A. Z. CONRAD na » + tees arn ere ae rte < i= x} bres + Pe ee) eet tate annual a ~ phe RE er hr ees A ee ee ee oan bs dT RARER ERED BER ered Lee eter anther gn. cL >see ie ys eis rR ‘ r ey eet, OL As ae ar a (a F a a a ene saat f te AY it z Pts a uy iy f ? RCE: Seyret att Fe my +i f Ly 4) vl bates ee Ae ? (f _ hsby ye i) 4 ’ 1 , cd ve Bags f i yr , ie i tg ‘s its ; ay A ; it ey ! M4 : ; ; ) Shae eae rey Ae i Re i ’ i J ' he ' 4. * an Pe ‘A, : { a } 4 i ¥ yj vig 3 sh } , 4 ify . “ : iy ; a ESUS CHRIST AT THE CROSSROADS } is f dee z of 1 a ' ; ' ' } jis ny ' i h) ra \ py J at wt i f \ + \ i] 7 i ¢ ‘ : vat Rye , i ; 7 . ] 4 H : tals : i " F ; ‘ * a i ; : , r + _ Jesus Christ at the Crossroads | By A. Z. CONRAD, Ph. D., D.D. Pastor, Park Street Congregational Church, Boston, Mass. New York CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EpDINBURGH Copyright, 1924, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY Printed in the United States of America New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street To the members and Congregation of Park Street Church, of Boston, Mass., in grateful recognition of never-failing loyalty and love during eighteen years of delightful ministry, this volume is affectionately inscribed. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/jesuschristatcroOOconr Preface life the upward incline is the chief business of Christianity. The fact of the Incarna- tion finds its chief significance in its purpose and power to face the world Godward. The slightest upward trend ultimately reaches the Throne. The slightest trend away from truth means the dismal swamp of doubt and then—the pit. Appraisements must have a goal in view. The chief peril lies in smoke-screening the consequences of the course pursued. Unmask error and men will flee from it. Given an unpiloted ship and a wild sea with a shoreward drift, and wreck is inevitable. Given a luring light on a rock-bound coast with a pre- sumptuous pilot, and every passenger is imperilled. Again, a dragging anchor will not prevent dis- astrous drift. Language is our medium of expression. Words and phrases may be as successfully used to camou- flage error as to reveal truth. E'ven the name of Jesus may be emptied of its content and divested of every Divine significance. A passion for “ recentness ’’ dominates present- day thinking. “ Newness”’ is, with many, synony- fi |B peers determines destiny. To give 8 PREFACE mous with trueness. The “last dispatch” is ac- cepted as a new revelation of truth. Yesterday’s realities are bartered away for today’s materialities. But truth is timeless. It is neither more nor less true because of the date label of its discovery. Denials destroy no verities. Christianity rests on unshakable validities. It is the blazing presence of truth that best reveals error. Contrasts and com- parisons unmask the false and emphasise the trust- worthiness of truth. In the religious thinking of today two directions are taken. Evangelicals represent a group defi- nitely marked by the fixed course adopted. Mod- ernists constitute another group whose direction is divergent from that of the Evangelicals. However slight the difference may seem at the outset of the movement and however indistinguish- able from an ethical standpoint, their courses lead to a destiny as wide apart as the poles. There are many varieties of individual divergence, yet the divergence is there. Many professed evangelicals have lost sight of the mountain-peaks of Revela- tion while many modernists are straining at the rudder to keep the prow from leaving the course that will eventually land the ship in the port of Peace. The main fact of life is the trend and tendency. The object of this book is to set in clear contrast these two dominant groups of professed Christians with reference to the courses followed and the ef- PREFACE 9 fect on the individual and on society of each course. Labels are often libels. The writer is not a “literalist ”’ nor a “ verbalist,’ yet a believer in a fully inspired Gospel of Christ. This book is writ- ten from the standpoint of a Progressive Evan- gelical, which designation the writer accepts. Fei ain Ce Boston, Mass. Contents . THE CONTROVERSY . . CoNTRAST AND COMPARISON . CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERNISM . THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF SILENCE . . THE CuHRIst OF THE GOSPELS OR THE Jesus oF MoDERNISM—WHICH? . . THE IMPREGNABLE FortTREsS REVELATION . . THE VircIN BirtH . REDEMPTION . THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER . . CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE . . THe MINistry AND MopERNISM . SCHOLARSHIP . RELIGIOUS AWAKENING . Tue Biicut oF MopERNISM . EVANGELICAL INITIATIVE . Tus Lost Cumst . . THe BricHtErR Day 11 OF EDR . 106 . 114 ey ESO My . 142 I THE CONTROVERSY T is a battle-royal. Modernists have issued the challenge. Evangelicals accept it. There is no discharge in this war. It is the bounden duty of believers in the Christ of the Gospels to lay bare the causes of present-day apostasy. Camouflaged error is illusive and alluring. The masked batteries of Modernism must be revealed and their destructive nature unfolded. Clad in the livery of Heaven, mistaken leaders conduct the unwary into the labyrinth of doubt, from which extrication is difficult. Opposition is to be met out in the open with straightforward, unequivocal af- firmation and argument. For Evangelicals who know it is a matter of life and death; either to ignore the present anti-supernaturalist movement, or to treat it with levity, is a betrayal of a sacred trust. Educated men of conviction appreciate its gravity. If any subject in God’s Universe is vital it is the secret and source of life everlasting. Those who think deeply and without bias, know that ethics and service must have adequate motive. There is much amiable agnosticism. It is much pleasanter to fellowship than to fight. Loyalty 13 14 THE CONTROVERSY cannot sacrifice truth for amity. Conviction com- pels a constructive programme independently of sentiment. Truth has always advanced in the teeth of storm. The conflict calls for courage and conscientiousness. The world has no use for tem- porizers or trimmers. Diplomacy in religion is softness and weakness, and means surrender. In plaintive platitudes modernism is pleading for an armistice. We are told that the present agitation is most disagreeable and might hurt the Church. Better that the Church be disturbed than destroyed. Better cleavage than chaos. Better denominational division than unhindered drift toward doom. Bet- ter arousement and alarm than the paralysis of ignoble pacifism. Better the painful probe than the permeating poison. Better that modernism be ham- mered than that the Church should be hamstrung. As well say the foundation of Washington Monument is not important to the permanence of the structure as to say that the outstanding facts of Revelation do not matter. If a switchman is throwing a lever that will wreck a train, every in- telligent and right-thinking man would say, “ Flag the oncoming train.” It is high time for the men and women who have had that deep and holy trans- action with God, known as conversion and regener- ation, to awaken out of sleep. “Questions of theological and religious prin- ciple are not to be adjusted, like political measures, by compromise, but must be fought through to THE CONTROVERSY 15 their last results, and the truth must either conquer or (for the time) succumb.”