intelligent people, 8 The Hibbert Journal, October, 1913, p. 53. 7 Z = hoa IX THE DEITY OF CHRIST VERSUS THE MODERN DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINITY OF MAN no place for the supernatural. It denies that there ever was a miracle. You would suppose, there- fore, that the divinity of Christ is also denied. Accord- ing to liberal authors this is a wrong guess, however. We are told that Christ is divine, since all men and everything that exists are divine. “Divine and human are recognized as truly one,” says President McGiffert, of Union Theological Seminary, “Christ therefore, if hu- man, must be divine, as all men are.’* Another writer says: “Divine immanence means that we look for Christ’s divinity in His humanity, not outside it.”? Ac- cordingly Christ was divine because He was human. Humanity is considered divine, since it is included in nature and, according to the doctrine of divine imma- nence, God and nature are essentially one. Therefore Christ, as well as every creature in the universe, is sup- posed to be divine. “Christ is essentially no more divine than we are or than nature is,” says Dr. McGiffert.? The question is here pertinent, Do the representatives of modern theology not see that they in this way, deprive the thought of Christ’s divinity of all meaning? Are they not aware of the absurdity of teaching His divinity Dee modern doctrine of the immanence of God has in the sense that He is divine because He is supposed to be the product of the universal world energy? The meanest creature in the universe is, considered from this viewpoint, divine in the same sense. If this be the 1 McGiffert, The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 207. 2 The Hibbert Journal, October, 1914, p. 739. 3 The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 208. DENIAL OF THE INCARNATION 81 true view of the matter, why speak of the divinity of Christ at all? Strange as it may appear, the theologians who reject the deity of Christ nevertheless teach the incarnation of God (in Christ), that is to say, His becoming a man. They do not accept the Scriptural doctrine of the incar- nation but advance a new dogma born of their own fan- cy. According to William Newton Clarke and other liberalistic theologians who hold the dogma of divine immanence, the divine and human nature are, as has been pointed out, essentially alike; there is no real dif- ference. It follows that every man, being of divine na- ture, is an incarnation of God, some men in greater, oth- ers in less degree, and there is no other incarnation save that which takes place in every member of the human family. “The incarnation of God in Christ is nothing else than the incarnation of God in all men carried to a superlative degree.”* It simply is the presence of God humanity. Furthermore the incarnation of God means, in liberal- istic teaching, the evolution of humanity. ‘God is con- 9 66 tinually incarnating himself in human life;”’ “all human history represents the incarnation or manifestation of the eternal Son or Christ of God,” says the liberalistic Brit- ish theologian R. J. Campbell. Christ’s incarnation is considered an anticipation of what humanity, in the course of the evolutionary process, will become in the future. Hence there is nothing miraculous about the in- carnation of Christ. Man is God-like, says Dr. Daniel Webster Kurtz, of McPherson College, this “makes the incarnation the most simple and natural thing in relig- ion.”® The more radical modernists say, since God’s in- 4 Clark, Henry W., Liberal Orthodoxy, 1914, p. 285. This is not the view of Dr. Clark (a British theologian) however. 5 The New Theology, p. 106. 6 An Outline of the Fundamental Doctrines of Faith, p. 26. ie bw 82 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM carnation in Christ does not essentially differ from His incarnation in all men, it follows that it was not volun- tary, and therefore not for redemption. It was the re- sult of natural causes and took place because natural law works of necessity. It did not have its occasion in sin. Christ was the product of the world, not a Savior come from outside the world. In other words, the incarnation in the modern sense is, as concerns Christ and all other men, a necessary occurrence in the evolutionary process. In short, under various ventures of camouflage a quite new picture of Christ is offered us by modern liberalism. Modern theology has bent its energies upon discredit- ing the doctrine of the deity of Christ. The radical higher criticism, indeed, has this very purpose, namely to disprove and discredit His deity. This, at least is the - opinion of the liberalistic theologian K. C. Anderson, of Dundee, Scotland, who says: “Not designedly, indeed, but really though unconsciously, the purpose of the crit- icism of the New Testament, especially in Germany has been to undermine the doctrine of the divinity of its central figure and to discover a human Jesus.”” “The bond of union among us all,” said a Unitarian professor referring to liberalistic, creedless churches, “is the fight against the deity of Jesus Christ.” The Bible teaches the deity of Jesus Christ. He was the God-man, very God and very man. The divine and the human nature were united in Him. The virgin birth of our Lord is one of the fundamental facts of Christian- ity. His pre-existence —i. e. His existence before His first coming into the world —follows as a matter of course and is clearly taught in Scripture. With the te- jection of the Bible as God’s Word, liberalism has con- sequently also rejected the deity of Christ. “The Bible having been lost,” says Professor Benjamin B. Warfield, 7 The Monist, 1915, p. 54. IMAGINARY PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 83 of Princeton Theological Seminary, “the Christ of the Bible has naturally been lost also.”* The Christ of the Bible is not acceptable to the modernists; and they ad- mit that their merely human Christ is not the one por- trayed in Scripture.4 At the same time they cannot deny that the Bible is the only source of our knowledge of Christ. So radical a critic as George Burman Foster says: “If Jesus did not say these things [which are re- ported in Scripture] we do not know what he did say.’® Dr. F. R. Tennant, a British theologian, says on this point: If the historical value of the Gospels be seriously question- able [as the modern critics assert], if the portraiture of Christ therein contained be untrustworthy, and the traditional interpreta- tion of His person be gravely in error, then the fundamental con- victions of Christians are threatened, and dogmas so essential as that of the Incarnation, not to speak of the dependent doctrines of the Trinity, the Atonement, etc., and also the “sure and certain hope of a resurrection” become insecure. — Personal religion, and not merely a theological tenet, is at stake with such men and women as take that interest in theological matters which becomes the in- telligent Christian.1° It is important to remember that the modern liberal critics not only reject the Bible as a supernatural revela- tion of God, but they disown all that is supernatural. They deny the history of Jesus in so far as it partakes of the supernatural; they deny His supernatural birth, His miracles and His resurrection. They accept only a human Jesus and consider everything beyond that as mythical and unreliable. They have undertaken the task of separating the natural and supernatural in the Gospel account of Jesus. But they have found it impos- sible to draw the line between that which from their own point of view is acceptable and that which is not 8 The Princeton Theological Review, 1910, p. 174. 9 The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence. 10 The Constructive Quarterly, December, 1919, p.. 703. 84 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM — acceptable. In Jesus’ life and teaching the supernatural is intertwined with the natural in a way that-it is irh- possible to construct a purely human Jesus from the Scriptural account. The supernatural is an inseparable part of it. To attempt a separation is to discredit the whole. If the contents of the Gospels, in so far as then deal with’ or involve the supernatural, be mere fiction, it would be asking too much of thinking persons to accept the rest as historical. The four Gospels would have to be considered quite untrustworthy. The amazing confi- dence of the higher critics in their own ability and wis-_ dom is clearly evident from the fact that they believe that they know more about the life and teachings of our. Lord than did the writers of the Gospels. Even if we accepted their denial of the inspiration of the Scriptures, we should have to tell them that their position is unrea- sonable. If the supernatural in the Scriptures were un- acceptable and the Gospel accounts contained fiction as well as fact, the critics would be undertaking the impos- sible in their attempt to separate the two. The human Jesus of modern theology, then, is ‘not the Jesus of the New Testament Scriptures, and since the Scriptures are the only source of our knowledge of Jesus, the “modernized” Jesus never had any existence except in the fancy of liberalistic theologians; he is only a fiction of unbelieving speculation. “This merely hu- man Christ,” says Professor C. W. Hodge, of Princeton Theological Seminary, “is not the Christ of the only sources of information concerning Jesus which we pos- sess; it is not the Christ of the Christian church; it is not a Christ of whose existence we have any valid evi- dence whatever. It is an imaginary picture, the product of emotion and fancy and of a naturalistic philosophy of immanence.’’!! 5 The Princeton Theological Review, 1915, p. 129. A MERELY HUMAN JESUS. 85 An increasing number of modern liberalists realize this to be a fact. “Recent [radical] critics have declared that the Jesus of liberal Protestantism is also a fiction,” says Dr. Douglas C. Macintosh.1? Professor Warfield says: Drews [a radical religious liberalist] is perfectly right in in- sisting that it is this [Biblical] divine-human Jesus or nothing; that there is not a particle of historical justification for the merely human Jesus of the ‘Liberal’ theology, and that it is a degradation of Christianity and a deadly blow at religion to find in this purely imaginary, merely human Jesus the central point and impelling force for all our religious life.13 At first the critics asserted that the Biblical account of Christ’s miracles and of His sayings, in so far as they involve the supernatural, is mythical and untrue. What He sad about His supernatural person and work and about the coming end of the world, etc., did not suit their fancy, hence they rejected it as mere fiction. But some of the critics have, as intimated in a preceding par- agraph, been led to see that this position is untenable. They now say that it must be admitted that Jesus said such things and made such claims as the writers of the Gospel report, but being a mere man, these sayings show that he was greatly mistaken. In fact, some of the crit- ics say that he was mentally deranged—he suffered from a mild form of insanity. Such is the blasphemous opinion of De Loosten, Hirsch, and Binet-Sangle who accuse Jesus of mental derangement in one form or oth- er. It must be admitted that a mere man speaking as Jesus did, would have to be adjudged either a deceiver or mentally unsound. If He was not the One that He said He was, His enemies would have been right when they said: “We have a law and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God” (John 19: 12 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 108. 18 The Princeton Theological Review, 1913, p. 299. 86 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 7). Professor Albert Parker Fitch, who does not accept Christ’s deity, writes: “Jesus said: Read me into God. So far as men can know and understand God, what I am he is like.’”!4 But unless Jesus was what He claimed to be, such language would be quite unacceptable and of- fensive. It would be an evidence of mental derangement or serious moral failing. | More and more the representatives of modernism ac- cept the view that it is enough to consider Jesus a mere ideal and that it is unessential whether He ever lived, or whether the person of Jesus is a myth. Professor Ezra Albert Cook, of the Congregational College of Canada, | Montreal, is one of the numerous writers who defend this opinion.* We are asked to believe that if Jesus of. Nazareth never lived — that is to say, if the whole Gos- pel story were either fable, or fraud, or both — we could nevertheless adhere to the Christian faith without seri- ous loss. . | The more moderate critics, accepting from the Gos- pel account that which fits into their theological scheme, make Jesus a religious genius or a religious hero. He was not essentially different from other men, they say, but his religious nature was better developed: In other words, he represented perfection of manhood. “Jesus attained in his character all that God ever intended or ex- pected of his Son, Man,” says Daniel Webster Kurtz, and “perfect manhood is divine Sonship.”1® In other words, the divinity of Jesus is merely true humanity. This is the view of the majority of representatives of modern theology. It is nothing more than an excuse for the Biblical doctrine of Christ’s deity, and a poor excuse, at that; it is a mere husk that has been deprived of its kernel, 14 Can the Church Survive in the Changing Order? p. 66. 15 In his Christian Faith for Men of Today. THE DESTRUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 87 This view involves also a denial of Jesus’ sinlessness. If He was only humanly perfect and attained to this hu- man perfection through development as a religious gen- ius, He was not without sin. This is freely admitted by some of the liberal theologians. A liberalistic writer says: Tempted at all points, as we are, and not without sin would be the logical result from the doctrine of the complete humanity of Jesus. From this conclusion the Unitarian does not shrink. He is ready to admit with the utmost frankness that in all probability Jesus had his moments of opposition to the divine will which con- stitutes the attitude of sin.17 Professor Rudolf Eucken says rightfully concerning the new theology view of Jesus: If Jesus therefore is not God, if Christ is not the second person in the Trinity, then he is man; not a man like any average man among ourselves, but still a man. We can therefore honor him as a leader, a hero, a martyr, but we cannot directly bind ourselves to him nor root ourselves in him; we cannot submit to him uncondi- tionally. Still less can we make him the center of a cult. To do so from our point of view would be nothing else than an intolerable deification of a human being.18 Dr. K. C. Anderson says: But the Christ of the church is not such a Jesus [as the critics would have us believe]. The important question is whether the Christian church can make the great change of belief which the acceptance of such a Jesus would involve and remain the Christian church. If the critic’s evidence for his thesis is so overwhelming that it must be accepted—well, then it must; but it is important that the churches of Christendom should realize the kind of Jesus the critics are presenting them with, and the vast revolution in be- lief which it involves. Christianity from the beginning has been conceived as a re- demptive scheme, the good news of a divine being coming down from heaven to rescue fallen man, the Christ or Savior not being a member of the fallen race, but apart from it and superior to it. 16 An Outline of the Fundamental Doctrines of Faith, p. 27. 17 Emerson, Unitarian Thought, p. 165. 18 Quoted, The Princeton Theological Review, 1913, p. 339. 3g MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM To make the Christ or Savior a member of the race, no matter how specially endowed with moral and spiritual qualities, is to alter the whole conception and to tear out the heart of the evangelic story. The Christian church has never yet consented.to put its Christ into the same category as the prophets of the Old Testament or the philosophers of Greece, but this is just what will have to be done if the Jesus of the critics is to be accepted as the Christ. The triumph of liberalism is really a defeat, for it- means the destruction of Christianity as Christianity has been known in all ages of its history. If Jesus was a man as Socrates, Alexander, Isaiah, and Jeremiah were men, then the whole Christian world has been under a delusion. The discovery that Jesus was a man merely as those named were men, would be regarded as destructive to Christianity just as would the discovery that Jesus never lived at all. It would be the destruction of Christianity as Christianity | has been understood by the great saints and theologians of the past.19 ) 19 The Monist, 1915, pp. 55-57. Xx SIN AND SALVATION in the last analysis “enmity against God.” The natural state of man is one of total depravity. This does not mean that the sinner is as bad as he can be. It means that the corrupting character and guilt of sin are such that no mere reformation or improvement, no development of that which man may naturally possess can save him. Salvation requires a supernatural regen- eration on the ground of the atonement of Christ. God Himself had no other way of salvation for sinful man than through the sacrifice of Calvary — His own self- sacrifice in His Son. ihe Scriptures teach that sin involves guilt; it is Corresponding to the guilt of sin is the wrath of God against sin. Clearly as the Scriptures teach that God is love, just so clearly they teach also His holiness and righteousness. The wrath of God is the necessary con- sequence of His holiness and of the guilt of human sin. God loves the sinner but cannot save him except through the atonement of Christ. If the sinner spurns the offer of salvation “the wrath of God remaineth on him.” The objections of modern liberalism to the thought of God’s wrath are due to the denial of the truth of the Gospel: that Christ who is very God gave His life and died, “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” Liberal modern theology leaves no room for a real conception of sin. The doctrines of divine immanence and of universal divine Fatherhood take the seriousness out of the thought of sin. The more advanced liberal- istic theologians consider sin a necessary incident of ev- 90 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM olution, a mere stage in the development of humanity, the growing pains of the soul, etc. A clergyman, writing in The Hibbert Journal, confesses frankly that sin is ~ meaningless to him. Dean Fenn, of the Divinity School, Harvard University, says, in an article on Modern Lib- eralism: “And what of human sin? Here more than anywhere else the weakness of modern liberalism shows itself. It may be conceded that traditional [conserva- tive, orthodox] theology made too much of sin, but surely that was better than to make light of it.”* R. J. Campbell, the author of The New Theology, said in a sermon, the lowest vices and most hideous crimes are a blind and mistaken searching after the divine in us. A certain secular writer has well said: Certain of our wise men of today have shaded away sin till it becomes an expression of temperament. They tell us that we sin because our grandfather sinned and because our home is situated in the wrong block. These are clever words of clever comforters, and surely they ought to wipe away forever the tears from our eyes. But they do not speak to human need. They leave the sinning one to continue in all despair. He does not ask that his sin be explained © away. He wishes forgiveness and a fresh start. In the Book, which is not read as once it was, there are no soft words about sin. But the way out is shown. Albrecht Ritschl and many others of the more mod- erate representatives of modern theology teach that the atonement of Christ affected man alone and did not change God’s attitude to sinful man. The one and only purpose of Christ’s life and death, they say, was to show God’s love. To accept the Atonement means, accord- ing to this view, simply to believe that God is love. If man could have believed in the love of God without Christ’s death on Calvary, no Atonement would, ac-, cording to the new theology, have been necessary. His death, they tell us, is not important in itself but must be viewed as a part of His life, and His life has value for us 1 The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 516. Italics mine. UNREAL VIEW OF THE ATONEMENT 91 only as an example. “Theology has made a fundamental mistake,” says Walter Rauschenbusch, “in treating the atonement as something distinct” and not “as an integral part of his life.’ And again: “His death is a matter al- most neglible in the work of salvation.”? Christ’s death was, according to modernism, simply a testimony and seal for His teaching. It was nothing more than the death of a martyr. His life, His teaching and His death were merely a revelation and exhibition of God’s love. “Christ was not a Sin Offering to propitiate God,” says Daniel Webster Kurtz, “His part in salvation was to reveal God’s love and forgiveness and grace.” — “His death was the climax of his revealing work of God’s love.”* This is the so-called moral influence theory of the Atonement. Modern theology makes much of the fatherhood of God. For God’s fatherhood in the Scriptural sense it has ‘substituted a new doctrine which exalts God’s love at the expense of His righteousness and holiness. The liberalistic view of God’s fatherhood leaves out of con- isderation the fact that, unless God is truth and holiness as well as love, He cannot be love in any real sense. This new doctrine ignores “the sinfulness of sin.” It stands for an indulgent but soft and weak fatherhood of God; too weak to deal appropriately with sin; too senti- mental to imsist on the sinner taking the only way of salvation from sin. But all the glib modern talk of God’s love, which ignores the Scripture teaching of sin and salvation, is nothing beyond a sickly sentimentalism which has never saved a soul nor ever will. This mod- ern supposed love of God is indeed not the love of an intelligent moral being. The moral influence theory of the Atonement makes Christ a Savior by teaching, not a Redeemer by atone- 2 A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 260. 3 An Outline of the Fundamental Doctrines of Faith, p. 30f. 92 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM ment. Modern theology conceives of Christ as a Savior in an unreal sense. It does not teach salvation by Christ’s work of redemption and of regenerating the heart, but by following His example. Considered from this viewpoint salvation is not the work of Christ but our own work. And since it is supposed that Christ is not the Savior in any real sense, it is an entirely sec- ondary matter who He was. This has been taught by many representatives of modernism. Professor George Cross, of Rochester Theological Seminary, for example, says, the theology which he represents is to develop a new doctrine of salvation in which “questions of Christ’s pre-existence and post-existence will be laid aside as un- — practical and unprofitable.’* A pertinent example of the treatment of the doctrine ~ of the Atonement in modern theology is offered by Wal- ter Rauschenbusch, in his book A Theology for the So- cial Gospel. This author devotes about forty pages to the subject of the Atonement. He addresses ‘himself to the task to show that Jesus died for the sins of the world, © not however in the Scriptural sense but rather in the sense that every one who suffered innocently and died a martyr, suffered and died for the sins of the world. But, if this be the right view, the question is in order, why is it that this author gives so much space to the subject of the Atonement? What is there in his view of the Atone- ment that would justify his extensive treatment of this question? Why should theology concern itself particu- larly with the Atonement and the death of Christ, if He merely died the death of a martyr? This is precisely the point that Rauschenbusch fails to clear up. The unreal- ity and artificial character of this liberal teaching on the. Atonement is clearly apparent from Rauschenbusch’s treatise. Having labored to show that Jesus died for the sins of the world he says, the death of Jesus is “a 4 The American Journal of Theology, 1915, p. 43. SALVATION BY CHARACTER. 93 matter almost negligible in the work of salvation.” And again he says: “What the death of Jesus now does for us, the death of the prophets did for him.’”® After all is said, the fact remains that the denial of the Atonement, as taught in Scripture, not only takes the heart out of the Gospel message but it utterly distorts the picture of Jesus. Deny that His agony and His feeling of being forsaken of God were the result of His sin-bearing, and you are forced to admit that Socrates who innocently suffered death calmly and without agony, was greater as a martyr, . Hand in hand, with the rejection of the thought of Christ as the Redeemer goes the liberalistic doctrine of salvation by character. This doctrine means that a good moral character, such as respectable people are supposed to have, is sufficient for salvation. It is a doctrine for those who feel that their own righteousness fills all re- quirements. Religious liberalism has no message for the sinner, be he respectable or not, who realizes that he is lost. The Gospel message, on the other hand, is for him who is “down and out” as well as for the one of respectable character, provided that they realize their need of salvation. The offer is to all. The vilest of sin- ners may come and accept it by believing that Christ, his substitute, died for him and shed His blood for his sin. The guilt and stain of sin is cancelled and the new nature implanted in him. Salvation from sin is a free gift of grace. It is some- times said that faith is a condition which the sinner must fulfill in order to be saved. In fact, however, justifying faith is but the acceptance of that which God is offering without money and without price. Repentance of sin 1s necessarily included in seeking salvation. Unless the whole attitude of the seeking sinner is one of repentance, his desire to be saved is unreal. The sinner may come 5 A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 262. 94 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM as he is and claim Christ as his personal Savior from sin and from hell. As a rule the greatest hindrance to the personal saving work of Christ on the part of the re- pentant sinner is the subtle unbelief which would assist Him somehow in this work. Many a soul persists in the attempt to become worthy of salvation by self-effort. But it is only as the sinner realizes that his own effort accomplishes less than nothing, that it is only a hin- drance to the real work; it is when he is willing to accept the work of salvation which Christ has finished on the cross — it is then that salvation for him becomes a fact. Singular it is that modern theology overlooks the patent fact that the moral influence theory of the Atone- ment is contradictory in itself. Unless a real atonement, | as the Scriptures teach, was necessary, the question is in order, Why should God permit the best and holiest One of all men to die an ignominious death on the cross? How could this be considered an exhibition of God’s love? Even if Christ’s deity be recognized, His death on the cross was uncalled-for as a mere proof of God’s love. If He died for sinners merely in the sense that sinners put Him to death and to give an example of mar- tyrdom, Professor Rauschenbusch would indeed be right when he says, “his death is a matter almost negligible in the work of salvation.” In that case it would be im- possible to believe that God had no better way to show His love than by permitting the tragedy of Calvary. In other words, unless Christ’s death had a great purpose, besides showing God’s love, it was not even an exhibi- tion of His love. It is clear then, that the moral! influ- ence theory is an unacceptable substitute for the Scrip-, tural doctrine of the Atonement. The modern theory is, in fact, a denial of it; it is a counterfeit of the Bib- lical doctrine. As a matter of fact the Bible doctrine of the Atonement is a stumbling block to the self-suffi- cient, self-righteous, carnal, modern mind? It is unpopu- INDIVIDUAL SALVATION 95 lar among those who would tune their faith to the spirit of the age. This is a poor excuse, however, for invent- ing a doctrine which denies the Atonement and intro- ducing the new doctrine under the old name. There can be no valid ground for such counterfeiting. Liberal leaders have asserted that the Biblical doc- trine of salvation is unacceptable to them because, so they tell us, it concerns itself only with the individual, and not with society and its great needs. We are told that the modern mind will not accept an individualistic gospel and that religion must be socialized. Salvation must be interpreted in terms of social service and social reconstruction. The representatives of religious liberal- ism ignore the fact that the greatest factor for substan- tially improving things on earth is the personal] in- ward transformation through the Gospel. This is the great power to produce moral character without which true social improvement is impossible. There will al- ways be social improvement to the extent that the mes- sage of the Gospel is accepted and the precepts of the Gospel are lived. Furthermore, modernism overlooks the fact that per- sonal salvation is for the individual a far more important matter than the privilege to live in a socially improved society. It is more important to have the victory of the spirit through a personal relationship to God than to have one’s social and political and economic desires sat- isfied. And the thought that the world may be regen- erated through human instrumentality, or in other words, that conditions on earth may be improved to such ex- tent that men are no longer born in sin and do no longer need personal salvation through Jesus Christ — this thought is utterly fallacious. If individual reformation does not change the heart of the one who reforms, nei- ther will improvement of social conditions break the or- ganized power of evil that is manifest in the world. It 96 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM is quite true that desirable reforms may oiten be ac- complished, but to reconstruct, or regenerate, the world through human instrumentality is impossible. It is not a man’s job, While these facts should not be lost sight of, it is on the other hand, as intimated in a preceding paragraph, just as important to remember that the Christian church, in so far as she fulfills her calling, is the light of the world and the salt of the earth. It is a matter of the utmost importance that the influence of a Christian’s life is what God has designed it to be. The fact that the world cannot be regenerated through human effort: can by no manner of means be interpreted to mean that the believer has no responsibility as to the temporal and © eternal well-being of his fellows. Biblical orthodoxy, unless it be unreal “dead” orthodoxy, manifests itself by a deep sense of responsibility toward those who need the Christian’s service. The Christian’s responsibility is as great as his opportunity for service. But to render such service effectively, the principle of separation from world- liness is essential. Worldly religiousness ceases to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. A host of modern theology writers assure us that the great question that faces us is not personal salvation, but that the church must save herself by adopting a message that is acceptable to the modern mind. We are told that, unless the church succeeds in winning the leaders of modern world-thought, she is doomed. But “why should Christianity undertake to adapt itself to the modern world instead of laboring to adapt the world to itself? Is its task to be conformed to this world, and’ not rather to transform it? Is modern thought the standard of Christian truth, and not the reverse? Is not the whole undertaking an implicit denial of Christianity — as a revelation of truth?’’® It is in very deed, 8 The Harvard Theological Review, 1915, p. 288. NATURALISM UNDER A RELIGIOUS CLOAK 97 Here is manifest the fundamental contrast between Christianity and the new religion. Modernism is bound to win the favor of the world and, therefore to accommo- date itself to the prevailing world-thought. Its great task is supposed to be to modify and reconstruct the Christian message to make it conformable to the pre- vailing thought and spirit of the age. Professor H. C. Aickerman, of the Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Nashotah, Wis., for example, says: The church of God in the world today must explain herself to this generation. The eternal truth must be seen with the eyes of the modern age. And to be seen correctly, or more correctly understood, her doctrines must be translated into the vital terms of the day. And this day is undoubtedly materialistic. Conse- quently the translation of doctrine must be in materialistic terms. — Such an applied Christianity must first become scientific in ex- pression. The theologian must learn how to think and express himself in materialistic terms.? Now to express religion, or salvation, in materialist- ic terms is to materialize it. Professor Ackerman is a representative of radical liberalism and is of the opinion that this is necessary to meet the demands of our age. Under liberalistic leadership our age, in the language of Professor Roy Wood Sellars, of the University of Mich- igan, is ascending to “spiritualized naturalism.’® Natural- ism — which means practical atheism —is “spiritualized” ; it is given a religious cloak. There are other liberal theologians who do not advo- cate so radical a change; all representatives of modern- ism, however, are of the opinion that religious doctrine must adapt itself to our age, for, in their opinion, the church cannot hope to succeed, or even live, except by virtue of such change. In other words, the present ques- tion, as already said, is not one of personal or individual salvation, but of salvation for the church. But why 7 The Biblical World, September, 1918, p. 197. Italics mine. 8 The Next Step in Religion, p. 2. 98 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM should the church be saved, if personal salvation is not needful? Would it not be more honorable for the church to die the death of the righteous than’to be turned into a social club or debating society? What right has a society of such character to the name of the Christian church? The modern idea of saving the church stands in the strongest possible contrast to the Bible teaching on the church and on salvation. Christianity, as represented by Christ and the apostles, and by the believers of all periods, considers it the church’s task to overcome the world, instead of accomodating herself to it. The Apostle Paul was beheaded, Peter was crucified, head downward, because they refused to make their message acceptable to the great world leaders. Ye noble army of Christian martyrs, look upon the latter-day modern- ized religious professors who for success, as the world counts success, are willing to renounce the truth for which you gave your lives. To win the favor of men they take their orders from the world. They believe that the church, in so far as she holds fast to the old faith, is destined to die. Granted for the sake of the ar- gument that they were right on this point, our griev- ance is that to abandon her message would for the church be nothing less than to commit an act of self- destruction — to die the death of a suicide. While our Lord, as we have seen, came to overcome the world and cared so little for world-thought that He made fishermen and tentmakers His first apostles, charg- ing them to preach the Gospel to the poor; while He instructed them to rely on supernatural aid in the great work to which they were called, and gave them to be- lieve that through Him they would be victorious and the cause would prosper though they died at the stake — the representatives of modern liberalism do not rely on supernatural help. Success, in their view, means social- SECULARIZATION OF THE MESSAGE 99 ization — wholesale world-improvement, and this they believe impossible through the old Christian message; therefore they have abandoned it. Now this seculariza- tion of the church’s message is not, as they would have us believe, its crown of glory; it is the cause of the im- potency and decay of the modernized church — its burn- ing shame. The denial of the Christian message of per- sonal salvation from sin makes the existence of the church superfluous. XI TWO TYPES OF MODERN THEOLOGY COMPARED higher authority indeed than the Scriptures. The rep- resentatives of modern theology, on the other hand, profess to reject all “authority religion;”’ they do not rec- ognize any authority, or norm, in religious matters, ex- cept the individual religious feeling or consciousness. The more advanced modernists deny even this as a re- ligious authority. Now to build a Christian theology on no other basis than religious feeling is manifestly im- possible. The representatives of modern theology re- ject the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures. In so far as they teach theology they do not have an ade- quate foundation for it. The fact is they, like the pope, substitute their own authority for that of Scripture. Wittingly or unwittingly they follow in the footsteps of the pope on this point. A few examples may serve to make this clear. Dr. Lyman Abbott has written a book on The Other Room, meaning heaven and the life in the beyond. A reviewer in a liberal theological journal raises the per- tinent question whether there is, from Abbott’s own point of view, a foundation for the picture of heaven which he gives. Abbott rejects the inspiration and au- thority of the Scriptures; he gives only his own thoughts on the points in question, partly in agreement with and partly contrary to Scripture. He believes in heaven but not in hell. He fails to give a single reason why he be- lieves as he does. Doubtless there are those who read T pope claims that he is a religious authority, a MODERNIST DENIAL OF INSPIRATION 101 his books and accept his theology on no other authority than that of Dr. Lyman Abbott, Professor William Newton Clarke, one of the leading modern theology authors in America, wrote a book in which he records his departure from “the faith once de- livered.” He-points out that in his youth and early manhood he accepted the Scriptures as God’s inerrant word. Then he began to doubt the reliability of Scrip- ture. From decade to decade he permitted himself to drift farther and farther from his former position until finally the Bible was for him a book of many errors, no longer an authority in matters of faith. In his Christian Theology he asserts that there is no divine inspiration which makes the contents of the Bible authoritative or reliable. The authority of the Scriptures, he says, is found in its truth, not in its supposed inspiration. Since the Bible is believed to be authoritative only in so far as it is supposed to be true, nothing must be accepted on the authority of the Scriptures, or simply because it is written in the Bible. This is the new theology view of Scripture. Whatever may be said of it, it is obviously not the Christian view. In fact, it is the denial of the Christian doctrine of Scripture. It is the view held by unbelievers in general, including pagans. The meaning of the modern liberalistic view of Scripture is that the _ great truths of Scripture, which cannot be verified ex- cept on the ground that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, must be discarded. The propagation of this lib- eralistic view of Scripture sounds the death knell for these truths. The all-important questions of the whence, wherefore, and whither of human existence must remain unanswered. | Now while Professor Clarke, in consequence of his denial of the authority of Scripture, rejects some of the fundamental Christian doctrines, he inconsistently main- tains a few doctrines for which there is no other ground 102 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM than Scripture authority. Dean Shailer Mathews says rightly that “generally speaking Clarke found the ma- terial of his theology in the Bible.” His various theo- logical views he attempted ‘to establish on a Scripture foundation. But why should he make such an attempt, if the Scriptures are not authoritative? Was it distaste- ful to him to proclaim his teachings on his own authori- ty? However that may be, the fact is that he substitut- ed his own authority for that of the Bible. This is ob- vious from his own statements. He says, for example, “I beg my fellow-Christians not to distrust the Bible or to fear for it, as if certain oper questions were to be © settled to its destruction or even to its weakening.” He says further that “the question of the religious value of the Bible is not an open question.’? Is it possible, it may be asked, that William Newton Clarke wrote these sentences? The Bible is in his opinion neither inspired nor inerrant, and among its errors are not only historic- al but also religious errors. Nevertheless he asks his readers to accept on his own authority the opinion that the religious value of the Bible— whatever that may mean—is not an open question. When he says, the Bible continues to be of great religious value he does not speak of the whole Bible. He does not mean to say that those religious thoughts of the Bible which he re- jects are of value. Clearly what he meant to say is that the value of certain religious ideas of the Bible is not open to question — namely of the religious ideas which appealed to Dr. Clarke as acceptable. In other words, under the guise of defending the religious value of the Bible, he defended the religious value of certain ideas which found favor before his eyes. In short, he clearly rejected the authority of Scripture and built his theol- ogy on his own authority. 1 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 446. 2 Sixty Years with the Bible, p. 254. A FAILING AUTHORITY 103 Pathetic indeed was the theological position of this liberalistic leader in his later years. Since the time of his early manhood he had been drifting, drifting. In his most prominent work he clearly intimates that he ex- pected to become still more liberal in his views. There is good evidence to show that he never ceased to drift and to tune his views to the changeable spirit of the age. Evidently he realized the thoroughly unstable character of what he retained as Christian theology; he recog- nized the danger that his readers and students, draw- ing the logical conclusion from his own premises, would be led to abandon the theological remnant which he la- bored to defend. He feared, apparently, that they would, on his own premises, come to the conclusion that there is no valid ground for Christian theology and for the existence of the church. Hence William Newton Clarke, who would not have his students accept any- thing on Scripture authority, asked them to accept his theology on his own authority. The late George Burman Foster, Professor in the University of Chicago, and in the latter part of his life also the pastor of a Unitarian church, was a well-known advocate of religious liberalism. He is noted, in fact, for his denial of all that is dear to the Christian’s heart. He openly denied the fundamentals of Christianity as well as the doctrinal points which the more moderate liberals, such as Professor Clarke, endeavored to retain. Nevertheless he professed to be an adherent of the Christian faith. He was, as already stated, the pastor of a liberalistic church and a leading representative of modernism. Since he represented the more advanced type of religious liberalism, the question is pertinent, Of what did the religious faith of Professor Foster con- sist and what were the grounds, or what was the author- ity on which it was established? In one of his last publications Professor Foster shows 104 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM that some students in liberalistic seminaries have decided, against his advice, to abandon the ministry, and have “made shipwreck of faith.’ This means that they have > renounced the church and have joined the ranks of the avowed free-thinkers who are open opponents of the Christian church. Now, if the question can be solved wherein these students have changed when they left the ranks of Professor Foster’s followers to become pro- nounced unbelievers, it will then become clear what he means when he speaks of making shipwreck of faith; and consequently we shall be able to answer the ques- tion, what was his conception of “faith.” Therefore we desire to ascertain the differences between the position held by Foster and his followers on the one hand, and | that of avowed freethinkers on the other. | Wherein does Professor Foster’s position differ from that of the unbelievers? Perhaps he believed in God whom the freethinkers deny? No, he did not.differ from them on point of the existence of God. He says: “God is a symbol to designate the universe in its ideal achiev- ing capacity.” Religion, he says further, may adapt it- self to the idea that God and the universe are identical or, in other words, that there is no God but the uni- verse... He also agreed with the freethinkers in their opinion of Jesus. He denies His deity and even says: “Of Jesus we know honestly very little, almost nothing, with indubitable certainty.’ Or did Professor Foster differ from the freethinkers on point of the immortality of the soul? No, there is no difference in their views on this point. He did not teach immortality but held it as an open question, like the freethinkers. Since he was the pastor of a liberal church and as such was under obligation to lead in public wor- 1 The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, p. 183. 2 The same, p. 193. A THEOLOGICAL FREETHINKER 105 ship, perhaps he differed from the freethinkers on the subject of prayer? Again a negative answer must be given. Professor Foster was of the opinion that we. should pray no other prayer than one which we our- selves may answer.* No freethinker would find fault with this conception of prayer. Or did he differ from them on point of the church? He occupied an ecclesi- astical office while the freethinkers hold that there is no need for the church. The difference here is apparent rather than real. Foster taught that Jesus never found- ed a church and its existence is quite inessential. There is, in short, no appreciable difference in doctrinal points. Professor Foster was a freethinker as far as doctrine is concerned. What about the subject of ethics? Perhaps Profess- or Foster defended some lofty moral ideals which the freethinkers do not accept. The published statement of principles of the freethinkers shows that this supposi- tion is unfounded. In fact, Professor Foster’s position on certain questions of moral reform was so exceedingly liberal and modern that he offended some of his own followers. When Professor Foster speaks of theological stu- dents as having made shipwreck of faith, he does not mean to find fault with them because they reject any or all of the points of Christian doctrine. He did not be- lieve that to deny the doctrines of Christianity is to make shipwreck of faith. The said students could in fact not be his followers without accepting the free- thinkers’ position on these points. Wherein, then, have they in his opinion erred that he speaks of them as hay- ing made shipwreck of faith? It is clear that Professor Foster would not have spoken of those students as having made shipwreck of faith if they had been willing to follow his footsteps and, 3 The same, p. 184. 