—Schaff, History of the Christian Church, III, 621. “Tt has often been remarked that truth and error keep pace with each other. Error is the shadow cast by truth, truth the bright side brought out by error. ’—Dean Stanley, Apostolic Age, p. 182. Many shades of opinion are finding expression. There are two great divisions and in one or the other of the contending camps are to be found all the people who have definite religious opinions. There are, after all, two great parties, the evan- gelical and the modernist. The difference between the two is as wide as the poles. The evangelical group holds unequivocally and tenaciously to the Revealed Gospel. This group insists that we have an authoritative and reliable Revelation from God in both the Old and New Testaments. ‘They accept readily and unhesitatingly “The Glorious Gospel of the Blessed God” at its face value. For this acceptance they offer no apology. It follows, as a matter of course, that they accept Jesus Christ exactly as He is represented in the Four Gospels. They recognise that Christianity is not based upon theory but upon a series of unalterable facts. ‘They have therefore no difficulty whatever in attaching an authoritative value to all the teachings of Jesus. The Bible is to the evangelicals the Inspired Word of God, worthy of unquestioning credence, and the one external rule of faith and practice. Modernism 16 THE CONTROVERSY has, as its distinctive feature, a repudiation of an authoritative Revelation from God, in the Bible, and places strictures and limitations on Jesus Christ Himself, as portrayed in the Gospels. The Bible is to the modernist a series of sifted traditions of varying and often questionable value. Modernism is governed by a naturalistic philosophy of God’s universe and of human life. While there are large numbers of people in the modernist group who re- pudiate its logical conclusions, they are all headed the one way, and are inevitably and irresistibly led toward agnosticism with an ever-lessening trust in a Divine Revelation. The issue before us is, therefore, not to be lightly regarded. Nothing could be more futile than the effort to make the general public believe that this is a controversy over words and phrases unworthy of serious consideration. As a matter of fact, it isa life and death struggle. While Christianity con- tains prudential directions, friendly counsel, whole- some advice, these are not its outstanding features. The great antithetic in the Christian religion is ex- pressed in the words “life” and “death.” The whole teaching of Jesus emphasises the contrast designated in these terms. No easy-going inter- pretations can permanently satisfy inquiring minds. We carry with us a consciousness of duty and des- tiny, which only rests when it has found secure foundations. The great propositions of Christian- ity are therefore basic and fundamental. The THE CONTROVERSY 17 Biblical conceptions of the issues involved in the present controversy are stated in unmistakable terms, in both the Old and New Testament. From the Biblical standpoint the supreme need of humanity is salvation. The terms “lost” and “saved” are not descriptive of conditions some- what divergent, though not necessarily important. That we may place more definitely before you what we conceive to be the contrast between the evangel- ical and the modernist position, let us see them in juxtaposition. There is no question but what many people have been entirely misled respecting the tre- mendous importance of the present-day discussion. Many who have not clearly before them the actual trend and tendency of modernism have regarded it with more or less favour because they have thought it to represent some new discovery of truth, and have been led to believe that there is nothing vitally fundamental in the issue itself. We are confident all this would be immediately changed if the aver- age man clearly understood what is involved and whither he is being misled by the sophistries and gratuitous assertions of modernism. ‘The contrast which immediately follows might be largely ex- tended in its application, but here touches the more vital features. I CONTRAST AND COMPARISON LL people in the religious world are either in the evangelical or the modernist camp. Here is the great division, and you can no more unite the two than you can mix oil and water or darkness and light. The positions are mutually exclusive. The frantic appeal for “silence and union’? goes unheeded and unheard because it is utterly absurd. The Biblical position is as clear as the daylight. The evangelical position is so evidently Biblical that to abandon it necessitates the abandonment of the Bible as a book of authority. That is precisely what the modernist does, and in that he is per- fectly logical. So much dust has been raised by modernism in an attempt, on the part of those who have hitherto been thought to be evangelical, to obscure the real issue that the man in the street is confused and uncertain as to what it is all about. Evangelicals unhesitatingly accept the super- natural in accounting for the universe. Modernists reject the supernatural with the slogan, “‘ Nothing above the natural order.” Evangelicals accept the Biblical statements: 18 CONTRAST AND COMPARISON 19 “God created the heaven and the earth,’ and “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” Modernists find the cosmos and man, results of a merely chemical process and make even Jesus the product of heredity and environment. Evangelicals adopt as a foundation truth the fact of a supernatural Revelation, the Bible, which 1s reliable, genuine, authentic, trustworthy, as a rule of faith and practice, faultless and obligatory on the conscience. Modernists regard the Bible as merely sifted tradition and without authority over the actions, motives and thoughts of men. Evangelicals accept the recorded miracles of the Bible as facts employed to accredit a divine mes- sage, and regard these miracles as well attested as any facts of history. Modernists reject miracles as recorded, account- ing for the record on the ground of human credul- ity and superstition. Evangelicals accept the Virgin Birth of Christ as definitely revealed in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and as well accredited as the record of the Sermon on the Mount or any other part of the Gospel message. Modernists repudiate in toto the Nativity story, and make Jesus Christ the son of Joseph or of a Roman soldier. Evangelicals accept at its face value the estimate 20 CONTRAST AND COMPARISON Jesus placed upon Himself as the “ Only Begotten Son of God” and an Atoning Saviour. Modernists attempt to bring Christ down to the level of ordinary humanity, only a little more complete. Evangelicals make Christ an absolute authority in all matters of the soul. Modernists applaud Christ’s teachings as exalted and His example as worthy of emulation, but in no other way than that of other men of eminence, except in degree. wie Evangelicals recognise that the place of the Christ of the Gospels is beside the Father—that He is to receive worship and adoration exactly as the Father. Modernists assume to bring Jesus down to a level with themselves, and to stand with Him in directing worship to the Father, divesting Him thus of all divine prerogatives, except as all men are divine. Evangelicals regard Christ’s death on the Cross as Redemptive and a true atonement for sin. Modernists reject the idea that sin needs any atonement and make Christ’s death merely a martyrdom. Evangelicals believe that Christ has power to for- give sin and that He is man’s Mediator for ever and ever. Modernists deny this power of Christ to deal with sin, and declare that no mediator is necessary between man and the Father. CONTRAST AND COMPARISON 21 Evangelicals recognise that sin must be treated redemptively. Modernists deny that sin is sin, as such, at all; call it a disease which may be successfully treated pathologically. Evangelicals believe that “the wages of sin ig death” and that ‘the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” precisely as de- clared in the Bible. Modernists look upon sin as misdoing, to be pitied rather than to be judged, and reject the idea that God can, or will punish beyond the grave. Evangelicals accept the definitely stated fact of the Bible that regeneration is necessary to salvation, in accordance with Christ’s own declaration, “‘ Ye must be born again.” Modernists declare that man needs no regener- ation, but that reformation is sufficient; they are thus in positive conflict with one of the most defi- nite statements of Jesus. Evangelicals believe in the actual bodily resurrec- tion of Jesus Christ from the dead. Modernists deny im toto the physical resurrection of Jesus. Evangelicals regard the Christ of the Gospels as the real Christ, to be accepted and trusted. Modernists construct a Jesus of their own and urge loyalty to a Jesus divested both of glory and power. Evangelicals believe in the triumphal return of 22 CONTRAST AND COMPARISON Jesus Christ, with varying shades of opinion as to its nature. Modernists see no hope, whatever, of the Second Coming of Jesus. Evangelicals believe the Church is the Bride of Christ as the Scriptures declare; that it is Christ’s Church and a permanent way of realising the Kingdom. Modernists believe the Church is like any so- ciety or club, transient in its nature and destined to disappear as a spiritual agency. Evangelicals believe in the factual basis of Chris- tianity, in the demonstrated and the long-tested truths. Modernists rest on the theoretical, the specula- tive and the unproven, conceived to be desirable. Evangelicals begin with well accredited facts and develop a theology to meet those facts. Modernists begin with the pre-conceived and unproven, and undertake to compel facts to fit its theory. ! : Evangelicals are everywhere supported and their positions buttressed by ‘‘ Thus saith the Lord.” Modernists know no such thing as “ ‘Thus saith the Lord,” and depend upon ‘ Thus saith science and thus say human philosophies of life.” Evangelicals believe in a living Christ, actively participating in the affairs of men, today. Modernists know only a Jesus who died as other men, and who has left only the influence of his life CONTRAST AND COMPARISON 23 just as other men have, thus affecting the activities of men today. : Evangelicals believe that Christianity is the only true religion, and is to be contrasted rather than compared with all other religions. Modernists regard Christianity as one of many religions, in some respects better, but in other re- spects no better than the historic, ethnic faiths. Evangelicals believe that the religious terminol- ogy long used, has a sacred content and that it is dishonest to employ old words, divested of all their familiar meaning, while the masses suppose the words are being used with the accepted significance. Modernists treat words and phrases as a magi- cian treats objects in his hands, practicing illusion and delusion at will. Evangelicals applaud learning, welcome the demonstrated facts of science, but refuse to be deceived or browbeaten into regarding as among “assured results”’ the vagaries and unsupported assertions of many who call themselves scientists. Modernists permit the dictation of science along all religious lines and accept as final the “ipse dixit ’ of titled men, in a realm where only Revela- tion can possibly speak with authority. Here, then, we have the contrast definitely and clearly stated, and you can readily determine with which group you prefer to associate yourself. The Bible is the Book of God, an impregnable fortress, an actual Revelation of God to man. 24 CONTRAST AND COMPARISON Who is willing to make the absurd exchange which the assumptions, the groundless assertions, the vague theories, the unfounded propositions, the undemonstrated speculations of liberalism demand? It is changing gold nuggets for “ fool’s gold.” It is accepting a bit of crystal quartz for a diamond. It is giving away a fragrant rose for a paper flower; it is leaving the sun-crowned, healthful plateau for a miasmic swamp; it is removing one’s house from rock foundations to engulfing quick- sands; it is leaving tropical flowers and fruits for a desert waste; it is leaving the perennial waters of a spring for a stagnant pool. It is leaving the ocean liner on which one is moving safely to a foreign port, and embarking on a waterlogged, unpiloted derelict, with neither cap- tain nor compass, the sport of the winds and headed for wreck. It is throwing away a lifebelt for the shadow of a cloud upon the water. It is exchanging gold coin for a chance at the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow. Modernism is the prophet’s staff in the hand of the servant of the prophet laid on the face of the dead child. ‘There was neither voice nor hearing.”’ II Kings iv: 31. The resource of those who trust in the Living Christ is unlimited. To those who have found Christ a Saviour, He gives the right to draw on Him for everything necessary at any moment. CONTRAST AND COMPARISON 25 *“ Ask, and ye shall receive.” ‘‘ Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” “All things are yours.” What can possibly give the cheer and the joy of knowing that Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord of Glory, walks through the day with you and knows every sigh, every disappointment, every heartache, and has the remedy for every ill? It is the glad testimony of millions that He gives beyond expec- tation. He paves the way to the heights. “ He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet with- out sin.’ “In that He was tempted, He knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation.” To lose the sense of Christ’s nearness is to lose the sense of power and peace. Thousands cry, today, in sheer despair, “ They have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him.” If you are one, here is a word for you: You will find Him where you lost Him; at the prayer place; at the Word which you began to distrust; at the church you began to neglect. If you have lost Him, pray that you may recover Him now. IIT CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERNISM ODERNISM is pre-eminently distin- guished by two outstanding qualities, antiquity and failure. It contains not one single NEW element. Masquerading as a product of recent intellectual effort and as a result of new discovery, it is in reality must-covered and dust- covered with age. Every objection now offered was presented during the infancy of the Church of God. Anti-supernaturalism as related to Jesus Christ was at the forefront in Ebionism, Arianism, Sabellianism, when the Church was still weak in numbers, though strong in faith. ‘The deity of Jesus Christ was attacked with all the parade of learning and vehemence of opposition and with every argument that is offered today. But dismissing God Almighty from His universe and bowing Jesus Christ out of His Gospel is not so easy a task as modernists seem to think. Mod- ernism is running true to form, when it claims in- tellectual pre-eminence. In this respect it has a great inheritance. Modesty has never been char- acteristic of unbelief in any of its forms. Arius and Celsus both proclaimed from the housetops, 26 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERNISM 27 that all intelligent people had abandoned the Gospel appraisement of Jesus of Nazareth. They, and their associates, tried to laugh out of court the witnesses for the deity of Jesus. They were sure the learning of the world was with them. Aposta- sies multiplied and when Athanasius stood as the most learned and the most illustrious exponent of an Inspired Gospel and a Divine Christ, he seemed to his opponents as the swan-singer of a dying cause, while they loudly proclaimed that “all