106 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM though they were unbelievers, to accept the office of minister or teacher in the church. And it must not be supposed that the said students who have abandoned the ministry in consequence of taking a course in a lib- eralistic divinity school, have scruples against teaching their newly adopted religious views. The point to which they object is, to teach these views under the guise of Christianity. In other words, their sin, in Professor Foster’s eyes, consists in this that, after becoming free- thinkers — or, in plain English, unbelievers —they have concluded that they should not pretend to be Christian ministers. Obviously their conscience does not permit | them to accept an office which would put them under obligation to teach the Christian religion — only to teach » free thought to which Professor Foster and other teach- ers of similar views have converted them. We should say, therefore, their difficulty is one of conscience rather than of faith. To be plain, their training at the new the- ology institution has given them the modern theological views but, evidently, has not given them the modern- ized elastic conscience, at least not to the extent desired by the liberal teachers. Professor Foster, as said in a preceding paragraph, stood for the denial of Christian doctrine. He substi- tuted for the Christian faith the new dogma that free thought is only the most advanced modern interpreta- tion of or substitute for Christianity and, therefore, free- thinkers are Christians. However, if freethinkers are not willing to be considered Christians, if they will not be identified with the church, but join themselves to be avowed freethinkers, (as did the said theological stu- dents), they have in Professor Foster’s opinion, made shipwreck of faith. To make shipwreck of faith, then, is not to renounce the Christian faith, but it is to deny the Christian character of free thought. This means that, viewed from the liberalistic angle, to make ship- A MERE SHIBBOLETH 107 wreck of faith is an exceedingly narrow, trifling thing. The religious difference between Professor Foster’s po- sition and that of the avowed freethinkers is a mere shibboleth. This brings us to the second part of our question, What is the ground or authority for the new dogma, making faith and shipwreck of faith so curious proposi- tions? It goes without saying that it is founded neither on Scripture, nor on science, nor on experience. Its on- ly foundation is the opinion of a freethinking professor who, by advancing this dogma, makes himself a relig- ious authority —a pope. Again we ask, what may be the reason that Professor Foster set up so outlandish a dogma which is unacceptable even to some of his own students whom he has largely influenced? What, in other words, is back of the peculiar type of popery for which he stood? Was it love to Christ that prompted him to demand of unbelievers to name themselves Chris- tians? But he held that we, practically, know nothing with certainty about the work and teaching of Christ. Or was it regard for the Christian church? In his larg- est theological work he claimed that Christianity is not the final and best religion. He called himself a Christian and also asserted, as we have seen, that, unless free- thinkers in general do likewise, they have made ship- wreck of faith. Nevertheless he admitted that, had he lived at some later period, he would not have pretended to be a Christian. According to a statement published by the Unitarian congregation of which he was pastor, he was “devoted to kindling the light of a better relig- ion.” It is worthy of notice that the Western Unitarian Conference, in 1886, refused to adopt the name “Chris- tian.” Dr, Foster, on the other hand, insisted that un- believers have a right to the Christian name. A curious thing is this modern liberalistic faith, as defended by Dr. Foster, is it not? For the Christian 108 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM message it substitutes a mere shibboleth. It makes the question of being a Christian, or a religious person, hinge on an exceedingly narrow pivot— the unreason- able dogma of a little new theology pope. On point of narrowness it is almost unprecedented in religious his- tory. Lest the reader think there may be some mistake about it, it is repeated here that George Burman Foster was a distinguished professor in a leading university, one of the editors of a well-known theological maga- zine, a notable representative of the modern religious liberalism. Says a theological professor in the Univer- sity of Chicago, in a sketch of Foster’s life: “It is only through the work of such men as Professor Foster that the Church is enabled to keep step with the progress of © the ages. They do not sit in her councils, but they break out the paths of thought along which those coun- cils will later follow.’ The serious question arises, how is it to be accounted for that thinking people fai] to recognize the unreason- ableness, the narrow. popery of the modern faith for which this man stood and for which so many others stand, practically, today? How can such a position, as this man defended, be countenanced in a great universi- ty? Academic freedom, we are told, gives a professor liberty to teach his views. Does it? How long would a professor teaching Romish popery be tolerated in such an institution? And is not the modern liberalism, as represented by Dr. Foster, even more unreasonable and more narrow than Romish popery? What may be the reason, we must ask, that there are in our day so many who accept modern religious notions of any kind, be they ever so absurd? —that even highly educated peo- ple who disown the Christian faith seem to be helpless as children when brought face to face with a situation requiring religious discernment?—that they so easily 4 The Christian Register, January 30, 1919, p. 10. WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE’S THEOLOGY 109 fall prey to “strong delusions” and believe the modern faith to be an improvement on the Bible faith? — that professors in prominent theological seminaries are of the opinion that men like George Burman Foster alone can save the church and that she is doomed if she persists in Scriptural orthodoxy? How is it to be explained that such men take a position which any person of ordi- nary powers of intelligence should recognize as unrea- sonable? We have no answer to these questions except the one given by Paul, II Cor. 4:4. A comparison between George Burman Foster and William Newton Clarke shows that the difference in their theology was in degree, not in kind. Foster simply had advanced farther on the road on which Clarke also was traveling. Evidently the difference is, at least in part, due to the fact that Clarke lived nearly a genera- tion earlier than Foster and though he yielded to liberal- istic influences, he was at the time when the first wave of modern religious liberalism struck our land, a man of more advanced years finding it more difficult to adjust himself fully to the liberalistic viewpoint which he ac- cepted. Another reason for Foster’s greater radicalism is that he spent considerable time in the study of liberal- istic theology in Europe, William Newton Clarke, whose work on theology has been more widely read and studied in America than that of any other recent theological writer, is a representa- tive of liberalistic theology, though he was of the more moderate modern school. Not only does he reject the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, but he denies other fundamental Christian teachings. On point of the deity of Christ his teaching in his Outline of Chris- tian Theology is unsatisfactory, and in a later work he advanced views on this point which could be subscribed 110 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM to by any Unitarian. Every reader of his books knows that he disowned other doctrines which, considered from the Scriptural point of view, are of vital importance. _ One of the most objectionable parts of Clarke’s: The- ology, is the section treating of the work of Christ, the Redemption and Atonement. The essential points are denied. The Bible teaches that sin is so “exceeding sin- ful” that the sacrifice of Calvary (God’s self-sacrifice) was necessary to make a way for sinful man to be saved. Christ, the just and innocent One, made atonement for the sin of the world by His vicarious death. He died for us. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him. He bore our sin. Alone through His blood which He gave for a ransom there is salvation for fallen man. His per- fect righteousness is accounted to those who believe in Him. Clarke ignores and denies these vital truths. He stands for the “moral influence theory” of the Atone- ment. He sets aside the Scripture teaching of Christ satisfying the divine law in our stead; he denies the doc- trine of justification by faith. In short, Clarke denies the evangelical doctrine of the Atonement and of salva- tion by faith—the very heart of the Gospel message. He gives us a substitute which at first glance has the appearance of the genuine thing, but a close exam- ‘ination shows it to be a counterfeit. Indeed the perti- nent chapters in his book may be said to be a master- piece of deception. The pertinent fact deserves notice that William New- ton Clarke accomplished far more for the cause of mod- ern religious liberalism than George Burman Foster. Where Foster has one reader, Clarke has a hundred. While Foster’s free thought position cannot possibly be mistaken, there are those who read Clarke and accept his views without recognizing their unscripturalness. Foster slew his thousands, and Clarke his ten thousands. In many theological seminaries Clarke’s Theology is used “AN EMASCULATED THEOLOGY” 111 as a text book, it was placed in the Course of Study for Preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church (North). This. means that a candidate for the ministry in the Methodist Episcopal Church may be ordained only after he has studied this work as the theological text book. How strange that such a book is selected as the text book in theology. Is it possible, we must ask, that the Methodist Episcopal Church, as represented by the per- tinent committees, is of the opinion that this book is one of the best works on Christian theology? Professor John Alfred Faulkner, of Drew Theological Seminary, Says poignantly (without special reference to the use of Clarke’s Theology)’: Our young preachers thus get an emasculated theology that would make our Methodist fathers turn in their graves, though they will get it in so beautiful a spirit that they will almost without knowing it substitute modern subjectivism for those verities as old as Christ and Paul which made the Protestant churches and es- specially which made the Methodist Church. Clarke was a master of English style. A British re- viewer of one of his principal books rightfully intimates that as a rhetorician he was greater than as a theologian.! His extraordinary ability as a writer enabled him to give his defence of modernism a comparatively orthodox ap- pearance or, in other words, to sugar-coat the deadly poison which he disseminated. Despite his denial of the Christian fundamentals, he uses the familiar expressions, and the unwary suppose all to be right. The plea that his book is useful to make young ministers acquainted with modern views can, therefore, not be taken serious- ly. It goes without saying that theological text books should be thoroughly sound and should expose false doctrine instead of defending it or offering it in a sugar- coated form. The students should know that Clarke’s 5 On the Value of Church History, p. 24. 6 The Hibbert Journal, vol. VIII, p. 210. 1 as MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM theology is founded on drifting sand and that its author prided himself of drifting with the times. They should be acquainted with the fact that only his death made an end to his theological drifting. Pity the minister who is left under the impression that such a book deserves to be regarded as an exposition of true Christian theology. XII THE ETHICAL INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION — THE LIBERALISTIC MORALITY tion of Christianity. Religion is either identified with morality and is held to be of value only in so far as it is defined as such; or morality is considered of primary importance and religion relegated to a second- ary place, the question of faith and creed being kept in the background. We shall here quote a number of liberalistic writers who testify to the fact that liberalism stands for an eth- ical interpretation of Christianity. Dr. K. C. Anderson, of Dundee, Scotland, says “According to Liberalism Christianity is an ethical system of teaching or precept, and Jesus Christ is the supreme teacher and moral and spiritual guide.”? Again this writer says: “The liberal criticism of the Scripture has, in effect, reduced Chris- tianity from the religion of redemption to an ethical sys- tem.’* “If the different forms of liberal theology be compared,” says the editor of one of the most important British theological journals, “it will be seen that, as or- thodoxy is left behind, there is a gradual increase in the spiritual competence assigned to man, and a gradual de- crease in the part assigned to the saving power of God, until we pass into what is almost pure moralism, in which the name of God is little more than the reminis- cence of past development.”? The modernized gospel, M tics oe liberalism offers an ethical interpreta- 1 The Monist, 1915, p. 45. 2 The same, p. 66. | 3 The Hibbert Journal, October, 1915, p. 10 seq. 114 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM says Walter Rauschenbusch, “plainly concentrates re- ligious interest on the great ethical problems of social life.”* This writer shows further that the social gospel “deals with the ethical problems of the present life.’ Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago, says: The ethical transformation of theology...... is actually taking place with great rapidity.6— The theology of our day is rapidly developing toward this larger ethical ideal.7 — Probably this ethical aspect of Christianity is most important in the eyes of most men. Theological opinions are very generally regarded as matters of personal option. But moral convictions are esteemed to be of primary importance.§ It is seen, then, that modern religious liberalism is closely related to the Societies for Ethical Culture. The purpose and aim of these societies is to advance the cause of good morals. In their program they exclude religion entirely; they set themselves the task “to increase mong men the knowledge of love and the’ practice of right.” ‘There is, in fact, no real difference between the message presented by the Ethical Culture Society lead- ers and that of the more radical liberalistic preachers who adhere to the ethical interpretation of Christianity. In the view of the Ethical Culture Societies, says Gus- tav Spiller, “no belief in a deity, no dogma, no authority is held superior to living the ethical life. The suprema- cy of ethics is the first doctrine taught.”® Again this writer says: “The spirit of the age [instead of God’s Word] rules in these societies.”*° One who attends the meetings of the ethical culture societies and of the more A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 15. The same, p. 16. s 4 6 p. 226. The same, p. 245. 8 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 561. 9 Faith in Man. The Religion of the Twentieth Century, p. 187. 10 The same, p. 188. 5 7 ee ee ee | AN IMAGINARY DIFFERENCE 115 radical liberalistic churches will be struck by the simi- larity of the messages of these institutions. True, the meetings of the Societies for Ethical Culture are not opened by prayer; it will be recalled, however, that the radical liberalistic preachers, though they offer prayer, do not believe that prayer will be answered in any real sense; they do not believe in a God who answers prayer. The Unitarian editor says, Unitarians differ from the Ethical Culture Societies on this point. He asserts that the Unitarians hold a theistic position, that is to say, they believe in God, while the Ethicists do not. Then the editor proceeds to give a definition of God which any representative of the Ethical Culture movement could subscribe to. He says Unitarians believe in God as the principle of life, the Presence who is eternally in, above and through the process of creation and who is indeed the process itself, growing from more to more, from im- perfection to perfection.t This definition shows that the dispute between the Unitarians and the said society is not worth while; it is, as a proverb has it, “a debate concerning the color of the emperor’s beard.” But while the liberal preachers, within and without the Unitarian connection, claim to be representatives of Christianity, the leaders of the Societies for Ethical Culture do not make any such claim. And, it should be added, these societies have practically no success in the attempt to win people for their cause; the number of their members is exceedingly small. On the other hand, the liberalistic preachers who defend the ethical interpretation of Chris- tianity, to all appearance owe their small success to the fact that they claim to be representatives of Christianity and their societies to be Christian churches. When we speak of the ethical interpretation of relig- ion, the thought is not that liberalism interprets religion as Christian morality. In fact, modernism defends lib- 11 The Christian Register, March 13, 1924, p. 245. ~ 4 116 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM eralistic ethical views which have resulted from a mod- ernized theology. The rejection of the inspiration of Scripture has destroyed not only the foundation of the faith, but of sound morality as well. The theories of evolution and of divine immanence do not offer an ade- quate substitute for the Scriptures as a basis for moral principle. The modern doctrine of God’s immanence inevitably revolutionizes the Christian moral conceptions. ‘“‘God is now recognized as immanent in all creation” says a writer in a prominent theological magazine, “things sec- ular have disappeared because all things, in their time 2942 and place and proper proportion, have become holy. While such is the opinion of this writer, there are, on the other hand, those who are aware that the very op- posite is the case. Modern liberalism, under the guise of making all things holy, has secularized all things. “The total secularization of all life seems to be the set program of the modern world,’!* says George Burman Foster. Professor G. A. Johnston Ross demands even that the church “must secularize God.” Modern thought, however, not only accepts the view that all things have become holy, but we are told that all acts of men are holy as well. “If God alone is and everything is God [or everything is the expression of an immanent God], vice is as divine as virtue, sin has no meaning and goodness no worth” says Alfred E. Gar- vie.* “If ail thoughts are thoughts of God, and all events are acts of God, then our evil desires and purpos- es are purposes and desires of God, and all our sinful deeds are deeds of God. — The logical consequence is a denial of the genuineness of the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong.’”** Dr. R. J. Campbell, 12 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 513. 13 The same, p. 188. 14 The Christian Certainty Amid the Modern Perhicesan p. ll. 15 The Reformed Church Review, 1917, p. 550. Par » = ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee PANTHEISM WITHIN THE CHURCH 117 the author of a number of theological books, said in a sermon: Sin itself is a quest for God—a blundering quest, but a quest for all that. The man who got dead drunk last night did so be- cause of the impulse within him to break thru the barriers of his limitations, to express himself, and to realize the more abundant life. His self-indulgence just came to that; he wanted, if only for a brief hour, to live the larger life, to expand the soul, to enter untrodden regions, and gather to himself new experiences. That drunken debauch was a quest for life, a quest for God. Men in their sinful follies today, their trampling upon things that are beautiful and good, are engaged in this dim, blundering quest for God, whom to know is life eternal. This is indeed a new doctrine. Not many years ago the editor of a well-known New York magazine which stands for religious liberalism, protested against the sub- stitut'ca of the modern view of divine immanence for omnipresence. In recent years belief in divine imma-_ nence has become quite common in liberalistic circles. A writer in The Reformed Church Review points out that open pantheism is current in the world today. “Within the Church we are a little more careful about our statements,” this writer says further; “yet here, too, there is a pantheistic trend. We are bidden to seek comfort in the fact that we are all divine and that God is present in the whole world.’'* It has been shown elsewhere that some of the fathers of liberalistic theology believed that there is no absolute truth, neither in theology nor in ethics. Now this is the view of the more advanced religious liberalism in general. Just as liberal theologians believe the Bible and Christian theology to be simply the result of man’s thinking, they accept a similar view concerning morality also. To deny the divine inspiration of Scripture means that there is no absolute standard or norm for morality. Representatives of modern liberalism admit unhesitat- 16 The Reformed Church Review, 1918, p. 244. 118 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM ingly that from their point of view there is no absolute right or wrong. Dr. James H. Tufts, Head of the de-. partment of philosophy in the University of Chicago, says rightly: “The newer ethics is itself as yet uncertain of its categories. Jt does not know exactly what justice fi. e., right and wrong] is.”’7 Other liberalistic teachers of ethics agree with this view. “Ethical precepts thus are made relative to human needs instead of being re- ferred to any superhuman or pre-human source,” says Gerald Birney Smith.*® | This means, as the last named writer also points out, that moral principles and precepts are to be explained from the evolutionary point of view: that the moral law is man-made and that it may be abrogated and changed > by man. Therefore, from the liberalistic point of view, to keep the moral law is not so important a matter, and transgression is not necessarily so serious as has been supposed and as Scripture declares. The cries, “Back to nature,” “Trust your instincts” have followed in the wake of discarding divine authority. The poet Maeter- linck says: “We no longer allow the rights of any of our lower instincts to be contested. We know how to jus- tify and ennoble them by attaching them to some great law of nature.” Sin, in modern theology, has become misfortune. It has lost its “exceeding sinfulness.” The modern view of conscience deserves to be notic- ed here. Modernism regards conscience the product of evolution. Considered from the Biblical viewpoint con- science is a gift of God though to be a safe guide it needs to be enlightened by the Word and the Holy Spirit of God. The illuminated conscience has a real place in the Christian’s guidance. It is important to note that, for a long period after the rise of religious liberalism, the supremacy of Chris- 17 The Biblical World, 1915, p. 13. 18 Social Idealism and the hawatas Theater p. 89. GENERAL MORAL DECLINE 119 tian ethics was not questioned. Those who denied Christ’s deity recognized Him, nevertheless, as the per- fect moral example, “the ideal man.” But within the last twenty-five years the fact has been brought home to liberalists that, unless Christ was really divine, there is no good reason to believe that He never erred mor- ally, or in other words, that He is the perfect moral ex- ample. If Christ was nothing more than a Jewish peas- ant, it would follow that neither His teaching nor His example is above criticism. In that case it would be inconsistent to regard His precepts as obligatory. for our age. In consequence modern liberalism, having dis- carded His deity, now openly denies His moral suprem- acy. The cry, “Back to nature,” has been boldly raised where formerly Jesus was held up as the supreme teacher of morality. Indeed, naturalism, to be consistent, must fall back on natural impulses for a moral guide. The result of the modern view of ethics is a general moral decline. The present evidences of moral deterior- ation are of such nature that they cannot be ignored. Many are the voices of protest, not only from orthodox Christian circles but from the ranks of religious liberal- ists as well. Professor Stuart P. Sherman has the fol- lowing to say on this point: Dante’s phrase “that she made lust and law alike in her decree, to take away the blame she had incurred,” sums up for me a deep, many-branched ruinous tendency of contemporary thought. This is the logical conclusion of the naturalistic philosophy which has been for many years subtly extending its influence in all countries and in every field of human activity. It is the logical conclusion of repudiating all standards, teaching one’s conscience to trot in the rut of events, and making one’s truth as one needs it.— The mod- ern man “blasphemes the divine power” by identifying its dictates with his appetites, so that no check of religious superstition or of reasoned reverence remains in his consciousness to oppose the indefinite expansion of his “self-love.’ — I am as certain as I can be of anything that God is a spirit who denies the validity 120 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM of adopting the laws of the physical universe for the moral regimen of man.19 Moncure D. Conway points out in his Hie ates: that modern science has discredited faith in the super- natural, but has failed to furnish a sufficient ethical — let alone religious — guide. He quotes his friend, Pro- fessor Goldwin Smith, as foreseeing “fatal results to the next generation unless science can construct something to take the place of the failing religious conscience.” This author also mentions the weil known fact that Her- bert Spencer, in his later years, deplored the regrettable moral results of modern science. Says Bertrand Rus- sell: Purposeless and void of meaning is the world which science — presents for our belief. That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms [in other words, the result of blind force]; that nothing can preserve ‘an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the de- votion, all the inspiration, all the noon-day brightness of modern genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins,— all these things, this author points out, are held, practically beyond dispute, by modern naturalistic science.?9 “The poison of destructive Bible criticism,” says the Lutheran Observer, “has gone into the magazines, popu- lar novels, high schools, lecture platforms — among all classes of thinking people. Amd it is bearing fruit m moral decline.”* An, eminent English writer declared that “the prevalence of agnosticism and skepticism as to all ethical principles” has resulted in “a well-nigh uni- versal declension in morality which threatens to end in a total and permanent eclipse of the Sun of righteous- DB 19 On Contemporary Literature, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 9. 20 Philosophical Essays, p. 60 f. 21 Quoted The Bible Champion, March- reel 1917, p. 129. “CIVILIZATION FACES A CRISIS” 121 ness.” Professor Guglielmo Ferrero, a well-known Ital- ian scholar, said in 1913: All the scruples and inner restraints with which, in the past, religion chastened the inner conscience of man, have fallen away and our civilization, so splendid and wealthy, is threatened with submersion beneath the mighty avalanche of three vices: fraud, immorality, and the arrogance of power...... I do not wish to ex- aggerate the transgressions of our modern Babylon, after the manner of Catholic priests and Protestant clergymen. Jt is never- theless certain that modern civilization faces a grave crisis in the matter of morals. Philadelphia’s best known Rabbi, Dr. Joseph Kraus- kopf, in his Atonement Day sermon, 1920, sounded a solemn warning of threatening disaster “unless both men and women take a stiff dose of the old-time religion to stiffen society’s moral backbone.— Many who are pleasure-mad and indulge in the social depravities of to- day know that their excesses and indecencies and im- moralities are iniquitous, but they have no longer the will-power to withstand them.” Dr. Howard A. Kelly, of Johns Hopkins University, distinguished as a scien- tist and surgeon, said in a lecture: Our country today is threatened with moral bankruptcy. I am not a pessimist or an optimist, but a steady searcher for truth as it exists. There are many indications of this moral degeneracy. Class feeling between rich and poor, the minimizing value of hu- man life, the pleasure-mad habits of our people and the ever in- creasing amount of dishonesty in the body politic. With all these © weaknesses of a nation there is bound to be the inevitable one of immorality of the sexes and its consequent train of diseases. Years ago I used to hear men speak in lowered tones of the gay life of Paris. Today all our big cities, even our smaller ones, offer as great opportunities for vice. Thank God, these terrible diseases are not quite so universal in America as on the continent of Europe, but they are bad enough. Sylvanus Stall says, at no previous time in the his- tory of this country has such a stress been put upon the virtue of our young men and women as today. The 122 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM split skirt and X-ray garments of the women make our city streets and village thoroughfares a menace to every | man who would keep his mind from evil suggestions. Doctor Yamei Kim, of the Pei-yang Woman’s Medical School in China, on a recent visit to this country, re- marked concerning the dress of women: “In big social gatherings in America and Europe I see many ladies wearing ‘fast’ dress. ‘These ladies are vainly trying to show off their physical beauty, or suggest that they have it. It would be impossible for an Eastern woman of fine taste to wear the dress I often see in America and Europe.” Dr. Winfield Scott Hall, a well-known Chi- cago physician, says of the dress of the modern woman: “Girls in their daily work, as well as women on the ball- room floor, have squelched their consciences and mod- esty to adopt the sensuous dress, with the result that immorality exists where otherwise there would have been decency and cleanliness.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote (in 1915): Woman’s idea of modesty seems to be very much of a theory and is not illustrated by her conduct, or her dress. The exhibi- tions of immodesty of dress which one sees in every drawing- room, in every ball-room, on the street, at lectures, and in homes, are appalling to most men. The American husband, who is the most liberal-minded being on earth, sometimes makes feeble ob- jections, but usually ends by accepting the statement of wife and daughters that they must follow the fashions if they would not be considered quite out of the world. The hero of the average comedy is a gay dog who spends his life in deceiving his elderly and trusting wife, and telling her im- probable stories which she swallows without even the proverbial grain of salt. He tells her that he is summoned to Mexico on business, © when he really goes off on a spree; he represents the chorus girl with whom she catches him dining as his long lost and wealthy aunt; he conceals his feminine visitor in the office safe when his spouse comes down unexpectedly to his place of business, and we shriek with joy and amusement over his cleverness. Apparently, not a thought of the immorality of the thing, and THE MODERN BALLROOM 123 of the disgusting duplicity of a man who lies to his wife, enters the mind of the audience. Perhaps the real answer to the problem of why divorce is on the increase may be found in the fact that we have made marital infidelity a subject for mirth. We condone it when we laugh at it. There are the obscene-minded who only laugh at disgusting vulgarity. They find no story funny that has not a double entendre meaning. They go to see broad plays where the wit is coarse and every suggestion ribald. Outwardly these people may seem to lead decent lives, but sooner or later you will find that they have been indulging in the sensuality they found so deliciously amusing to hear about. Rabbi Wise of New York said (in 1914): “Nearly all men and women were shocked when the wretched mod- ern dances were perpetuated for the first time. If one were to enter a New York ballroom today for the first time after ten years’ absence he would be struck dumb with disgust and astonishment at the degeneration which has come to pass within a little time.” The same writer speaks in this connection of “the widespread moral deterioration which we see about us, the general lowering of standards, the evidences of which are many and multiplying.’’? Dr. John Haynes Holmes writes: Dancing today, even among our so-called “best people,” is indecent. In watching a dancing party at a seacoast resort this past summer, we noticed all kinds of dances and postures which, in the settlement and community center dances in the New York slum districts, the chaperons are under strict orders to forbid as immoral. Nowhere in our social life today is there such evidence of degeneracy as on the dance floor. The music is barbaric, the dressing immodest, and the dances brutally sexual.23 Referring to the refusal of the Methodist Church to admit actors and actresses into membership, the same writer says in Unity: On the other hand, however, we wonder if the actors and actresses of our time are wholly without blame. Are they not earning their living in the service of an institution which is rapidly 22 The Literary Digest, January 31, 1914, p. 210. 23 Unity, September 23, 1920, p. 21. 124 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM sinking to the lowest depths of moral degradation? Are not men and women, supposedly respectable, appearing nightly in plays which outrage every decent instinct of human’ nature? Are not © the members of the profession, in other words, aiding and abet- ting the debauchery of the commercial managers, by consenting to do for them their dirty work? One cannot touch pitch without being defiled. One cannot act in a disreputable play without one’s self coming under suspicion of being a disreputable char- acter. And again this writer says: The New York theatrical season [1920], which sets the pace for all the rest of the country, seems just a little worse this year than it has ever been before. Crude vulgarity competes with in- decency presented in the guise of gorgeous spectacle, and both threaten to be engulfed by the mounting flood of inane futility. The Broadway stage is crowded with women who are actresses only in the sense that they are willing to expose their nakedness to the public gaze, and with men whose only qualifications are the ability to tell a dirty joke in a dirty way. A well-known secular magazine has the following in an editorial on the present-day theater: To all but playgoers of the very newest generation there must occasionally come the thought that there has taken place a vast change in our toleration of things on the stage. The theatre does not hesitate nowadays to put into vivid representation topics and occurrences which the reviewer may well hesitate to mention by name in even the cold abstractness of type. Marital infidelity has always been a legitimate dramatic motive, but formerly it was suggested, not shown. Today it is given to us in full detail, and our authors and producers have come to look upon seduction and rape as perfectly legitimate material for frank depiction be- fore miscellaneous audiences. The ethical interpretation of religion, or the identifi- cation of religion with morality, is clearly the denial of the Christian teaching that true morality needs religion for a foundation. Liberalism, declaring that there is no religion but morality, makes morality its own founda- “TREACHEROUSNESS OF HUMAN INSTINCTS” 125 tion. Religion is disowned and a new morality substi- tuted for the Christian morality. Modern moral teach- ing, with which religious liberalism is identified, finds itself in evident bewilderment. Religion, as defined by modernism, is nothing more than a name. It has been well said that men in our day cheerfully give up the substance but never the name of Christianity. ‘“Relig- ion in these days is the more praised as it is the more attentuated and dissolved,” said William Hayes Ward, formerly editor of The Independent.** Another theolog- ical writer, Professor John A. W. Haas, says: “If, then, finally the authority of the message is gone, we are left without any authority, religion is adrift and optimism is a pure speculation. We are hastening through our mod- ern liberalism into conditions of religious dissolution which no sentimentalist can deny.””? Professor Walter Scott Athearn, of Boston University, speaks of “the present tide of indifference, luxury, and commercial greed,” and remarks: “We are fast drifting into a cul- tured paganism.—In fifty years crime has increased four hundred per cent. Something must be done to underpin the virtues of our people.””® To conclude the subject of the New Morality we quote a noteworthy paragraph by Professor Stuart P. Sherman: The great revolutionary task of the nineteenth-century think- ers, to speak it briefly, was [considered to be] to put man into nature. The great task of the twentieth-century thinkers is to get him out again — somehow to break the spell of these magically seductive cries, “Follow Nature,” “Trust your instincts,’ “Back to Nature.” We have trusted our instincts long enough to sound the depths of their treacherousness. We have followed nature to the last ditch and ditch water. In these days, when the educator, returning from observation of the dog kennel with the 24 The American Journal of Theology, 1909, p. 229. 25 The Lutheran Church Review, 1917, p. 188. 26 Religious Education and American Democracy, p. 11. 126 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM treatise on animal behaviour, thinks he has a real clue to the edu- cation of children; when the criminologist with a handful of cranial measurements imagines that he has solved the problem > “a of evil, when the clergyman discovers the ethics of the spirit by a7 meditating on the phagocytes in the blood; when the novelist, ¥ returning from the zoological gardens, wishes to revise the re- lations of the sexes so as to satisfy the average man’s natural craving for three wives; when the statesman after due reflection on “the survival of the fittest” feels justified in devouring his neighbors — in the presence of these appeals to nature, we may wisely welcome any indication of a counter revolution.27 27 On Contemporary Literature, p. 10. In connection with the subject under consideration the book, The Menace of Immorality in Church and State, by Dr. John Roach Straton, deserves mention. XIII THE SOCIAL GOSPEL man’s sinfulness and the Biblical conception of the world. The “exceeding sinfulness of sin,” the existence of Satan and his kingdom, and the need of supernatural salvation are denied. For the Bible mes- sage of personal reconstruction the social gospel substi- tutes the call to socia] reconstruction. Not long ago the General Secretary of Home Mis- sions of one of the more prominent evangelical denomi- nations in a public address set forth the nature and meaning of the social gospel, He himself being an ardent advocate of it. His address in substance follows. M mes theology rejects the Bible teaching on The thought that there is a kingdom of evil besides the king- dom of God is all wrong. There is only one kingdom and every man is a citizen of it. Since there is only one immanent life force, the world is a unit and man also is a unit. There is no room therefore for the old conception of sin. Furthermore there should be no attempt made to draw a line of distinction between things religious and secular, holy and unholy, Christian and-non- Christian, the church and the world. Sin is, in the last analysis, not a personal but a social evil. It is the result of improper social conditions. So long as our social order is not Christianized, sin will ever be present with us. It is impossible to lead a Christian life except in a Christianized society. Yet if we accept the thought of divine immanence, sin and evil cannot be quite so bad as they seem to be. Considered from the viewpoint of the social gospel the thought that God would damn a man because of sin is offensive. Since man is inherently good and all men are God’s children, there is in modern religion no place for individual salvation. The divine plan of salvation of which conservatives still speak is su- perstition. What is needed is not individual but social salvation. For although the world is God’s kingdom, it does not follow that 128 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM all is developed to perfection, or is incapable of further improve- ment. Such a conception would not fit into the scheme of general evolution. Salvation has become a social term. It means that the world must be made better socially by reforms and social im- provements of various kinds, by education and moral advance- ment. In a word, the social gospel addresses itself to the task to make the world a decent place to live in. This is the business of the church in the new age. Considered in its true light this en- deavor is essentially religious, it is the manifestation of true spirituality. What was formerly spoken of as religious is of value only in so far as it serves social ends. If my life is a unit, then all that pertains to my life is an object of the church’s mission. Such is the modern social gospel. ~The Biblical Gos- pel of salvation is “restated”; the Cross is given “a so- cial interpretation.” For true spiritual religion we are offered a substitute having no other purpose than to make the world a decent place to live in. The new gos- pel is the gospel of externalism. It is assumed that fa- vorable external conditions will bring about the moral regeneration of society and that human nature will re- spond automatically to its better environment. Salva- tion is to come through civic, economic, social and po- litical remedies. Certain defenders of the social gospel tell us that until a man’s economic and social desires have been satisfied, it is both useless and illogical to preach to him morality and spirituality. To Christian- ize the social order, rather than the individual, or in other words, to make the world a decent place to live in, is supposed to be the great task of the church. The social gospel therefore lays enormous emphasis on a man’s physical and material well-being. Religion is held to be nothing more than a plan for social wel- fare. Christianity, being considered a scheme of social improvement, is reduced to humanitarian and social en- deavors. It is interpreted in terms of materialistic hu-- manitarianism. Education and sanitation take the place ’ = “HUMANIZING RELIGIOUS INTERESTS” 129 of personal regeneration and the Holy Spirit. True spiritual Christianity is denied. The social gospel is in fact religiously indifferent. It holds that the difference between Christianity and other religions is in degree, not in kind. Yet the social gospel comes under the cloak of religion. We are told that the spirit of loyalty and devotion shown towards modern social endeavors deserves the name of religion and Chris- tianity. “The man who enters thoroughly into the so- cial movements of his time,” says Professor Edward Scribner Ames, of the University of Chicago, “is to that extent genuinely religious, though he may characterize himself quite otherwise [1. e., though he may be an avowed unbeliever|]. Non-religious persons are accord- ingly those who fail to enter vitally into a world of social activities and feelings.” John Herman Randall says: “The simple fact is, we are living in an age that is fast becoming socialized from top to bottom, and individual religion, like individual ethics, must give way to broad- er and more social conceptions.” “The rapid and sig- nificant development of Christianity in the interests of what is called the ‘social gospel,” says Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago, “is really part and parcel of a humanizing of religious interest.”® The social gospel is proclaimed in numerous books and magazine articles as well as from many pulpits. Countless representatives of modern liberalism are de- fending it. “Our old religion was a process of saving a few souls here and there out of a world that we con- demned as bad,” says a prominent Methodist preacher of the State of New York; “the new religion is a com- munity affair, and we will make our towns and our cities the right kind of places so that everybody will be 1 The American Journal of Theology, 1908, p. 543. 2 Humanity at the Cross Roads, p. 291. 3 The Biblical World, May, 1919, p. 254. 130 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM — a Christian as a matter of course. When it used to be hard to be good, it will become difficult to be bad.” In- dividual salvation is practically spurnéd and denied. A minister of a Unitarian church in New York said re- cently in a sermon: “No man is satisfactorily saved un- less he is a member of a saved home; there cannot be a saved home unless there is a saved community, nor can there be a saved community until there is a saved world.’”* In other words, salvation is wholly a matter of social improvement. Considering the question from the Ree of Next Testament Christianity some fatal weaknesses of the. social gospel are in evidence. The new gospel identifies essence and fruit. Making social service the most 1m-. portant feature of Christianity, the fruit is mistaken for the essence. In fact, the fruit is divorced from the tree that produces it. Social betterment is excellent as the outgrowth of Christianity; the attempts to make it a substitute for the Christian religion have signally failed. The social gospel overlooks the fact that man’s greatest needs are of a spiritual nature, and hence the greatest service to man is to supply these needs. The new gospel ignores the vital and fundamental issues that have to do with man’s spiritual well-being and true betterment. The primary duty of the church, namely, to give spirit- ual food to the souls of men, is set aside. It is a whole- sale effort for the improvement of mankind on the sur- face rather than for betterment in the mainspring of the heart where the seat of evil lies. Christianity recognizes the fact that personal recon- struction through the Gospel is the greatest factor in bringing about real and lasting social betterment in the world. John Morley, a noted British author, gives the following significant testimony: We all have been upon the wrong track, and the result is” 4 Quoted in Our Hope, July, 1919. —? - = * = ed ne a ee Te eee oe nut a) CPE aise je te ar oe ee ae CHRISTIAN MOTIVE IN SERVICE 131 that the whole of us have less to show for our work than’ one man, Booth [of the Salvation Army]. Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, Frederic Harrison, and the rest of us who have spent our lives in endeavoring to dispel superstition and to bring on a new era, have to admit that Booth has had more direct effect upon this generation than all of us put together.’’5 The social gospel, then, fails to distinguish between Christian service and social service. But the two are not identical. The successful business man, or laborer, is rendering valuable social service though he may not be a Christian, or he may be a Christian only nominally and hence may be lacking the Christian motive that is essential to Christian service. It is quite true that the meanest manual labor is sanctified and becomes elevat- ing when it is done from a Christian motive, “as unto the Le:d.” But this does not mean that such work ig in itself of equal importance with the more direct Christian work which has to do principally with leading men to Christ and caring for their spiritual welfare. The Apos- tle Paul making tents in Ephesus did an important work. It enabled him to continue his labors to which the Lord had called him. But great would be the world’s loss had Paul been of the opinion that secular work in itself is as important as the preaching of the Gospel, and had given his whole time and effort to tent making and oth- er kinds of social service. Had Paul even devoted the entire income from his business to Christian purposes, he would have made a mistake. It was not the work to which God had called him. Yet there are plenty of men who are called of God to make tents. If they do their work from the same motive as Paul did his work and are as faithful as Paul was, their reward in the day of Christ will be equal to that of Paul. Christian work done from the Christian motive must be distinguished from social service in which this motive is absent. 5 The Harvard Theologica’ Review, July, 1916, p. 318. 132 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Another glaring weakness of the social gospel is that it does not address itself to all classes, If social service is the whole of Christianity, then those who are unable to render such service are deprived of the privilege of being Christians. The social gospel has no message for the halt and maimed, the suffering from cancer and tu- berculosis; no message for the dying. To those whose souls cry out for the living God the message of the new gospel is a mockery. Professor Thomas N. Carver, a hes religious lib- eral; calls attention to another flaw in the gospel of so- cial service, namely its indefiniteness. He points out that “under the old doctrine of salvation Christian work had a definite meaning. It meant saving souls....bring- ing them into the kingdom.” He says further: It is not enough to preach the gospel of work unless you men- tion the job at which you expect people to work. Instead of mere- ly saying, “Work, for the night is coming,” it is necessary to be ‘somewhat specific and say (if the metre can be fixed up), “Improve this road, for the night is coming. Build this bridge, for the night is coming. Drain this swamp. Improve this crop, for the night is coming. In the absence of some kind of doctrine of sa!vation work means little more than persuading people to join the Church. Under these conditions, the Church becomes very much like an initiation society, such as you would find in many colleges.