schol- ars’ and “every educated man” had thrown over- board the ideas of a Virgin-born Jesus, a redemp- tive Christ and Resurrection a physical reality, after Jesus had been placed in the tomb of the Arimathzean. The oldest book in the world is the Book of Job. In that we have the counterpart of the contest between evangelicals and modernists. Job was humble, had faith in God and in Revela- tion, believed in repentance and remission of sins through sacrifice. He believed in the love of God, but understood well, that with a just God, sin can- not be whitewashed and made respectable by soft terms and mild phrases. Then came a controversy. The sons of God came together, and, as is usual, “ Satan came also among them.” Jehovah asked him where he had been? He answered: “From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it.” In other 28 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERNISM words, he was engaged in a widespread propa- ganda against the truth. Then, after Jehovah had called attention to the rectitude and devotion of Job, Satan proposed to prove that Job was righteous for revenue only. A little later three modernists, Job’s supposed friends, entered into controversy with him, seeking to break his faith in revealed religion. Job stood his ground and received the approbation of Jehovah. The three modernists made a great show of learning and told Job that “all scholars”’ were of the opinion that his position was an outworn and impossible theory. Their erudition counted for nothing against the clear enunciation of truth given by Jehovah. Had the “three friends” been as willing to be taught of God as was the afflicted believer, they might have reached different conclusions. They staked. everything on their own unaided wisdom, their self-sufficient knowledge and their predetermined conclusions as to what God Almighty ought to do. Another characteristic of modernism is its constant exhortation to “breadth.” Yet its vo- cabulary of invective is unsurpassed. Its char- acterisations of those who adhere to Revealed truth are loaded to the limit with vituperation, sarcasm, raillery and every sort of abuse. They expend a tremendous amount of ammunition on straw men of their own making. There can be no question that in every religious controversy there is CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERNISM 29 danger of violating the spirit of Christian love. Often, however, this is more seeming than real. In the case of intense conviction, only intense ex- pression may be expected. Nothing more discredits modernism than its un- ceasing proclamation of “assured results”? which are merely assertions and absolutely undemon- strated propositions. ‘There are no “assured re- sults ”’ that contradict the historic faith. The lack of heartfulness is seen in the cold- blooded way in which the humble trust of disciples of Jesus is attacked, ridiculed and summarily dis- posed of. What possible good is accomplished by such a proceeding? It was the boast of Sir Wal- ter Scott that he had never written anything that would lessen the faith of any man in God. Until modernism has something besides happy or un- happy guesses and idle speculations to offer in place of the Gospel of Christ both reason and kindness would dictate that the faith be left un- disturbed, which gives spiritual vigour, peace and hope. Truth is eternal. The attempt to discredit the Gospel by calling it ancient, is utterly stupid. The sun is old, but not obsolete. God’s throne is old, but represents the mastery of the world. None more than evangelicals applaud scholar- ship for what it accomplishes in aiding a correct interpretation of truth and in scientific discovery. Evangelicals have nothing to lose and everything 80 CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERNISM to gain from the most painstaking inquiry and the most erudite investigation of the revealed and the historically demonstrated. The most modern thing in the world is God’s Revealed Word. Later than the last word of the radio is the Counsel of the Infinite. It meets the latest need, the instant the need is felt. It is always in advance of the pilgrim and anticipates his every want. The last sigh of pain, the last search for truth, the last emotion of joy, the very last sense of hunger or thirst, all these are answered instantly with the ripest and greatest and truest conceivable thing: “ Thus saith the Lord.” No believing being is so thrilled with up-to-dateness, as the believer in Jesus who hears His voice, feels His touch and trusts His leadership. IV; THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF SILENCE the Christ of the Gospel and the Book of God are arising in all parts of the world and giving utterance to their profound convictions, modernists are in a great state of excitement urg- ing a truce. Many good people, not appreciating the critical and serious situation confronting the world, are calling for quiet, and asking that there should be at once a cessation of hostilities. For a quarter of a century modernism has had pretty much its own way. A silence, probably more or less guilty, upon the part of evangelicals, has per- mitted an extensive propaganda against Biblical inspiration, the Deity of Christ, the Atonement, and, indeed, against every one of the great Funda- mentals of the Faith. Men say, “ We are tired of strife, and what we want to hear is the preaching of the Gospel.” Modernists have all at once shown a tremendous interest in this “ preaching the Gos- pel,’ though the logic of their own utterances would leave the Church with no true Gospel to preach. The Gospel is God’s Word of redemption. The Gospel is the proclamation of emancipation 31 B ECAUSE the number of loyal witnesses for 82 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF SILENCE through Divine sacrifice. In a very true sense, the Divine Christ is Himself “ The Good News to the world.” We quite agree that the chief business of the Christian ministry is, and ever must be, a faithful presentation of the Gospel of Grace. Just this is what the modernists have not been preaching and have no intention of preaching. If the message of the New Testament is not, as respects doctrine and life, an infallible one, there is no sure Gospel to proclaim. Modernists understand perfectly well that they can never hold their own, under the lime- light of the testimony of human experience where definite transactions with God have been realised. Therefore the frantic appeal for silence just now is not surprising. There is, however, a logic of silence with which we must reckon. Silence is con- sent; consent is participation; participation is re- sponsibility for all the consequences. — An illuminating passage in Ezekiel 33: 6 empha- sizes the responsibility of the Christian ministry: “But if the watchman see the sword come and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his in- iquity; but his blood will I require at the watch- man’s hand.”’ It is not so easy, therefore, to shirk obligation in the interests of a false peace. Mod- ernists are making loud assertions about the trouble which is being stirred up by evangelicals. Modern- THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF SILENCE 33 ists and liberals are accusing the defenders of the faith with the entire responsibility for present-day contentions in religion. We hear much about “ the iniquity of heresy hunting,” and still more about “the perils of prospective division and new align- ment in the denominations.” Evangelicals have not the slightest anxiety with respect to the in- vincibility of the Christian faith. ‘They have not the slightest fear that the Word of God will lose its hold, nor are they troubled lest the traditional beliefs of Christendom shall be permanently super- seded by the errors of modernism. They do, how- ever, have a very genuine concern lest multitudes of people following false lights shall be led astray and suffer not only temporal, but eternal loss. Positively sure that the Bible is true when it de- clares to us that “there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved’ than the Name of Jesus; equally sure that “he that believeth and is baptised shall be saved ” and “he that believeth not shall be condemned ”’; also positive that “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,’ they are com- pelled to utter their word of warning and to op- pose with all vigour the utterances and activities of modernism. Evangelicals have no right to be silent. The hour has struck when every true wit- ness of the Lord Jesus Christ must speak out with definiteness. Evangelicals have sat by and watched modernism stealthily, surreptitiously capture the 384 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF SILENCE various organised agencies of religious activity. They have taken possession of the denominational Boards. ‘They have permitted, with all too little protest, the boldest and most daring denials of a vast number of truths held sacred by the successive generations of Christians since the day of Jesus Christ. They have seen churches by the hundreds sparsely attended in the morning and dark at night, steadily decreasing in power and influence, and have gone on in the even tenor of their way, without sounding the trumpet-blast of alarm which should long ago have been clearly heard. Every man who has had a true vision of the Christ of the Gospels is under bounden obligation to take his place as a witness to the truth as it is in Jesus. If disturbance has arisen, the fault rests with those who have become apostles of naturalism and who have abandoned the truth “ once delivered to the saints.” ‘The attempt to throw responsibil- ity for possible. divisions upon evangelicals has its counterpart in the story of Ahab and Elijah. When Ahab had ignored and despised the truths of revealed religion and in wanton disregard for justice had caused Naboth to be slain, he went to take possession of the vineyard and met Elijah, who was the personification of the conscience of Israel. What was his exclamation as he addressed Elijah? “Art thou he that troubleth Israel? ” The confusion and the turmoil which had attended the misdoing of Ahab, he sought to attribute to the ee — i eens Sn _—-_, THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF SILENCE: 35 Prophet of Israel. Precisely thus does modernism attempt, after an effort to take possession of the Church, to throw all obligation for the contro- versies of the hour upon those who rightfully represent the God of the Bible and the Christ of the Gospels. No one can deny that we are facing a still more distressing turmoil than has been ex- perienced. Let the responsibility rest right where it belongs,—upon the leaders in present-day apos- tasy. It is as ridiculous and absurd to attribute these disorders to those who maintain the tradi- tional faith as it would be for a man who should put his torch to his neighbour’s house to protest because of the turmoil resulting from the presence of the fire department. If cleavage is at hand, it is because the wedge has been driven in by mod- ernism, while at the same time it is clamouring lustily for an impossible union. It is the boast of modernists: “ We do not care a fig whether Christ came through a Virgin or not. We have no interest in the Resurrection.” We refer such to the words of Lincoln in his con- cluding debate with Douglass. He said: “ Doug- lass says I do not care whether slavery is voted up or down. Is it not a false statesmanship that undertakes to build up a system of policy on the basis of caring nothing for the very thing that everybody else does care the most about?” The attitude is neither morally commendable nor in- tellectually complimentary. There is also a fine - Se —— 386 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF SILENCE parallel between the demand for silence then and now. Mr. Lincoln said: “ You must not say any- thing about slavery in the free states because it is not here. You must not say anything about it in the slave States because it is here. You must not say anything about it in the pulpit because that is religion and has nothing to do with it. You must not say anything about it in politics because that will disturb the security of my place. There is no place to talk about it being a wrong.” Substi- tute modernism for “slavery” and you see the application. V THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS OR THE JESUS OF MODERNISM: WHICH? SERIOUS arraignment of the decline of the Modern Church appears in the exhor- tation given at the National Congregational Council held in Springfield, in October, 1923. It was legitimate and timely. Its need was apparent. “Brethren, take Jesus in earnest.” Christ js Christianity. Is it possible that departure and spiritual lethargy have reached the point where such an exhortation to ministers could be appropri- ate? The implication was that, with many, Jesus Christ had ceased to be a sertous reality. Such a condition is amazing and appalling. Such an appeal could have no point with reference to those who accept the Christ of the Manger, Cross and Throne. Evangelicals not alone “take Christ seriously,” but vitally. Why the exhortation, unless it is recognised that perilous departures are necessitating that the Christ of Calvary should once more say to His professed followers, ‘ Will ye also go away”? It is pertinent to inquire, however, who this Jesus is whom we are asked to take “ seriously.” 37 38 THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS In answering this question we may find the real explanation of the appeal itself. The Jesus of modernism is the one we are asked to take in earnest: He, from whose crown of glory has been plucked the jewel of supernaturalism, by denying His virgin birth, His atonement and physical resurrection, reducing Him to the proportions of an exalted man and no more. He is the Jesus of anti-supernaturalism, who has neither power to save nor to hold. When we are asked, “ Is loyalty to Jesus enough?” we answer, “ That depends wholly on who the Jesus is.” Right here is the difficulty. Sacred names and words long em- ployed, with a perfectly well understood content, have been absolutely emptied of their meaning, and the unwary are caught in the net of misrepre- sentation. In the thought of the world the word “Jesus” has for two thousand years had a very definite meaning. That Name has meant the Christ of the Gospels. It has stood for the super- natural, saving Jesus of Revelation. Not so at all is the name as used by modernists. They do not know of any reliable, trustworthy Revelation, all of which is to be received. That is why the note of warning needs to be sounded clearly. Do not be deceived by the modern use of such names as “ Jesus, Redemption, Resurrection, Divinity, Son of God,” etc. Christian names and pious phrases may mean nothing at all, or they may mean everything. But you must know who THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS 39 is using them, and in what sense. The content of these words and phrases must accord with the perfectly clear Revelation of God and His Word. The Jesus of modernism or liberalism is no more the Christ of the Gospels than is a magnified man, God. Here lies the crux of the whole controversy today. The rejection of the Gospel is the rejection of the Christ. Who, then, is the Jesus of modernism? A Man, whose advent was not foretold—the natural prod- uct of a progressive evolution. He was not supernaturally born. The story of the Annunci- ation is false. He was not the only-begotten