® The pastor of a Unitarian church — formerly a Pres- byterian minister — writes: Not very long ago the livest and most vigorous denominations had two objects, which really amounted to one, that were perfectly clear in their own consciousness and to the world, — the conversion to goodness of those who were not good, and the building up in goodness of those who had been converted. All their efforts were directed to the accomplishment of these definite ends. Their con- ception of what constitutes goodness and of the way to put one’s self in possession of it was doubtless crude and in large measure mistaken. They had involved goodness in a network of abstruse theology. But nevertheless, sticking close to the Bible, as they 8 The Harvard Theological Review, July, 1915, p. 384. SAVING THE FARMER’S CROPS W333 understood it, they drew the people, held their grip on them, and promoted real goodness in their lives. Fundamentally these fore- fathers were right. And they held the people because both they and the people knew that they were right. We who have discarded conversion and growth in grace as outlandish absurdities, and the Bible too, or at least have reduced them to the flabbiest kind of thing, who have left ourselves without any clear object, who are driven hither and thither by every wind of doctrine and sleight of men, are in niortal error, and the world knows it.7 A reason why the social! gospel is lacking in definite- ness is that the task which it would lay upon the church is too extended in scope. Social service is a very broad term. A number of writers, as for example Professor Edward L. Earp, of Drew Theological Seminary, are of the opinion that the church should identify herself with the Rural Life Movement. To make the country church a success, we are told, the church must make it her business to build up a prosperous farming community. The rural preacher must be an agricultural expert. He must concern himself with the problems of better seeds, better breeds, better implements, and up-to-date meth- ods of farming. As a prominent religious periodical summed it up some years ago, a minister should be trained to “save the crops of his people, as well as their souls.” ‘There have been arranged agricultural summer courses for ministers. “It is the plan to teach the rural pastors how they may help the farmers to get better crops by applying scientific methods,” we read in a prospectus for such a course, “so that the farmers in return may learn better church-methods.” If it is the church’s business, however, to teach agri- culture to rural populations, can she consistently over- look the fact that the cities are teeming with those whose usefulness could be greatly enhanced by further training in the occupations which they are following, and who also should be won for the church? — For the church to 7 The Christian Register, August 26, 1920, p. 12. Italics mine. 134 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM accept the modern program of social service would be not merely to neglect the work to which she is called, but it would mean that she become a “Jack of all trades and master of none” —a real obstacle to general effi- ciency. American agriculture must be in a bad way if the farmers need the ministers to teach them how to raise pigs and grow corn. Rejecting, in short, the Christian view of man’s sin- fulness and of an evil world, the social gospel prescribes reformation as the reeded remedy. Reformation and man-wrought changes are believed adequate to make the individual as well as the world all that is to be desired. | Now it cannot be questioned for a moment that reform is good in its place. Ifa thief ceases to steal and begins. to work for an honest living, he is doing a praiseworthy thing. Christianity does not hold the absurd view that the vicious and profligate are as desirable members of society as they who live honorable lives. But it is the church’s business to stand for Christianization in the New Testament sense, not for mere reformation. A sinner who reforms is not for that reason a Christian. Reformation will not change the human heart. Regen- eration is the work of God. Walter Rauschenbusch has written A Theology for the Social Gospel. ‘The title of this book is significant. The substance of its contents is not claimed to be the theology but a theology for the social gospel. This au- thor’s primary interest was the gospel of Socialism. Theology was to him, as it is to modernists in general, quite a secondary matter. In his view its value is to be measured by the possible service it could be made to render the social gospel. This new liberalistic theology is supposed to be a thing to be used rather than accept- ed as true. Rauschenbusch’s theology is by no means. the foundation for his gospel, but is itself founded on st - me. mn re, a THE JESUS OF THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 135 the social gospel. He admits that some other theology may be built on the principles of Socialism and he knew that the great majority of Socialists do not accept his theology. In fact nearly all the leading Socialists, fol- lowing in the footsteps of Karl Marx, their greatest representative, look upon all theology with contempt. Rauschenbusch never made the claim that Socialism would not be successful without accepting his theolo- gy, but he hoped that his theology would aid the cause of Socialism by making it acceptable to professing Christians. In one instance he makes this honest con- fession: “Of course some of the ideas I have ventured to put down are simply a play of personal fancy about a fascinating subject.”* All this means that “the theol- ogy for the social gospel” is not a matter of vital con- cern to the cause of Socialism nor to any other cause. “The social gospel is believed by trinitarians and unitarians alike,” says Rauschenbusch, “by Catholic Modernists and Kansas Presbyterians of the most ce- rulean colour. It arouses a fresh and warm loyalty to Christ wherever it goes, though not always a loyalty to the Church.’® But since the social gospel, as represent- ed by this author, rejects the deity of Christ, it is incor- rect to say that it is accepted by trinitarians. Again, deny Christ’s deity, and the Jesus you have left is not a person deserving loyalty. Could you honor as a leader a mere man who said in regard to his own person what Jesus said about Himself: “I am the light of the world —the way, the truth and the life—the living bread come down from heaven; before Abraham was I am; all power is given unto me in heaven and on earth,” etc.? Would not one saying these things about himself, unless they are true, deserve sympathy and pity, rather than honor? : A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 238. 9 The same, p. 148. 136 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Dr. Lyman Abbott, in the Outlook, recently said that church attendance is not an index to religious interest, because men read religious articles in magazines and ex- press their worship in social service. Indeed modern church-goers are often told that such service is the lead- ing interest of Christianity. It is generally known that in the modernized churches the emphasis is laid on so- cial service, reform, and morality. Addresses on sub- jects of this nature are largely taking the place of the sermon. May not this be one of the principal causes of the decline of church attendance? A layman writing in a theological magazine complains that the attempt of © the church to “Christianize the social and civil life of the world,” larization of the church by the world. He deplores the fact that this cry of warning should come from a lay- man, and that of the clergymen (who, as a rule, were trained in liberalistic theology) “not one in ten” will a- gree with his view. He says further: The sacred edifice heretofore dedicated to the worship of Al- mighty God has now become the center of secular functions. We now go to church to hear sermons on the minimum wage, ade- quate housing of the poor, the regulation of moving pictures and the dance-halls, how to vote, and the latest vice-investigation re- port. Billiard and pool tables are being installed, dancing classes are organized, and all sorts of amusements offered to entice the youth within its sacred precincts. A child returning home from Sunday school recently was asked by its mother the subject of the lesson. It was how to keep the streets clean. Another Sun- day, kindness to dumb animals furnished the subject of the les- son, and this was a graded Sunday school, up to date. A good woman who had suffered greatly with a recent sorrow brought herself to church longing for some comforting word. She heard a sermon on the Charity Organization Society and the Visiting Nurse. Ministers of the Gospel are willing to preach on every sub- ject under the sun except the Gospel, and when they begrudgingly mention the Gospel, they almost tell us it is not divine, but a man- made thing. They have relegated to the brush-heap most of the through social service, has resulted in the secu- Jab = ail Me me ee p yr, “| J hay " r) = = See ENC, eS a ee Ne, eee en eee 2 re ee 5 ee ee ee Sa ¥ ? “ ee ate ~~ * - ile TESTIMONY OF A UNITARIAN MINISTER = 137 sacred doctrines and many of them even deny the validity of their own divine office as ministers of God. All comes from man, nothing from God. Perhaps this is the reason so many ministers look down on empty pews and complain bitterly that their mem- bers do not come to hear the sermons prepared with so much labor.10 Social service as a substitute for the old Gospel mes- sage has been tried out by Unitarians and other liberal churches. There is abundant proof to show that it has utterly failed, a fact that is persistently ignored by its present advocates. The churches which have embraced the social gospel, says a writer in the Harvard Theolog- ical Review, “have distinctly weakened their life and influence.”*?— A writer in the Biblical World says: The secularization of the activities of the church has weak- ened its spiritual life and emptied its pews of devout worshipers. —Today altruism has largely superseded churchly Christianity, and social service in a very material manner has made many churches in our land a social club or an executive committee for the engineering of social activities.12 A prominent Unitarian minister writes: During my sixty years of service in the Unitarian ranks J have Seen scores of organizations go down to defeat because they did not make religion the one all-important element in their work and in their appeal to the public. Let me cite instances of this kind. A minister and his wife took charge of a Unitarian church that was fairly prosperous and immediately threw themselves with ardor into every available kind of social service. Among other good things they organized an unsectarian literary club which at- tracted some of the best people in the city. Some years after, the minister's wife was eagerly telling me of the wonderful success of the club, when I asked, “How about the church?” “Oh, that is closed,” was the answer. In another church there was a popular preacher who always drew a large congregation of people who were interested in the various radical reforms that he advocated, but his audience was a procession and not a compact congregation. As soon as the peo- 10 The Reformed Church Review, April, 1916. - 11 The Harvard Theological Review, July, 1916, p. 314. 12 November, 1914, p. 312. 138 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM ple whom he attracted became familiar with his idiosyncrasies they ceased to attend his church. He once said to me, “I have seen enough people go through my church to build a city.” I re- - peated his remark to a brother minister who said, “And -they never go to church again.” A well-known literary man said to me, “Some of us thought we could do without the church, so we met on Sunday morning and discussed literature and seciology; but after a time we learned that the church had something to give that we did not get, and so we adjourned our meetings and went to church.”13 Social reform, as differentiated from the social gos- pel, ought to be a principal concern of every government. It is in no sense a substitute for individual regeneration and for the Christian religion. Despite the most desir- able reforms people may be materialistic and godless. Col, Raymond Robins, of Chicago, gives the following report from a land which is well-known for its political reforms: | In Australia, foremost in legislation for women and children, where the eight-hour day is the universal day, where municipal ownership of railroads, trams and telephones prevails, where that whole social program has been worked out, a labor party is in full command of the three industrial states. “Surely,” you say, “everything will be happy and beautiful there.” Well, in the streets of Sydney I saw more drunken men and women than I ever saw in Chicago, and the whole community was getting the uneconomic mind, the something-for-nothing attitude. Why, you could see whole groups stand in line on Saturday afternoon wait- ing to bet a portion of their week’s wages in government protect- ed lotteries. A greater illegitimate birth rate prevails there than in any other nation of which we have record, and a lower general birth rate in the cities than of any nation of which we have rec- ord. Why? Material prosperity. Seven million people fringed around an area as large as the United States. Maxim Gorky, the noted Russian author, writes: “What alarms me most is the fact that the social revolution does not bring with it any sign of spiritual regeneration among men. It does not seem to be making men more honest. It is not lifting their self-esteem nor the moral value of their labor. At 13 The Christian Register, November 14, 1918, p. 6. A MESSAGE OF DESPAIR 139 least one does not notice among the masses that the revolution has lifted or quickened their social conscience. Human life is appraised just as cheaply as it was before. The habits of the old regime are not disappearing. The new authorities are just as brutal as the old ones were and, in the bargain, their manners are worse. The new officials permit themselves to be bribed just as easily and they send men to prison in herds as the old did. Phys- ical force has merely been transferred. But this does not in any way help the growth of new spiritual forces among us. The rectification of wrong can come only through the development of our spiritual forces.” Various representatives of the social gospel, among them Walter Rauschenbusch, have said, it is impossible to be a Christian so long as our social order has not been reconstructed along socialistic lines. No one can live a Christian life, we are told, in an unsocialized common- weaith. So, as concerns personal salvation, the social gospel, according to its own representatives, means that we cannot hope to be Christians at the present time. Considered from a Christian viewpoint it must be saia, therefore, that the social gospel brings a message of de- spair. XIV RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY, THE DENIAL OF GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY trast to autocracy, or the rule of a king or prince. But what is religious democracy? Religious democracy does not mean the right of self- government for the church, it does not mean congrega- tional (sometimes called democratic) church govern- ~ ment. In the sense in which this term is now often used by representatives of modernism religious democracy means the abolition of the rule of God in the religious realm, just as political democracy means the deposing of a king, or the renunciation of his authority in the-polit- ical realm. As in a truly democratic state the king, if there be a king, has been democratized and has only such authority as the citizens of the state may see fit to grant him (in other words, he is a king in name only), so religious democracy demands that the ruler — God —must be democratized. Modernism undertakes to take from Him His power and authority. It is an atti- tude similar to that of the servants in the parable: “We will not have this one to reign over us.” It may be superfluous to repeat here that, according to Scripture teaching, God is the Creator and Ruler of the Universe. The human family divides itself into two. classes, as concerns their relationship to God as His sub- jects. The sinner is in rebeliion against God; yet God has authority over him. There is for him a day of reck- — oning coming. The true subject of God is the one who has become His child by regeneration. It is true, there- D EMOCRACY means the rule of the people, in con- SPHERE OF CHURCH AND STATE 141 fore, that God in His kingdom rules “with the consent of the governed.” ‘Those who do not give their consent to His rule are not His true subjects; they are outside of His kingdom. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that God does not derive His power and authority to rule from the governed. In other words, His kingdom is not a democracy; it is necessarily a holy autocracy. This, by the way, does not mean that there is any room for priestcraft or priestrule. While our Lord has given His church a degree of authority, it is to be remembered that the church, in the language of Scripture, is the body of believers. The fact deserves notice that the sphere of the state is quite different from that of the church. Its task does not concern the salvation and spiritual welfare of man- kind, not the spreading of the Gospel or the administra- tion of church government. Its work is confined to the sphere of civil government and morality. While it is true that religion is the true foundation for morality, the maintenance and propagation of religion is not with- in the proper sphere of the state. The state’s business is the regulation of civil affairs, the protection of the law-abiding, the punishment of evildoers, the repression of vice. A union of church and state is inconsistent both with New Testament Christianity and with true democ- racy. ‘The state is an institution of God in the sense that He has ordained its existence and it is His will that they who are citizens of His kingdom render willing obedience to the state (provided always that the state does not exercise tyranny over the conscience). Yet the fact remains that the state is not, and from the na- ture of things cannot be, established on the same basis as the church. The state is not and does not pretend to be the kingdom of God. The church, on the other hand, is God’s kingdom (in its present form) to the extent that it measures up to the New Testament standard; in 142 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM other words, to the extent that God rules it and has His own way with it. This means that while the kingdom — of God is not identical with the church, it is within the visible church. The church, then, is established on a re- ligious, spiritual basis; the state is founded on the prin- ciples of morality, of legal right, of righteousness. _ The word democracy is derived from demos, which means the people. A modern democracy is a rule of the people; the people have it in their power to elect their own law-makers and officers for the administration of the government in accordance with the law. Strictly speaking the people in a modern democracy are ruled by their representatives in office. Neverthe- less the term democracy is properly applied, provided that the representatives truly represent the people and unselfishly serve the people’s interests. Self-seeking mo- tives, partisanship, bossism, corruption, “mobbings” in a democratic state are indications that democracy has not yet passed the experimental stage. Corruption in politics means autocracy of the most objectionable type. It is true that general education of the citizens is need- ful in a democracy; the supposition, however, that edu- cation will suffice to qualify for citizenship and for the administration of government has proved erroneous. Democracy depends for success primarily on the moral character of the citizens. So long as among the citizens of a state there may be those who lack in moral qualities, there 1s a possibility that such may be entrusted with responsible positions. While the state cannot demand Christian qualifications on the part of its officers, it is clear that only men of integrity and satisfactory moral. character can consistently serve in civil offices. As for the administration of the affairs of the church, there is no ground, Scriptural or other, for entrusting it to an ecclesiastical ruler, or, for that matter, to a few such rulers. If religious democracy meant the rejection Pt eed ee ee LP ee eed THE GOD OF RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY 143 of ecclesiastical autocracy, it would be decidedly ac- ceptable. What it does mean is the denial of the ruler- ship of God, particularly His sovereignty in the sphere of religion. Religious democracy is, as intimated in a preceding paragraph, the rejection of the fundamental truth of God’s sovereignty. * Modernism demands a democratized God. The well- known theologian of religious democracy, Walter Rau- schenbusch, tells us we must save God by democratiz- ing Him. “The worst thing that could happen to God,” this writer says further, “would be to remain an auto- crat while the world is moving toward democracy. He would be dethroned with the rest [of the rulers]’’? Pres- ident Arthur Cushman McGiffert, of the Union Theo- logical Seminary, New York, says: “Democracy demands a God with whom men may co-operate, not to whom they must submit.”* “The principle of democracy,” says Professor Errett Gates, of the University of Chicago, “arose first of all in the political sphere, but it was found to be equally applicable in the religious sphere.”* Dr. Frank Crane says in a magazine article: “Are we to go on regarding God as an absolute monarch when the idea of absolute monarchy has been discarded among men?’ Dr. Henry Frederick Cope, the General Secre- tary of the Religious Education Association, in his book Education for Democracy, describes religion as “gradu- ally emerging from the notion of a dictator deity to the leadership of a splendid Brother in the great Human family.” “The democratizing of religion,’ says Profess- or Herbert Alden Youtz, of the Graduate School of The- ology, Oberlin, “is one of the significant processes that is taking place just now at an unprecedented rate.” 1 A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 178. 2 Religious Education, June, 1919, p. 161. 3 4A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 437. : 4 Democratizing Theology, p. 4. 144 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM This author proceeds to point out that this democratiz- ing means a radical transformation in our very concep- tion of religion or in “our way of conceiving the living God and His relationship to our world.” Again he says: Our Christologies and our doctrines of God are being democ- ratized. — There is a superficial way in which a man may democ- ratize his theology by going over it and substituting for the Monarch God, a democratized divine Ruler; substituting a Re- public of God for a Kingdom of God. This is necessarily an artificial thing to do.5 Professor Gerald Birney Smith shows that religious democracy does not accept beliefs or practices imposed from above. This means that modernism rejects au- thoritative revelation. Various liberal theologians have pointed out that modern thought, accepting God’s im- manence, objects to the idea of a Father God. The new world-order, in their opinion, demands a God who is nothing beyond a “comrade in the struggle of the race,” as Professor Albert Parker Fitch says, or, more accu- rately, one whose comrades we become by working for social ends. And yet the doctrine of God’s fatherhood was only recently very popular in liberalistic circles. The advocates of the demand that God must be de- mocratized do not believe in God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture. They accept the modern idea of an immanent God.7. The God of modernists is not a personal Being. He is not distinct from the world but is a part of it. When they speak of God they evidently mean either a blind cosmic energy or a mere concept of the mind. In their opinion God is the product of our own thought and imagination; He exists only in our own mind and is, as it were, what we may see fit to 5 Democratizing Theology, p. 5. 6 The Biblical World, November, 1919, p. 637. 7 On the close connection between the doctrine of immanence and the idea of religious democracy cf. Dr. Gerald Birney Smith, Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 517. ATHEISM OF RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY 147 make Him.” Professor Roy Wood Sellars, of the Univer- sity of Michigan, says: “All of man’s ideas are human ideas, and so his ideas of his God and the very person- ality and moral outlook of that God reflect the social standards which are in force around the individual.’”® Says Walter Rauschenbusch: “The conception of God held by a social group is a social product.” And again: “Our consciousness [or conception] of God is the spir- itual counterpart of our social consciousness.’” it is strange, is it not, that a man of Walter Rauschen- busch’s erudition, in order to make Christianity accept- able to the defenders of the social gospel, can forget himseif to such extent as to say that God must be saved by democratization, and unless this is done, the world will dethrone Him. But to democratize God means nothing less than to dethrone Him, unless it be supposed that God, like vain man, would be willing to occupy the throne while He is shorn of that for which the throne stands, namely of His power and authority. To democ- ratize God is, as John Haynes Holmes rightly says, “‘to shift the basis of religion from God to man”; it is to ac- cept a humanitarian instead of a theistic basis for re- ligion. In its last essence this can mean only one thing, namely the denial of God. The God of our fathers is de- throned — speaking now from the viewpoint of the rep- resentatives of religious democracy —and, as a recent writer said, He is replaced by a God elected on a pflat- form of approved social and political ideals.'° Can there be an excuse, we must ask, for representa- tives of religious liberalism still to use the name of God and claim to be theologians, when their god is a mere concept of the mind? The God of modernism is a being which comes, as it were, under the guise of God, pro- 8 The Next Step in Religion, p. 161. 9 4 Theology for the Social Gospel, pp. 167 and 179. 10 The Unpartizan Review, January-February, 1920. ~ 146 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM claiming that the basis of religion is in man and that there is no other God but man and his great ideas. «Is it possible that the belief in such a god as that is sup- posed to justify the term religious democracy? The question is here pertinent: How can modern re- ligionists worship a God whom they have, suppositively, democratized? Some of them, be it said to their credit, have declared that they cannot. A modernist who is a member of an evangelical church says: “Personally I have gotten to the point where | regard all worship as idolatry.”11. The denial of a personal, almighty God makes worship indeed idolatrous. The representatives of modernism fail to give us a good reason why a de- mocratized God should be worshipped. Such worship, being of an idolatrous nature, cannot be taken seriously. Necessarily it has degrading results. To democratize God is to discard true religion. The representatives of religious democracy hold that democ- racy itself is religion and that it is the only religion that is worth while; there is, in their opinion, no religion but democracy. This is the denial of religion. We are told that there is no difference between democracy and reli- gious democracy, and that the former is identical with the latter. “Democracy is a social faith; it is a religious faith,’ says Professor Theodore Gerald Soares of the University of Chicago.’? Gerald Birney Smith is of the opinion that “the triumph of democracy is now the chief concern of the church and all theological training should be to that end.’** “I worship God,’ says Professor George Albert Coe, of the Union Theological Seminary, “who, breathing himself everywhere into the human clod, makes it a spirit, a social craving, even the spirit of humanity, yes, the spirit of a possible world society. 11 Friends’ Intelligencer, September 6, 1919. 12 The American Journal of Theology, 1919, p. 124. 138 The Biblical Worid, May, 1918, p. 302. Italics - mine. “DEMOCRACY OF GOD” 147 I bow my spirit before the Spirit of the world democracy that is to be.’'* Dr. Coe and other writers on the subject have discarded the use of the phrase “kingdom of God” in favor of “democracy of God.” But is not this a mis- nomer? If the democratizing process include God Him- self; if religious democracy be simply democracy, it is difficult to see a good reason for speaking of the democ- racy of God. Religious democracy is closely related to the so-called social Christianity. Edward Scribner Ames says rightly that modern religion “is referred to as the religion of the spirit, as social Christianity, and as the religion of democracy.”?* The opinion that democracy is religion is founded partially on the claim that Jesus was “the first great democrat,” and that the burden of His message was the establishment of a proper form of civil govern- ment. Walter Rauschenbusch intimates that had Jesus lived for thirty years longer He would presumably have been more successful in that which He undertook to do."* There is no objection to the idea that all men are ina sense religious; it is quite a different matter, however, to identify religion with democracy and assert that all men, being religious, are democratic in sentiment. Those who make such assertions would do well to remember that not all countries have a democratic government. While Walter Rauschenbusch and other representa- tives of religious democracy commend worship and sanc- tion the existence of the church, they do not hold that the church should be a permanent factor in a true de- mocracy. The church, in their opinion, is useful only as a possible medium to educate the masses into a democ- racy such as they desire. A true democracy, they be- lieve, has no need for the church as a separate organiza- 14 Religious Education, October, 1916, p. 379. Italics mine. 15 The New Orthodoxy, p. 10. 16 4 Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 266. 148 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM tion. ‘They favor an ultimate union of religion and state. Their position on this point, however, differs radically from the older state-churchism of Europe in which state and church, though closely united, were separate organ- izations. It should be observed that, if God is democra- tized and there is no religion but democracy, the exist- ence of a particular religious organization is uncalled- for; it is in fact precluded. For a democratic state of that description it would be inconsistent to permit vari- ous religious organizations within its borders. “Both dogmatism [speaking of evangelical Christianity] and ecclesiasticism [1i. e., insistence on the right of religious organization| are in their inmost nature sectarian ;” says Professor Coe, “they have always divided Christians from one another.” Religious democracy, it is supposed, cannot tolerate anything that divides people. It is need- ful therefore, the same author insists, that we advance “to a fully social position,’’’ that is to say, a position which ultimately knows neither dogma nor church. This author says further “A particular religious fraternity — within the community, though its doors be wide open to everybody, is not, and cannot be, the solution of this problem.”’!® Religious democracy, as advocated by many liberal- istic writers, does not make a distinction in principle be- tween Christian and non-Christian, believer and unbe- liever, saint and sinner; hence it can well spare the serv- ices of the church. We again let the defenders of a “democracy of religion” speak for themselves. Henry T. Hodgkin, a prominent British “Friend” of the liberal- istic type, says: | The point at which to begin is the basal conviction that every man is essentially religious.19—JIt is true that there are people 17 4A Secial Theory of Religious Education, p. °262. 18 The same, p. 323. 19 Lay Religion, p. 54. A PROPOSED MODERNIST STATE CHURCH 149 who say quite positively that they are not religious, that they do not know this instinct, etc. It may fairly be asked, however, whether this apparent absence of a “religious instinct” is not due to a complete misconception of religion — the very misconception we are here seeking to remove.29 — Religion is a necessary part of every man’s life. That is not to say that every man is religious in the conventional sense — far from it, thank God! It simply means that any idea of religion which is limited to the few [the Christian believers, for example] is, from the nature of the case, false. — Democratic religion....claims sinner not less than saint.21 It follows that there is no longer a real need for the ex- istence of the church. Religious democracy, or social Christianity, demands that our religious institutions must ultimately be brought under community control. Joseph Ernest McAfee, who is holding an important office in a religious organization and is the author of a book on Religion and the New Amerwan Democracy, says: | If American society perfect its democracy, its religious insti- tutions must come under community control. This implies that all sect labels must come off and sectarian control must be abolished. This is essential from the point of view of democracy. Enlight- ened Christian forces should join with democracy to transform the present order and abolish the sectarian system.2” These sentences might be taken to mean that all Christian sects should be asked to unite into one relig- ious body. This is not the opinion advocated by this au- thor, however. His demand goes much farther. Hear him: — Sectarianism would not be abolished with the merging of all Christian sects into one. That might only aggravate its evils. A strong sect can do more mischief than a weak one. What democ- racy needs to complete its program, and what Christianity needs for its emancipation, is the abolition of the whole sect program and the eradication of the whole sectarian principle and spirit. 20 The same, p. 195. 21 The same, p. 32. Italics mine. 22 Article “Can Christianity Tolerate the Church?” in The New Republic, January 18, 1919. 150 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM This means, as this author takes pains to point out, that the Christian church as an institution or organiza- tion must cease to exist. “A real world-society.is not possible with a divisive, competing, warring religious so- ciety,” says Dr. Henry F. Cope.** President McGiffert writes: “Democracy demands the abandonment of this traditional notion of religion and the recognition of it as a communal affair having to do with the salvation of the community, that is, in ordinary language, with the es- tablishment of true liberty and human brotherhood.’’** One would suppose that “social Christianity” and “religious democracy” stand for toleration and not for religious tyranny. The contrary is true, however, as may presently be shown. The charge of intolerance is sometimes made against evangelical Christianity. We readily admit that the Christian church cannot take the position of general toleration in the sense that she could ignore the difference between the Bible faith and the modern rejection of the faith. That every man has a right to his own religious belief is true in the sense that the truth must not and cannot be forced upon any one. As citizens of a free state we properly demand and concede > the right of religious liberty. But this does not mean that the church should take an attitude of indifference and neutrality toward the Christian faith, or that believ- ers could religiously fellowship non-believers. President George E. Horr recently remarked: “It is frequently said that a man has a right to think as he pleases. That is just what no living soul has any right to do. His only — right is to think according to the facts of the case and according to the laws of thought.” No one, in fact, has a right to think wrongfully and come to hurt. But, on the other hand, the fact must be recognized that truth 23 Religious Education, 1919, p. 223. 24 The same, June, 1919, p. 161. ee ea” eee ee DIFFERENCES MUST BE RECOGNIZED 151 cannot be instilled by any other means than teaching and persuasion. The attempt to spread the truth by co- ercion or persecution is contrary to Christian principles. Evangelical Christendom demands of the state general toleration on the basis of free citizenship. But, as al- ready said, the fact must not be overlooked that the church cannot take the position that all men, whether they are believers or not, have a right to membership in the church, or that ministers of the church may preach modernism. Such a position would make the church lose its Christian character. Even the Masonic Order is reckoning with the fact that not all men stand for Ma- sonic principles. And the Unitarians do not and cannot fellowship those who insist on Scriptural orthodoxy. This is not intolerance. “How can two walk together except they be agreed?” Evangelical Christianity, then, is identified with the principle of liberty of conscience and of general tolera- tion within the sphere of the state. The state cannot consistently espouse the cause of any particular relig- ious sect; it cannot assume the task of the church. For the state to admit only Christian professors to citizenship would be as inconsistent as if the church opened her doors to non-Christians or, in other words, if she dis- carded the faith. The representatives of modernism would have us be- lieve that evangelical orthodoxy is antagonistic to de- mocracy. Now if by “democracy” they mean religious democracy, as this term is used by modernists, we will- ingly concede this point. Liberalistic leaders do not properly distinguish between religious democracy and political democracy, and therefore decry the Bible faith as the enemy of democracy. According to Professor William Frederic Bade, of the Pacific School of Religion, the orthodox view of the authoritative nature of Scrip- 152 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM ture “is the last bulwark of autocracy. 25 Gerald Birney Smith says: ; An autocratic [i. e., evangelical] religion cannot prepare citi- sens for democracy. — If, submitting to the authority of Scripture, we are training men to think of Christianity as something un- changeably there by divine decree....we are training men in au- tocracy.26 — We cannot maintain one kind of authority in our political life and a totally different kind of authority in religious life unless we wish religion and democracy to be mutually distrust- ful. To insist on blind submission in religion is a spiritual prepara- tion for blind submission to autocratic power in the state; it is fun- damentally opposed to the ideals of democracy.27—A church that hoids to orthodox yiews belongs to the old regime rather than to. the age of democracy.*8 This means that representatives of religious liberal- ism denounce orthodoxy as the enemy of democracy and claim that evangelical Christians who accept the Scrip- tures as God’s Word are not truly democratic. It is in- sinuated by modernists that orthodox believers reason in a fashion something like this: God, the All-mighty, All-wise, All-loving, All-righteous, has autocratic pow- er, therefore there ought to be on earth autocrats who lord it over their fellows. It is assumed by representa- tives of modernism that those who recognize the sover- eignty of God and teach unquestioning submission to Him, cannot be truly democratic in sentiment. Is not this a most outlandish insinuation? Or, is it true that the evangelical Christians of our iand cannot consistent- ly support our democratic institutions? Do they favor autocratic government? Is not the contrary true, that the very back-bone of true democracy are the ones who, instead of attempting the democratization of God, will- ingly submit to His sovereignty? Is not democracy a miserable failure where the belief in a sovereign God is 25 The American Journal of Theology, 1919, p. 234. 26 The Biblical World, July, 1919, p. 422. 27 The American Journal of Theology, July, 1917, p. 346. 28 The Biblical World, May, 1919, p. 255. LORDSHIP OF CHRIST DENIED 153 banished from the people’s thought? Does not Russia at the present time give us an object lesson showing the real meaning of the democratization of God? The sup- position that, since there ought to be no autocracy on earth, it follows that God also should be shorn of auto- cratic power, is absurd. Religious democracy, in short, demands of us that we renounce the sovereignty of God and the Lordship of our Lord Jesus Christ. It would assign to our Lord the office of mere democratic leadership. “What kind of a leader do we need?” asks Henry T. Hodgkin, and his answer is: “Viewed from the standpoint of democracy, we may say that we need a leader who is one with the led, not coming from above but raised from the ranks, and that he must be the servant of the community, not its ‘boss.’’’® The same writer says, the orthodox view of Jesus Christ involves that “He is not one of us.” “Such a leader,” he says further, “cannot be in a real sense a part of our everyday life, still less can He be the servant of the community.’*° This is the oft repeated liberalistic claim that we must “make Jesus real” by denying His deity. It is argued that a divine Jesus is not “one of us.” This claim rests on the false premise that Jesus was not both human and divine. But Scripture teaches that Christ was human (“one of us”) as well as divine, very man and very God. It is impossible to accept the opin- ion that a merely human, failing Jesus would be more real. Dean Shailer Mathews has well said on this point: “We can never make Jesus real by reducing him to the level of people with whom we gossip over our back-yard fence.’’*1 This statement is all the more remarkable be- cause Dr. Mathews does not defend the orthodox doc- trine of the deity of Christ, though obviously he percieves nD Lay Religion, p. 182. 30 The same, p. 183. 31 The Biblical World, May, 1920, p. 226. 154 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM that, even from his point of view, the process of SS izing” Jesus has been carried too far. The thought that a democratic leader, vaetea) of divine Savior and Redeemer, is needed, is quite unaccept- able. Even the atheistic, anti-religious social democrats of Europe admire Jesus as a (supposed) democratic leader. If Jesus were nothing beyond that, it would be difficult to see why so much should be made of His leadership. Unprejudiced Socialists admit that Karl Marx and Au- gust Bebel were greater leaders in the field of politics and Socialism than Jesus. It is, therefore, difficult to see why men who see in Jesus nothing more than a lead- | er of democracy, cling to the Christian name. Modern- ists would have us profess Christianity but deny the Lordship of Christ; they ask us to renounce the Lord- ship of the Master, but cling to the ethical leadership of Jesus of Nazareth. Now a true believer in our Lord, who has’ been saved through His grace, will at any time lay down his life rather than deny the faith by renouncing the Lordship of the Savior. Not only must the believer realize that -without Christ’s divine Lordship there could not be sal- vation, but he will count the unconditional surrender to Him his greatest privilege, the only true freedom. The Apostle Paul loved to refer to himself as a bondservant, literally a “bondslave” of his Lord, and again he refers to Him in the well-known words: ‘Whose I am, and whom I serve.” Christianity minus faith in Christ as the divine Redeemer, minus recognizing His Lordship, is necessarily either laughing stock for the prince of darkness, or it is a mighty tool in his hands. From the view that evangelical Christianity is antag- onistic to true democracy there is only a short step to the demand that orthodox Christianity should not be tolerated in a modern democracy. Such demands have in fact been made and apparently, without a protest by PROPOSED UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE 155 representatives of modernism. “A humanist’s religion,” observes Professor Roy Wood Sellars, “can admit no cunning division into the things which are God’s and the things which are Caesar’s.’*? Joseph Ernest McAfee says: No one who believes in essential Christianity should resist the process of bringing our religious institutions under community con- trol. — Religion, like every other universal human concern, must be brought under community control, if democracy is fully to vindi- cate itself. A church bearing a sect name and exploiting society in the interests of a sect idea cannot be tolerated by a thoroughgoing democracy. Religion is too vital a social function for its institu- tions to be monopolized by private corporations.33 The program of the more advanced modernism, then, provides for a liberalistic state religion, a union of relig- ion and state. It will be recalled that such was also the position of Karl Marx and other Socialist leaders. The new state religion is to comprise Christians, non-Chris- tians and atheists — anti-Christians — alike. Yet it is to be by no means doctrinally indifferent. An organization that stands for the democratization of God and the denial of Christ’s Lordship is naturally inimical and hostile to Christianity. No believing Christian could join himself to a religious world society of this character. Dr. McAfee, it is interesting to notice, based his de- mand for the abolishment of the Christian church on the claim that Christianity will fare better if the church can be eliminated. The church, he thinks has a “demoraliz- ing” effect on Christianity. “In the nature of the case,” he says, “an ecclesiastical organization cannot serve the purpose for which Christianity is in the world. Being a spirit and not an institution, the attempt to institution- alize Christianity sacrifices its genius.— An official Christian Church by its very nature must be un-Chris- 82 The Next Step in Religion, p. 213. 38 The New Republic, January 18, 1919. 156 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM tian.’** In other words, the attempt is made to justify the proposed suppression of the Christian church on the ~ supposition that the elimination of the church would prove a blessing. Now this was essentially the position of the persecutors in all ages. Even Nero claimed he was doing a good work by putting to death all Chris- tians. In the dark ages the persecutors advanced pre- cisely the same argument as the modern representatives of religious democracy. They claimed that great bless- ing weuld result if the persecuted ones, instead of suf- fering for their faith, would accept the faith of the dom- inant authorities. Therefore persecution was believed to be justified. Is it not strange indeed that they who claim to repre- sent democracy and toleration propose the suppression of the Christian faith? And at the same time representa- tives of religious liberalism accuse the defenders of the old Bible faith of intolerance. Dean Shailer’ Mathews brands the Christian believers of the Biblical type, as represented by the Bible Schools, as reactionaries and says, if their efforts should succeed “Protestantism would become dangerous to intellectual and religious liberty.”*° It is the old story. Evangelical Christianity, insisting on the right to stand for definite doctrine, is accused of an attitude that is inimical to religious liberty. The fact is willfully overlooked that influential modernists are favoring the suppression of the church and of the Christian faith as well as of every other religious creed. Religious democracy — modernism — and general social- ization are to be established by secular means. Relig- ion is to be “placed under community control.” While noted modernists in the church accuse the fundamentalists of opposing religious liberty, for the reason that they do not recognize modernism as iden- 34 The same, January 18, 1919. 