Son of God. He was not the Child of the Virgin Mary, but of a Mary of questionable morality. In maturity He entered on the work of a reformer. His teachings were exaited, but without binding authority, other than would be true of any wise philosopher or religious teacher who should speak from a high, ethical level. He was not infallible. He shared the mistaken views of His day. The Jesus of modernism did not, and could not, raise the dead. He worked no miracles. He died a martyr to His high idealism. His death was not an atonement for sin. He did not will it, but was a victim. His outpoured life on Calvary was not expiatory in any sense. He died, was entombed and never came forth from the tomb, and never will, save as other men. His predic- tion, “ Destroy this temple, and in three days I 40 THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS 3 will raise it up,” was the dream of an enthusiast and never fulfilled. He did not ascend to the Throne from whence He came, though He said ~ He would do so, in the solemn moment of His last prayer. Today, He is not a living Christ any more than His apostles who died are living apostles. He gained a place in the world’s hall of fame, or even in the world’s Pantheon, but in no true sense was He God. This is the Jesus of modernism!! Whence came He? There is absolutely no record whatsoever of such a Jesus. The only Jesus his- tory knows anything about is the Christ of the Gospels. Modernism first blasted away its own possible foundations when it repudiated the Gos- pels and declared them not inspired and not re- liable as a historic record, but merely traditional information and full of error. Where, then, can they go to find the Jesus of whom they talk? No picture of this sort appears in the only Book that can possibly tell us anything about Jesus. The Jesus of modernism is the creation of rationalistic liberalism. He is a creature of human imagination, problematical, theoretical, speculative, fanciful, unhistoric, non-existent, un- real. No wonder such a man is unable to grip and hold people who are spiritually intelligent, educated, not alone in university training, but in the school of the prophets and in the school of Christ. THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS 41 We answer unhesitatingly that loyalty to such a Jesus is not enough. A higher and holier loyalty is demanded, both for salvation and service. What could be more indicative of blinding prejudice than the claim that scholarship is on the side of the denial of the Truth most clearly proclaimed in God’s Word? One wonders in what sort of se- clusion or self-imposed obscuration one can be living, who does not know that there are emi- nent scholars among people of all shades of belief and unbelief. One outstanding fact, however, is this: that evangelical Christianity has the advo- cacy of hundreds of men whose intellectual com- prehensiveness and mental incisiveness are second to none in the world. And these are men who believe in a supernatural Christ, including re- demption and miracles, and who have faith in the Bible as an absolutely infallible guide to eter- nal life. Contrast all this with the Christ revealed in the Gospels, the Epistles, the history of the Church, the history of human progress and the Christ of personal experience. Look upon the portrait of Jesus in the marvelous composite given in the Four Gospels, and you will see a picture of the only Jesus of which history knows. For a thou- sand years the promise of His coming had been the inspiring hope of the Chosen People. It was the Messianic Star which never dimmed in their heaven that led them on. In the fullness of time, A2 THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS prophecies were fulfilled. The long-expected Mes- siah appeared. The Virgin Birth proclaimed in Isaiah 7:14, ‘‘ Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel,” was realised. To a sweet virgin of Nazareth came the Annunciation of the unprecedented, miracu- lous experience through which she was to pass. Her startled and timid heart was reassured. She did not falter. The Magnificat was her answer, and it is also the answer to the unholy caviling today, which charges God Almighty with unkind- ness in choosing an innocent maiden as His method of entering upon His historic life among men. Joseph, disturbed, troubled, was accorded the fullest of Divine explanation; he accepted it and took to himself Mary in holy wedlock. The birth of this supernatural Person was attended with heavenly choirs at Bethlehem and humble shep- herds accepted the angel testimony, “ Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” ‘The shepherds found and worshipped. Wise men presented their offer- ing of gold, frankincense and myrrh, all typical and symbolic. This Jesus of the Gospels, supernaturally born of a virgin in full accord with prediction, passed through every variety of human experience, save that of yielding to temptation, and reached the age of thirty. At the Jordan He was supernaturally THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS 43 accredited by the Eternal Father and entered upon His great mission of salvation. Then followed, for a period of between two and three years, a series of acts and utterances so other-worldly, so exalted, so manifestly above the level of humanity, that those who heard marvelled and the world has continued to marvel for nearly two thousand years since. He spake with authority. As honey from the honeycomb, so His words dropped from His lips, weighted with sweetness and wisdom. He wrought miracles, never to satisfy curiosity, but always benevolently, and His works of wonder were a Divine seal upon the truthworthiness of His every act and utterance. He proposed the estab- lishment of a Kingdom and the subjugation of the world with the single weapon of love. He healed the sick, whatever might be their affliction. He raised the dead. He cheered the disconsolate. He spoke comfortably to the penitent. He de- nounced hypocrisy. He reprobated Pharisaism. He exposed shams and pretenses. Over and over again He contrasted His own personality in its source, in its mission and in its destiny with that of all men. He definitely proclaimed His own mission in the world as one of salvation through sacrifice. He declared and exercised this power to forgive sin, and insisted that He was personally the source of Eternal Life. He declared regeneration indis- pensable to salvation. His oneness with the 44 THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS Father He made perfectly apparent. He reversed all ordinary methods of success and proposed to win by temporary defeat, to live by dying, to con- quer by surrender to the Infinite will. He em- phasised the fact of His humanity, and at the same time declared unequivocally for His own deity. He claimed power to lay down His life and to take it again. His moral perfection was manifest in His refusal to utter a single vindictive word when in the agonies of crucifixion. On the contrary, He pled for the forgiveness of His enemies. In fulfillment of His promise, “ Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,’ He came forth from the tomb attended with marvelous manifestations of God’s presence and power. His enemies had made any deception impossible. By His resurrection He sealed as forever true the statement He had already made, “I am the resur- rection and the life.’ Those most intimately associated with Him in life, before His cruci- fixion, fellowshiped with Him, ate with Him, and were unanimously convinced that His resur- rection was a reality. In the presence of His disciples He uttered His final word of commis- sion, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” He dis- appeared supernaturally, with the promise of re- turn in triumph and victory. He went from whence He had come, to be forever a living, THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS AB regnant, intercessory Lord of glory and Saviour of mankind. This is the only Jesus of whom we have any historic record. ‘This is the Christ of the Manger, the Cross, the Throne, the Resurrection, the As- cension, Pentecost and the Christian Church. Under the holy spell of this same Jesus, the Church inaugurated in the upper room was established and re-enforced at Pentecost. Under the inspiring fel- lowship of the Risen Lord the little band of dis- ciples faced without flinching the most terrible persecutions and the most unspeakable martyrdoms. They were daring and determined. This is the Christ who appeared to Saul of Tarsus, accom- plished his conversion and secured his allegiance. Under the sacred afflatus of the spirit of this Christ, he became at once, and still is, next to Jesus, the incomparable personality among the sons of men. This is the Jesus who placed the aureole upon the brow of childhood, sanctified and emanci- pated womanhood, smote the shackles from slaves and faced multitudes of humanity heavenward. This Christ has led untold millions of the sons of men from sin to righteousness, from despair to hope, from weakness to strength. To this super- natural, Divine Lord is due the world’s uplift morally, politically and spiritually. Because and only because men have known Christ as a Saviour, who saves both from the guilt of sin and the love of sinning, have pioneers 46 THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS braved wilderness-perils to proclaim a redemption which actually redeems. How differently would the history of our country have read had not such men as Peter Cartwright, and that famous group known as the “ Iowa Band,” and hundreds of noble, consecrated men, been willing to leave splen- did churches and large salaries to go into the wil- derness and proclaim God’s good tidings! Whole communities were cleaned up and transformed, through the lifting up of the Christ of Calvary as the one and only hope of salvation and eternal life. Can you conceive of men prompted by merely ethical considerations, such as the Jesus of mod- ernism presents, being willing to make the sacri- fices involved in Christianising frontiers? What Committees of Safety could not accomplish with the hangman’s rope, was easily achieved by the Gospel of Grace through living witnesses for Christ. Nothing during the past hundred years has been more mightily significant in the world’s uplift than Christian Missions. What inspired them? What mighty motive inspired the leaders of the great Moravian missions, or of the English missionary societies, or of a multitude of great denominational missionary movements in our own country? What accounts for the “inner urge’”’ which led young men by hundreds to abandon prospects of wealth and set aside literary and professional aspirations and go to the remote regions of the earth? Can THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS AT you point to a single great missionary movement instigated by liberalism? Nota single one. Ques- tions of mere improvement do not lead to the heroic sacrifices made by men like Livingstone, Judson, Mills, Paton, Taylor and hundreds like them. It was because these men saw in Jesus Christ the One Redemptive Power in the world that they went with heart yearning to lead the be- nighted to light and life. This is the explanation of the martyrdoms suffered in African jungles, mountains of the Caucasus, Indian solitudes and the most remote districts of the world. It was under this tremendous spiritual compulsion that the Hawaiian Church was organised in the Park Street Church Chapel, Boston, by men and women ready to embark on the hazardous enterprise of Christianising the people of the Hawaiian Islands. Is it at all conceivable that men would face the gleaming spearpoints of cannibals in the New Hebrides for any other reason than to make the Christ of Calvary known to lost souls? It is an incontrovertible fact that the presentation of the Jesus of liberalism awakens but a languid interest, and develops a religion of convenience and comfort on the material side. Salvation through regeneration lies at the core of the Christian doctrine. Christ’s pronouncement is neither ambiguous nor equivocal. “‘ Ye must be born again.” Twice Born Men, written by Harold Begbie, is illustrative of the actual experience of 48 THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS hundreds of millions of people since the Christ of the Cross made His great sacrifice to save sinners and redeem the lost. In an experience of thirty- nine years in the ministry, I have yet to find one solitary individual who would say: “I had fallen into the sinks of iniquity, was hopeless and de- spairing; liberalism came to me with its doctrine of salvation through character and I was em- powered thereby to throw off the evil habits which had fastened upon me, and to rid myself of the sense of guilt which preyed upon my conscience. I experienced complete emancipation and know myself to be a saved man.’ Until the Jesus of modernism is effective in leading at least one soul to say, “I have found salvation, hope and eternal life through this unhistoric creation of human theory and human philosophy,” he can lay no great claim to humanity’s acceptance and faith. The drift away from the supernatural Christ leads, logically, to appalling consequences. A College President recently testified that he heard a min- ister who occupies a Congregational pulpit say in substance in a Chicago ministers’ meeting, “I have reached the conclusion that Jesus was not intel- lectually infallible nor morally perfect.” The Christ whom evangelicals know is both intellect- ually infallible, morally perfect and “equal with the Father” in wisdom, power and glory. The wife of a Congregational Pastor said, recently: “What a pity that Jesus, so kind and gentle, could THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS 49 not have had the advantage of one of our modern universities.” It is quite the fashion to pity Paul for his limited vision and lament that the Apos- tles could not have had the benefits of the counsel of the wise men of today. All this is simply pitiful. It reveals an utter lack of appreciation of the intel- lectual pre-eminence of a Spirit-filled mind and heart. Right here is the weakness of the academic viewpoint. VI THE IMPREGNABLE FORTRESS OF REVELATION HRISTIANITY needs no apologetic. It is consistent with itself. Its historic position is absolutely assured. As well might you undertake to defend the beauty of the diamond by argument and by reasoning, and insist upon the splendour of its imprisoned sunlight, as to attempt to prove Christianity’s worth to the world. It is the brightest and most lustrous jewel of truth the world has ever known. Its perpetual radiation of the wisdom and power of God Almighty is a declaration of its Divine vitality and its unmeas- ured value. The sun which for centuries has lighted the world, assuring seed time and harvest, bringing to the eye of man nature’s marvels of beauty and treasures of wisdom, has a splendour independent of age and requires no argument or explanation in evidence of its value to humanity. Much more may it be said, that the Sun of Right- eousness, Who for nineteen hundred years has been shedding His light upon humanity, is in no slightest need of human advocacy in support of His value to the sons of men. 50 FORTRESS OF REVELATION 51 Next to Jesus Christ Himself, the Bible is God’s greatest gift to the world. Nothing could ever endure severer tests, harsher criticism, or greater opposition than has the Bible. It offers itself to humanity as a true record of God’s