85 The Bibiical }Vurld, April, 1917, p. 202. ee ee FUNDAMENTALISM FOR FREEDOM 157 tical with the Christian faith, it is interesting to notice that not all liberalists are of one opinion with Dean Shailer Mathews on this point. Henry Neumann, of the Ethical Culture Society, writes: The fundamentalists are not trying to suppress freedom of pulpit speech. They are doing the very different thing of de- manding consistency within their own churches. The funda- mentalists do not attempt to forbid the liberal preacher to speak. The preacher. is free to utter his ideas anywhere that he pleases, with one exception. He is asked not to utter them in a church whose purity of doctrine the church authorities are expected to safeguard. A Unitarian church, I imagine, would not be con- tent to remain long under a pastor who would come to share the religious beliefs of a Bryan or a Papini. The fundamentalist is no different. He holds that you may think that Jesus was as much a mortal being as Lincoln. Believe and say so if you will, but not in a church which is dedicated to the idea that Jesus was the only Son of God.36 36 The Christian Register, March 13, 1924, p. 245. XV THis NEW VIEW OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION nurture and education as one of her chief interests. No words need be lost here concerning its import- ance. Modern liberalism has substituted religious edu- T = Christian church has always regarded Christian cation for Christian education. While it is true that in- conservative circles the term religious education is some- times used synonymously with Christian education, in genera] modern usage religious education has acquired a meaning that differs radically from the meaning which it had in Christendom before the rise of modernism. © Representatives of religious liberalism tell us that Christian education of the older type produces “sec- ondhand religion.’ A recent writer says: “second- hand religion is no religion. It is a wretched make- shift.”? This is true, if by this term is meant a mere knowledge of the Christian message without the person- al acceptance of it, or a form of religion without a vital relationship to God. There are, however, liberalistic writers who use the phrase “secondhand religion” in a new sense, as will directly be shown. Modern theology comes to us with the claim that the Bible is not to be accepted as God’s Word. The message of Christianity, we are told, is of a social nature and nec- essariy varies and changes with the nature of the par-. ticular social improvements that are supposed to be in order. Since Christianity, in the opinion of modernists, has no fixed, definite message of truth or doctrine, a Christian religious teacher should not profess to have 1 Hodgkin, Lay Religion, p. 41. MEANING OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 159 definite religious truth to offer. Any claim of this sort, they tell us, can only produce secondhand religion in those who are taught. The way of orthodoxy, says Dr. Herbert Alden Youtz, of Oberlin Theological Seminary, is “to give the people a secondhand account of God.’ Modern interpreters of religious education tell us that children should not be left under the impression that there is definite Christian truth in which they may be in- structed. Professor George Albert Coe, of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, who is perhaps the most prominent American writer on this subject, argues that we ought not “to impose beliefs [or doctrines] upon children.’”* “The aim of instruction,’ he says further, “is not to impose truth but to promote growth [namely, growth toward social efficiency]. The instruction must be emptied of its traditional tmplications of telling pupils what to believe. To impose such beliefs upon a child [in other words, to tell a child what to believe] is not to promote the growth of a free personality.”* This author says turther: When we have made clear to ourselves what sort of world the Father and we as his children desire [in other words, in what direction to bend our endeavors for social improvement], must not our next concern be that the young also should desire it? What boots it if they know all Scripture, all doctrine, etc., if they have not both the forward look and the sort of desire that can reconstruct a world? — Let the curriculum be drawn from any sort of material.5 Similar views have been expressed by other advo- cates of modern theology. The supposition that the Bi- ble is the source of religious truth, is considered out of date by modernists. Liberalistic writers agree on the 2 Democratizing Theology, p. 12. 3 A Social Theory of Religious Education, 1917, p. 65. 4 The same, p. 1. Italics mine. 5 The same, p. 66. 160 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM point that the source of the divine is world-wide. A re- cent writer says on this point: To find the divine we must trace it out through all its devi- ous course. To hear its message we must listen to the voice of the grass and birds, of the winds and of the stars, and to the still small voice within our own heart. That is poetical, no doubt; but how shall we make out any intelligible meaning in all these multitudinous voices and myriad revelations? There is too much discord and contradiction and confusion. There is good and there is evil; there is wisdom and there is folly; there is the per- manent and there is the fleeting. Shall we put it all on one level and say: “All is Truth, all is Mind, all is God?” How about the evil? Is that merely an illusion of mortal mind? Surely we. cannot trifle with evil like that; it is too deep and tragical to be simply set aside by a wave of the hand. Or if we want to dis- tinguish, what shall be our standard of judgment?6 Since, then, according to religious liberalism, the di- vine is scattered, as it were, throughout the whole world, the curriculum for religious education is to be drawn “from any sort of material.” It must not be drawn from the Bible as the one true source of religious enlighten- ment, nor from books based on the Bible, such as the catechism, for this will give the pupil a fixed or definite idea of religious truth and the result, we are told, will be secondhand religion. A Unitarian preacher says: “The fault is that we have asked people to begin their relig- ious life by accepting certain teachings about God. But this is just a reversal of the natural order. When we make an acquaintance we do not presume to know all about him at the outset. Rather we wait to see to what extent our confidence may be well placed.” In other words, the child is to settle these questions without tak- ing either the word of the teacher or the word of Scrip- ture for it. “The influence of the catechism [or of defi- nite religious instruction] in tending to stereotype the idea of God upon the minds of the young,” says Henry 8 The Reformed Church Review, 1918, p. 244. ARE CHILDREN TO BE THE TEACHERS? 161 T. Hodgkin, “is wholly and utterly bad. In the very subject on which children should be our teachers, we presume to teach them.”* Do we hear rightly, then, that the children should be the religious teachers of their elders? Our Lord commended certain traits in the char- acter of children, it is true; the point in question how- ever is, did He appoint the children as the religious teachers? Did He charge the aposties to tell the world to listen to the message of babes, or did He give the a- ‘postles a message of salvation to proclaim? It is somewhat difficult to see wherein the task of the liberalistic religious teacher consists. Not only does he decry the authority of Scripture but he is not supposed to give the pupil the result of his own endeavor to find the divine. In this make-believe religious instruction the pupil himself must by his own effort gather the divine from world-wide sources. Is it possible, one is tempted to ask, that any normal person is taking such views of religious education seriously? The sum and substance of all this learned talk about modern religious education is, that the children of Christian parents should be per- mitted to grow up in heathen ignorance and darkness. True, the modern religionists, as a rule, have no objec- tions against instruction in morality, but the same may be said of representatives of non-Christian religious sys- tems. It may be worth while to notice that among the rad- ical modernists there is at least one who openly rejected the thought that the young should not be given religious instruction. Walter Rauschenbusch says: “If every in- dividual had to work out his idea of God on the basis of his own experiences and intuitions only, it would be a groping quest, and most of us would see only the occa- sional flitting of a distant light. By the end of our life 7 Lay Religion, London, 1918, p. 196. 162 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM we might have arrived at the stage of voodooism and necromancy.’’* Another liberalistic writer says: “Neg- lect of religious instruction, in order not to bias a grow- ing mind, is usually laziness camouflaged as liberalism. What other subject is neglected for a like reason?—A home without any religion, however liberal, is a danger- ous place for a child to be born in.’” } The modern view of religious education is defended in various books on the subject published in recent years. Prominent and representative among these books is the one by Professor Coe, from which we have quoted in a preceding paragraph. This author identifies religion with social reconstruction and democracy. Hence he de- fines religious faith as the endeavor to reconstruct soci- ety through the means of reforms of various kinds. Re- ligious education is interpreted in social terms; it is iden- tified with social education. Now this is the general po- sition of religious liberalism on the point of. religious ed- ucation. The leading recent writers on this subject are defending this view. The purpose in religious educa- tion, says Dr, William Irvin Lawrance, of the Unitarian Church, “is to socialize our pupils.’ And again this writer Says: Whatever culture really enlarges the sympathies and multi- plies contacts and stimulates to service is to be classed as relig- ious education.1°—- There is urgent need that religious educators break away from conventional usages and recast their curricula along broader lines. What may be taught? Everything that is true either as fact or as illumination.11 Religious Education, the organ of the Religious Edu- cation Association, says editorially: “We must get away from the concept of religious education as a secluded area oi interest for the people who wish to add the facts 8 4A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 168. 9 The Christian Register, July 8, 1920, p. 19. 10 The Social Emphasis in Religious Education, p. 36. 11 The same, p. 34. WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EDUCATION? 163 of religion of the child’s curriculum. Religious educa- tion is as broad as life itself....it is the science of hu- man growth.”?? In other words, all worth while educa- tion is religious education. It is supposed that the church, when engaging in religious education, should have for her aim not the dissemination of New Testa- ment truth but the socialization of the pupils. The interests of religious education in the modern sense are represented in America principally by the Re-- ligious Education Association. There is plenty of evi- dence to show that this Association is representative of the modern religious education movement, as advocated by the authors quoted in previous paragraphs. And va- rious denominations, as well as the Federal Council of Churches, have officially recognized it and are working with it. The Committee on Education of the Interna- tional Sunday School Association have published a state- ment in which — having previously referred to “invalu- able agencies” in American secular education — they say: “The field of religious education has such an agency in the Religious Education Association. Such associa- tions should be encouraged as essential to the develop- ment of a scientific program for a democratic people.” It may be worth while to observe that the Religious Education Association owes its existence principally to William R. Harper, the first President of the University of Chicago. From its beginning it stood for religious liberalism. “In the Religious Education Association Unitarians have been welcome from the first and have had a voice in its councils and occupied official posi- tions,” says a Unitarian writer. In 1913, after the annu- al meeting of this Association had been held in Cleve- land, Minot Simons, the Unitarian minister of that city, wrote: 12 Vol. XIV, 1919, p. 290. 164 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM I am deeply impressed with the fact that the Religious Edu- cation Association is one of the most liberalizing forces of the modern religious world. I have been quite amazed at the theo- logical radicalism which I have heard during the past week. — The R. E. A. deserves our support as Unitarians because it is doing our work to an extent that we little realize. Of the annual meeting of the same association, for 1919, which was held in Detroit, with Samuel A. Eliot, President of the American Unitarian Association, as chairman, a report was published in the eastern Unitari- an church paper. “Can we do better,” asks the Uni- tarian writer of this report, “than to give thorough and hearty co-operation to the Religious Education Associa- tion which welcomes us without reserve or discrimina- tion, and which preaches our message of education in re- ligion with such persuasiveness and power?’ Dr. Du- rant Drake, Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College, recently recommended the R. E. A. as the most important iiberalizing agency of the day.** 7 The membership of the Religious Education Associa- tion is not confined to those who profess the Christian faith. This association, says Charles W. Eliot, one of the prominent American modernist leaders, “acts on the principle: diversity in opinion or belief, unity in conduct or action.” It is open to all men and women of what- ever religion or denomination who “desire to promote moral and religious ideals in education, and educational ideals in religion.” Henry F. Cope, the General Secre- tary of the Association, says: Its membership constitutes a world-group united in a com- mon social life and forming a common fellowship of aim and service. This aim lifted men and women [not only Christian men and women but also those of other religions] above the [re- ligious] controversies which had hitherto divided them, so that 13 The Christian ae fae April 3, 1919, p. 13. 14 The same, July 17, 1919. 15 The same, May A 1919. THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION SOCIETY 165 in the Association representatives of the great religious faiths [both Christian and heathen] find themselves standing on a common platform. Its members represent almost every -great religious division. They are one in the common faith that life’s ultimate product is spiritual and is to be realized [not by super- natural means, or divine grace, but] by those known and order- ly processes of development which we call educational.”’16 This is plain language. Educational religion or re- ligious education takes the place of supernatural salva- tion. This modern world-movement does not stand for ‘anything particular in the way of religion. It is so broad in principle and scope that it cannot take a defi- nite stand in favor of any existing type of religion. With pride the Religious Education Association points to its universal broadness that embraces even heathen relig- ions. In short, the R. E. A. takes a position of neutrality in matters religious, though it bears a religious name. The devil-worshipers in darkest Africa may not be rep- resented in it, but presumably they would be eligible for membership, Modern religious education does not have a religious message or definite religious truth to teach. Just as, from the liberalistic viewpoint, not the content of theol- ogy, but the method is the principal thing, so also in re- ligious education the method is supposed to be all in all. Hence Christian believers and representatives of virtual atheism as well as Buddhists and Confucianists are in- vited to join hands in this work. Schools of religion — “religious community schools’ —have been organized in America in which anything unacceptable to non- Christians is carefully avoided. But the fact remains, as Herbert Alden Youtz has aptly said, that “excessive emphasis upon practical methods often conceals spirit- ual deadness. Here ts the fatal weakness of much relig- ious education.” Yet unless theology has a definite re- 16 The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 386. 17 Democratizing Theology, p. 32. Italics mine. 166 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 1igous message, it is but natural to consider method the principal thing. : The modern religious education mibventent. then, de- fines religion as socialization and identifies religious edu- cation with social education. Professor H. W. Holmes describes religious education as “an effort to establish re- ligion as a unifying and creating force in socwl evolu- tion.”’*® The General Secretary of the Religious Educa- tion Association says: “The program of religious educa- tion is nothing less than the reconstruction of society through the wills of men.”!® And again this writer ob- serves: “Today religious education is concerned with the whole program of education so far as it deals with persons as religious persons and so far as it looks to a religious order of society.”?® Now a religious order of society, in the language of liberals, is the realization of what is known as social reconstruction — the religion of democracy. All endeavor that serves this:end, “looking to a religious [i. e., democratic] order of society” of this kind, is considered religious work. Social service is iden- tifed with religion. It goes without saying that all legit- imate, worth-while work is social service and, consid- ered from this viewpoint, is religion. A person engaged in such work is claimed by modernists to be a religious person. This means that religion and religious educa- tion is everything, and nothing definite. Education, in so far as it has to do with teaching doctrinal, supernatu- ral religion, is not recognized as a worth while phase of religious education; modernism is decidedly antagonistic to definite doctrinal teaching. The serious pertinent question is, How is it to be, ex- plaineu tnat men and women who profess evangelical Christianity can make common cause with this modern 18 The Christian Register, August 5, 1920, p. 13. 19 Religious Education, 1919, p. 224. 20 The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 384. AIDING THE CAUSE OF MODERNISM 167 world-movement and with the Religious Education As- sociation in particular? It cannot be denied that the true character of this organization is clearly recognized by religious liberalists. Is there a possibility that the evangelical men who consent to labor with this society are not as well informed about its character and aims as are the liberalists? Obviously their support of this movement is entirely inexcusable. Some may say that while they have accepted the invitation to speak in one ’ of their annual meetings, no fault can be found with the contents of their addresses. The point however is, as thinking persons generally know, that by your very presence as a speaker you made your influence count in favor of what this society stands for. Is it possible that there are conservatives who fail to see this point? We have, in passing, never heard that any speaker in those meetings had the courage to give testimony for the Bi- ble truth against modernism. To doso would be contrary to the rules and would not be permitted. Chautauqua, an institution having its origin in a camp-meeting, has always considered religion one of its interests. It is generally known that in more recent years some of the Chautauquas have been conducted in a way highly satisfactory to liberals. Particularly is this true of.the original Chautauqua Assembly. Of the ses- sion of 1920 a Unitarian writer says: The specific interests of religion have been in the hands of such men as Dr. Cornelius Woelfkin, Dr. Alexander J. Grieve, President Lynn Harold Hough, Bishop W. F. McDowell, Dean Shailer Mathews, and Dr. F. F. Shannon. Unitarians coming away from the great Amphi-theatre service each Sunday morning are wont to exclaim with satisfaction.?1 Thomas M. Roberts, a Unitarian, says of the same session at Chautauqua: “I was so pleased with the leav- 21 The Christian Register, August 26, 1920, p. 19. 168 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM ening process going on there, that I should like our Uni- tarian people to continue to affiliate with other denomi- nations in this very important educational work.’?? A- gain a Unitarian writer says in the Christian Register: The quiet influence of our representatives at Chautauqua, en- tering in friendly spirit into all good works there going forward, has disarmed sectarian suspicion and led many to see the real meaning and purpose of the Unitarian movement. — It is signifi- cant that our entrance into organic relations with other churches at this large centre of religious activity is through the channel of religious education.2% , Dr. Durant Drake, speaking of modern religious edu-. cation, says: “The great hope of the church lies in edu- cation. When education is tenfold as prevalent, there must be either a great revolution in the church or a great withdrawal from it.”** It can not be doubted that mod- ern religious education, if it be approved of the church in general, would result in a complete liberalistic revolu- tion and the eclipse of “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” *2 The Christian Regsster, September 30, 1920, p. 16. 23 The same, p. 16. 24 Krom an Address, as reported in The Christian Register, July 17, 1919. XVI THE MODERNIST VIEW OF MISSIONS either indifferent or antagonistic to Christian mis- : sions. In recent years there has been a change in its attitude to missions. Liberalism, as represented by those who have accepted modern theology, is now pro- fessing friendliness to mission work. This change of at- titude is due to a new view regarding the nature and purpose of missions which has come to prevail in liberal- istic circles. The modern view of missions stands in strong contrast to the evangelical view. Professor Edward Caldwell Moore, of Harvard Uni- versity, in an article on The Liberal Movement and Mts- sions, points out that “for the missionary achievements of the nineteenth century the churches described as or- thodox have been almost wholly responsible.” Liberal churches, he says further, “have sustained missionary endeavor in but slight degree,” and “the liberal element within the so-called orthodox churches....has frequent- ly excluded itself” from the missionary enterprise. “Hos- tility to missions, lack of sympathy with the aims, dis- sent from the methods of those eager in this [mission- ary] propaganda, have been almost a party badge of the so-called liberal Christianity.” The same author, in his book on The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World, shows that rationalists and liberalists were “hostile to missions” for the reason that missions stood for the Bib- lical doctrine of salvation, just as the liberals were also “alienated from the church at home” for the same reason, R cits ini liberalism has from the beginning been 1 The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 22. Italics mine. 170 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM namely because of the fidelity of the church to the Chris- tian faith. This testimony is altogether in accordance with fact. The real cause for this negative, declining attitude of liberalism to Christian missions is not far to seek. True missionary work is always based on the conviction that you have the truth and the truth must be given to others. “The real belief in absolute truth,’ says a writ- er in The Unpopular Review, “is a missionary state of mind, and carries with it the faith that truth is the one thing worth having.”* Modern liberalism denies the pos- sibility of knowing absolute religious truth. Further- | more it considers all questions of religious doctrine and truth as secondary. Therefore it has no positive relig- ious message. The best in Christianity and the best in heathen religions is, according to modern theology, only subjectively, or relatively, good. If Christianity be bet- ter than some of the non-Christian religions, we are told, the difference is only in degree, indeed in some instanc- es in but slight degree. The fact is that some of the liberals —the Unitarians, for example — frankly confess to their own substantial unity with certain heathen re- ligions. A Unitarian writer, having called attention to the fact that religious liberalists have more in common with the Reform, or Liberal Jews than with orthodox Christianity, proceeds to say: Then we think of other non-Christian religions. Has it not been the Unitarian group that has led in the affirmation that there are no heathen religions, that there is one Father over all, and all true thought and feeling, yes, all dim groping after truth and right, is as divine in origin as the word of Hebrew seer or Christian leader ?’’4 Indeed, the Unitarians, as will be presently pointed out, 2 P. 87. 8 July-September number, 1918, p. 96. « The Christian Register, January 15, 1920, p. 60. UNITARIAN MISSION WORK THA glory in their co-operation with pagans, such as the Brahmo Somaj of India, a Hindu society which is antag- onistic to evangelical Christianity, but friendly to Uni- tarianism. The Hindu poet Tagore, by the way, who is well-known for his enmity to the Christian faith, rep- resents the viewpoint of the Brahmo Somaj. Professor Francis A. Christie, of the Unitarian the- ological seminary at Meadville, Pa., in an article on Uni- tarianism, says: | What corresponds to the customary foreign mission work [in evangelical denominations] exists [among the Unitarians] in the relations sought by the Unitarian body with [pagan] circles in India and Japan. The typical instance is the friendship and co-operation established with the Brahmo Somaj of India. Professor Christie adds that students of the said Hindu society who resort to Unitarian theological schools in America “find an essential agreement in faith.” “The Unitarians think of the Brahmo Somaj,” he says further, “as their own movement expressing itself in terms of In- dian tradition.”® “The bond of union among us all,” said another Unitarian professor, referring to Unitari- ans in America, “is the fight against the deity of Jesus Christ.” Obviously and naturally heathen religionists are included in this bond of union. It is to the Unitarian’s credit, however, that they do not claim their entering into relations with Hindu and other heathen bodies, and recognizing them as repre- senting “their own movement” — that they do not claim this to be mission work, though the writer just quoted says, it corresponds to mission work. Some of the lib- erals within evangelical churches, on the other hand, ev- idently think it the purpose of missions to enter into “re- lations” and religious fellowship with non-Christian peo- ples. Representatives of religious liberalism in evangel- ical denominations are of the opinion that the mission- ’ The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 566. 172 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM ary should not come to the heathen claiming that Chris- tianity is the one true religion, but he should appreciate the heathen religions and learn of them,.and in turn have the heathen people appreciate Christianity and learn of it. It is a noteworthy fact that modernism in general admits that it has been influenced by the heathen world. Dr. Miller, the founder of the Christian College of Mad- ras, wrote: “Remember that the Hindu religion has giv- en the world the great truths of the immanence of God and the solidarity of mankind.’® Henry T. Hodgkin, Secretary of the British Friends’ Foreign Mission Asso- ciation, formerly missionary in China, says: It is the missionary’s duty to interpret to the West [i. e., to Christendom] all that is highest and purest in the East [i.e., in- heathendom], seeking to set forth the true humanity, the simple- hearted faith and love to be found in all religions and races, so that those who have sent the missionary forth may be drawn to love and appreciate those to whom he goes. It is the mission- ary’s high calling to interpret West to East and East to West by sympathy and true understanding.’’? The science of Comparative Religion “has flooded the world with a new light,” says Dr, William R. Lawrance. It has shown that “back of religions [both Christian and heathen] is religion, and each [religion of the world] is appreciated and the whole [namely universal religion] is apprehended through sympathy.’ The. great heathen faiths should be studied, sa.s this writer, “not to cata- logue their errors but to understand them.” Missionary education should teach Christians “to appreciate non- Christian peoples and their religious faith, and to ap- proach them [on the platform of universal religion] in a spirit of helpful comradeship,” instead of undertaking to convert them.’ Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the 6 Randall, Humanity at the Cross Roads, p. 317. 7 The World Tomorrow, June, 1919, p. 161. Italics mine. 8 The Social Emphasis in Religious Education, p. 97. 9 The Christian Register, May 22, 1919, p. 12. MUTUAL RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION 173 University of Chicago, says: “Gradually we have come to see that it is religiously desirable that the Christianizing of non-Christian peoples shall mean the strengthening and purification of the best religious and moral traits of their native faith, rather than its complete eradication.” Dr. John Herman Randall writes: “What an opportuni- ty is presented today for religion to realize, at last, its true mission in the world and, minimizing all differ- ences, begin to magnify those things common to all relis- ions.”11_ At the World’s Sunday School Convention, held in Tokyo, in 1920, Prince Tokugawa in an address said of the convention's message and purpose: “It is not a mere Christian propaganda; it is part of that greater propaganda of the Religion of Humanity, which makes us feel that all the world is akin.” The view, held by the representatives of modern the- ology, that mission work means the “interpretation” of Christianity to the heathen peoples on the one hand, and the “interpretation” of the heathen religions to Christen- dom, on the other, raises a number of puzzling ques- tions. It is readily seen that the supposed task of such interpretation could not furnish the essential motive for “mission work. This modern way of reciprocal religious interpreting implies that heathenism is met on a com- mon basis and is recognized as one in essence with mod- ernism. Besides, if the liberalistic view of the Christian faith is accepted, namely that Christian doctrine is to be considered as of only secondary importance, to acquaint heathen peoples with it must also be a secondary matter. Neither could religious liberalists consistently expect to find the doctrines of non-Christian religions to be of a more vital character than the doctrines of the Christian faith. It follows that interpreting the West to the East and the East to the West can not be a matter of primary 10 The Biblical World, November, 1919, p. 638. Italics mine. 11 Humanity at the Cross Roads, p. 229. 174 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM religious import. And such interpretation cannot reason- ably be named mission work. Be it repeated here for emi- phasis that the Unitarians are showing good sense by their refusal to speak of their own work as mission work when they simply enter into fellowship with representa- tives of heathen religions recognizing them as co-work- ers in a common cause. But the new view of missions includes more than mere mutual interpretation of religion. Its burden is the social gospel. Instead of working for the salvation of individuals by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, it under- takes to save society by socialization and reforms of — various description. Dean Shailer Mathews, of the Di- vinity School, University of Chicago, says on this point: We used to regard the foreign missionary as trying to save brands from the burning. Now we can see he is also putting out the conflagration [making endeavor for individual salvation un- necessary]. He is a messenger of good will, an ambassador of the higher internationalism of the kingdom of God.12— If Chris- tianity can only rescue brands from the burning but has no power to put out the fire [then we have] a religion doomed to disappear with the advance of ethical liberalism.18— The new social inter- est of Protestant Christianity...... wants to save men into heav- en by embodying the principles of the kingdom of heaven in the state. It is less concerned in rescuing people than in educating them to keep them out of danger.14 Professor Gerald Birney Smith says: Today the missionary enterprise is being shifted from a pro- gram of rescuing a few souls from eternal disaster to the ideal of a long campaign of education and social reconstruction in the non-Christian nations. — Increased emphasis is being laid on the claims of the social and political future of the non-Christian peo- ples on this earth15— The Great Commission was [formeriy] regarded as an autocratic [authoritative] command to be obeyed. 12 The Biblical World, March, 1915, p. 129. 13 The same, December, 1914, p. 374. _ 14 The Constructive Quarterly, March, 1913, p. 108. - Italics mine. ; ; / 15 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 110. RELIGION HUMANIZED 175 Today missions are justified and supported by looking forward and seeking to meet the [social] needs of the future. — Humanly determined programs are being substituted for dogmatic decrees in the work of the churches. This is genuine democracy.16 — The missionary enterprise is rapidly being conceived as a demo- cratic social program rather than as the rescue of a few individu- als from the divine wrath. To reconstruct the social life of a people in all its phases is the end of the gospel. Education is coming to be a primary means of accomplishing the missionary task.—In a word, when the missionary enterprise is seen to be .a democratic religious movement, it gives to Christianity a task of supreme importance.!7 This author, who, by the way, is the Professor of Sys- tematic Theology—Christian Doctrine—in one of Amer- ica’s largest divinity schools, defends the view that “a democratic religion [such as modernists desire to rep- resent] must exist by human consent rather than by a claim of divine rights [or by building on the authority of God’s Word].”'® In other words, Christianity is human- ized and, on the mission fields as well as elsewhere, is identified with social reconstruction — the new democra- cy. The effort is no longer to save the individual from sin by preaching and teaching the Gospel. It is no long- er believed that this is, at the same time, the most effect- ive way to improve society. But the aim is to save so- ciety through reforms and legislation of various kinds. Professor George Albert Coe, of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, says on this point: The modern foreign missionary movement started out as an effort to rescue individuals from sin by preaching. It is now transforming itself into co-operation with the socially construct- ive forces of the peoples to the end that the level of the whole civilization may be raised. Educative processes that form the social standards are becoming basal in missionary strategy.19 16 The Biblical World, July, 1919, p. 423. 17 The same, November, 1919, p. 638. Italics mine. 18 The same, July, 1919, p. 422. 19 Religious Education, October, 1916, p. 381. 176 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Another writer in Religious Education says: “When one faces the matter squarely, the problem of foreign missions is the same at heart as that which is before the churches at home. We are at the big business of con- structing a Christian social order.’’° A Unitarian reporter at the annual meeting of the Religicus Education Association, of 1919, held in De- troit, points out that the new view of missions was de- fended in this gathering. He says: “It would surprise many of our [Unitarian] household of faith to hear the missionary work in our [evangelical] sister churches in- terpreted in terms of world friendship, world relation- ship and world service. Yet that is exactly the point of view taken in the Missionary Education Movement,” as set forth by its representatives at this meeting.** A writ- er who was formerly connected with a Christian college in China says: | The church of today is increasingly emphasizing that part of its message which has to do with transforming this world into the Kingdom of God. Christians are today attacking sin by try- ing to abolish poverty, ignorance and disease. Pursuant to this conception missionaries are emphasizing in China, education, medical work, famine relief, and help for the unfortunate mem- bers of society. In all this they meet with a hearty response, for the Confucian school that has so dominated Chinese thought through the ages directs its energies largely toward making hu- man society ideal.—The social message of Christianity is strik- tingly in accord with the best of Chinese tradition.?2 All unbiased students will admit that religious liberalism is more nearly akin to Confucianism than to New Testa- ment Christianity. | Another object included in the modern view of inis- sions is stated by Gerald Birney Smith: “One of the su- preme tasks of the church [both in the West and East] 20 Religious Education, April, 1910, p. 91. 21 The Christian Register, March 27, 1919, p. 10. 22 The Biblical World, June, 1917, p. 335. Italics mine. HEATHEN RELIGIONS LIBERALISTIC 177 in a democratic age is to make universally accessible the historical interpretation of the Bible’** i.e. the liberal- istic religious views. In other words, the defenders of modernism consider it the church’s business to spread modern theology. Nothing is more natural than this. You could not expect a liberalistic church to propagate the evangelical faith, could you? Now the greatest im- pediment in the way of such liberalistic endeavor is old fashioned New Testament Christianity. As for heathen- ism it decidedly has liberalistic tendencies. It is an un- deniable fact, as has been intimated, that the most fun- damental doctrine of modern religious liberalism — the doctrine of divine immanence — is of heathen origin. The essential liberalism of the most prominent hea- then religions is evident from the religious eclecticism of their adherents. Not only have they, as a rule, a great variety of gods from which to select those whose sup- posed pretensions appeal to them, but the practice of countless numbers of heathen proves that they have no difficulty to profess various religious faiths, for example, Buddhism and Confucianism, at the same time. Heathen people, as a rule, have no objection against accepting the Christians’ God as one among many. What they object to is the exclusiveness of Christianity. Liberalism revolts at the thought that all other gods must be rejected and that there is only one way of salvation. Heathenism is essentially liberalistic though it does not go to all the length of radical modernism which explains away relig- ion by reducing it to a psychological formula. It may be worth while, in this connection, to inquire into the causes for the difficulties which modernists en- counter in persuading those of liberalistic views to iden- tify themselves with a liberal church. Children who have been brought up under liberalistic influences are 23 The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 347. 178 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM difficult to win for the liberalistic church of their elders. The Unitarian church membership recruits itself large- ly, in some sections almost wholly, from the ranks of evangelical churches, that is to say from those who had been won for Christianity through evangelical influenc- es but have made shipwreck of faith. The cause for this interesting fact is incidentally given by Professor Ed- ward Caldwell Moore, as follows “The true course is ap- parently to have religion and then to liberalize it. It is seemingly futile to have liberalism and then seek to in- ject religion into it.”’* In other words: If you desire that young people embrace religion, do not preach to them liberalism, for if they become liberalistic in thought, you will find it difficult to arouse in them a real religious interest and to persuade them to unite with a church. But after they have become religious, you may liberal- ize them and still hope that they will remain religious and be willing to take upon themselves the duties of membership in a church. Professor Douglas C. Macintosh, of Yale University, says similarly, liberalism “is much more efficient in con- serving the faith of modern-minded men who are al- ready Christian” than in leading non-Christians to re- gard Christianity as even probably true.”> This is an ac- knowledgment of the fact that persons brought up in liberalistic circles are admittedly not easy to win for a liberal church. Though such young people are liberal- ists, they evidently fail to see sufficient reason for the existence of the liberalistic church. Also, of the small number of students in Unitarian theological seminaries only a minority is of Unitarian parentage. Now sirice ‘it is seemingly futile to have liberalism and then seek to iniect religion into it,” it follows that the matter of liberalizing those who have embraced evangelical Chris- 24 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 10. 25 The same, 1915, p. 306. ~ CONVERSION TO MODERNISM 179 tianity — having become members of evangelical church- es —-is a question of life and death to liberalistic church- es. “It is our mission,” said a speaker in a session of the American Unitarian Association, ‘‘to instruct, en- lighten [i.e., liberalize] and harmonize the churches of Christendom.” All this goes far to explain the mission- ary practice of modern liberalism. Its efforts are spent. in the attempt to win evangelical Christians in the home land as well as in the heathen countries for modern- ism. The Unitarians furnish a good illustration to the point. While they have established “relations” and fel- lowship with pagan religionists, they carry on a great work to spread modernism in the home land. Nowhere, apparently, has the attempt to’ liberalize evangelical churches been more successful than in Japan. It has been known for some time that the young Chris- tian church of Japan has to considerable extent fallen prey to the systematic modernizing endeavors made by Unitarians and other liberals. The official representa- tive of the Unitarians in Japan has recently made the as- sertion that Japanese Christians in “orthodox” mission churches are now as a class thoroughly liberalized.” “As: early as 1890 the magazine The Unitarian was started in Japan, and another, the Shiri (Truth) as an organ for propagating the higher criticism. This movement shook the Japanese Church to its foundations. For at the same time a movement took place within the church in the same direction, questioning the inspiration of the Bible and asking for a revision of the Creed. Some doubted various fundamental doctrines. As a result, faith be-: came colder from that time onwards among Japanese church members.’*? In China and India the modern the- “6 The Christian Register, May 2, 1918. Compare the article Christienity in Japan, in Religious Digest, 1919, No. 4. 27 Report of the Edinburgh World "Missionary Conference, vol. IV, p. 113. 180 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM ology is working havoc among converts to Christiant- ty... The missionary Robert Gillies, of the China Inland Mission, reports that in China the destructive criticism is making inroads upon the preaching of the missionaries and upon the literature published by missionary publish- ing houses. This is the consequence of prospective mis- sionaries attending unsafe colleges and seminaries in the home land. Furthermore many of the Christian missions in China send their students to Great Britain and Amer- ica to be educated and in many instances their faith in the Bible, as taught by faithful missionaries, is under- mined. A veteran missionary says: “We pray the Lord of the harvest that He will thrust forth laborers into the harvest, and then we send those laborers to semi- naries where they are unfitted, wholly incapacitated, to work in the harvest field.”*® It will probably be remem- bered that Evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman gave the ad- vice that the churches at home should recall from the mission field all missionaries who did not. believe with- out reserve in the integrity and authority of the Bible. Rev. Charles Inwood, a Bible teacher and evangelist who has visited many mission fields of the world, reports that, in his opinion, the greatest menace to the efficiency of Christian missions is found in the lack of conviction as to the inspiration of the Bible as the authoritative content of the Christian message. “At home this means the shifting of the basis of the missionary motive from obedience to the command of Christ to a purely human- itarian impulse and purpose. On the mission field it means less study of the Bible as the message of final au- thority as to the needs of man and God’s way of salva- tion, and more study of man and his environment to dis- cover his personal desires and human possibilities.” At the quadrennial meetings of the Federal Council 28 The Sunday School Times, June 28, 1919. 29 The same, December 26, 1920, p. 715. —-. LIBERALISM ON MISSION FIELDS 181 of Churches, held in Boston, 1920, Dr. Doremus Scud- der, of the Congregational Church, formerly a pastor in Japan, after making a plea for the admission of the Uni- tarian Church to the Federal Council, complained that the evangelical’churches of Japan refused to admit the representative of the Unitarian Church, Dr. Clay Mac- Cauley, to their fellowship. “Among the [evangelical] missionaries in Japan,” he said further, “there were young modern-minded and modernly trained mission- aries, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and others, whose point of view concerning Jesus was prac- tically the same as that of this veteran [Dr. MacCau- Tey? Under the title, Can This Be True? the Moody Bible Institvic Monthly for November, 1920, has an article giv- ing “cpinions expressed at a missionary conference in India recently” 1. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is like the avatars of the Hindus. 2. The resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Virgin birth are not facts. 3. People make a mistake in speaking of the Bi- ble as inspired rather than inspiring. 4, Jesus cannot do all the work of redemption in a lifetime. 5. Isaiah fifty-three is not a prophecy of Christ. The appearance of its being so is largely due to its translation having been made by Christians. 6. We should not refuse to think that Jesus made mistakes in what He said. 7. The idea of a day of judgment is not believed by any sane person. The Sunday School Times says: Notwithstanding the steady tendency to unbelief in the car- dinal doctrines of the Word on the part of many modern mis- sionaries, yet it will be an encouragement to God’s people to know that in all these lands the Lord is raising up a native min- istry who know, love and preach the clear message of the Gos- pel.32 Professor William Brenton Greene, Jr., of Princeton 30 The Christian Register, December 9, pay P. 3, 32 October 23, 1920. 182 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Theological Seminary, in a timely article on The Crises of Christianity, writes: : Again, the crisis of Christianity appears in this, that while her missionaries are multiplying, their gospel, it would seem, here and there, little by little, is being depleted and emasculated. Such is the warning that has been coming to us from Japan. Such is the warning that is now coming to us from China. Such is the warning that is beginning to come to us from other fields. Could anything be so appalling? We have been wont to look on our Foreign Missions as the demonstration that the church is obeying her Lord’s last and great commission to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” But what if the gospel which some missionaries preach is another gospel which is not a gospel? This would prove treason both in the council tent and on the firing line.33 The new view of missions is the most insidious foe of evangelical missions. The immediate aim of modern- ism is the modernization of Christendom both in the home land and in foreign countries — the undoing of the work of the faithful missionaries of the cross. The ul- timate object of liberalistic mission effort is the sociali- zation of the heathen nations through social service, re- form and social reconstruction. It is said that social service for the nations of the earth is a worthy endeavor. This cannot be questioned. But when carried on on a liberalistic basis and offered as a substitute for the Christian faith social service has necessarily a pronounc- ed anti-Christian tendency. Furthermore, the attempt to socialize the non-Christian countries has nothing to recommend it to thinking people so long as the endeay- ors for the socialization of the home lands have failed. Here the proverb is applicable, “Physician, heal thyself.” The representatives of the new view of missions have done very little along any line for the heathen nations. They have a way, however, of diverting evangelical mis- sion effort into liberalistic channels. Liberalism, by the 33 The Princeton Theological Review, 1919, p. 346. MISSION FUNDS FOR LIBERALISTIC USES 183 confession of some of its own adherents, lacks the true missionary motive. Has it ever been heard of, that peo- ple are tithing themselves in order to spread the modern religious liberalism among ‘heathen nations? We think not. But there are many, many loyal Christian believ- ers who tithe themselves to assist in bringing the pre- cious Gospel of salvation to those who grope in heathen darkness. They have the missionary spirit for the rea- son that they are convinced to have in the Christian faith - the most valuable treasure. They realize that the great- est service to be rendered to others is to spread the faith through which they have found salvation. There are those who give tithes of their income though they them- selves are doing without some things that are generally supposed to be needful. Some do not have the means to educate their own children properly. They make sacri- fices out of love to their Lord, to bring to the heathen this priceless treasure. Now for religious liberalists to use such money for liberalistic purposes in accordance with the new view of missions, is by all odds the greatest offence of which modernism is guilty. That such condi- tions are possible is also a serious blot on the good name -of the Christian Church. It is only fair to say that lib- eralism should not undertake the liberalization and so- cialization of the world if its own constituency is unwill- ing to support this work by furnishing the needed means. XVII MODERN RELIGIOUS UNIONISM has recently been stated by John R. Mott: “It is more necessary to be active than to be orthodox.” In other words, to work is the great necessity; whether vou work for evangelical Christianity, or religious liber- Ts leadng principle of modern religious unionism alism, is a secondary matter. The slogan of modern un- ionism is, “Getting together by working together.” Says Dean Shailer Mathews: Yet whatever form co-operative denominationalism may take, we are learning daily one lesson of democracy: the way to get together is to work together. It is futile to try to standard- ize theologies in a democratic world. It is even more futile to try to find some theological minimum [a minimum creed] which will be unobjectionable to everybody [as a basis for a working union ].1 This is a correct and authoritative statement of the modern principle of religious unionism. It demands working together with those to whom even a theological minimum, or a declaration favoring at least a few of the Christian fundamentals, is objectionable. Now it can- not be questioned for a moment that there are certain kinds of work in which evangelical Christians and repre- sentatives of liberalism can unitedly engage. If former President Taft, who is a Unitarian, were your neighbor, could you not consistently agree to co-operate in making a needed sanitary improvement, or undertaking to per- suade a property-holder not to rent his building for im- moral purposes? Most assuredly so. But, assuming that you are a believer in the deity of Christ and in salva- 1 The Independent (New York), April 17, 1920. ‘ a ll ett i i ee i ee i : : : DOCTRINAL INDIFFERENCE 185 tion through the Blood, you could not, without becom- ing disloyal to the fundamentals of the faith, engage in evangelistic or other distinctly Christian work with Uni- tarians. If you, for example, consented to the engage- ment of a minister, or evangelist, that is acceptable to liberals, you would plainly show that you are not taking your supposed evangelical faith seriously. Even if the liberalists — desiring you to take a stand in favor of unionism — agreed to leave the choice of a Christian _worker to you, the fact that you are willing to work with them in such a way would create the impression that you do not regard the differences between your position and that of the liberalists as of fundamental importance. Therefore the very fact that you consented to such union endeavors would be an aid to the liberal cause. Liberal- ism, having no essential doctrines, has nothing to lose but can only gain through the modern unionism. Back of such unionism lies the supposition that the differences between evangelical Christianity and liberal religion are of small consequence and should be obliter- ated. A union is to be effected by making conservatives forget and ignore the differences that separate them from modernists. To this end the slogan “Getting to- gether by working together” has been adopted. Here the words of the Prophet Amos are applicable: “How can two walk together except they be agreed?” How can they who accept the Gospel as the apostles preached it, and they who uphold a modern substitute for the Gospel, work together in the evangelization of the world? How can the liberals who recognize Buddhists as brethren in the faith and undertake the conversion of believing Christians to modernism, engage in religious work with evangelical Christians? How can believers in Christ recognize as co-workers in the vineyard of the Lord those who speak of the doctrine of salvation through the Blood as “pestilential teaching?” Is it not a surprising evidence 186 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM of the shallowness of new theology thought that evan- gelicals are either supposed to virtually abandon their position, or that it is assumed the two parties which have opposite views concerning the meaning of salvation can labor together for the salvation of men? In the month of August, 1918, a Conference of The- ological Schools was held in Cambridge, Mass., at the invitation of Harvard University. The last day of the conference was begun with a communion service in which, besides representatives of evangelical churches, Unitarians also participated. The editor of an evangel- ical church organ, commenting on this “demonstration of Christian unity,” says, the nature of the Christian re- ligion, if rightly comprehended, is such that “it does not nullify fellowship” and the Christian faith is never di- visive but all-comprehensive. Dr. John Herman Ran- dall writes: “The most hopeful sign today is the new movement toward Christian unity. — Such unity is not the end but only the stepping stone to a still broader re- ligious unity that shall embrace all mankind.’* This au- thor says further: “What an opportunity is presented today for religion to realize, at last, its true mission in the world and, minimizing all differences, begin to mag- nify those things common to all religions.’”* Another liberalistic writer says: “The new interpretation of re- ligion demands that men of all religions forget the things that have divided them in the past, and that stress be placed upon the establishment of a genuine social jus- tice.” Professor Roy Wood Sellars has the following to say on the question of religious unionism: “The belief in God must not be a creedal element and atheism must cease to be a term of reproach. The question of the ex- istence of God should not affect the fellowship of mem- 2 Humanity at the Cross Roads, p. 224. 3 The same, p. 229. “BELIEF IN GOD INESSENTIAL” 187 bers in a church. If emphasis is swung to the human- istic side, the question of God’s existence will naturally drop into the list of maybe’s.’’* The modern religious liberalism is, it must be con- ceded, all-comprehensive in design. But modern relig- ion would, clearly, not claim to be all-comprehensive, if it did not deny the existence of Satan and of his king- dom. The new theology disowns the Word of God and therefore denies that the prince of this world “now work- “eth in the children of disobedience” (Eph, 2:2). True, if Scripture teaching is unacceptable, if there is no king- dom of evil and sin is not what Scripture says it is, then the attitude of liberalism on this point may be correct. On the other hand, if there is a prince of darkness and a kingdom of evil, it is obvious that an all-comprehensive religion would necessarily include them. That liberal- istic religion would be only uniting in its character and effect, and not also separating, is therefore its fatal weakness. Concerning the “Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America” Professor Geo. Cross says: “Doctrin- al discussions are carefully avoided because, no doubt, of the danger of a growth of divisive influences. Never- theless the doctrinal implications of its position must be squarely faced sooner or later.”®> Dr. Charles S. Macfar- land, the General Secretary of the Federal Council, writes: “I am willing to talk with men upon almost any other subject but that of Christian unity. The important thing is to get them together to show them the common social task.”® Proceeding on this principle, the con- stituent bodies of the Federal Council have united on a social creed instead of a religious one. We may, of course, be told that social service is the fruit of Chris- 4 The Christian Register, July 29, 1920, p. 7. 5 The American Journal of Theology, January, 1919, p. 143. 6 Christian Service and the Modern World, p. 110. 188 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM tianity. The fact, however, is that the social creed of the Federal Council is not distinctively Christian in char- acter. Any normal man, be he Christian, Jew, Moham- medan, or heathen, will admit that the reforms demand- ed in the said “creed” are desirable. The social creed of the Federal Council would make a praiseworthy plat- form for a political party; it is quite inadequate as a creed or working scheme for a federation of churches. Premier Lloyd George, of England, has lately said wise words on this question: The task of the churches is greater than that which comes within the compass of any political party. Political parties may provide the lamps, lay the wires, turn the current on to certain machinery, but the churches must be the power stations. If the generating stations are destroyed, whatever the arrangements and plans of the political parties may be, it will not be long be- fore the light is cut off from the homes of the people. The doc- trines taught by the churches are the only security against the triumph of human selfishness, and human selfishness unchecked will destroy any plans, however perfect, that politicians may de- vise. In other words, the churches, by faithfully propagating Christian truth, are rendering the greatest possible serv- ice to the nation. Professor George R. Dodson has well said: The social interests are a very important part of life, and re- ligious people today usually try to promote them. But they nei- ther are nor can be the basis of a church. How to make the world a decent place to live in is not one problem but many, and they cannot be solved together. If men had no other interests, they would not form a church but would create special organiza- tions to produce special results, e. g. associations for tax reforms, city planning, better housing, smoke abatement, pure milk, in- dustrial conciliation, suppression of vice, the mastery of tubercu- losis and social diseases, etc. Even if the church undertook these tasks, it would fail, and its minister could be nothing more than a superficial sociologist, knowing many things but knowing none of them well, and doing many things but all of them badly. — To give religious names to organizations formed her secular ends conduces neither to clearness of thought nor to any other good.7 SOCIAL INTERESTS AS BASIS 189 It is quite possible that a church or a federation of churches may stand for positive religious truth without adopting a written creed; they may have a creed though it be unwritten. Among the constituents of the Federal Council there are those who would not accept a minimum creed expressing adherence to the fundamentals of the Christian faith. It is a significant fact that the Unitari- ans and other liberals earnestly desire admittance into the Council, on the ground that some of the most rad- ical liberals are within this body. A federation standing loyally to the fundamentals would not attract the Uni- tarians. The fact remains that unless a federation of re- ligious bodies stands for the fundamentals of the Chris- tian faith and will write them on its banners, it does not sustain a distinctly Christian character. That it may have a social or political creed does not change this fact in the least. It should be added that the social service wave which struck the modern church not many years ago has large- ly receded. “Social service has been a blessing,” says Willard L. Sperry, a representative of liberalism, “but its sources of energy are not as strong as they were; the coal may be getting low. We are liable to develop a cult of busybodies. After all, when those in need are housed and clothed, they still must know what to do with life.”® And President Arthur Cushman McGiffert has said: “We are plagued in these last days by social service.’”® In short, modern religious unionism stands for ignor- ing every fundamental of the Christian faith. This prin- ciple was well characterized by Dr, Paul S. Leinbach, an 7 The Christian Register, October 24, 1918, p. 11. 8 The same, July 28, 1920, p. 8. 8 The same, August 22, 1918, p. 9. Compare p. 137 of the present book. 190 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM editor of an evangelical denomination, who, referring to a work of charity in which he was engaged with repre- sentatives of various denominations, including Unitari- ans, said in a Unitarian convention: The men who un- dertook this work “forgot the little theological tags which divided them and were united in the spirit of serv- ice.” The same speaker said “there are in the church too many divisive dogmas which keep apart the friends of truth.and high ideals.’ While it is true that the Uni- tarians, including those among them who stand for out- spoken, bald atheism, claim to labor for high ideals, the fact remains that Christianity and the full-fledged liber- alism are, religiously considered, opposites. The modern religious unionism means, in principle, the renunciation of the Christian faith, Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote: I have taken a deep interest in the struggles of the ounnaae brethren; but I have never advised those struggles, nor enter- tained the slightest hope of their success. My course has been of another kind. ‘As soon as I saw, or thought I saw, that error had become firmly established, I did not deliberate, but quitted the body at once. Since then my one counsel has been, “Come ye out from among them.” I have felt that no protest could be equal to that of distinct separation. 10 The Christian Register, June 10, 1920. XVIII Pow GHD ISCIPLINE, VERSUS PERSECUTION ITHIN recent years a number of books and mag- W azine articles have been published defending the . view that the Christian church has not the moral right to exercise discipline for false doctrine. Modern thought in general takes the position that all disciplinary measures on the part of a church, to exclude heresy and maintain the purity of the faith, are an infringement of the principle of religious freedom and liberty of con- science. Discipline on account of false doctrine is held to be persecution, differing only in degree from the dun- geon, the rack and the stake. A host of modern writers have asserted that a church that will not bear with mod- ernism in her midst manifests the spirit of persecution that formerly lighted the stake for those who dared to dissent from the creed established by the state. Not a few liberalistic writers on this subject describe the Christian church as the enemy of religious freedom. Some seem to be of the opinion that there would never - have been religious persecution, had not the church been intolerant. It is proper, therefore, to raise the question, how it came about that the church whose head is the pope, girded herself with the sword to overcome the dis- senters and to maintain her creed by incarceration and persecution; and whether there is any ground for the opinion that the teachings of the Christian church, as laid down in the Scriptures, would countenance that sort of thing, | In the first place it is to be noticed that the Christian church endured severe oppression and at times cruel 192 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM persecution for nearly three hundred years, namely un- til the time of Emperor Constantine the Great. This emperor embraced the Christian religion and eventually decided to make Christianity the religion of the state. His sons, who succeeded him, began to persecute the dis- senters, namely the heathen who desired to adhere to the religion of their fathers, and the Christians who pro- tested against state-churchism. For this new departure there was absolutely no Scriptural ground, no more than for the practice of prayer to the holy virgin, or for the doctrine of salvation by works, or for the various other unscriptural doctrines and practices that were gradu- ally introduced in the established church, There was in this period a radical change which amounted, practically, to a partial repudiation of Scripture authority. The lead- ing church became paganized to a large extent. The de- generated state church represented a strange amalgama- tion of paganism with Christianity. Originally the church, having the mind of Christ and following God’s Word alone, had kept itself in consistency with Chris- tian principles; the church of Christ had manifested the nature of a lamb. Now the lamb lost, as it were, its in- nate characteristics; it developed the teeth and claws of a beast of prey. But there were, as already intimated, Christian dis- senters who endured persecution rather than to identify themselves with the new state church. In certain per- iods the protesting dissenters were comparatively strong. Then came the great Reformation of the sixteenth cen- tury. The leading reformers believed a union of church and state to be unscriptural, but yet they finally consent- ed to it—a glaring inconsistency. Even in New Eng- land, Protestant churches were established that were in efiect state churches, persecuting those who differed from the established creed. Today Protestantism is practically a unit in the advocacy of religious freedom. PERSECUTION UNCHRISTIAN 193 The denial of freedom of conscience is contrary to the principies, precepts, and spirit of New Testament Christianity. The New Testament Scriptures clearly forbid persecution in any form, but expressly demand church discipline for those who err in doctrine or prac- tice. Our Lord has ordained that if a man “hear not the church,” he should be excluded (Matt. 18:17). And Paul says: “A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject” (Tit. 3:10). Again Christ has com- manded His followers to “resist not evil’ (Matt. 5:39) namely, as the context indicates, not with the sword of iron. In the parable of the tares among the wheat, where the field represents the world — not the church — as is expressly stated (verse 38), the servants are bidden to “let both grow together until the harvest....lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.’ (Matt. 13:29, 30). This is clearly a warning a- gainst the attempt to bring about a regeneration of so- ciety cr of the world by the use of force; it is a warning against persecution. Modernism defends the opinion that the principle of religious freedom and liberty of conscience does not per- mit of church discipline on account of false teaching. Obviously this view is an indication of the shallowness and superficiality of the modern mind. In effect the - modern position means that ithe dismissal of a liberalist- ic minister, or professor in a church institution, is con- trary to the principle of liberty of conscience. The mod- ern view of religious freedom is the very opposite of the view defended by the early champions of freedom. The early defenders of religious liberty held that liberty of conscience means that no one should be compelled to make a profession of faith or to unite with a church. And if a member or minister of a church decided to withdraw, he should have the right to do so. The mod- ern view that the principle of religious freedom gives 194 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM an unorthodox religious teacher the right to fill a posi- tion in an orthodox church would have appeared stupid to the early defenders of freedom. They were not under the spell of modern thought and hence must have real- ized that a truly orthodox church is necessarily bur- dened in conscience to entrust the important office of a preacher or teacher to a religious liberalist. An ortho- dox church cannot with a good conscience tolerate that sort of thing. Therefore the principle of liberty of con- science must give a religious body the right to ask for the withdrawal of those who do not accept its doctrines and principles, just as it gives the individual the right to withdraw of his own free will. Modernism, it is worthy of notice, seems to have de- veloped a type of conscience that differs radically from the Christian conscience of the old heroes of the faith. In our day liberalistic theologians who have discarded the Bible faith think, as a rule, that to ask them to re- sign their office in an orthodox church is to oppress their conscience and to persecute them. When a num- ber of years ago a minister in a prominent denomination offended his church by his new theology. views, the opinion was publicly expressed that to ask him to resign his paying position would be a mild form of persecu- tion, since he could probably not earn as much in an- other profession. On the other hand the mighty men of faith who defended the principle of religious free- dom did not find it in their conscience to remain in a church from which they differed in faith; they with- drew, though to do so may have meant for them the | > most cruel persecution. It is refreshing to notice that there are a few repre- sentatives of modern liberalism who do not accept the opinion that the principle of liberty of conscience gives a liberalistic minister the right to retain his position in ~~ aia , = ee ae SL ee ee ee. MODERNIST IDEA OF FREEDOM 195 an orthodox church. The minister of the First Uni- tarian Church in Cambridge, Mass., says: I see no reason for complaints [because of the exclusion of liberalists from evangelical churches]. An organization for the promulgation of doctrines in which I do not believe is one to which I do not wish to belong. If the organization should give me to understand that the assent to its creed which it asks of me is only nominal, this confession of unreality would only deepen my determination not to belong to it.1 Without doubt this writer recognizes the fact that Unitarians do not for a moment suppose that it would be inconsisent with the principle of religious liberty to ask the resignation of an orthodox minister or professor in the Unitarian Church. If a secret order may con- sistently expel a member who fails to stand for its prin- ciples, why should it be inconsistent for the church to take similar action? The modern view of religious freedom is, in its final essence, merely camouflaged doctrinal indifference. The liberalistic mind has largely accepted the opinion that there is no absolute religious truth, that doctrine is quite a secondary matter, and that it should therefore not matter to an evangelical church if a liberalistic person is holding office. The thought, however, that the prin- ciple of religious freedom requires such an attitude of indifference cannot be taken seriously, no more than the modern idea that the early Protestant leaders who con- demned religious oppression and persecution, did so from motives of indifference to doctrine. This view re- garding the early Protestants is in fact an historical un- truth that is a reflection on the intelligence of those who accept it. If the reformers had not believed that Chris- tian doctrine is of the greatest importance, might they not have remained in the state church in which they were born and held office? Was it not possible for them 1 The Arbitrator, January, 1919, p. 12. 196 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM in that church to lead a devoted life and even to deviate from the established creed, provided they did not publish or profess their convictions? Would they, or their fol- lowers, have suffered persecution and death for the sake of doctrine, if they had the modern views of indifference as to Christian doctrine? Has it ever been heard of that a liberalist, who is neutral or indifferent in the matter of faith and doctrine, endured persecution for his relig- ious faith? Wi5ull a man die for his faith when his relig- ion consists principally of negations and when he ac- cepts the opinion that there is no absolute religious truth and that theology is nothing beyond method? Is it not incredible that religious liberalism will make martyrs? Modern liberalism boasts of the advocacy of relig- ious freedom. We are told that modernism has never oppressed or persecuted those who are of different per- suasion. There is abundant evidence that this claim is not well taken. The countries whose governments have fallen prey to religious liberalism have suffered a cur- tailment of religious freedom. The government of France, for example, is so thoroughly modernist as to be anti-religious. Today a church or religious society has less legal right in France than any secular society or corporation; religious societies have been deprived of the right to own real estate property. Says the late Professor G. Santayana, of Harvard University: Liberalism has been supposed to advocate liberty, but what the advanced parties that still call themselves liberal now advo- cate is control, control over property, trade, wages, hours of work, meat and drink, amusements, and in a truly advanced country like France control over education and religion; and it is only on the subject of marriage (if we ignore eugenics) that liberalism is growing more and more liberal. Professor Santayana is right. In France the liberal- istic government has to some extent succeeded in gain- 2 Winds of Doctrine, p. 4. MODERNISM INTOLERANT 197 ing control of religion. As liberalism is increasing in other countries it is working toward the same end. More and more voices are heard that favor a union of liberalized religion with the state. This will mean per- secution for the dissenters, as may be further shown elsewhere. XIX HISTORICAL FALSEHOODS — CONTRASTS BE- TWEEN FREEDOM AND ANARCHY HEN George Burman Foster, because of his ad- W vocacy of modern liberalism, was excluded from the Chicago Association of Baptist Ministers, he advanced the claim that he was “the most truly Bap-. tist of them all.”1 A writer in a Unitarian periodical thinks, the Unitarians, since they do not require any. doctrinal tests whatever, are “the real successors of Roger Williams,” the founder of the Baptist Church in America. The same writer thinks, the Unitarians “are perhaps the only people who are Baptists in Roger Wil- liams’ estimate.”* The editor of a Unitarian journal is of the opinion that “thorough adherence to the funda- mental Baptist position” assures “sympathy with liberal theology.’”* The view has often been expressed that the true Protestant position demands the toleration of re- ligious liberalism in an evangelical church. A Baptist writer Says: Has the Baptist denomination with its splendid tradition of religious liberty not room for those who exercise their liberty in adopting....modern interpretations of the old gospel? Surely it cannot be that the denominational heirs of Roger Williams in- tend to drive out those who are Roger ‘Williams’ spiritual heirs.4 In a similar way it is often asserted that the true Congregationalists, the true Lutherans, etc., are the rep- resentatives of the new theology. We have singled out 1 The Christian Register, March 6, 1919, p. 7. 2 The same, May 2, 1918, p. 7. 3 The same, May 2, 1918. 4 Quoted in Word and Way, 1911, No. 4, A HISTORICAL PERVERSION 199 the Baptists for an example, since liberal tendencies are most frequently ascribed to them. Similar assertions are also made concerning other denominations and a- bout Protestantism in general. Professor Geo. Cross, of Rochester Theological Seminary, for example, iden- tifying Protestantism with liberalism, says: “Protestant- ism denies that the natural and the supernatural are separate. It finds the supernatural within the natural and the divine within the human.’® Auguste Sabatier, the well-known liberal French theological leader, wrote: “With Luther and Calvin the Christian conscience was definitely recognized as autonomous. It can never again retrace its steps nor again take on the yoke. The idea of setting up in Protestantism an external infalli- ble authority [recognizing the Scriptures as God’s in- errant Word] is only a survival of the principle which was defeated in the sixteenth century.’® Similar views regarding Luther and Calvin have often been expressed by liberalistic writers. But on what ground are such assertions made? Ev- ery student of church history ought to know that the leading reformers of the sixteenth century advocated the principle that Scripture, not conscience, is the final au- thority, and that a conscience that is not tuned to Scrip- ture teaching is an erring conscience. The idea that conscience is autonomous,—a law unto itself — that it is not to be subject to God’s Word — this idea would have been a very abomination to the reformers. To ig- nore this outstanding fact regarding their position and assert the contrary is inexcusable. There is abso- lutely no evidence for such a view. It is just one among the many perversions of history which liberalism ac- cepts dogmatically on the authority of some liberalistic writers. 5 The American Journal of Theology, April, 1919, p. 140. © Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirst, p. 252. 200 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM It is important to remember that our question is not whether there are in our day churches of the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, etc., denominations which are lib- eralistic in doctrine. It is only too well known that this is the case. The point in question is, was there origin- ally in the doctrines and principles of these churches any ground for the claim that they cannot consistently be identified with the old theology to the exclusion of liber- alism. Are these churches, in so far as they refuse to countenance the new theology, true Congregational, Disciple, etc., churches, or have they fallen from their first estate? Is there, historically considered, any ground for the opinion that true evangelical Christians take a liberalistic view of the nature of Christian doctrine and can therefore not have any doctrinal tests or, in other words, that liberalism is an innate characteristic of Protestantism? ? : Concerning no other evangelical church, probably, has the claim of innate liberalism been so frequently re- peated and so largely accepted as about the Baptists. It is for this reason that we take them here for an ex- ample. Many writers, both within and without the Bap- tist Church, have said that Baptists have no binding creed; they do not stand for anything doctrinally ; they have a right to reject any doctrine, every Baptist Church is a law unto itself in matters of faith and practice. If this were a correct statement of fact there could be no question but that Baptists are essentially liberalistic in faith. But there are Baptist churches— great numbers of them — which take the position that to deny the Chris- tian fundamentals is to repudiate the Baptist faith. In other words, there are Baptists who have a creed, be it written or unwritten, that is held to be binding. This fact has been overlooked by those who have asserted that “heresy trials” are made impossible by the supposed STATE CHURCHISM UNSCRIPTURAL 201 Baptist position as to creed. Though there are liberal- istic Baptist churches which do not hold to anything doctrinally, the supposition that they constitute the whole of the Baptist denomination can find acceptance only with them that are unacquainted with the outstanding facts. A thorough search of early Congregational and Bap- tist literature, including their confessions, establishes the fact beyond the possibility of a doubt that there is “no room whatever for the view that they were liberal- istically inclined, or had no doctrinal tests. It is diffi- cult to see that a church could be more free from theo- logical liberalism than were the early evangelical dis- senters. The British state church of a few centuries ago would not have admitted that it was theologically liberalistic in any respect. Considered from the view point of these dissenters, however, the union of church and state which, contrary to Scripture, was upheld by the state church, was in effect liberalistic. It meant that the Scriptures are not the only authority in matters religious. The Mennonites, Baptists and other dissent- ers saw clearly ——and every evangelical Christian will agree with them today—that there is absolutely no Scripture warrant for a union of a Christian church with the state. They realized that a church which consents to a union with the state, does not follow the voice of Scripure but of self-interest on the part of kings and potentates and ecclesiastical leaders. The scriptural way to plant and maintain the faith and to kindle the love of God in the hearts of men is quite different from the way of state-churchism. State-churchism is not founded on Scripture, hence its acceptance means the rejecticn of the principle of the sole authority of Scrip- ture; and therefore it, in principle, means to that extent theological liberalism. The leading principle of liber- alism is the setting aside of Scripture as the authority 202 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM for the faith and practice of the church and considering doctrinal matters of secondary importance, The fact that the early Baptists published a number of confessions at various times has been supposed to in- dicate that they had no binding creed, since former con- fessions were superseded by newer ones. But a com- parison of these confessions shows that they are state- ments of one and the same creed. Need it be said that neither the Baptists nor any other body of reasonable Christian confessors were ever of the opinion that a written statement which they might give of their faith was beyond the possibility of improvement? The Bap- tists stood for definite doctrines and principles and those who did not accept their creed were refused the right of membership, in other words, they had an au- thoritative creed like all other evangelical denomina- tions. One of their articles of faith was the inspiration of the Scriptures. .They recognized the Scriptures as in- fallible, verbally inspired; they said of the Bible that “God is the author thereof (in the sense that He inspired it), therefore it is to be receivel because it is the Word of God,” as is stated in the Baptist Confession of 1677. Now the acceptance of the inspiration of Scripture is in itself a creed of tremendous importance. It would be folly to say that a church which accepts the supernat- ural divine revelation in Scripture has no binding creed or is “a law unto itself” in doctrinal questions. When consistently accepted the doctrine of inspiration excludes theological liberalism. Again the opinion has often been expressed that Baptists, since they have always advocated liberty of conscience, should within their churches grant all lib- erty to deviate in doctrinal matters from the accepted standards. Only recently, when a Unitarian minister occupied the pulpit of a Baptist church in a New Eng- land city, the local Baptist Ministers’ Association, though WHAT IS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM? 203 affirming their own orthodoxy, declared themselves in favor of granting such liberties. Their decision on this question they expressed in the following statement: Resolved that we believe in freedom of thought and religious practices. For centuries Baptists have been passionate advo- cates of religious democracy in its purest forms. While we cher- ish our own personal convictions unflinchingly, we concede to those who differ from us the ancient Baptist privilege of private judgment and free speech [even in our churches]. As Baptists we believe in religious freedom. So they supposed themselves justified to open their pul- pits to Unitarian preachers. “To Unitarians this is pe- culiarly gratifying,’ says a Unitarian editor, “for our central principle is that same unfaltering faith in the right of private judgment and spiritual freedom.’” The reader will notice that the Ministers’ Association which gave out this declaration failed to make clear the point, what religious freedom, or liberty of conscience, has to do with the question of admitting Unitarian min- isters to evangelical pulpits. A number of questions are here pertinent. In the first place it should be noticed that the said Baptist ministers assert their own ortho- doxy. Could it be, then, that they are of the opinion that, by refusing Baptist pulpits to Unitarian ministers, the evangelical] Baptists would forego the privileges of religious freedom and liberty of conscience? Could not these privileges be exercised without permitting those who deny the deity of our Lord to speak in evangelical churches? Or could it be that the Unitarian ministers do not enjoy religious freedom unless they are admitted to evangelical pulpits? Since the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees religious freedom to every man, Unitarians and freethinkers not excluded, are the evangelical churches violating the Constitution of our land when they deny them their pulpits? We 7 The Christian Register, May 2, 1918. 204 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM know, by way of illustration, of a person— not a Uni- tarian — who claimed the right to preach in all church- es of a certain town; his claim was not based on the principle of religious freedom, however, but on a sup- posed special call. Could it be that the Unitarian min- isters’ conscience is so constituted that it cannot exer- cise its God-given liberty, if they are refused the priv- ilege to occupy evangelical pulpits? And what about Unitarians permitting orchedaes evangelical preachers to occupy any of their pulpits? Will they permit faithful messengers of the old gospel to preach in their churches? Do they believe that re- ligicus freedom demands this sort of thing of them? Certainly not. This is what John Haynes Holmes has to say on this point: “Even those radical churches which have freed themselves of all theological bonds have gone to the other extreme of setting up a structure of denial which is just as exclusive as any of the creeds of Christendom.”* Dr. Holmes is right. In fact, Unitari- ans are more positive in their denials than some nom- inally evangelical churches are in their affirmations. There is plenty of evidence of a deep-seated aversion on the part of Unitarians against orthodox preaching, but — they obviously agree with liberalistic Baptists in the opinion that the exercise of religious freedom involves the admission of Unitarians to evangelical puipits. The question remairs, what has the refusal to admit Unitarian ministers to evangelical pulpits to do with re- ligious freedom and with Roger Williams’ position on this point? In what respect is it a violation of this prin- — ciple? Some of the eminent theologians tell us there is such a violation involved but they have utterly failed to make this point clear. How is it to be explained, we — may further ask, that people who boast of being in the 3 8 Unity, May 22, 1919, p. 140. WESLEY ON LIBERALISTIC VIEWS 205 habit of doing their own thinking, as liberals often do, accept the opinion that a church which takes a definite stand doctrinally is violating the principle of religious freedom? We have, by way of illustration, spoken here more particularly of the Baptists, but all other evangelical churches originally occupied essentially the same ground as the Baptists, on such fundamental doctrines as the trinity of God, the deity of Christ, the Atonement, the inspiration of the Scriptures, etc., and as regards the proper attitude toward those who disown these truths. The early Methodists, for example, considered these doctrines as essential, in other words, they had a bind- ing creed including these points of doctrine. This is evident from various statements made by John Wesley. He wrote, for instance, to a prominent Unitarian: Take away the scriptural doctrine of redemption, or justifi- cation, and that of the new birth, the beginning of sanctification, or, which amounts to the same thing, explain them as you do, suitaply to your doctrine of original sin; and what is Christian- ity better than heathenism? Wherein (save in rectifying some of your notions) has the religion of St. Paul any pre-eminence over that of Socrates or Epictetus? Either I or you mistake the whole of Christianity from the beginning to the end. Either my scheme or yours is as contrary to the scriptural as the Koran is. Is it mine or yours? Yours has gone through all England, and made numerous converts. I attack it from end to end; let all England judge whether it can be defended or not.9 The right of a body of Christian believers to stand for certain doctrinal convictions, and consequently to uphold a doctrinal norm for those who would identify themselves with them, or would speak in their churches, cannot be questioned. It is impossible to take seriously the opinion that the principle of religious freedom pre- cludes that sort of thing. As for the early evangelical churches, they would have taken it as an insult had they 9 Faulkner, Wesley as Sociologist, Theologian, Churchman, p. 206 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM been accused by their contemporaries of holding the opinions on “religious democracy” with which they are credited by teachers in some of our modern theological seminaries. Again it is true that the leaders in the Reformation of the sixteenth century believed in the right of private judgment and private interpretation in the sense that neither pope, king, nor hangman, neither ecclesiastical nor civil authorities, had the right to en- force their religious decisions upon any believer or body of believers who had obtained more light from Scripture or who for any reason differed from the dominant church. The assertion, however, that the right of pri- vate judgment meant, in the opinion of the Reformers, that the ministers or members of their churches had the right to teach that which is clearly at variance with God’s Word, or that it meant the right to deny the in- spiration and authority of Scripture, this opinion is al- together unfounded. Neither Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, nor the evangelical dissenters, confounded relig- ious ireedom with religious anarchy, after the manner of modern liberalism. Various liberalistic writers have said, it is impossible to determine just what the Bible teaches; they assert that it would require an infallible person to interpret the Bible, therefore no individual or church has the right to say that their interpretation of the Bible is correct. To superficial thinking this may be a profound argument. Is it true, however, that no one can tell what the Bible teaches? Do not Bible students in general agree that the Scriptures teach the fundamental doctrines of the evangelical churches? Do not, as a rule, even liberalists admit this? The denial of the fundamentals on the part of liberalism has its cause in the rejection of the authori- ty of Scripture. The opinion that the Scriptures do not plainly teach the fundamentals must be ascribed to ig- norance. if hci ry Sr a RES HR SS DISCIPLINE IS NOT PERSECUTION 207 Again, when you speak of fundamentals, it is needful to let people know what you mean; it is necessary to define yourself. Dean J. F. Vichert, of Colgate Theo- logical Seminary, by way of illustration, in his booklet Concerning Fundamentals, states that those who, in his view, take “a reactionary attitude” — the conservatives —are too exacting in their insistence on definitions. He says: “Certain doctrines are [by conservatives] defined and declared fundamental. These are to be the test of .a man’s fidelity to truth, of his orthodoxy and denomi- national standing.” Clearly, however, a doctrine, to be worthy of the name, must be stated or defined. And if a church holds certain doctrines to be fundamental, they ought to be made the test of a man’s orthodoxy and de- nominational standing. Dr. Vichert thinks, “this pro- ceeding implies a monopoly of truth on the part of those who propose it.” He adds: “One wonders whence the infallibility came which qualifies any group of men for such an undertaking. A moment’s reflection makes clear that it is but the claim and practice of the Roman church over again. To be sure, the fagot and the stake are missing,’ etc. Yet in the same pamphlet this author expresses the opinion that men who deny certain teach- ings which he considers of fundamental importance should be relieved of positions of trust and leadership which they may hold. Dr. Vichert defends “the right and competency of the individual to transact for himself in matters of re- ligion,” in other words, the right of liberty of conscience. Now the fact deserves notice that this is precisely the plea advanced by the said liberalistic leaders who, in our author’s view, ought to be relieved of their positions. Indeed this right must not be questioned or denied to any person. To relieve an unsound teacher of his posi- tion, or to exclude him from the church, is not to in- fringe upon his rights of religious liberty. To exclude 208 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM a man who does not stand for the doctrine of the church does not constitute an infringement of this sort. On the other hand, to demand that such a person should be re- tained, clearly involves an infringement upon the rights of religious liberty of the church. The church, as well as the individual, must have the right to stand for some- thing definite in matters of religion. To take such a po- sition in no wise involves a claim of infallibility for the individual or for the church. It does not require the predicate of infallibility to have convictions as to the fundamentals taught in God’s Word. A church which has no such convictions to stand for is a sorry figure indeed. The cause of modern liberalism has been advanced in no small degree through perversions of history — histo- rical falsehoods. We are asked to believe, as we have seen, that Protestantism is, essentially, liberalism; that the early dissenter churches had no authoritative creeds; that Roger Williams was one of the distinguished fa- thers of modern liberalism. And these are but a few among the many perversions of history on which the modern mind has been fed. Modern thought is quite credulous toward anything that favors modernism; too often it uncritically accepts “things that ain’t so.” There are liberalistic churches which claim they have no binding or authoritative creed nor any doctrinal test, and yet they, to all appearance, shrink from the unavoid- able consequences of such a position. The most con- spicuous example, probably, of a church which not only in theory but in real practice follows the principle of “no doctrinal tests,” is the Community Church organ- ized by John Haynes Holmes, of New York. Of this church it may be truthfully said that it has no binding creed. It is Dr. Holmes’ boast that Jews and Buddhists are members of it. Dr. Holmes and probably the ma- jority of his congregation were formerly Unitarians. A 7 a i x xu i DEFINITE DOCTRINAL POSITION 209 writer in a Unitarian journal regrets their withdrawal from that church and points out that a Unitarian church also has the privilege of receiving into membership those of non-Christian faith. It must be assumed, however, that the members of the Community Church recognize the leadership of Jesus in a similar sense as the atheistic socialists accept it. Now we are told that they who take a position such as the Community Church — stand- ing, in plain English, for religious anarchy — are “Rog- er Williams’ spiritual heirs” and they only have the right to the evangelical name. The opinion that a church of any one of the evangel- ical denominations which has a binding creed or a doc- trinal test, is deviating from the position of the early church fathers, is an historical perversion which is un- worthy of well-informed people. The contrary is true. The early fathers of all evangelical churches, Congrega- tionalists, Baptists, and Methodists included, would have considered it absurd that a church which does not stand for Christian doctrine and has no doctrinal tests should lay claim to the Christian name. In this connection it may be repeated for emphasis that a body of believers may not have a written creed and yet stand faithfully for the doctrines of the Christian faith. The Young Men’s Christian Association, for example, though it nev- er had a written creed, was originally a mighty force for evangelical Christianity. Professor Edward Caldwell Moore says: “Membership was conditioned not merely upon moral character and sympathy with the aims of the Association but also upon the acceptance of the doc- trines of evangelical denominations. The Association thus reflected in its very origin the reaction against lib- eralism.,”?° The principle of religious freedom and liberty of con- 10 The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World, p. 99. 210 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM science, for which some of the early dissenters so ear- nestly contended, means that, as a citizen of the state, every man has a right to believe and teach any morally unobjectionable religious doctrine. You may be fully convinced that your neighbor who may be an unbeliev- er, is erring religiously, yet the state has no right to take him to account for his error. But this principle does not mean that a man who does not accept the creed for which the church stands, has a right to claim mem- bership in the church. The state has its laws to which the citizens must conform and those who break the laws are temporarily separated by confinement in prisons. The church also has its creed and principles by which it is maintained and those who do not abide by them must be excluded. The principle that every citizen of a given state should make his own laws, or, in other words, be a law unto himself, and that the state has no right to impose its laws upon the citizens — this is the principle of anarchy. Just so the assertion that the church should have no creed, that she should not stand for anything definite as concerns matters doctrinal and religious — that every member should follow his own autonomous conscience—this is the principle of religious anarchy. A people which does not recognize the right of the com- monwealth to make binding laws, could not be recog- nized as a state. Neither is a group of persons who re- | fuse to stand for anything definite religiously and doc- trinally, a Christian church. The modern notion that religiously there should be no recognized standard or authority and that a consist- ent believer in religious freedom “don’t obey no orders unless they is his own,” is curious indeed. A supposed freedom that is not willing to bow to law is not of divine but of diabolic origin. A supposed free church that has nothing to stand for, besides such matters as social im- provement, is a church in name only. It is quite possi- RELIGIOUS ANARCHY 211 ble to build a church of that type, made up of people of contradictory interpretations of life and of contrary pro- grams of religious action—éin other words, a church composed of liberal and orthodox — it is possible to or- ganize such a church, provided the orthodox do not take their faith seriously. The question is not one of possi- bility, however, but of principle. It is not enough that the church be free— freedom may be “not according to _knowledge” — she must have a purpose—a creed. The editor of a liberal journal has these significant words to say on the point in question: The gist of the matter is that Unitarians make their free- dom a principle of dissolution when they say that this freedom principle takes the duty out of a church attendance. With a good many of us liberalism is organized disunion, religious an- archy, a bit of bad thinking applied to religion 11 The Christian Register, February 7, 1918, p. 9. XX \ IMMORTALITY as ODERN science has undertaken to explain the ivi soul as a mere “stream of thought,” to use the expression of one of America’s eminent philoso- phers, the late Professor William James, of Harvard University, who defended this view. Human _ personal-. ity in any real sense is denied. If this view were correct man could not be immortal in any true sense. If there be no soul it would be folly to speak of its immortality. Radical modern liberalists have not ceased to speak of immortality but they have deprived the word of all real meaning. President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark Uni- versity, (an eminent representative of the new theolo- gy), says: “The only valid immortality is of two kinds, influential and eugenic.’”? “The prolonged and rich life of posterity here,” he says further, “is the only real ful- fillment of the hope of immortality.”? Professor Coe, of the Union Theological Seminary, thinks devotion to the cause of social regeneration ‘may be a factor in a pro- cess whereby immortality, in the literal sense of indis- soluble fellowship between persons, is being achieved.’”* This is immortality in name only. Modernism, denying all supernaturalism, has no room for personal immor- tality. Walter Rauschenbusch pointed out that the doc- trine of transmigration of souls, or of re-incarnation, is held by some of the modern theologians. “This theory,” he says further, “seems to offer a fair chance for all, pro- vided each soul is really started in the exact environ- 1 Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology, vol. I, p. 15. 2 The same, vol. II, p. 692. 3 The Psychology of Religion, p. 298. THE AGONY OF UNCERTAINTY 213 ment which it has earned by its past life and in which it can best develop for the future.”* This is a striking indi- cation of the ascendency of paganism in nominal Chris- tendom. Modern liberalism has no answer to the question, “If a man die, shall he live again?’ Therefore the rep- resentatives of modern religion, in so far as they do not deny immortality outright, assume an attitude of gener- al indifference on the question of the immortality of the soul. President McGiffert has pointed out that theolo- gians of today are losing interest in the subject of im- mortality and “many Christians, because the life after death lies beyond the range of experimental proof [and they no longer accept the authority of Scripture], have growr indifferent about it.’”° In fact, not a few minis- ters 3: tne modern gospel have preached from the pulpit that there may be no hereafter. “Men are exhorted to find immortality in advancing the race, only remember- ed by what they had done,” declared The Continent not long ago. Professor Henry C, Vedder, of Crozer Theo- logical Seminary, says: . Most theologians and preachers declare very positively that there is a place called Heaven, where the “saved” will forever be happy in the presence of God. There may be such a place; nobody can prove that there is not. But neither can the preach- ers prove that there is sucha place. There is no adequate ground for their confident assertions. When they tell us that there is a Heaven, and all about its conditions and life, as if they had actu- ally been there and had brought back plans drawn to scale and complete. specifications, they are just “pushing wind.” They know no more about it than you or I know, and that is just nothing at all.é Considered from the viewpoint of modernism which de- nies the authority of the Scriptures, Professor Vedder 4A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 231. 5 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 325. 6 Quoted in The Baptist Believer, April, 1920, from Chester ews. 214 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM is right. Unless God has answered these questions for us in His Word, we must confess to ignorance concern- ing these things. With faith in the Bible as God’s su- pernatural revelation goes, as a rule, belief in heaven and immortality. Various defenders of modernism have expressed the opinion that the desire for a future life is essentially self- ish. A writer in The Christian Register speaks of this desire as “aggravated selfishness.” In the view of these writers the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is in- compatible with accepted principles of morality. But if the desire for a life beyond the grave be unjustifiable, would not the life that now is fall under like censure? If non-existence be the unselfish thing and there be no hereafter, would not self-destruction become a virtuous deed? It may be worth while to notice, in passing, that the desire for personal salvation has also been interpret- ed as selfishness.® | The contrast between believing that man’s existence is confined to the short span of time of his earthly life, and that it extends through an eternity either of bliss or of woe is apparent. Belief in the immortality of the soul is a tremendous factor in shaping a man’s life on earth. It matters much to society, said Professor Gold- win Smith, “whether death ends all and conscience is a delusion,” for “the churches are a momentous part of our social organization, and on these beliefs they rest.’® Human responsibility to God and belief in divine justice cannot mean much if death ends human existence and there is no judgment to follow. Christianity has been criticized severely by modernists on account of its other- worldliness. But other-worldliness is the natural result 7 The Christian Register, October 3, 1918, p. 13. 8 The same, May 29, 1919, p. 13. 9 The Independent (New York), May 18, 1905. HUMANISM NOT RELIGION 215 of the belief in immortality. Such belief must, as said in a preceding paragraph, have a marked influence on the lives of thinking people. In fact, true religion is necessarily linked with the conviction of immortality. “The work of man may center itself in the present world, but unless the faith of man extends beyond humanism, beyond social betterment and art, it is no religious faith at all.” XXI } SCIENCE or unproved suppositions, therefore theology also might content itself with “workable hypotheses” as its underlying principles. While it is true that much [: has been said that all science rests on hypotheses that popularly goes for science is nothing more than: supposition, this can by no means be said of all science. Modern science, indeed, works largely with hypotheses and theories. It need not be said that this is in itself entirely unobjectionable. A scientist has the undoubted right to set up a hypothesis. If he succeeds in proving | and establishing it, this particular view ceases to be a hypothesis. It is only when scientists teach mere hy- potheses as if they were established truth, or when they work with hypotheses that are contrary to Scripture that we must object. The weak point in modern sci- ence is that certain unproved theories are treated as and given the appearance of established truths. It should be added that science in so far as it has to do with practical things, such for example as medicine and surgery, the use of electricity, etc., is established on facts, not on mere hypotheses. While it is true that a theory may help a physician in his effort to find effect- ive remedies, the value of a given remedy depends solely on the fact that it brings the desired results. The prop- erties and effects of drugs are known to physicians. If a medical “science” which consisted of hypothe- ses, instead of being based on fact and truth, and tested by experience, would be worthless, what about a theol- ogy which deals only with hypotheses and does not RELIGION AND SCIENCE AY, claim to have absolute truth or fact, but admittedly of- fers only relative, subjective, imaginary truth? Chris- tianity is an historical religion. It depends for its right to exist on certain historical facts, such as the incarna- tion of Christ and His work for the salvation of man- kind. Deny these truths and you have lost your foun- dation for the Christian faith. The statement that there is no conflict between sci- . ence and religion has various meanings depending upon the personal position of the one who may use such an ex- pression. A Christian believer saying that there is no conflict between science and religion means that the claims of modern science, in so far as they are antago- nistic to Scripture, are unfounded. A modernist using the same expression means the very contrary, namely that religion is acceptable only in so far as it is based on natural law and is explainable by science. Now the principal facts on which the Christian re- ligion is founded are of miraculous nature. The incar- nation and resurrection of Jesus Christ and other mira- cles cannot be explained by natural law or science, nei- _ther can the divine work of grace in the human heart be so explained. It is due to the direct working of the Holy Spirit. These things are consequently disowned by the more advanced modernists. They hold a monistic view of the world and insist that there is no such thing as the working of God above and beyond natural law. They declare that all truth is uniform with the same laws of nature and therefore the supernatural is unreal. Now modern science, by taking an attitude of nega- tion with reference to the supernatural, over-steps the bounds of its own realm. The fact is that nature itself and natural law is a proof of the possibility of the mira- cle. Nothing less than the supernatural, miraculous work of God can account for the existence of nature. Evolution does not offer a real explanation. Most‘evo- 218 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM lutionists admit that they cannot explain how life orig- inated upon earth. The origin of life calls for a work that is superior to natural law —a miracle. Again they who assert that man is nothing more than a highly de- veloped animal make an assertion which is not only in- capable of evidence but is clearly contrary to fact. A miracle cannot be explained by natural law or by science, yet science is unscientific when it asserts that a miracle is impossible to God. ‘There is no scientific evidence whatever against the omnipotence of God, or the Deity of Christ, or any other doctrine of the Chris- tian faith. On the contrary, as already stated, nature it- self is a witness for God, and there is in Christian experi- ence abundant proof of the possibility of the supernat- ural and miraculous. The Christian believer who makes faithful use of his privileges, lives in the atmosphere of the supernatural. So far from believing that the super- natural is impossible, he is convinced that. God’s Word is true. Though between the natural and the supernatural, or miraculous, there is a vital difference, it is needful to keep in mind that God may use natural law to accom- plish a particular purpose. The supernatural, on the other hand, is done above and beyond natural law. To say with modernism that the supernatural is impossible is to deny the omnipotence of God. The most objetionable hypothesis of modern science is the theory of naturalism. This is the assumption that there is nothing beyond nature and material or natural forces. There is, according to this theory, neither di- vine revelation nor miracle. There is no God beyond or above immanent natural law. This theory is radically antagonistic to the Christian faith. Naturalism is in a large measure responsible for the fact that the higher institutions of science have become hotbeds of infidelity. Moncure D. Conway, in his autobiography, points to “FAILING RELIGIOUS CONSCIENCE” 219 the failure of modern science, after having weakened the faith in supernaturalism, to furnish a sufficient ethical guide. He quotes his friend Goldwin Smith as fore- seeing “fatal results to the next generation unless sci- ence can construct something to take the place of the failing religious conscience.” Is not the hope that sci- ence will do anything of this sort futile? Unless men are willing to accept the supernatural revelation of God in Scripture, they will never have an adequate founda- tion for ethics and religion. To take science, instead of divine revelation, for such a basis is to build on a founda- tion of sand. Naturalism in morality and in religion is fatal to both. None other than President Arthur Cush- man McGiffert has pointed out that science, if taken as a basis for morality, is an utter failure. He says: “Sci- ence does not make for democracy but for aristocracy and autocracy.” /.fter elucidating this point further this author says: The ideal of democracy could hardly have arisen in a scien- tific age.— Science gives us not the ideal of democracy but of the superman, the ideal of autocracy and imperialism.—If we want a democracy it is because we are idealists, or because we _are religious men, not mere scientists, and if democracy is to prevail, it will be because idealism triumphs over brute fact and religion forces science to do its bidding.1 Science does not furnish any evidence in favor of naturalism. On the other hand, it would be out of the question to suppose that science, without the aid of rev- elation, could give us adequate information concerning God, His character and man’s relationship to Him. It is a popular fallacy that men of science know more about these things than those who have not studied science. It is inexcusable for men of science to undertake the set- tlement of questions that are beyond their realm, as did, for example, the unbeliever Laplace, when he said, he 1 Religious Education, June, 1919, p. 156 ff. 220 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM had searched the heavens with the most powerful instru- ments and had failed to find God. It is readily seen that this statement, instead of proving the non-existence of God, is only evidence of the well-known truth that learned men sometimes lack wisdom, Modern naturalistic science should not assume that it can speak authoritatively on the greatest questions, as if it had the means and ways to investigate the great spiritual verities that lie beyond the physical. To ac- cept the dogma of naturalism is therefore thoroughly unscientific. Naturalistic science has made a dogma of a hypothesis for which there is absolutely no proof, and with unheard-of haughtiness it assumes that those who refuse to accept the new dogma are behind the times and have no right to their belief. | | : No orthodox theologian was ever so dogmatic as the materialistic scientist who alleges that his scientific learning does not permit him to accept the Christian fundamentals; he means merely that they will not fit his own dogma and unfounded hypotheses. Here, then, namely in the field of modern science as taught in many of our institutions of higher education, is dogma for- sooth. Modernistic dogma is, as a matter of fact, not based on revelation, as is the Christian dogma; nor has it any other worthy foundation. Its foundation is the notions and predilections of unbelieving men. There- fore naturalistic dogma is not worthy of acceptance by those who do their own thinking. In effect, then, we have mainly two dogmatisms fac- ing each other. On the one hand there is the dogma of Christianity which is based on Scripture and confirmed by Christian experience. On the other hand is the dog- matism of what a recent writer calls naive, uncritical naturalism which assumes that it has the last word on the questions of God and human destiny and that the mechanical interpretation of the universe is the sole and NO ANSWER TO MOST VITAL QUESTIONS 2721 absolute truth, overlooking entirely the outstanding fact that the naturalistic theory has no foundation except in the materialistic, anti-Christian spirit of the age. And yet science, notwithstanding all its materialistic attainments, recognizes today that there are many far inferior quesions to which it has no answer. It does not know, e. ¢., what electricity or gravitation is. “We have a remarkable chemistry of commerce and have rescued ‘a thousand waste products,” says Professor J, A. W. Haas. “We have created an apparently new physical chemistry which rests on mathematical exactitude. But have we pried any more deeply into the secrets of at- oms, or electrons, or ions, or corpuscles? Can we an- swer the ultimate question of chemical research?” our institutions of higher education, severe criticism of them is out of place. Is it not true that they have rendered great service to the church and to society in general, and should we not be sincerely grateful for it? Most certainly. Science, for example, is doing wonders in our day. But in so far as science “works,” that is to say to the extent that it has been tested by practical ap- plication and use, it is not established on the hypothesis of evolution nor on any other unscriptural theory, but is altogether in harmony with Scripture teaching. As con- cerns its real value and usefulness, modern science would therefore be the same if all scientists were believers in the Scriptures as God’s inspired Word. It goes without saying that no one will criticize the colleges and universities in so far as they are rendering service to the human family. However, the fact cannot be ignored that many of these institutions stand for re- ligious liberalism and unbelief, and in so far as this is the case they do not render service but disservice to society. The offence consists in this that, besides the dissemina- tion of real learning, they bring destructive religious in- fluences to bear upon the student. There are those who tell us that our fears are un- grounded. We must have faith, they say, in truth’s ‘power to make its own way and to vanquish error. Our apprehension regarding young people in agnostic insti- tutions has, we are told, its roots in distrust of truth. Such sentences give expression to one of the curiously 15 The Christian Register, October 2, 1919, p, 151. Italics mine. eee ie a — Se sf a ee eee ae ee SHOULD THE TRUTH BE DEFENDED? 245 perverted ideas of modern liberalism. But what of the professors in some of our institutions of higher learning who not only make light of the doctrines of the Christian faith but of Christian morals as well? Are we expected to accept the supposition that wrong ethical teaching and perverse moral influences are harmless because of the power of truth to vanquish error? Why educate at all along those lines, if such be the case? The late Dr. William R. Harper, a noted liberalist, once said, “If I were a boy again, I would read every book I could reach.” He overlooked the fact that a flood of immoral, let alone irreligious, literature is on the market in our day which is unfit to be read and which has poisoned the minds of a host of young people. Does not the Unit- ed States government forbid the transmission of immoral books through the mails? Is Anthony Comstock to be praised or censured for his crusade against morally per- nicious literature? If the danger to our young people from morally ques- tionable literature is real, is there not even greater dan- ger for them to sit at the feet of those who profess ag- -nosticism in regard to Christian morals? And is there not every reason to believe that irreligious teachings and influences are every bit as harmful as those of morally objectionable nature? Are not the former indeed more insidiously dangerous and as a rule more radically de- structive than the latter? Yet the fact remains that truth will be victorious in the end. Truth will always be truth whether you-and I recognize it as such or not. Would it not be absurd to suppose that truth will turn into error unless we defend it? But while it is true that “truth crushed to earth will rise again,” there is grave danger that it will not rise for those who crush it. Irreparable personal loss necessarily results from the rejection of vital truth. It is for this reason that truth must be defended and 246. MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM error opposed. Efforts must be put forth to get men to accept the truth. Nothing in humari life is comparable in importance with the acceptance of religious truth. And in the realm of religion and ethics it is easier to yield to error than to that which is true. Even Goethe who was not a Christian believer said, men follow error for the reason that to do so is easier than to embrace truth. To take the course of least resistance and yield to the anti-Christian spirit of the age is easier than to be loyal to Jesus Christ and fight the good fight of faith. It requires more earnest and determined effort to follow the truth than to yield to error. For a young person who for any length is sitting at the feet of a teacher de- fending moral or religious error it is the natural thing to become tainted; indeed it is, speaking generally, inev- itable. There are instances in which young people and par- ents have concluded, since courses in the Bible are of- fered in some of the colleges, that these institutions must be safe. All depends however on the personal position of the teacher. Bible study under a teacher who stands for liberalism is almost invariably even more objection- able than the study of other subjects under such a teach- er. Not seldom it is the case that modernistic Bible study is of so predominantly critical character that the religious side, even from a liberal viewpoint, is lost sight of. “Critical courses in the Bible might be anything but religious,” says Professor Athearn.*® The attendance of colleges which stand for the lib- eralistic religious views is unjustifiable. To take such a risk is a moral wrong. These schools, by their own confession, bend their energies upon destroying the faith of childhood. He who discards the old Bible faith suf- fers greater loss than all the learning of the schools can 16 The Church School, p. 257. THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS OF AGNOSTICISM 247 make good. Young people desiring to devote them- selves to the acquisition of higher education should be advised to choose a sound institution. Again, if the op- portunity to attend such a school be absent, they should realize that there are thousands of men and women who have never attended college but have acquired a better education than the average graduate. It may be worth while to notice, in passing, that Dean Frederick S. Jones, of Yale University, has recently expressed a sentiment in regard to the purpose of a college education which is now widely recognized as reasonable: There was a time when I thought that we must teach in col- lege first and foremost the learning of books. In these days I would ‘bend every effort to the making of good citizens, and by a good citizen I think I mean a man who is master of himself, earns his own living, and as far as possible in doing it is of benefit to his fellow men. - The question suggests itself: Should not the Christian home be equal to such a task? If a Christian student cannot consistently attend a college that is spreading religious liberalism, what about the schools of agnosticism which go by the name theo- - logical seminaries and divinity schools? Are they not even mightier agencies of evil than the liberalistic col- leges? ‘To those who recognize the vast differences, the fundamental contrasts between the modern liberalism and the old Bible faith —to such it is perfectly clear that the modernized theological seminary is in very deed the greatest menace, the most formidable foe to the Chris- tian faith and to the moral fibre of the nation. The spread of agnosticism as to the Christian faith and mor- als by the theological seminaries spells disaster to Chris- tianity. “What is the effect of the new theology methods up- on our theological seminaries?” asks Dr, Augustus Hop- kins Strong. He answers: The effect is to deprive the Gospel message of all definite- 248 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM ness and to make professors and students disseminators of doubts. — The theological seminaries of almost all our denomi- nations are becoming so infected with this grievous error, that they are not so much organs of Christ as they are organs of Antichrist.17 It is said that in one of the leading European coun- tries the church, or sections of it, favors the liquor traf- fic for the reason that some of the prelates of the church are financially interested. What an inconsistency, you say. But is it not a greater offence to support an insti- tution that stands for the repudiation of the fundament- als of the Christian faith and Christian morals? If pat- ronage of the liquor traffic 1s a moral wrong, is not the support of such an institution (be it as a student or in some other way) a so much greater wrong as these in- stitutions are a greater menace to Christian faith and morality? Is it not impossible to us to effectively com- bat this menace so long as we patronize it in any way whatever? When we are told that religious liberalism, as represented by the said institutions, stands for cred- itable ideals we must not lose sight of the fact that irre- ligion and atheism are never so dangerous as when they come under a cloak of idealism. But what is the church to do without the seminaries? Does she not need them for the education and training of the coming ministers? In the first place the out- standing fact is to be recognized that not all seminaries are tainted with liberalism. The church owes a great debt of gratitude to the faithful men in the sound, con- servative seminaries who have not bowed their knees to Baal; as well as to the educational boards and commis- sions which consistently maintain the proper Scriptural attitude. Let students attend such schools. Let them never lose sight of the fact that a man is better qualified for the Christian ministry if he maintain the faith of his WW Tour of the Missions. Observations and Conclusions, p. 189, ATTENDANCE AT LIBERALISTIC SCHOOLS 249 childhood, than if he lose it in the attempt to acquire more learning. Sometimes it is said that a young man who has an experiental knowledge of Christ need not hesitate to at- tend a modernized seminary. Cannot God keep him sound in the faith? The point in question however is, whether it is morally right to go to such an institution. If these schools are agencies of evil, it behooves a Chris- tian to shun them. If you do that which is morally wrong, you have no right to expect that God will keep you and bless you in it. Religious liberalism is now in the air. It is propagated from pulpits, through papers, magazines and countless books. ‘There is danger of be- coming tainted without attending schools that have writ- ten liberalism on their banners. Unless God does a mir- acle — and He is not given to doing miracles for the dis- obedient — you will, if you take a course in such a sem- inary, come out tainted. You have no right to be a stu- dent in an institution that is given to combating the faith. Your very attendance at such a school would be inconsistent with loyalty to Jesus Christ. A further fact to be recognized and which has al- ready been touched upon is that training in a higher in- stitution of learning is not claimed to be indispensable for the ministry of the Word of God. | Looking closely into this question we find that in most denominations the lion’s share of ministerial work is done by men who have never attended a college or seminary. In the Bap- tist Church, for example, according to Dr. Henry L. Morehouse, only one-eighth of all the white ministers in this country have received a college and seminary train- ing. In the year 1913 one sixth only of the men ordained to the ministry in the Baptist Church had received such training.** There is every reason to believe that in the 18 The Record; Rochester Theological Seminary Bulletin, May, 1917, p. 51. 250 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Methodist Church the percentage of college and semi- nary men in the ministry is somewhat similar. Bishop Francis J. McConnell, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, informs us that some of the best pulpits in the denomination with which he is connected are filled by men that have not taken a seminary course.’® In the Free Churches of England there were, in 1909, less than 10,000 ordained preachers, but above 50,000 so-called lay-preachers that were without special training. It is a noteworthy fact that Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Dwight Lyman Moody and many other untitled preachers had acquired a better education than many a seminary grad- uate. One of the soundly evangelical and most active Christian bodies in America, numbering about 7,500 members and fully supporting about fifty American mis- sionaries in foreign countries have among their pastors and mission workers not one that has either a college or a seminary degree. And there are other Christian bod- ies in which prevailing conditions are somewhat similar. “Never were the ministries of the Anglican and Free Churches better fitted by scholarship and by general at- tainment to perform their task,” says Sir Joseph Comp- ton-Rickett, and yet, especially in the Free Churches “the sermon is mostly ethical, ofttimes literary, but it fails to search and grip as in former days.’*° Another British writer, George Tyrrell, recalling the great suc- cess of the early Methodist preachers, says: “The preach- ing of practical Christianity is easily within the capacity of simple and practical men. Do we not immensely exaggerate the amount of education required in ordinary cases ?”’?1 Does this mean that learning is to be discounted? By 19 The Harvard Theological Review, 1915, p. 328. 20 The Contemporary Review, May, 1917, p. 630. 21 The same, May, 1909, p. 586. LUTHER AND THE UNIVERSITIES 251 no means. It does mean that learning is not to be sought in institutions which, through their religious attitude, plainly are agencies of evil. The disastrous influences — religious and moral — proceeding from such institu- tions cannot be ignored. And, as already intimated, the opinion that unbiblical, irreligious tendencies are the necessary sequence of higher education is not for a mo- ment to be countenanced. Martin Luther spoke of the leading universities of his time as the gates of hell — they were the most formidable powers arrayed against the Gospel. But not for a moment did Luther entertain the thought that the antagonistic attitude of the univer- sities was due to their superior learning. He often re- fers to the anti-evangelical professors as “the sophists of the schools.” By setting himself as a steel-wall against the universities he by no means disfavored education. Furthermore, though the “sophists” of Luther’s time claimed to speak in the name of scholarship and science, they, as a rule, changed their position if the university with which they were connected chanced to be located in a state whose ruler decided to accept the Lutheran _ reformation. Obviously they took their orders from “the powers that be,’ while they claimed to speak in the name of scholarship. In our age there are many who advance a similar claim while in fact they take their or- ders from the spirit of the time. Liberalistic theological professors have openly boast- ed that they have it in their power to liberalize the church with which they are connected. They think that the church cannot do without the seminaries and, after the seminaries are liberalized, the church has no way to prevent the spread of liberalism within her borders. It is true that as the seminaries go, so will the church go, but the opinion that the church cannot, if necessity re- quires it, exist and prosper without the seminaries is not well founded. While it is readily recognized that the 252 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM sound and safe seminaries are a great aid to the cause of Christ, the view that we must have seminaries, even if they be liberalized, is unacceptable. . We have fallen upon times when it has become the fashion for churches to be more concerned about the preacher’s correct grammar than his Scriptural sound- ness. The lack of spiritual power is a characteristic of our time. It cannot be rightfully claimed that such pow- er comes through education. The agnostic theological seminaries offer striking proof of the undeniable fact that higher education and spiritual blindness go only too often hand in hand. Professor Philip Schaff said once in his parting counsel to one of his classes: “Re- member, first of all, the true bearing of theological study on your personal character. Scholarship is good, virtue is better, holiness is best of all. Your learning and elo- quence will do little good in the world unless they are quickened by spiritual power.” A Unitarian editor writes: “The preachers who hold the greatest number of hearers are those who are fairly fanatical, in worldly eyes, in the proclamation of a defined and a working faithy?’* A word remains to be said regarding the Bible Schools. The increasing danger arising from the liber- alistic tendencies of the colleges makes imperative the existence of theological schools which do not require a college degree for admission. Furthermore the Bible Schools do not depend on the liberalistic colleges and universities for competent teachers. The Bible Schools are today a bulwark of positive Bible faith. Most of the more prominent defenders of the faith are connected with these schools. A writer in The Moravian says: It is true that I do not agree with the teachings of the Bible Schools at every point, nevertheless it is also true that most of the criticism and opposition to the Bible Institutes comes from 22 The Christian Register, March 7, 1918. THE BIBLE INSTITUTES 253 sources inspired by the higher destructive criticism. We can most naturally expect this very thing. I would just as soon ex- pect these people to say something good about Bible Institutes as to expect the owner of a brewery to say something good about prohibition. To men who profess to be ambassadors of Christ, interpreters and ministers of Christ and His gospel, eat- ing the bread of the church, often in the best remunerated posi- tions in the gift of the church, and yet argue away the supernat- ural origin and power of the gospel in the lives of men, who deny the necessity and the fact of regeneration in the heart of the in- dividual, substituting for the real gospel of Christ a man-devised cultural veneer; to such men the Bible Institutes must be a thorn in the flesh as well as in the spirit. Opposition to the Bible Schools is, apparently, in- creasing in modernist circles. A liberalistic writer has referred to them as a “pest”, meaning probably that they are, in his opinion, the most formidable impedi- ment obstructing the way of modernism. In the Con- ference of Theological Seminaries, held in the month of August, 1918, at Cambridge, Mass., a speaker referred to those “who are now being fearfully ministered to by products of Bible Schools,’** and a Unitarian editor says in a report of the same convocation: “Throughout the . Conference there was a recurrent note that one of the chief enemies of an educated ministry is the so-called Bible School.”** The question seems here in order: would it have been too much to expect of this confer- ence to consider the fact that a great many of our semi- nary students are being trained in anti-Christian, nat- uralistic “theology” and that people are “fearfully min- istered to” by some of the products of these seminaries. As a proof that this is not an overstatement we quote here from a topic card given out recently by the minis- ter of a Unitarian church in one of our larger cities, an- nouncing a series of addresses. Here we read: 23 The Biblical World, August, 1916, p. 68. 24 The Christian Register, August 22, 1918, p. 8. 25 The same, p. 5 254 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM The old religion, based upon supernatural and divine rev- elations, is being supplanted by a religion based upon the natural and human relations. The old moral sanctions are giving way and new sanctions must be put in their place. The old faith in di- vine providence is toppling and reeling, and a new faith in hu- man providence is slowly risitg in strength and power.26 Ts it not a significant fact that in a Conference of Theological Seminaries a recurrent note of censure of the Bible Schools is heard while, according to published reports, the fact that religious naturalism and atheism is spread by the seminaries is never touched upon? It is pleasant to notice that there is at least one writ- er who, though he has accepted liberalistic views, has retained something of his former opinion of the Bible Schools. Clarence J. Harris writes in The Christian Reg- ister*” about Dr. James M. Gray, President of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago: “Whatever may be the the- ological narrowness of such a man, one thing is certain, the several courses of Bible study under Dr. Gray did more for the writer as a minister than all the theology meted out in two seminaries.” What a pity that the writer of these words stands no longer for the old truth. Presumably he yielded to liberalism under seminary in- fluences, yet, in the same article he deplores the cold- ness and lack of power in the Unitarian Church. — Ey- ery lover of the Bible as God’s Word, every believer in the primitive Christian message should be interested in the Bible Schools, as well as in the Seminaries which unswervingly stand for the Christian truth. 26 The Christian Register, February 26, 1920, p. 22. 27 The same, April 11, 1918. XXIV THE IMMORALITY OF THEOLOGICAL COUN- TERFEITING AND CAMOUFLAGE \ HEN counterfeiting is mentioned in connection W with the new theology, there are always those who are ready to talk of unfairness and partial- ity. It may be in order, therefore, to give the word, at the outset, to new theology men who frankly admit that liberalistic theologians have indulged in word-jug- glery and camouflage. Before hearing the testimony of men who represent the religious liberalism, it may be well to recall that Ritschl, the father of the new theolo- gy, defended the principle that it is right and proper, in order to allay the fears of the conservatives, to express the new theological opinions in the old familiar words. In Ritschl’s theology certain doctrines are substantially ‘ modified or radically changed, but the changed doctrines come in the expressions and phrases of the old theology ; new meanings are ascribed to the old words. This means that, though the new theology differs radically from the old, it is given an orthodox appearance. It is presented under the guise of the familiar vocabulary of orthodoxy. Ever since the days of Albrecht Ritschl has theological counterfeiting been in fashion among mod- ernists. In recent years not a few representatives of the new theology have freely confessed that camouflage and counterfeiting, as indulged in by modern theologians, is unjustifiable. President McGiffert says, for example: “Thanks to our careless thinking, to our elastic con- 256 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM sciences, we still profess to believe these doctrines,” namely doctrines of Biblical Christianity.1 Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago, points out that the presentation of certain new theology views “is practically certain to abound in skillfully de- vised ambiguities which obscure rather than reveal the actual content of the theologian’s thought. But if once the spirit of intellectual juggling be admitted into any procedure, it is no longer possible to claim moral su- periority for it. The New Testament itself reminds us that the ‘double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. ’? This author says further: If there be allowed a spirit of ingenious juggling by which the newer [theological] science is made to yield something re- sembling the older conclusions, the sense of honor is inevitably dulled? The subtle temptation to “harmonize” contradictory elements by clever analogies, so that new meaning may be read into old words and the semblance of an unchanging theology may be retained, is all too frequently yielded to.4 New mean- ings are thus smuggled in under familiar labels.5 Modern books on theology frequently indulge in clever rhetorical state- ments which serve, indeed, to allay the fears of conservative Christians, but which fail to meet the demands of earnest and ex- act thinking. Such adjustment of statements are likely to in- volve a failure to be thoroughly loyal either to Scripture or to the demands of criticism. And when stern loyalty is relaxed, the door to timeserving is wide open.® Quite right, representatives of new theology views may, by intellectual juggling, disperse the fears of con- servative Christians and persuade them of the sound- ness of liberalistic teachings. Too often they are suc- cessful in such endeavors. For, is not the pious lan- guage of Scripture used in the presentation of these 1 The American Journal of Theology, 1911, p. 235. 2 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 179. 3 The same, p. 181. 4 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 606. 5 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 489. 6 The same, p. 490. —- eS . ! : 7 : | ) 4 IMMORALITY OF CLERICAL POSITION 257. views’? Does not the coin which is offered bear the proper superscription and symbol? What matters it to the modern conscience that the content and fabric is different from the genuine article? — But such counter- feiting is nothing less than deception — pious deception perchance. From the viewpoint of morality and com- mon honesty it is altogether inexcusable. A British writer says on this point, after criticizing the liberal churchmen for the practice of answering questions con- cerning the creed in the affirmative, when they actually disbelieve the statements: “What a pass have we come to! Here are leaders of the Church —an institution one of whose main objects is the propagation of truth — here are our spiritual pastors and masters actually as- serting that it is justifiable to assert your belief in state- ments which you do not believe.”7 John Morley, in his book On Compromise, wrote: “The first advance towards either the renovation of one faith or the growth of an- other, must be the abandonment of those habits of hyp- ocritical conformity and compliance which have filled the air of England of today with gross and obscuring ‘ mists.” Dr, James Martineau said: “IJ am persuaded that honorable laymen, themselves of [liberalistic] Broad Church sympathies, are more awake than is com- monly supposed to the essential immorality of the liberal clerical position.’® A Unitarian writer says: “I have an old friend, a clergyman of another church, who recites his creed with his congregation every Sunday. He tells me the distress it is to him that it is not his creed. That old friend of mine is trying to do his duty under fearfully difficult conditions. And they cost him his self-respect.”® When Dr. Hugh R. Orr, of Pittsburgh, severed his connection 7 The Hibbert Journal, No. 47, p. 675. 8 The same, No. 46, p. 333. 9 The Christian Register, February 20, 1919, p. 13. 258 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM with the Methodist Episcopal Church, to unite with the Unitarians, Bishop J. F. Berry made the remark in pub- lic that “it would be far better if many ministers who are preaching the Unitarian doctrine in the Methodist Episcopal Church would be as honest as Dr, Orr.” “The Unitarian Church is open to these men; why, then, sail under false colors?” asks The Presbyterian; “Why not be honest? Why not have the courage of their convic- tion?’ Zion's Advocate said a few years ago: When men surrender their faith in the supernatural and in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian Church, and can no longer preach and teach them, why do they not, like honorable gentlemen, resign the responsibilities which they have accepted, and go out and establish a platform of their own? If they have the truth, why do they not show their confidence in their teach- ings by organizing their own institutions instead of continuing to receive their support from those whose beliefs they have sol- emnly promised to espouse? I think that common honor and honesty would lead them to such a step.1° An expression on the point in question by Henry Neumann, of the Ethical Culture Society, Brooklyn, is noteworthy. He writes: At least the fundamentalists are consistent. They do not believe in one thing and say another. Words do indeed change their meaning. The term “Americanism” to-day does not mean exactly what Americanism meant a hundred years ago. But if I say it is “Americanism” to give my chief loyalty to London or Paris or Rome or Moscow, surely I had better find some other wort to indicate a change so great from the earlier mean- ing. If the logic of modernism is sound, and if you can keep the old names no matter what new meanings you read into them, Luther ought to have continued to call himself a Roman Catholic, Unitarians ought to have called themselves Trinitarians, and all Christians ought to continue to call themselves Jews. The difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is not greater than the difference between fundamentalism and mod- ernism. I honor the desire of the fundamentalists that preach- ~— 10 The Bible Champion, 1916, p. 130. eo a a — oe DODGING THE ISSUES 259 ers in their denominations mean what they say and say what they mean.11 . Another representative of the Ethical Culture move- ment, H. J. Bridges, of Chicago, writes: The question of intellectual honesty in church and pulpit has hitherto been utterly ignored by the mass of the public. A distinguished teacher in the Divinity School of a great universi- ty recently gave one of the cleverest exhibitions of the art of riding two horses at once that I ever witnessed. At a confer- ‘ ence of liberals he witnessed. At a conference of liberals he ex- pressed his own views about God, Christ, the Bible, and the church in language of masterly vagueness and ambiguity. There is nothing more repellant than the preacher who pri- vately admits that he doesn’t believe what he publicly utters. It is simply a question of common honesty and truthfulness in the pulpit. Nothing could conceivably be more demoralizing than this game of sanctified make-believe. None of the things that preachc-s generally denounce, and not all of them together are so profoundly corrupting, so ruinous to the very principles and standards of moral integrity as that which must be plainly called religious lying—preaching doctrine that the preacher himself thinks false. It is humbugging the naive and unwary for the glory of God and the security of your own income and social position. Here is what the editor of the Boston Herald says in a recent issue about the dishonest attitude of modern- ists in general: From the beginning the overwhelming majority of liberals in the orthodox churches have dodged the issues — have hedg- ed, evaded, qualified and compromised. They have comforted their congregations with assurances that nothing was really hap- pening in the world of religious thought, and that they need not therefore be disturbed. Black they have blithely called white, and error truth. For one man in the liberal camp who has the courage of his conviction, there are a thousand, like Harry Em- erson Fosdick, who shift and shuffle on every question. Now come the fundamentalists to demand a “show-down.” They make their position clear and they ask that their opponents do as much! ; 11 The Christian Register, March 13, 1924, p. 245. 260 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM A prominent Unitarian writer, Edmund H. Reeman, Says: f If the modernist means anything, he means, we take it, that he does not accept the Bible as the infallible and authoritative word of God. He means that his. God and the God of the fun- damentalist are as different as chalk and cheese. He means that he does not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin, nor that His dead body was raised from a Palestinian tomb, nor that this same Christ shall ever come again in triumph from the cloud. Why, then, does he not say so in terms as unequivocal, as simple, and as straightforward as the fundamentalist uses? Why — does he not openly ard frankly state that, if fundamentalism is true Christianity, then he is not a Christian and has no use for Christianity ?12 It is seen, then, that there are modernists who con- fess to the inexcusableness of the practice of presenting the modern liberalism under an orthodox cloak. These men are of the more radical liberalistic school. and make no secret of their denial of the Christian fundamentals. But the question is here in order, Is not the position of the more radical religious liberalists even more vulner- able and inexcusable than that of the more moderate school? Is it anything less than counterfeiting and camouflage when the more outspoken modernists up- hold a mere semblance of theology, though by their own confession their theology is an entirely secondary mat- ter? Some of the liberalists have discarded every trace of the Christian faith and theology but continue to lay claim to the Christian and religious name. A noteworthy instance of this kind is brought to our attention by the book The New Orthodoxy, published by The University of Chicago Press. The author is Pro- fessor Edward Scribner Ames, of the University of Chi- cago, who is also an ordained minister in an evangelical church. Now, you would suppose a book on orthodoxy 12 Unity, January 24, 1924. 3a a —— RELIGIOUS ATHEISM 261 to treat on such themes as God and His holiness, sin and its wretchedness, the way of salvation, the immor- tality of the soul, etc. But this book on The New Ortho- doxy, simply ignores these things. The author mentions God a few times but conceives Him (as a liberalistic re- viewer has rightly said) as “only a kind of symbol for the vital spark.” Personality is ascribed to Him in the sense as it is sometimes ascribed to a city or a college. Worhip is held to be beneath the dignity of modern man. The reviewer already mentioned points out that “Mr. Ames is not much excited about theology. He seems, indeed, to regard theology as rather in a class with as- trology,” or, in other words, as superstition.1* Notwith- standing all this, this book is given to the world. under the title of The New Orthodoxy —a striking instance of liberalistic camouflage. The Biblical World is authority for the statement that the attitude to religion taken by Professor Ames “is so widely prevalent in our day as to be characteristic of it.’’** A similar instance is that of the book, The Next Step in Religion, by Professor Sellars, of the University of _ Michigan. This book is even more outspoken in its frank denial of God, eternity and all that is supernatural ; it is in fact, a defence of rank infidelity. Nevertheless it comes under the cloak of religion. The author says: “Is it justifiable to retain the term religion when its ancient setting has been so completely discarded [by the author himself]? I have myself asked this question many a time. For many. years I felt that it would be better to give up the word entirely as indissolubly bound up with those ideas and beliefs which the modern trained mind is outgrowing.’’5 He says, he has finally decided to re- 13 The New Republic, May 10, 1919. 14 The Biblical World, January, 1919, p. 84. 15 The Next Step in Religion, p. 221. 262 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM tain the term, but demands that “we must be firm in our negations of the old views.” “If religion is to sur- vive,” this author thinks, “it must be human and social. It is they who insist upon a supernatural foundation and object who are its enemies.’*® True, the defenders of a> supernatural religion, such as were Christ and the apos- tles and the Christian leaders of all periods, are the en- emies of the sort of thing for which this author stands. What offends us in particular is that this atheistic, ma- terialistic thing comes under a religious cloak and pre- tends to be a substitute for and improvement on the Christian religion. A reviewer of this book in so radi- cally liberalistic a paper as Unity, says, it is neither honest nor useful for one holding such a viewpoint to lay claim to the name of religion, “but,” this reviewer adds, the use of words in a sense totally different [from their real sense] 1s a part of the obscurantism now pela} [in modernist circles ].”2" It is generally admitted, as has been pointed out elsewhere, that the differences between the old and the new theology are of a vital nature and that the new the- ology is the result of a radical revolution. Is it not strange, therefore, that the attempt is made to carry water on both shoulders and claim adherence to the old as well as the new theological views or, as is now often the case, to openly deny the faith but retain the religious and Christian name? Many have surrendered to mod- ernism and yet undertake to convince the conservatives that such is not the case. Or they, while frankly reject- ing the Biblical theology and the old Christian faith, in- sist on retaining the Christian name. The case in the first instance is much the same as if a statesman who has stood for a given platform discarded its “planks” but not its mame, and endeavored to make ‘his old friends 16 The same, p. 225. 17 July 3, 1919. Italics not in original. eats ee ie ol ne soe Eee Te LS es eee ee ee a | Se ee + * a oF 1s, % COMMON HONESTY NEEDED 263 believe that he is loyal to the old party, while to those who accept the new platform he freely admits that he does no longer hold his former views. Should not his new friends, in their own interest censure such duplici- ty? One of the great causes of the general moral decline of our time is without question the general timeserving, dissimulating, dishonest attitude of modernists as con- cerns the greatest religious questions. A recent writer Says on this point: A man cannot profess one thing with his lips and believe an- other thing in his heart without suffering some loss of moral values, no matter what interpretation he may place upon his words. Inconsistency in religion does not end there. Nothing is more responsible for a growing loss of moral values than the kind of intellectual deceit that is so often practiced in churches. We talk about chicanery in politics and about subtlety in busi- ness, but they are well matched in many of our professions of religion; and if they sought sanction, it could be readily found in the practices of many ecclesiastical institutions. Professor Herman Mulert, of Leipzig University, wrote: “Nothing can more deeply injure Protestant Christianity than the suspicion that the minister does net speak out freely his deepest conviction,’'* in other words, that he pretends to be orthodox when such is not the case. “Strange it is that the liberal clergymen can- not see the injury they are causing both to religion and to their church by these methods,” says a British writ- er, referring to the practice of professing an evangelical doctrine which one does not believe. “Laymen who think and are honest are fast deserting the church, and, what is perhaps more serious, young men who think and are honest find it impossible to enroll themselves as her ministers.”?® It is interesting in this connection to no- tice that from England comes the message of a great 18 The American Journal of Theolegy, 1912, p. 311. 19 The Hibbert Journal, April, 1914, p. 676. 264 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM dearth of ministers. In the Church of England for the last six years the average number of ordinations has been 287 while the average annual loss to the ministry by death and retirements is about 700. The total number of clergy under 35 years is estimated at very little over 1,000, and observers state that unless there is an enor- mous increase in ordinations in the next few years it will be impossible to maintain the parochial system, as it has been known in England. It will be recalled that modernism has taken possession of all the theological seminaries of this church. The liberal ministry does not attract thinking young men, as the Unitarians and other liberal churches of America have learned to their sorrow. | A most discouraging “sign of our time” is the prev- alence of the practice of “hedging” among theological writers and professors. Men of high position in the church are playing fast and loose with words, they have no scruples against making a statement of their faith with mental reservations; they are trifling with the Christian religion and morality. It is all so different from the transparent candor with which the believers of all ages have stated their faith; it is even different from the method of scientists who would deem it be- neath their moral dignity to stoop to such more than quest.cnable practices. In modern theology “hedging” and camouflage has been developed into a fine art. The writer has in mind a book on prayer whose author is a pronounced liberalist. Though he does not believe in a God who answers prayer, but holds that the effect of prayer is entirely subjective, he has “hedged” to such extent and with such success that many a believing Christian has read his book, never suspecting that the author speaks of prayer in an entirely new sense and that the book is quite acceptable to radical liberalists. Many theological books are published in our day which PRACTICE OF HEDGING 265 the trained reader will recognize as unorthodox, but their authors are given to the practice of “hedging.” They do not commit themselves. And again there are authors who are clearly liberalistic but it is impossible to determine their own position as to the points on which they write. They may speak or such fundament- al doctrines as the deity of Christ, the Incarnation, Atone- ment, and the inspiration of Scripture. The reader is fully aware that they do not defend orthodoxy but fails to find an answer to the question what sort of “doxy” they stand for, or what they mean when they treat of the said doctrines. None other than Dean Fenn, of Har- vard University, says that readers of current theological literature must often wish that every writer were obliged to furnish a glossary, explaining the meaning of the terms which he uses.” He adds that theological writers can hardly expect a sympathetic hearing from thought- ful men unless they are willing to let them know what they are talking about. The supreme need of modern liberalism, Dean Fenn says further, is for definite and precise thinking and direct, plain speaking. The unvarnished fact is that a large number of the- ’ ological books has been published concerning which it must be said, that it is impossible for the readers to know what the authors are talking about. And those for whom these unreal, non-committal books were writ- ten are men and women who, in their own opinion, are too far advanced in mental development to accept the doctrines of the Christian faith. Could there be more convincing proof of the superficiality of modern liberal- istic thought? Yet it is to the very characteristic of hedging that some of the most widely used theological books owe their popularity. A British reviewer of the Theology by William Newton Clarke says: “In America 20 The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 518. 266 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM the fashion seems to be to defend a foregone conclusion by rhetoric. This makes the reviewing of the book be- fore us a peculiarly difficult task. It contains a great deal of what is known as ‘hedging.’ ’’?! From the viewpoint of general morality and common honesty theological hedging and camouflage must be unconditionally condemned. Such practices are un- worthy of persons of serious purpose. A man writing a book on theology who is unwilling to commit himself and to let his readers know what he is talking about is clearly a double-minded man—a sorry figure morally. It will be recalled that our Lord unscathingly censured the Pharisees and referred to them as blind leaders of the blind. The greatest of the Pharisees, Saul of Tarsus, testifies of himself after his conversion that his Pharisee- ism was due to blindness. On the other hand, the mod- ern theological hedgers who, having not sufficient faith in their faith to confess it, refuse to commit themselves on the greatest religious questions, are purposing in their heart, as it were, to let “the blind” go on ‘in their way. They do not offer them light as they conceive of it. They write books on theology, yet their great care is, not to commit themselves on the points in question, but to hide their own position — if they have a position to hide. Some of them boast that they are not so con- ceited as to think they have any knowledge about the deep religious questions. The practice of using words and phrases in a new and unreal sense which greatly modifies or annuls the real sense, and refusing to reveal what meaning is put into these words; such a practice would not be tolerated for a moment in any other line of study. It is a char- acteristic feature of modern theology, a sad comment on 21 The Hibbert Journal, vol. VIII, p. 210. hihi See gigi ial tere ai FN Sten RR i PS xs 2 ! TREACHEROUS ATTACKS 267 modern religious conditions, a striking testimony to the shallowness of the spirit of the age. A further evidence of an unsound moral attitude is found in the fact that some of the modernized seminaries not only stand for “counterfeiting” and “hedging” but they do so against the express will of the churches who own and support the seminaries. Without scruple, as it seems, the new theology men, though they admit that their teaching differs radically from the old faith, are oc- cupying property and using money designed to the main- . tenance and propagation of the primitive Bible faith. It will be recalled that the Unitarians were successful in the attempt to appropriate to themselves many church houses and other church property of evangelical congre- gations. In a similar manner liberalism has captured seminaries of orthodox Christian bodies. Mission mon- ey given by consecrated Christians for the propagation of the Gospel is used by liberalists for the purpose of modernizing the Christian converts from heathenism. All this is morally quite indefensible. On the occasion of the publication of Professor George Burman Foster’s principal work a Chicago daily newspaper made the following editorial comment on the situation in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago: We are struck, also, with the hypocrisy and treachery of these attacks on Christianity. This is a free country and a free age, and men can say what they choose about religion, but this is not what we arraign these divinity professors for. They are to be criticized on other grounds. Is there no place in which to assail Christianity but a divin- ity school? Is there no one to write infidel books except the professors of Christian theology? Is a theological seminary an appropriate place for a general massacre of Christian doctrine? Mr. Mangasarian delivers infidel lectures every Sunday in Or- chestra Hall and no one is shocked, but when professional de- fenders of Christianity jump on it and assassinate it, the public —even the agnostic public—cannot but despise them. 268 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM If the expression of these infidel sentiments by Christian teachers makes a marked and saddening impression on mature minds, how must it affect the young people in attendance at the university? These young people are not contaminated by the teachers of Spiritualism, Theosophy and free thought who abound in Chicago but when the very men whom they regard as pillars of the faith bend under them like a broken reed it is in- evitable that they will leave the university confirmed infidels. Even so, we are not championing either Christianity or infidel- ity, but only condemning infidels masquerading as men of God and Christian teachers. A remarkable fact deserves to be noticed here, name- ly that some of those who do not seem to be offended by the counterfeiting and camouflage of liberalism, in- sist that the old Bible faith is selfish and immoral. Dr. Herbert Alden Youtz, of Oberlin Seminary, says, for example: “Surely the time has come to insist that illib- eralism and conservatism are immoral and. unspiritual in a world of progress.”?? President A. C.. McGiffert thinks “religion must eschew altogether its egoistic and otherworldly character. There can be no compromise on this point.— The religion of democracy must cease to minister to selfishness by promising personal salvation and must cease to impede human progress by turning the attention of religious men from conditions here to rewards elsewhere.’**? Could it be, then, that our Lord and His apostles, by administering to the spiritual needs of men and showing them the way of personal salva- tion, ied them in a selfish, immoral way? Or is, on the contrary, the denunciation of personal salvation a cause for the present general moral decline? It is interesting to notice, in this connection, that the new theology rejects also the Biblical doctrine of the Atonement as immoral. It is immoral, they say, that a judge sentence one person to bear another’s sins. That oa = erg 22 Democratizing Theology, p. 13. 23 Religious Education, June, 1919, p. 160. Italics mine. MODERNIST PERVERSION 269 this is said in connection with the Atonement is due to a strange perversion of this Bible doctrine. The fact is that no one was compelled to suffer for another’s sin. God Himself became man in order that He might, of His own free will, bear the sin of the world. Christ is God. He became man and acted in accordance with the Father’s will when He became the sin-bearer of the world. The Father, according to the eternal plan of love “laid upon Him the iniquity of us all,” but He did so in accordance with the Son’s own free will and plan. And mark well, the purpose of it all was to do a won- derful work of grace for those who accept the great sacrifice, namely to put away their sin and effect in them a miraculous change of heart, that henceforth they will not serve sin. To say that this greatest of all divine plans and works is of an immoral character, is to take what you want, for want of a more appropriate name, may bt fitly called a satanic view of the Atonement. It is very peculiar (is it not?) that men who defend theological counterfeiting and similar modern practices make the astonishing assertion that they consider the Biblical doctrine of the Atonement immoral. Their conscience will not permit them, they say, to accept what is in truth the greatest and most wonderful deed of a holy God. Here, if anywhere, the words of Paul, Rom. 1:22, are applicable. XXV \ MODERN THEOLOGY IN THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD WAR casionally to “our bewildered and discouraged re- ligious life.”? Need it be repeated that general re- ligious bewilderment has followed in the wake of the modern denial of Scripture authority? The confusion obtaining in liberalistic circles has been greatly aggra- vated by the world war. The fact is that the great war has clearly shown the unreality of the foundations of re- ligious liberalism. As early as in the second year of the war it was predicted by liberalists that the internation- al conflict would probably result in a loss to religious liberalism. Dr. L. P. Jacks, the editor of The Hibbert Journal and a Unitarian leader of Great Britain, having pointed out that religion is interpreted by the old theol- ogy in terms of salvation, and by modern theology in terms of moral excellence, said concerning the world war: P esonaity « George Burman Foster referred oc- It is possible that humanity may emerge from this conflict not proud of its achievements but thoroughly ashamed of itself. —In which event, all those forms of thought which rest on the postulates of moral excellence will receive a set-back, and men will fling themselves....on the grace and mercy of God. That will be good for the theology of salvation,— Man, meanwhile, is neither as wise nor as good as he thought he was. A damaging blow has been dealt at the reputation of human nature; man’s self-respect is for the moment lowered.2 — It is probable that the theology which interprets religion as the pursuit of moral ex- 1A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 749. * The Hibbert Journal, October, 1915, p. 12. “LIBERALISM WAS TOO OPTIMISTIC” 271 cellence will remaim below the horizon for some time to come. — Who, then, can doubt that if the pursuit of moral excellence [or, in other words, the modern religious liberalism], is to turn out a success, man will have to do much better in the future than he has ever done in the past?4 In the opinion of Professor John Wright Buckham who represents the more advanced liberalistic school, the war has shown “with especial vividness” that liber- alism “was too optimistic.”® A Unitarian editor says: “Another mistake that Unitarians are liable to is making re- ligion too easy. We Unitarians are temperamentally optimists. We believe in human nature and in the progress of humanity. We have too easily assumed that evolution is an irresistible force impelling men upward whether they will or no [in other words, that religion is really a secondary matter in “our splendid cosmic climb’ ]. Such inevitable moral advance can no longer be asserted. Here is a great part of the world back in barbarism again, back to primitive brutalities, fears, hates, and horrors. No languid optimism is preachable in such a time as this. — Religion admin- istered in sugar-coated pills will not cure a mad world.6 Again the same writer says: Five years ago our favorite phrases were, “The parliament of man, the federation of the world [in other words, the brother- hood of man].” With ghastly surprise we woke from “our dream - of peace,” to such savagery and turmoil as the world had never known.— What shall the end of these things be? Must the slumbering passions of unregenerate humanity lie forever con- cealed beneath a deceptive peace? Does human nature hold, as a permanent source of danger, selfish and cruel lusts that may at any time turn a peaceful landscape into a battlefield ?? A writer in the leading liberal church paper of Ger- many Says: We now know that our task is not the removal of some ex- 3 The same, p. 14. Our author adds a proviso: “Unless human- ity redeems its Character by some great act of atonement, as it con- ceivably may.’ The editorial article in the same Journal, of October, 1919, shows that Dr. Jacks is disappointed in his hope for such a thing. 4 The same, p. 13. 5 Progressive Religious Thought in America, p. 315. 6 The Christian Register, May 9, 1918. 7 The same, March 7, 1918. 272 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM ternal imperfections on the body of humanity. No longer can we misconceive the real matter-of-fact state in all its serious- ness, nor indulge in the credulous optimism which assumes that, according to the law of evolution, humanity is gradually advanc- ing and that evil can be eliminated by a system of prudent, prac- tical, liberalistic, social reforms in business, state and church. What help is there in merely external remedies for a body that is suffering from an internal malady?8 Professor Emil Pfennigsdorf, of the Univessiiye of Bonn, Germany, writes: The optimism with which we expected all salvation for hu- manity, as well as for the individual, to come from modern im- provement and development, has proved a failure. This 1s the significance of the world war. The powers [of darkness] which are present in the human family, have through the war come to light, have done their work and have gathered strength. The naive trust in the human spirit, which was supposed to possess redemptive power for the individual as well as for humanity, has through the war been shaken in its foundation and made unten- able. We can no longer defend the view that the divine may be sufficiently found in our own consciousness. God has again be- come the Holy, the Mysterious, the Incomprehensible One, the Lord of the World, before whom humanity is “as a drop in a bucket.” In the face of the international darkness and the deep tragic of recent ‘history, the Idealist will find himself compelled to reckon with the thought that a real revelation of God is need- ed to enable man to find Him and to obtain life through Him. Clearly irrationality and moral corruption have possession of the human being in such degree that the sufficiency of human thought can be no longer asserted. What is needed is a revelation of God which has actually taken place in history and which will with convicting power seize the human soul in its depth® Dr. Frederick Lynch, one of the delegates to the first World Conference of the Churches for Internation- al Peace, who was in Europe on the eve of the great war and witnessed the first outbreak of it, testifies that he has changed his former views of the nature of man and of the supposed need of an “easy faith.” He wrote: 8 Christliche Welt, March 11, 1920. 9 Persoenlichkeit, seventh edition, p. 30 seq. ‘ eee ee ed. = ngs ee ee FAILURE OF NEW THEOLOGY 273 Another thing which we think every American of the fifty who got this frst sight of war has come to feel is that our relig- ion has broken down in its psychology, that our [liberalized] Gospel has been addressed to a man who does not exist, that our sermons have been preached to an imaginary man. We have been preaching to men as highly respectable, on the whole good, some of them saintly, while as a matter of fact this has been only seeming. They have seemed this because great tempta- tions have not roused them from their sleep. No one who came across Europe within the last month can ever hold this easy faith again. Men are beasts; cruel, lustful, revengeful, ravening, just as the Gospel represents them. There are exceptions, but in most of us the beast lies just below the surface, and nothing but a regeneration which shall sweep through men’s souls as a wind from heaven can make them clean.19 Dr. Richard Roberts, of the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn, writes: On the whole things were going on very well indeed. The old chariot of progress was forging its way bravely up the hill and presently we should arrive. Just where we were going to arrive did not seem very clear. That, however, did not matter. Wherever it was, we were getting there. And now the chariot has been suddenly and awfully pitched over a precipice and we are writhing at its foot in blood and tears. We had said compla- cently that the “ape and tiger” were at the point of death; be- hold they have turned upon us and are rending us to pieces. The moral tragedy of the world is being enacted in a muddy, bloody horror before our eyes, and our little fantastic dreams of progress are looking very futile and cheap over against this vast catastrophe. This war is the greatest revelation of the moral perversity of man since Calvary. The one thing we cannot do after this is to belittle sin or explain it away.11 The history which has culminated in the present catastrophe vindicates be- yond a peradventure the New Testament diagnosis of our human distemper, and it leaves us no room for hope save in the New Testament remedy. In the place of the futilities of a genial cul- ture gospel we must bring to the world again the power and the hope of a conversion gospel.12 10 Quoted in The Sunday School Times of August 21, 1920. 11 The Biblical World, November, 1918, p. 281. 12 The same, p. 286. 274 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM These confessions of liberalistic writers are of great significance. They show that the world war has, in the opinion of these writers, proved the erroneousness of the most fundamental teachings of religious liberalism; in other words, they are confessions to the bankruptcy of modern theology. The great war is unanswerable proof that, despite the belief in man’s natural goodness and in the world as God’s kingdom; despite the “genial culture gospel” of social and moral improvement, of ed- ucation and material advancement, the nature of the world has not changed. The world is, in the final anal- ysis, as antagonistic to true Christianity as it ever was. The advance of civilization has given the world a pleas- ing veneer, but has not changed its heart. Laiberalistic leaders now confess openly, as we have seen, that, in the light of the great war, their own gospel of moral and social advancement is not adequate to the great need of the human heart and of the world. Some of them admit now that a supernatural revelation of God is needed and that no other remedy for human sin will suffice than the New Testament remedy: a divine work of grace in the human heart. Now liberalism does not have these things to offer. To say that they are needed is to confess that modern theology is fundamentally erroneous. This means that liberalism is confessing to its own inner collapse, its bankruptcy. On the other hand it means also that there never was so opportune a time to show the true charac- ter of liberalism and to spread the New Testament message, as the present. In Germany modern theology has experienced a de- cided setback, a weakening all along the line.® Dr. William H. Drummond, secretary of the International Congress of Religious Liberals, says that “owing to the ) 143 Compare article by Professor Heinrich Weinel in The Hib- bert Journal for January, 1924. Cee, ee ee Te ee a a) at inn a RI a al alee ls a at = oo rallies Gale Se ee ee ne a ee eee ae ee eee. eT EUROPEAN MODERNISTS DISHEARTENED 275 war various liberal religious groups in practically all the countries in Europe have become disheartened.’’* Dr. Adolph Keller, of Switzerland, in an article on Protestantism in Europe Today, says: “Our liberal-mind- ed spiritual parentage in Central Europe is in a much ° more dangerous situation than the conservative ele- ments” in those parts. He says further: “Liberal peri- odicals in Germany can hardly be maintained without foreign help. The only liberal missionary society on the Continent [in Germany] is in greatest peril.” Unmis- takably the world war has served to show the unreality, the inherent weakness of modernism. 14 The Christian Register, October 25, 1923. XXVI THE INEFFICIENCY OF RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM } E have in recent years heard much about the W waning influence and inefficiency of the church. The cause is often said to be her unmodernism, the conservatism of her creed. Many liberal writers have asserted that the church is doomed if she persists to stand for Biblical orthodoxy. The way and the only way to save the church, we are told, is to open her gates to the modern liberalism, the new theology. This is the view generally held in liberalistic circles, as could be easily shown by quotations, were it not quite well known. So much more remarkable is the fact that not a few liberalistic writers frankly admit the inefficiency of the religious liberalism as compared with the old Bible faith. The new theology has in fact been tried out by the Uni- tarians and others and has proved a failure. It has not brought to the church the promised prosperity but has brought inefficiency and decay. So well known is this fact to those who have made investigation that it cannot be ignored by the representatives of liberalism. Some of them have, as already intimated, admitted it in their writings. A number of new theology writers are here | quoted on the subject under consideration. Dr. Douglas Clyde Macintosh, of Yale University, admits freely that “the old Christianity was positive and vital,” while the message of religious liberalism “has been predominantly negative.” “But mere negation,” he says further, “is not enough,” denial alone will not A SUBSTITUTE FOR THEOLOGY SOUGHT 277 suffice. In an article, written jointly by a few of the professors of the University of Chicago, the confession is made: “That there are undeniable losses in the de- parture from orthodoxy ought to be recognized.’* Dr. W. H. P. Faunce, of Brown University, a leading mod- ernist, says: “Under the old theology there was a spirit of reverence and obedience now often totally lacking.’ Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago, writes: “Precisely those people, whose thought- fulness and conscientious intelligence are imperatively needed in the work of the church, are also painfully aware that as yet nothing of a strong positive character has come to take the place of the older type of theolo- gy.’* Professor Durant Drake, of Vassar College, makes this confession: “But if we are candid, we must admit that wyon its constructive side [liberal] theology has less to show. We can raise far more problems than we can solve; and we know far less about the great enig- mas than men once thought they knew. The situation is far from satisfactory.”> “We have discarded the old piety,’ this author says further, “but have not worked - out new methods to produce the type of character we want.”® Again this author says: “We have not found out how to develop piety in the new way.” President Mc- Giffert speaks of our liberalistic time as “this time of confusion and upheaval.’ Professor Edward Caldwell Moore raises the ques- tions: “Why do traditionalists [conservatives] often fail of religious effectiveness? Why, however, do pro- 1 The American Journal of Theology, 1914, p. 554. 2 The same, 1913, p 97. 3 The same, 1916, p. 338. 4 The same, 1912, p. 606. 5 Problems of Religion, p. 413. 6 Religious Education, 1919, p. 313. 7 The Christian Register, March 27, 1919, p. 10. 8 The American Journal of Theology, 1911, p. 3. 278 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM gressives [speaking of liberalists] fail still more often?’® The same writer admits the fact that “the liberal move- ment in the nineteenth century illustrates often the disin- tegrating and devastating effects of lberalism.’’*° Under new theology influences, he says further, “there has been less evidence of this consuming anxiety for the spiritual life of man, less of this moving instinct of responsibility, less of the spirit of that outgoing care for souls which quickens men to ardent adventure and puts them upon heroism and self-sacrifice.”4* In another instance, Pro- fessor Moore says: “If there is always to be a superior- ity of Christian devotion, of a zeal for God and love of man, on the side of the conservatives; if there is always to be a religious inferiority of liberals, then it will still be to the conservatives that we shall owe the best of the world’s work.”” Professor Georse Albert Coe, of Union Theologieas Seminary, says: “Liberalism makes for ethical clarity and breadth, but it easily fails of ethical fervor.’** And again: “The very narrowness of dogmatism seems at times to produce religious intensity that has power with men, whereas the liberal thinker tends not seldom to become an cnlooker rather than a doer.’ Only the conservative theologians, says the liberal- istic thinker, Professor G. Santayana, of Harvard Uni- versity, “have anything to say to the poor, or to the rich, that can refresh them.” This writer points out that in a frank supernaturalism “lies the sole hope of the church.” “Its sole dignity also lies there,” he says fur- ther. “As to modernism, it is suicide [for the church]. It is the last of those concessions to the spirit of the 9 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 4. 10 The same, p. 5. 11 The same, p. 11. 12 The same, 1913, p. 25. 13 4 Social Theory of Religious Educatite p. 348. 14 The same, p. 336. * “SWEETENS THE PANG OF SIN” 279 world which half-believers and double-minded prophets have always been found making; but it is a mortal con- cession. It concedes everything, for it concedes that everything in Christianity, as Christians hold it, is an illusion.”?® “The modern liberalistic view,’ the same writer confesses, “takes the seriousness out of religion; it sweetens the pang of sin which becomes misfortune; it steals the empirical reality away from the last judg- ment, from hell and from heaven; it steals historical reality away from the Christ of religious tradition and personal devotion.’’?® The late Professor George Burman Foster, of the University of Chicago, in the preface to a volume in which he questions or denies every one of the Christian fundamentals, makes the remarkable confession that he does not desire this book to fall into the hands of those who yet cling to the old faith. “I could wish with all my heart,” he says further, “that our fathers and moth- ers might enjoy the blessed calm of the evening life free from the spiritual bewilderment of those who have to wander in the region of doubt and to feel their feet slip just when they thought that some rock on which they stood was firm.” This author admits that “the full and solid comfort and hope which warmed the hearts and il- luminated the faces of the fathers” is now absent. He tells us that he has simply endeavored in this volume “to cleave to the sunnier side of doubt.” In conclusion he expresses the wish that “there may be light and warmth cnough to keep us from freezing in the dark.’*" Strange as it may seem, Professor Foster in the same book lauds doubt to the skies as one of the greatest assets to re- ligious life.** He wrote this book in 1909 and his later 15 Winds of Doctrine, 1913, p. 56. 16 The same, p. 5. 17 The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, 1909. Italics mine. 18 The same, p. 133. 280 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM writings show that in more recent years he came to. the conclusion that religious assurance (“a rock on which we could stand firm”) is neither possible nor needful to find. Professor Thomas N. Carver, of Harvard University, in an article, What Ails the Church? points out that the impotence of the liberal church is due to “the loss of a definite, soul-compelling purpose or program.” He says further: Formerly the church knew exactly what it was for; now it does not seem quite certain. Then there was no wavering; now those churches which are not merely drifting are running around in a circle looking for some “cause” to espouse, or something vaguely called “social service” to perform. Then the church preached a clear and definite gospel of salvation, with damnation as the unattractive alternative; now it is not considered quite polite in the best religious circles to mention damnation, and, since there is nothing very definite to be saved from, salvation has lost its meaning. If the [liberal] church had a definite, soul- compelling purpose, we should find the liberal churches either progressing, or at. least decaying less rapidly than the more nar- rowly orthodox churches. But the opposite is the case.19 An object lesson as to the effect which the accept- ance of the new theology has on the prosperity and effi- ciency of the church, is presented by the church of Ger- many. Besides its many liberalistic pastors Germany had a few years before the war 120,000 teachers giving religious instruction in public schools who declared themselves to be ardent defenders of the modern relig- ious liberalism. Notwithstanding these facts the church in Germany had been fast losing ground, not only among | the educated but also the laboring classes. The latter, even before the war, had been largely won for atheistic socialism. A liberal theologian of Nuremberg, Germany, Dr. Rittelmeyer, said in 1910 in an article treating on _ 19 The Harvard Theological Review, 1915, p. 381 f. Italics mine. ORIGIN OF MODERNIST THEOLOGY 281 the effect of the new theology on the efficiency of the church: If we honestly inquire into the question as to the practical effects of modern theology, we must admit that the masses of the working people, counting millions, do not appreciate the church. Not only do they, at least as far as Germany is concerned, dis- trust the church but they refuse to have anything to do with it. And how about the educated classes? We have long made a hobby of the endeavor to win those who are supposed to be alienated and estranged because they consider the church too conservative. But what are the actual results? True, there are those who acknowledge that modern theology alone has en- abled them to remain in the church. But how insignificantly small is the number of these. What is the cause of the failure? Wherein consists the weakness of advanced theological thought? The answer is, mod- ern theology is the child of criticism. It may be rightfully said that it is of a negative character. We can readily understand the complaint of the orthodox who say: “One thing after the other is doubted and rejected and eliminated. Farther and farther goes this process of disintegration. What will remain in the end?” Modern theology is lacking, not only in distinctive- ness of its message, but in regenerating power which the old faith really had. Jesus is for us not the Saviour of the world and Redeemer of mankind, as he is for orthodoxy. A Unitarian writer observes: “Some people say the religious liberal is often more liberal than religious. Why is this true? One reason is that he has lost interest in the old forms of religion without gaining enthusiasm for the new.””° The editor of the Unitarian organ says: “There is far deeper conviction among the people who stand fast in the old order of doctrine than there is among those in the new.’’®4 Professor William Adams Brown, of Union Theological Seminary, New York, writes: What is to become, we are asked, of Sunday-observance, church-going, family worship, the habit of Bible reading and of daily prayer, if no firmer basis can be provided for their support 20 The Christian Register, July 8, 1920, p. 19. 21 The same, January 6, 1921, p. 3. Italics mine, 282 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM than the generalities of the new theology? And we ourselves, when we consider the easy-going religion which is all about us, often share this feeling, and wish now and again that we could recover the unquestioning faith of an earlier age, even at the price of some of its intolerance and narrowness.?2 Professor Albert Parker Fitch, of Amherst College, observes: “The great failure of the new age was and is that it has not yet found, or at any rate not whole- heartedly accepted any adequate substitute [for the old theology].” This writer realizes that many who have discarded the older religious views “practically annihi- late the distinction between good and evil and abandon themselves to a sort of emotional chaos and moral sen- timentalism. Such extreme individualism is common and lamentable enough.’’** Clearly religious liberalism, having not yet found an acceptable substitute for the old faith, no solid founda- tion upon which to build, is in a bad way. Small won- der that liberalists speak of “our bewildered and dis- couraged religious life.” What a contrast between the old Christian faith and the modern liberalistic religion expressing the pious hope that “there may be light and warmth enough to keep us from freezing in the dark.” Modernists have commonly supposed that the prin- ciple of liberty would serve as a foundation for a mod- ernist religious structure, and a substitute for the Chris- tian faith. We shall presently see that the Unitarians, for example, are united on no other ground than liberty. Every church or congregation is strictly autonomous — a law unto itself —in matters of teaching and practice. More recently various leading modernists have appar- ently become disillusioned on this point. They begin to realize that liberty, being in itself a negative principle, does not offer a real foundation for a religious union. A 22 The Harvard Theological Review, January, 1911, p. 17. 23 Can the Church Survive? p. 72. 24 4 Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 749. =e OA. see Pe t i r, June 5, 1919, p. 5. 21 The same, November 13, 1919, p. 22 The same, March 21, 1918, p. 2. Italics mine. 23 The same, September rs 1920, p. 9. * a 1 a a Pe ee ae hk Pee ee eS ee a —_ 7A he “SOMETHING LACKING IN OUR GOSPEL” 295 they are spendthrift, living on the capital of the past, on the prayers of the generations departed.?4 If we raise the question of the deeper causes of Uni- tarian inefficiency, and decay, we find some striking an- swers in the leading Unitarian organ. A writer in this paper says: “When Unitarians develop an evangelism which sends out preachers and teachers, exhorters and inspirers, that can drive home conviction of sin and can awaken the sense of moral responsibility, we will start to grow.””> Another writer in the periodical just men- tioned says: “Instead of considering theology of such negligible importance that God must be referred to from the pulpit in only the most general terms, ought we not to value it as a normal stimulus to mental and spiritual growth?’ And the editor of the same paper writes: “All the Sunday lectures on economics, sociology, la- bor parties, single tax, poetry and the Bolsheviki are not to be compared with those innermost questions of the spirit which have made theology the queen of sciences.’’? Again this writer says: “Do we know that a church is as strong as its theology?’?* Another writer in the Uni- tarian organ is of the opinion that the decay of Unitar- ianism can not be remedied by propaganda and organi- zation alone; in his view “there is something lacking tn our gospel itself.’?® Again the Unitarian editor has in another instance the following to say: This whole subject of theology is of transcendent interest and importance. We should rejoice if our readers would warm up to a searching, good-tempered, persistent discussion of doc- trinal matters. The need among thoughtful people in our church- es of just this thing is almost pitiable. Nothing is more crying. Theology is the articulation of religion, and we must have it or —— 24 The Christian Register, February 14, 1924. 25 The same, April 11, 1918, p. 7. 26 The same, November 27, 1919, p. 12. 27 The same, March 21, 1918, p. 2. 28 The same, April 15, 1920, p. 2. 29 The same, September 2, 1920, p. 9. 296 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM die spiritually. ‘The religion of the inarticulate” is pure non- sense. We have got to put it in clear-cut words. Now this is an interesting situation. Representa- tive men in the Unitarian Church come out with the open confession that the great need for Unitarians is a theology. They believe a theology is absolutely essen- tial to the life and prosperity of a church. Yet, there is abundant proof that the Unitarians as a church do not have a theology. The very essence of the Unitarian po- sition, and of liberalism in general, is, in fact, that doc- trine and theology are so unimportant that every man should be considered a law unto himself in such matters and the church should not stand for a particular theol- ogy. Religion, they say, “is a thing which exists inde- pendently of definite theological doctrines.” And is it not a fair assumption that the Unitarian editor, since he recognizes the weakness of a church without a theology, might make his paper of some service in that direction to its constituency? But the Christian Register is, by its own confession, an organ of religious liberalists both within and without the ranks of nominal Christendom. This paper publishes articles defending the baldest athe- ism. In an editorial review of a book in which theology is regarded as rather of the nature of astrology — super- stition—the Christian Register said: “It is for holding precisely the views here set forth that Unitarians have been denied Christian name and fellowship.”s1 What is here said about the message and teaching of Unitarianism applies equally to religious liberalism ta general, as advocated by some of the leading theolog- ical seminaries of America. This is a fact that is gen- erally recognized by Unitarians. The President of the American Unitarian Association says: “Unitarianism 380 The Christian Register, March 20, 1919, p. 5. 31 The same, February 20, 1919. The book here mentioned is Bes New Orthodoxy, by Professor Ames, of the bien, of hicago. FOES FROM WITHIN 297 means the system of religion of certain churches and in- dividuals whose Christianity is of the liberal type.” Professor Francis A. Christie writes: “The modernism of theological view professed by Unitarians is some- times indistinguishable from the modernism permitted in other Christian groups, and the necessity of a sepa- rate organization [such as the Unitarian Church] con- sidered as a protest against older theological views, is often disputed [by liberals in evangelical churches].’’** And the Unitarian editor says: “In all of the orthodox denominations there is a liberal wing in which the the- ological difference between them and us is almost noth- ing.”** It would take a microscopic analysis to discern the difference between some of the liberals in evangel- ical churches and the Unitarians,” says Zion’s Herald. Some of the Unitarian leaders have expressed their grievance that men who advocate Unitarian teaching stick to evangelical churches. Others again believe, and indeed rightfully, that the cause of liberalism is served better if the liberals stay in these churches “and reform them from within,” as a liberalistic writer ex- presses himself. Former President Taft, a member of the Unitarian Church, said in a public address: “The one trouble we suffer from —if it be a trouble — is that there are so many Unitarians in other churches. They are one with us in faith but do not sit in the pews of our Church. But that means that they [the other churches] are coming to us.” Without question ex-President Taft is right. Religious liberalism within the evangelical churches is a far more serious danger to the Biblical faith than without. Decidedly, a foe from within is the greater menace. It should be added that many liberal ministers in evangelical denominations have united with 32 The New International Encyclopedia, Article “Unitarianism.” 33 The American Journal of en Nee 1917, p. 554. 34 The Christian Register, April 15, 1920. 298 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM the Unitarians, only to be disappointed in the hope of success under the banners of outspoken liberalism. A prominent Unitarian writer testifies that “sixty per cent of those who enter our ministry from other denomina- tions, leave it,”** to engage in some other occupation, finding obviously, the liberal ministry an unsatisfactory calling. This fact is the more noteworthy, as the ma- jority of Unitarian preachers were formerly ministers in evangelical churches. : The question suggests itself, How is it to be account- ed for that evangelical churches whose ministers preach Unitarian doctrine, continue in some instances to show a growth and prosperity unknown in organized Unitari- anism? The answer is obvious. There are those who will unite with an evangelical church that has a liberal minister, but would not do so if the denomination in question were officially-committed to liberalism. Many are of the opinion that the preaching of the new theolo- gy from pulpits of evangelical churches is a passing phe- nomenon and that the churches after all stand for the old theology. The New Theology comes to us with great preten- sions. The old evangelical faith, so we are told, has out- lived its usefulness. A new theology is needed which, by eliminating the supernatural, will make the Chris- tian religion acceptable to the modern mind and thus save the church from (supposed) utter failure and in- sure her continued prosperity. Now in the light of the history and present condition of Unitarianism it must be said that these pretentious claims cannot be taken seriously. The Unitarians have tried out the modern liberalism. It has utterly failed to bring efficiency and prosperity to the church. While they have influenced multitudes toward discarding the Christian faith, they 85 The same, October 23, 1919, p. 6. ee a ee A COSTLY EXPERIMENT 299 have not succeeded in the effort to persuade many of them to support an undogmatic church. So prominent a Unitarian leader as Professor Christie says: “As an un- dogmatic church Unitarianism is conducting a great historic experiment.”*® In other words, Unitarianism is, after a century of effort and unparalleled opportunity, still in the experimental stage. It is conducting an ex- periment to ascertain whether an undogmatic religious society can be successfully established. And what a costly experiment the fight against the truth of the Gospel has proved! As for the Christian Church, it never had an experimental stage. It was from the very beginning engaged in the great work of saving souls and rendering to them service for their Christian life. The history of organized religious liberalism — with- in as well as without the Unitarian connection — offers an interesting field to the religious student. It affords unanswerable proof that the liberalization of Protestant- ism means its disintegration. 36 The American Journal of Theology, October, 1917, p. 554. XXVIII J THE CHASM BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW THEOLOGY | eralism seems to be unable to understand the posi- “- tion of those who believe that the Christian faith was once for all delivered to the saints through divine revelation. Of the inability, on the part of liberals, to understand the old faith there is a great deal of evidence. Modernists say, for example, the old faith has no oth- er foundation than the authority of the theologians or of the church. They tell us that conservatives, instead of asking, “What is true?’ ask, “What is authorized?” But the thought that the church, or the theologians, may on their own authority defend a religious doctrine, is, as intelligent people usually know, contrary to ortho- dox teaching and considered offensive in evangelical Christendom. Need it be said that he who recognizes |: is peculiarly interesting to notice that religious lib- the Bible as God’s Word, accepts its teachings as true, not as merely humanly authorized doctrines concerning which it is not known whether they be true or not? Is it not an insult to say of the conservatives that instead of asking, “What is true?” they ask, “What is author- ized?” Again representatives of the new theology say, they cannot accept the Biblical doctrine of salvation. They advance the view that salvation in the Bible sense is of a selfish — sinful — character. A number of writers have said, salvation must be socially interpreted and, unless God will save all mankind, their moral nature will not | permit them to consent to their own personal salvation. SS ee oS ee eee ae ie i ss ae ese eee ee FUNDAMENTAL CONTRASTS 301 The desire and willingness to be personally saved, they say, is rooted in selfishness. Mark well, we are asked by liberalistic theologians to accept the opinion that to do the will of God, as Scripture requires, and seek per- sonal salvation, is selfishness. If this were correct, it would follow that He whom we serve is not the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture but is a being _who delights in selfishness and sin. Has there ever been heard a more miserable falsification than the asser- tion that salvation, such as Christ and the apostles preached, is grounded in selfishness? Is not, on the con- trary, the acceptance of the old Gospel and the persona! experience and realization of salvation the only true an- tidote to selfishness? One of the fundamental Christian principles is the futility of self-effort in the realm of the true inner Chris- tian life. The sinner seeking salvation must come to the place where he realizes that he cannot be his own savior, that his own effort availeth nothing; he must be willing to surrender himself and take salvation as a free gift of grace. The same principle holds good in every other phase of the true spiritual life. The great- est need for growth in grace and for the continuation of conscious Christian experience on the part of the believ- er is the deep realization of the worthlessness of self- effort, and the desire that the self-life should cease. Mark well, this does not mean indifference or indolence, but the very opposite. This principle is emphasized in Scripture. Our Lord has taught that self, or the self- life should be denied, that without Him we can do noth- ing, that the branch must draw life from the vine, that to the poor in spirit is the kingdom of heaven, that “my strength is made perfect in weakness.” And Paul says: “When I am weak, then am I strong” (II Cor. 12:10), and again: “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which 302 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Now this principle is a rock of offence to representa- tives of liberal religion. For illustration: A Unitarian editor refers to an acticle in The Sunday School Times as “amazingly harmful stuff.” In this article it was shown that ‘““God’s provision for a Spirit-filled life is just a pro- vision for people who recognize their weakness and who have no illusion as to their strength.” Commenting on this, the Unitarian editor says: “Such exegesis is a crime.”? | Furthermore it has been said of various representa- tives of liberal religion. For illustration: A Unitarian do not regard salvation as a reality for this world but for another — not as a present reality but as something to take place in another world. Now, evidently, con- sidered from the viewpoint of liberalism, salvation in any true sense is out of the question, for the good reason that the Savior is denied. When, however, liberalists tell us that for those also who personally accept the old Gospel message there is no salvation in this life, they are making a rather curious assertion. He who realizes salvation as a blessed present reality, having in Christ a daily living, present, satisfying Savior—to such an one the said assertion of liberalism is absurd. The fact remains, then, that representatives of re- ligious liberalism find themselves unable to understand and appreciate the old Biblical truth. Of the things that are the essence of the Christian life and Christian truth they speak as the blind speak of the colors. Even the most precious truth of the atonement through Christ they regard as morally objectionable.? In the midst of a land of Bibles they find themselves in dense spiritual darkness. 1 The Christian Register, August 19, 1920, p. 3. 2 Compare p. 268 of the present book. MODERNIZING THEOLOGY 303 Dr. Francis Landey Patton, former President of Princeton Theological Seminary, has well said: “The only hope of Christianity is in the rehabilitating of the Pauline theology. It is back, back, back to an incarnate Christ and the atoning blood, or it is on, on, on to athe-_ ism and despair.” It would be useless to deny that the liberalizing and modernizing of theology has inherent atheistic tendencies; in fact, the full-fledged moderni- - zation of theology, as represented by the more advanced type of religious liberalism, demanding the democratiza- tion of God, is atheism. Evidence for this statement has been given elsewhere. Only recently a Unitarian editor published, under the title Modermzing Two Basic Beliefs, an article discussing a book in which the beliefs in God and immortality are radically denied, and such denial is spoken of as modernizing these doctrines. Moderniz- ing the faith is, in the language of hberalism, denying the faith. Liberalists tell us that intellectual difficulties stand in the way of accepting the old Bible faith. Considered from the world’s viewpoint this cannot be denied. But ‘the thought that the difficulties can be lessened or elim- inated by “restating” or liberalizing theology, is a delu- sion and a snare. The contrary is true. The acceptance of the new theology position raises difficulties that are greater than those of orthodoxy. The outstanding fact is often ignored that religious liberalism, though coming under a Christian name, has no acceptable foundation. Therefore it cannot claim reasonableness. We are told by representatives of lib- eralism that the question of the new theology’s founda- tion is, like theology itself, a secondary matter, but this assertion is unacceptable to thinking people. The theo- logian who recedes from the rock foundation of God’s 3 The Christian Register, May 9, 1918, p. 15. 304 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM Word, in order to take what he may suppose to be more reasonable ground, will, upon close examination, find that his new position is beset with greater difficulties than the orthodox position. If he is a thinking person he must sooner or later go backward or forward. It has been pointed out that many have gone forward into what is nothing more nor less than sugar-coated athe- ism, and others are drifting in that direction. It should be added that moderate liberalism shows an unmistak- able tendency of drifting into radical liberalism. And yet, the atheist’s position is an utterly untenable one. In fact, atheism (the denial of God, or the teaching that God is merely the immanent world energy) is a most unreasonable supposition. That learned men doubt the existence of God — deny that there is a great mind and purpose back of the universe—is indeed remarkable. True, the unbelievers give various reasons why they do not believe in God; but the wonder is, that they do not perceive the far weightier unanswerable reasons for ac- cepting the existence of God. That learned people fail to see the unreasonableness of the denial of God is clearly due to satanic influences, the devil having “blind- ed the minds of them which believe not.” It is a sort of miracle of Satan, and not a small miracle at that. The Gospel of salvation through the blood of Christ is to unregenerate, worldly-minded humanity, as well as © to an apostate church, a foolish, despisable thing. Mod- ern theology men have referred to it as “pestilential” teaching. Not a few well-known liberalistic theologians have only scoffing and ridicule for it. “For the preach- ing of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it 1s the power of God. We preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ (I Cor. 1:18, 23, 24). o—- ‘ 1 P > ST ee ee ee ee ee ee CHRISTIANITY EXPLAINED AWAY 305 Is it not an appalling fact that there are in our day men, supposed to be ministers of the Gospel, who openly declare that the crucified Christ, as the Apostles preach- ed Him —or, in other words, the message of salvation through the Blood —is to them as well as to their con- gregations a stumblingblock and an offense? But to us who are saved, says the Apostle, He is “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Now here is clear evi- dence of.the fundamental contrast between the non-be- liever and.the believer. What the one considers fool- ishness the other finds to. be the power of God. To him who has accepted the Gospel. message and is experiencing its power in his own. life there is nothing so vital, noth- ing so satisfying, nothing. to. make his heart burn within him, as the.sweet story of the Gospel, the message that Christ gave His life for us, “the just for the unjust that He might bring us to,God” (I Pet..3:18).. On the other hand, the preaching. ofa modernized gospel i is.indeed an ‘ offense. _ You cannot blame. those who. say they. find it an uninteresting, lifeless thing. It is a form of the Gos- _ pel minus the power thereof. The fact must not be overlooked that religion is po- ~litely bowed out of existence by modern “religious” lib- -eralism. Religious psychology, as. now taught in our leading seminaries, undertakes to give a biological ex- planation of religion. It denies that there is a special religious instinct. Religion, including Christianity, is reduced to a psychological formula, which means, in plain English, that it is explained away. The case is similar to that of a certain naturalistic scientist search- ing the heavens with his telescopes and declaring that he did not find God. Considered from this viewpoint there is no vital difference between Christianity and other religions. .Even natural religion, such as every person is supposed to have, though he may not hold ta any religion, is held to be identical with “the essential 306 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM religion of the spirit.” All this means clearly that, ac- cording to modern theology, religion cannot be a mat- ter of so great importance as has been supposed. Though it is obviously true that there is no vital differ- ence between religious liberalism and paganism, we must insist that the Christianity of Christ and the apos- tles is of another character. There are the most funda- mental differences between the old-fashioned Christian- ity and natural religion (such as you had before your conversion) or pagan religion. Unless this be a fact, it were folly to propagate the Christian faith. In that case our missionaries would have no better message than that of the social gospel which reduces Christianity to a scheme for social improvement. | Our faith is “the victory that overcometh the world.” True, there are those who in theory believe in the Scrip- tures giving assent to the Christian faith, but have nev- er personally appropriated the truth of Christianity to themselves nor made it a part of their own lives. Hence they do not have a real conviction of the truth, not the faith that overcometh the world. If they profess the Christian faith, they have not permitted the truth of the Gospel to become the determining factor in their own lives. They do not dedicate themselves to the service of God and of their fellows as followers of Jesus Christ. They find it too onorous a task to regulate their lives according to the Scripture requirements and to bear the reproach of Christ. They may profess an “other- worldly” faith but in fact are enwrapped in this present world, its treasures and pleasures. Yet, though it is quite true that salvation is of faith by grace, it is just as true that faith is not without its fruits and the Scrip- tures state clearly what these fruits are. Dead faith is not true faith. “Dead orthodoxy” does not deserve the name of orthodoxy. Worldliness and mere pretense are, like modern liberalism, deadly foes to true Christianity. i i te Ne GREATEST ENEMIES OF CHRIST 307 Both prophecy and recent history are pointing to the fact that the end of the present dispensation will bear a striking resemblance to the earliest Christian period. Our Lord and His followers were “despised and rejected of men”; the great and mighty of the world deemed them beneath their notice or heaped infamy on their heads. Did not the Sanhedrin condemn Christ to death on the charge of blasphemy? Did not some of the philosophers of Athens refer to the apostle Paul as a “babbler.” Yet after nearly three centuries of expan- sion the Christian Church began to grow cold and woridly. The rulers of the world, the worldly philoso- phers began to favor it. The church had a great out- ward growth. In the course of history Christianity was in many countries made the religion of the state. Every person was compelled by law to be a member of the state church. A large part of the world was apparently Christianized. But the supposed Christian religion of the masses and of the great of this world was a super- ficial thing. Now in our time we see the world throwing off its Christian cloak. Modern liberalism, though it has re- tained the Christian name, does not claim to represent Christianity as the apostles preached it. Once more, as in the days of the apostles, Christianity is despised and rejected by the leaders of thought. And mark well, the greatest enemies of the crucified Christ and of apostolic Christianity are men who hold some of the most respon- sible positions in the church, just as in that early day the most formidable foes of our Lord were the ecclesi- astical leaders in the religious body of which He Him- self was a member by birth. As modern liberalists in high stations openly reject the doctrines of the deity of Christ and the atonement through the Blood, just so the ecclesiastical dignitaries of that period condemned Him to death because, said they, “he made himself the Son 308 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM of God” (John 19:7). And as in that period the masses followed their ecclesiastical dignitaries rather than “the carpenter of Nazareth,’ the fishermen of Galilee, and the tent-maker of Tarsus, so the masses of our time will not accept the leadership of those who follow the foot- steps of Christ and the apostles. In a word, the world and the apostate church are openly despising the old Bible faith. And those who stand for the faith will not fare better at their hands than did Christ and the apos- tles at the hands of the high priests and scribes. The days are again upon us when to bear “the reproach of Christ” means something similar to what it did in tee primitive Christian period. The Apostle Paul refers repeatedly to: the fact dul the Gospel, as he preached it, was, in the eyes of the an- ‘cient unbelieving world, foolishness—“‘anti-intelligence,” to use a modern term. Now this is precisely the charge “advanced by modern liberalism against those who stand for the old Gospel. For example, Dean: Shailer Math- ews says: “Over against intelligence in religion [speak- ing of religion as represented by modern liberalism] is being organized anti-intelligence” meaning evangelical conservatism to which Dean Mathews refers in the same instance as “obscurant and reactionary religion.”* The attitude taken by modern religious liberalism to those ‘who represent the old Bible faith is similar to that of the unbelievers in all ages of history. The fact is that between the full-fledged religious liberalism and free thought, or unbelief, there is just this difference that the one claims the predicate “religious” while the other does not. What the representatives of religious liber: alism mean when they speak of non-doctrinal, non-cred: al, ethical religion, is the same thing for which the 4 The Biblical World, November, 1920, p. 554. ae ee | ee ee NAME OF RELIGION RETAINED 309 freethinkers stand, though they do not pretend to be religious. This means, as has been pointed out elsewhere, that the modern religion, as defended by its leading represent: atives in contradistinction to pronounced free thought, is a trifling thing, a shibboleth. An illustration to the point is found in the confession of a noted liberalist, Professor Roy Wood Sellars, who “for years felt that it - would be better to give up the word religion entirely,” but finally decided to retain it and unite with the Uni- tarians.© Though an outspoken atheist, as his writings indicate, he is a prominent member of the Unitarian Church. He, as well as the leading professors in the liberalistic seminaries, is a representative of the modern non-doctrinal, ethical “religion.” Now we are told that this class of religionists the agnostics and the pro- nounced atheists — stand for “intelligence” against the supposed anti-intelligence of those who are loyal to the faith of the apostles. Mark well, despite the word-jug- glery, camouflage and counterfeiting of religious liberal- ism, conservatives are accused of obscurantism. They can say, with the Apostle Paul: “We are fools for Christ’s sake’ —in the eyes of the modern deniers of the funda- mentals of the faith. That the denial of the fundamentals within the church necessarily means disaster is not open to argu- ment. Liberalism rejects the supernatural character of Christianity. Natural religion alone is to find favor. It is, by way of illustration, as if that which our Lord has planted—the grapevines— should be suppressed, and that which naturally grows—the briars, burdock, milkweed and their ilk— be permitted to take posses- sion of the vineyard in the hope that ultimately the fruit will surpass that of the grapevines. Every one knows 5 Compare p. 261 of the present book. 310 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM what will happen if that which nature is planting in the vineyard be given the right of way. The grapevine has no chance where that which grows naturally iis tolerated. Both in morals and religion the good plants require cul- tivation, effort and care. A general toleration of all plants in the vineyard would be an absurd proposition. The editor of an American daily writes: No church can, without self-stultification, retain in its min- istry men who deny that which the Church deems indispensa- ble doctrine. The Church cannot, of course, order the mind of any man and make him believe that which he cannot be- lieve. And no honest man will teach what he is convinced is not true. It were better, then, that the ministers who find themselves out of accord with ancient doctrines go their own way in peace, leaving it to the established churches to pursue their important and highly valuable iabors in accordance with unalterable conviction.® Consider for a moment what would be the conse- quence if the liberalistic professors in the seminaries ad- vocated modern moral teachings, such for example as the exceedingly loose views in regard to the relation of the sexes which are now advanced by not a few learned and influential writers in Europe. If liberal ministers preached such views, the decline of morals would be ap- palling. But clearly the denial of the Christian funda- mentals by preachers is not a whit less disastrous to true religion than the advocacy of immorality. Is the church of Jesus Christ going to countenance that sort of thing? The fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that compromise with the new theology means defeat. The thought that the cause of the old faith can be enhanced by a small measure of modernization is a delusion. No sooner have you discarded some point of the faith in fa- vor of a more liberal view, when you discover —if you 6 The Gazette Times, Pittsburgh, Pa., December 18, 1923. CONSERVATIVES A MAJORITY 311 are accustomed to doing your own thinking — that your position is unreasonable and untenable. “One thing is certain,” says Dr. Henry B. Smith, “that infidel science will rout everything except thorough-going Christian orthodoxy. All the flabby theories will go overboard. The fight will be between a stiff, thorough-going ortho- doxy and a stiff, thorough-going infidelity.”* A position of compromise is a losing position. It means that you virtually accept the liberal viewpoint. The great majority of the membership of the evan- gelical denominations in the United States and Canada is decidedly conservative. For this fact there is abun- dant testimony by various well informed writers. Pro- fessor Ozora S. Davis believes that fundamentalists, at a conservative estimate, number seventy-five per cent of all Protestants in the Far West and the Pacific Coast, fifty per cent in the South and Middle West, and at least twenty-five per cent in the East of the United States. Professor George W, Richards, a defender of modern- ism, has declared that three-fourths of all Protestants are conservatives. A Unitarian editor estimates that nine-tenths of all Protestants “believe in the infallible authority of the Bible.’* This means that as a rule the churches have it in their power to take a pronounced po- sition for the old Bible faith. Where this is not the case, or, in other words, where the liberals are a majority, those who stand for the faith once for all delivered to the saints find themselves, without question, face to face 6 The Gazette Times, Pittsburgh, Pa., December 18, 1923. 7 Apologetics, p. 194; quoted in The Princeton Theological Re- view, 1913, p. 502. 8 The Christian Register, November 29, 1923. Compare The Monist, 1915, p. 46; The Reformed Church Review, 1918, p. 302; The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 349; The Biblical World, August, 1915, p. 95; the same, November, 1918, p. 288; The Christian Register, August 19, 1920, p. 807. 349 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM with the duty to “come out from among them and be separate,’ as did the Cogregationalists of about a hun- dred years ago. It is impossible to suppose that, in the minds of those who are informed of the revolutionary character. of liberalism, there can be the least doubt as to the necessity of separation. The question is there- fore, Do the representatives of the old faith have the courage of their conviction? Are they made of the same stuff as were the apostles and martyrs? Are they going to take the position of loyalty to Christ, or are they willing, for the sake of a false peace, to recognize as a Christian church an institution that does not stand for the Christian truth? Is their faith genuine, or is it only sham and pretense? | The liberalists, needless to say, are not kindly dis- posed to the thought of leaving the evangelical church- es. The unbelieving men in the seminaries will not re- sign their positions of their own accord. Not a few lib- eralistic writers have advanced the opinion that the rep- resentatives of liberalism should stay in the churches, for the reason that they can do far more for the cause of liberalism if they are members of some evangelical church, than if they were without the church. A liberal Baptist writer in The Standard said: For a liberal leader to leave the Baptist denomination is to give aid and comfort to those reactionaries among us who seek to deny the Baptists’ sacred right to independent thought. — Thus the position of the liberal thinkers who remain among the Baptists is made more difficult, and the progress of liberal thought among our churches is greatly retarded. Of this there cannot be any doubt. Considered from their own viewpoint liberalists would, therefore, be ua- wise to leave the church so long as they are permitted to stay. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the old faith it is not only unwise but it is a glaring incon- sistency and an offence to permit men to plant “natural religion” in the vineyard of the Lord. And it is vain to MODERNIST FAILURE 313 suppose that a church which retains an evangelical name, but is committed to the cause of liberalism, as are. the Unitarians, will ultimately fare better than the Uni- tarians. That the churches which openly stand for lib- eralism and do not pretend to be evangelical, are suffer- ing from anzmia and in consequence find themselves slowly dying, is an undeniable fact. It must be expect- ed that the liberalistic churches within evangelical de- _ nominations, if they freely renounce the evangelical name and faith, will share the fate of the Unitarians. The fact is that the Unitarians were originally Congre- gationalists who have renounced their creed and have become outspokenly liberalistic. If the liberal element in present-day Congregationalism would openly and un- mistakably espouse the cause of modernism, as do the Unitarians, there is every reason to believe that they would find themselves “in the same boat” with the Uni- tarians. This explains also why liberal preachers, as a rule, desire to remain within the evangelical churches. It is admittedly easier to serve an existing evangelical church and work in the interest of liberalism than to build up a church on a liberalistic foundation. We have else- where quoted Professor Edward Caldwell Moore’s ad- mission that “the true course is apparently to have re- ligion and then to liberalize it,” and that “it is seeming- ly futile to have liberalism and then seek to inject relig- ion into it.’ The common experience of liberal preach- ers who are not connected with evangelical denomina- tions is that, even if they can draw a crowd, they can- not hold it. Modernism can hide its inherent inefficiency with comparative ease so long as it is permitted to stay within an evangelical fold. .All this means that he who fails to recognize the need of separation is indirectly aiding the cause of liberalism. Furthermore there is every reason to believe that, 314 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM with the progress of the modern apostasy and the draw- ing nigh of the coming of the Lord, it will become more and more evident that a cold, formal, worldly type of Christianity, tuned to the spirit of the age, will not stand the test. It must be expected that for the undecided and faltering who do not mean to take an out-and-out position for the old Christian faith, it will become in- creasingly difficult to cast their lot with those who stand for the faith. Those who do not know from experience the blessed reality of the truth of the Gospel and of a life of prayer-fellowship with God will find themselves in danger of being swept away by the popular current of unbelief. The apostasy that is evident on every hand is an un- mistakable sign of the times. It should arouse believ- ing Christendom from its lethargy and listlessness to a realization of conditions as they are. In consequence of the apostasy the church finds itself today face to face with a crisis such as it has never passed through in its history. The need of the hour is men and women who from conviction stand for Christ and the truth, for “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,” counting with Paul “all things but loss for the excel- lency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord” (Phil. 3:8). The crisis is here. Are we, as loyal disciples of our Lord, ready to meet it squarely? Are we willing to unreservedly come out on His side, taking an out-and-out stand for Him? May our answer be that of Peter at a time when many went back and walked no more with Jesus, and the Master addressed to the disciples the ques- tion, “Will ye also go away?’ Then Simon Peter +an- swered Him: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.’ (John 6:67-70). | Pa ee ee INDEX Abbott, Lyman, 10, 53, 100, 136 Absolutes, non, in modernism, 46, 51-55, 176, 225, 226, 240 Ackerman, H. C., 24, 97 Agnosticism, 27, 45, 239 Agriculture, teaching, 133 Altruism, 34 America, 59, 180 at Unitarian . Association Perego 195 °25./34; 35,72, 77. 129, 147, 260 Anarchy, religious, 210 Anderson, K. C., 12, 82, 85, 113 Andover Seminary, 285 “Anti-intelligence,” 309 Apostasy, modern, 17, 311, 312 Aristotle, 49 Arnold, M., 131 Astrology, 261 Athearn, W. S., 125, 231, 246 Atheism, 38, 70-74, 145, 189, 223- 228, 236, 243, 261, 302, 303 ~ Atonement, the, 25, 45, 57, 90, 91-96, 268; moral influence the- ory of, 91-95 Augustine, Church Father, 228 Australia, 138 Authority of Scripture, meaning of 24 “Back to Nature,” 118, 125 Bacon, L. W., 292 Bade, W. F., 151 Baptist Confessions, 202 Basis sought for modernism, 46 Bebel, August, 154 Bergson, Henry, 49 Berkowitz, H., 67 Berry, J. F., 258 Bible, English version of, value of, destroyed, 27 Bible reading neglected, 25 Bible Schools, 16, 252-256 19; Binet-Sangle, 85 Biologists, 236 Bolsheviki, 295 Bond of Unitarian Union, 82 Books, immoral, 245 Booth, General, 131 Bornhausen, K., 21 Boston, 293 BoydjeJ. ti 13 Bowden, E. J., 294 Brahmo Somaj, 171 Bridges, H. J., 259 British Bible Society, 28 Brooks, Phillips, 25 Brown, W. A., 65, 227, 281 Bryan ws: Teves P33 Bryany WL4)221 Bryant, 25 Buckham, J. W., 52, 271 Buddhists, 165, 176, 208 Butler, Nathaniel, 230 Calvin, John, 199, 228 Calvinism, 227, 228 Camouflage, theological, 17, 59, 72, 74, 82, 255-267 Campbell, R. J., 71, 81, 90, 116 Canon, modern, 2 Carver, T. N., 132, 280, 290 Cases Si fo 54 Channing, W. E., 286, 293 Character, salvation by, 93 Chapman, J. W., 180 Chautauqua, 167 Chicago Association of Baptist Ministers, 198 Childhood, faith of, 231 China, 180, 184 Christianity redefined, 11 Christie, F. A., 171, 289, 297, 299 Christ, deity of, 21, 37, 56, 80-86 His authority denied, 21 Christian Science, 197 Church discipline, 191-197 316 Church fathers, 30 Church, modern idea of, 97-99; rights of, 194; sphere of, 142 lark iy W., 56 Clarke, James F., 291 Clarke, Wm. N., 25, 27, 30, 60, 66, 81, 101-103, 110-113, 265; dog- matism of, 107 Coe, Geo. A., 146, 147, 159, 175 212, 278 Colleges, liberalism in, 16 Community Church, 200 Compromise unacceptable, 309 Compton-Rickett, J., 250 Comstock, Anthony, 245 Confucianism, 14, 165, 176 Confusion, religious, 35 Conscience, liberty of, 191-210; modern type of, 194; modern view of, 118 Consciousness, religious, 50 Constantine, Emperor, 192 Constitution of United States, 203 one old and new theology, Sia Conway, Moncure D., 120, 218 Conwell, Russell D., 235 Cook, E. A., 86 Cooke, G. W., 36 ope,” B,D. 221 Cope, H. F., 143, 150, 164 Counterfeiting, theological, 266 Crane, Frank, 143, 221 Cross, George, 53, 92, 187, 199 255- Dance, immorality of, 122, 123 Darwin, 25 Davis, QO. S.,; 311 Decline, moral, 119 Definite teaching needed, 30 Deism, 63 “Democracy of God,” 147 Democracy, religious, 138-144 “Democratizing God,” 143 Denial of fundamentals, 14 Depravity, total, 89 Departure, radical, from creeds of Christendom, 12 Descartes, 49 Despair, result of modernism, 28 Moan Shen effects of liberalism, INDEX Devil-worshippers, 165 Devotees, of India,. 38 Dietrich, J. H., 70 Dijkema, F., 283 Dissenters, evangelical, 201 Disunion, organized, 211 Dixon, A. C.,, Doan, (Hes ir “Doctrine not essential,” 51-54, 309 Dodson, G. R., 72, 73, 188, 243 Dogma, rejection of, Si, 52 Dogmatism, negative, 54, 220, 221 Dole, C. F., 224 Dotterer, R. H., 65, 66 Doubting God’s Word, 39, 40 Drake, Durant, 164, 168, 277 Drews, Arthur, 90 Drummond, W. H., 274 - ‘ 2 " - = - rw < Ee ee ee ee A er ee a Barp, E44, eo Easy-going modern faith, 40, 42 Edison, Thomas, 221 Eliot, C. W., 164 Eliot, 5 Oo 164, 208, 296 Ellis, G. E,, 12, 292 Emerson, R. W., 292 Epictetus, 204 Error, a mortal, 132 Ethical Culture Societies, 34, 56, AIA AL4 CLTS Eucken Rudolf, 49 Evolutionism, 118, ‘221-227 Experience, religious, definitions of, 35; of spiritual realities, 42; not a substitute for Scripture authority, 47 “Faith in faith itself,’ 52 Falsehoods, historical, 198 Fatherhood of God, 40, 91, 92, 290 Faulkner, J. A., 111, 244 Faunce, W. H. P., 9, 276 Federal Council of Churches, 163, 180, 187-189 Fenn, W. W., 40, 46, 90, 228, 265, 286 Fitch, A. P., 86, 144, 282 Forsyth, P. F., 53 Foster, G. B., 15, 25, 76, 77, 78, 83, 103-109, 116, 198, 235, 240, 267, 270, 279 France, 196 HA umanitarianism, INDEX Freedom, religious, 191-210 Biter 210 Freethinkers, 114, 115, 309 Fundamentals denied, 14 Garvie, A. E., 56, 64, 116, 228 Gates, Errett, 11, 143 George, Lloyd, 188 Germany, 281 Gilbert, G. H., 11 Gillies, R., 180 God, His fatherhood, 40, 91, 92, 280 ; His nature, 62, 63; moder- nist conceptions of, 64, "70-72 Goethe, 25, 246 Gorky, Maxim, 138 Gospel, modern, suaned nats? 295 Gray, James M.. 254 Great Britain, 180 Greene, W. B., Jr., 181, 237 Haas, J. A. W., 125, 221 Heackel, sBernst: 70.» Hall, G. Stanley, 76, 212 . Hall, Winfield S 122 Harper, W. R,, 161, 245 mracrisw GS 254 Harrison, Frederic, 131), Harvard College, 285 Heathen not to be converted, 173 Hedging, 263-265 . .. Heresy: trials, 200 Higher criticism, 16; defined, 22 Hill, Wm. B., 232: Hirsch, 85 Be Historians, 236 _ Historico- critical method, 00 ‘Hobbs, W. H., 240, Hodge, C. W., & Hodgkin, H. Y. 148, 153, 161, 172 Holmes, J. H., 55, 123, 145, 204, 208 Holmes, H. W., 166 Hopelessness of modernism, 120 Horr, G. E., 150 Horton, R. F., 29 Humanity, religion of, 173; wor- ship of, 79 the new reli- gion, 47 Huxley, 221 Idolatry, modern, 78, 146 317 Immanence, divine, 62-76, 116, 117, 218 Immorality of camonflage, 255- 269 Immortality, 212-215 Imperialism, 219 Incarnation, modern views of, 81 India, 28, 39, 171, 179 Inefficiency of modernism, 276-283 Inerrancy of Scripture, 18 Ingersoll, R. G, 9,.10, 17, 243 Inspiration, counterfeit, of, 24; modern theories of, 19, 205. doc- trine of needed, 29 © Intolerance, 150, 154 _Inwood, Charles, 180 Irreconcibable positions, two, 16 Jacks, L. P., 270 . Jaines, Wm., 25, 212. Japan, 171, 178-180 Jesus, “modernized,” 84; ibecale: tic view of, , 463+ “a, bade ley genius,” 59 Jews, 16, 35, 59, 60, 188, 208 Johnson, G., a Jones, F. S., 247 Keller, A. 275 _ Kelly, H. A. 121 Kepler, 25. : Kim, Y. Dr., “122 Kirkland, Pres., 286 Knox, John, 206 - Koran, the 205 Krauskopf, Ne bea Kurtz, D. W.;. 81, 86, a1 Lake, Rveom 68 Lamson, A., 286 Laplace, 219 Lawrance, I. L., Leinbach, P. S., 189. - Leuba, James H., 236-239 Liberalism, devastating effects of, 278; failure of, 40, 274, 281; inefficiency of, 276-303 7 Liberals, a minority, 311; in evan- gelical churches, 297, 312 Liberty, religious, 191-197, 198-211 Locke, 25 Loosten, de, 85 Lordship of Christ, 153, 154 162, 172 318 Lowell, 25 Luther, 33, 199, 251 Lynch, Frederick, 272 Machen, J. H., 16, 30 Macintosh, D. fon 85, 178, 276 Meaterlinck, oo, 118 MacCauley, C., 181 Macfarland, C. S., 187 Man, divinity of, 13 Martineau, J., 257 Martyrs, 98 Marx, Karl, 135, 154, 155 Masonic Order, 151 Materialized religion, 97 Mathews, Shailer, 9, 60, 156, 174 184, 308 McAfee, J. E., 149, 155, 157 McConnell, F. J., 66, 67, 250 McGiffert, A. C., 255, 268 McKeever, W. A., 69 Message of the Bible, 41 “Method alone essential,” 45, Miller, Dr., 172 Ministry, the liberal, 242 Miracles, 63, 66, denied, 22 veramams Education Movement, 1 47 Missions, opposed by liberals, 169; 183, mission money misused: 267; modern view of, 169-183 Modernizing the faith, 303 Mohammedanism, 14, 24, 35, 59, 188 Moody, D. L., 250 Moore, E. C., 11, 76, 169, 178, 208, 277 Moral interpretation of religion, 36, 38, 43, 113-119 Moral truth only relative, 117 More, Paul E., 238 Morehouse, 249 Morley, John, 130, 257 Mott, John R., 183 Mulert, Herman, 263 Narrowness of liberalists, 107 Naturalism, 216-228; religious, 67, 68; spiritualized, 97 Natural religion, 39 Necromancy, 162 14, 44, 55, 63, 67, 68, 80, 143, 150, 189, 213, 219, INDEX Negation, new theology, 13. Nero, 156 Neuman, H., 157, 258 New England, 192, 202 New theology inessential, 68; without a foundation, 45-47, 57 Non-doctrinal religion, 52, 309 Northrup, C., 14 Obscurantism, modernist, 262, 308 Old Testament Scriptures, 30 Orr; Hi Ru 257 Otherworldliness, 214 Orthodoxy, the new, 11, 77, 260; “dead”, 96, 306 Paganism, 24, 35, 38, 306, Pantheism, 117 Park, C. E., 294 Patten, S. N., 71 Patton, F. L., 303 Paul, apostle, 99, 131, 306 Persecution, 154, 192-197 Peter, apostle, 98 Pfennigsdorf, E., 272 Pharisees, 266 Philosophy, 49, 67 Physicists, 236 Platner, J. W., 287 Plato, 20, 49 Poison, sugar-coated, 111 Popery, modern, 67, 100, 103, 107, 108 Prayer, 62, 75-79; atheistic type of, 78; strange definitions of, 76 Proof-text method, 19 Protective tariff, illustration, 17 Protestantism, 192, 199, 206, 208, disintegration of, 299 Psychologists, 236 Psychology, religious, 39, 222, 305 Radical departure from the faith, 15, 16 Randall, J. .H., 53, 71, 129; 173; 186 Rationalists, 35 Reauschenbusch, W., 53, 55, 64, 91, 92, 94, 114, 134, 135, 138,, 143, 147, 212 Reconstruction, personal, 127 Reeman, E. H., Reese, C. W., 73 INDEX Reformation, the, 192, 206, 208 Reform Jews, 170 Regeneration, 40 Relativism, 51-55, 169, 226, 240; a sickening sense of, 46 Religion, creedless, 296, definition of, 34; easy-going modern, 283; experiental, 39; explained a- way, 222, 306; materialistic con- ception of, 36; natural, 39; se- _ condhand, 158 Religious education, 158-169 Religious Education Associaton, 162-171, 176 Religious instinct denied, 36 oe ate instruction abandoned, 159 Religiousness and blindness, 39 Resurrection of Christ, 27 Revelation, divine needed, 41; minimized, 55 Revolt against doctrinal theology, 11 Revolution, religious, 9-17, 262, Richards, G. W., 311 Ritschl, A., 36, 58-60, 90, 227, 255 Rittelmeyer, F., 280 Robins, Raymond, 138 Roberts, Richard, 273 Roberts, Th. M., 167 Ross, G. A. J., 116 Royce, J., 34, 64, 71 Rural Life Movement, 131 Russell, Bertrand, 79, 120 Sabatier, A., 34, 199 Sachs, Arthur, 54 Salvation, conditions of, 93; mo- dern conception of, 15, 301; socially interpreted, 127-140, 301 Sanhedrin, 307 Santayana, G., 196, 278 Satan, 187 Savage, M. J., 27, Schaff, Philip, 252 Schleiermacher, 58, 60 Science, 216-222; not the basis for theology, 46 Scripture, authority of, 44, 51; authority of, denied, 25; in- spiration of, 18; new theology view of, 101 319 Scudder, Doremus, 181 Secondhand religion, 158 Secret orders, 194 Secularization of religion 116 Self-destruction 214 Sellars, R. W., 34, 36, 47, 72, 97, 145, 186, 260, 309 Seminaries, liberalism in, 16 Sentimentalism, moral, 282 Shakespeare, 24, 26 Sherman, Stuart P., 118, 125 Shibboleth, 107, 309 Shipwreck of faith, 105, 232 Shotwell, J. T., 12 Simons, Minot, 163 Sin defined 89; making light of 90; modern views of, 116 Sinlessness of Jesus denied, 87 Sinful nature of man denied, 15 Smith, G. B., 23, 25, 27, 45, 46, 51, 70, 71, 114, 118, 129, 146, 172, 174, 176, 233, 256, 277 Smith, Goldwin, 110, 214, 219 Smith, Henry B. 311 Soares, Th. G., 76, 146 Social gospel, 127-140 Socialism, 55, 134, 135 Social service, 41 Societies, ethical culture, 43, 56 Sociologists, 236 Socrates, 204 Soul, supposed evolution of, 36 we Tan ak divine, denied, 140- 154 | Sperry, W. L., 189 Spencer, Herbert, 120, 131, 221 Spiller, G., 114 Spurgeon, C. H., 30, 190, 250 Stall, Sylvanus, 121 State churchism, 192, 201 State, sphere of, 141 Stephen, L., 49 Straton, J. R., 126 Strong, A. H., 68, 242, 247 Substitutes for theology, 55 Stuiccess, two views of, 98 Sunday School Association, Inter- national, 161 Supernatural denied, 64, 70, 261 Superstition, accusation of, 12 Taft, former President of U. S., 184, 297 320 Tagore iy biiay Tennant, F. R., 83 Tennyson, 25 Testament,.the Old, 31 Theater, corruption of, 123, 124 Theism, said to be outgrown, 72 Theological schools, conference of, LB6) 253): liberalism in, 16, 230- 245 Thermopylae of. Christendom, 30 Tokugawa, Prince, 173 Tokyo, 173 Toleration, 140-156 Transmigration of souls, Triumph, liberal, defeat, 13 Troeltsch, 61 - Truth supposed to be relative, 46, 51-55, 169, 226, 240; fended, 145 Putts.) Joe, 2118 _ Twofacedness, Ritchlian, 59 Tyrrell, George, 250 . 212 Unbelievers, are » there any? 10 Uncertainty, . agnoy of, 46 ~ Unequal yoke, 185 Unitarian: attitude to’ missions, 170; conference, western, 36; denial of. the faith, 52 Lak eaueenin failure of, 284-299, Unitarian ministry, 298 _Unitarians, 28, 43, 311 Unionism, religious, 184-191 Union of church and state, 141 Uniting all religions, 188 to be de. INDEX erage ae sce of modernism, 255-267 Geet religious, 35. Value-judgments, 227 Van Dyke, H., 228 Variations in Bible “manuscripts, 19 Vedder, H. C., 213 Vichert, Joh 206, 207 Virgin ‘birth of. Christ, 26 Voodooism, 162 Ward, Wm. H., 125 Ware, Henry, 286 Warfield, B. B., 83, 85 Weakness of modern religious education, 165 Wellhausen, 27. Wesley, John, 205 Whittier, 25 Wilcox, Ella W., 122 Williams, Roger, 198, 204, 208, 209 Wise, Rabbi, 123 Word- jugglery, 24, 253-256 - World and church, 97-99 — World war, 270- 275 Worship abandoned, 76, 145, 146; minimized, 77; “must be ‘relin- quished,” 70, 261 Y. M. GC. A. 209 Youtz, H. A. $2) /52) 143, 158, 165, 224, 228, 268 Zerbe,- A. S., 224, 237 Zwingli, 206 fi H : : ae Lard ae A ota 5 et ; / 1 Ihe n** hat + itt it burst " "4 bh il in ll 012 01083 [ | ———— | Nii Pict. ee ti cern amen ty mae SEN fee A ATTRA Si a on et Et wrens ij WA 4 s ae — + eee = oe eene te. 29 — punaan * eerste nee meer met er ta - > - a