unveiling of himself to man. Covering a period of more than a thousand years, containing sixty-six divisions, presenting truth through a great variety of human personalities, it presents a unity of purpose, an inherent consistency, an undiminished vitality abso- lutely inexplicable on any other basis than that it was given to the world under the superintendence and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Bible claims for itself full and final authority respecting the duties of man. Origin and destiny are clearly and unequivocally defined and stated in terms which, except through wilfulness, can not be misunder- stood or misinterpreted. Its demands, commands, exhortations and appeals run counter to the natural desires of man, and, as might be expected, have from the first met with opposition and antagon- ism. The Word of God is so opposed to human pride and so severely censures arrogance, pre- sumption and conceit, that the most determined opposition has been met from those who advo- cate that every man should have the privilege of following what is right in his own eyes. The denial of the authority of the Bible is to be expected in a world filled with pride, wickedness and wilfulness. Since Christianity is rooted in 52 FORTRESS OF REVELATION Revelation it is not surprising that violent per- secution, unrelenting opposition, unreasoning de- nunciation have attended its development. The ten great persecutions of the Roman Empire seek- ing to obliterate every trace of revealed religion ignominiously failed. Out of each successive or- deal the Bible arose to support and propagate truth Divinely communicated, and Christianity, buttressed and sustained by the Divine Book, grew constantly stronger. The Bible has under- gone the fire test of human hate, in every pos- sible expression of malignity, but like the bush in the desert which startled the great lawgiver and deliverer of Israel, Moses, ‘‘ because it burned with fire and was not consumed,” the Bible has proven itself capable of enduring the trial by fire and has come out of every furnace of per- secution without diminution or loss, and, if pos- sible, more glowingly resplendent, after each trial by fire. Not less successful has the Word of God been in the acid test of criticism. It has met every conceivable objection and every criticism which the genius of opposing intellectuals could apply and it has come forth with no scar upon its face, win- ning the approval of increasing multitudes and the heartiest support of the most pre-eminent intel- lectual lights of every generation. As though the fire test and the acid test were not sufficient, the Bible has been subjected also to the severest of FORTRESS OF REVELATION 53 all trials, the time test. A book which will endure through nineteen hundred years of opposition of every conceivable sort and not only hold its own, but steadily increase in the reverence, the love and the trust of hundreds of millions of people, is not a book to have the slightest fear of attack from new angles. There is no form of opposition which has been practiced in the past which is not to be found in modernism. More crafty, more sophis- tical, more plausible than ever before, arguments are being multiplied by modernists against the re- liability and trustworthiness of the Bible as a Divine Revelation. With respect to the Bible, the modernist is like a man standing before a plate- glass window through which may be seen a marvel- ous landscape with endless variety of beauty to entrance and instruct him, but who spends his time inveighing against the makers of the plate-glass, because of some fancied flaw upon which he is concentrating his attention. Instead of hearing the beating pulse of the Infinite, in the Book of God; instead of following the scarlet thread of promise running from Genesis to Revelation, pro- claiming sacrificial love for humanity; instead of looking into the face of the Christ of the Gospels as the world’s Redeemer, modernism occupies it- self with fancied contradictions, with reasons why the Bible is merely a human book, and with the grounds of its rejection as a truly Inspired Word of God. 54 FORTRESS OF REVELATION Is this a laudable occupation? Is it worthy of men created in the image of God? What benefit to humanity is likely to accrue from this process which would tear to shreds the seamless robe of Revelation if it could; which would blast out and destroy the foundations of the great fortress of truth? Nothing has been more futile than the Devil’s dynamite. It has not been able to dis- lodge a single stone in God Almighty’s splendid cathedral of truth. Detonation and smoke have deceived and misled many. Modernism mega- phones its destructive propaganda and the people are led to believe it is vastly more extended in its influence than it really is. Its smoke-screen of sophistry has sufficed temporarily to hide from the unlettered the great, immovable mountain peaks of inspired Truth. Nevertheless, these stand like Alpine heights sun-crowned, immovable, un- changeable. Why, then, should we waste time in a consideration of modernism? It certainly is not because we have the slightest question as to the ultimate outcome. Honest criticism and inquiry is to be ever welcomed and even ap- plauded. Faith must have rational foundations. Evangelicals above all other classes of people are ready “To give a reason for the hope that is in them.” Instead of disparaging the human intel- lect, we glory in those powers of inquiry and of investigation with which we have been endowed by God Almighty, and which in the realm of FORTRESS OF REVELATION 55 religion should be exercised forcefully, fearlessly and sincerely. “The Gospel is either true history, or it is a consummate fraud; it is either a reality or an im- position. Christ was what He professed to be, or He was an impostor. There is no other alternative. Fis spotless life, in His earnest enforcement of the truth, His suffering in its defense, forbid us to suppose that He was suffering an illusion of a heated brain. Every act of His pure and holy life shows that He was the author of truth, the advo- cate of truth, the earnest defender of truth and the uncompromising sufferer for truth. Now, con- sidering the purity of His doctrines, the simplicity of His life and the sublimity of His death, is it possible that He would have died for an illusion? ” So wrote Daniel Webster. Never in the history of the world has the Bible exercised a greater influence than today. It is distributed in various parts of the world, in more than seven hundred languages and dialects, and the urgent demand for translations into new tongues is constant. The issues of all Bible Societies are at the rate of thirty million volumes of Scripture a year, and it is estimated that more than six hun- dred million volumes of the Bible, in whole or in part, have been issued since the art of printing became known. Today, it is far and away the greatest selling book in the world. It stands at the basis of the laws of all civilised governments. 56 FORTRESS OF REVELATION It has always been recognised as a moral influence in every community where it is read, beyond that of all other influences combined. It is quite the fashion today to applaud its literary merits, and at the same time deny its inspired origin. Such ap- plause counts for absolutely nothing. Great as is its literary merit, this is not the supreme thing about the Bible; nor could this explain in any degree its tremendous hold upon the mind of man. It is the one book sought for comfort by the be- reaved, for counsel by the repentant and for hope by the disheartened. The Bible, and it alone, fur- nishes a pillow for the dying, and unerring counsel for the living. Modernism is absolutely incapable of giving any adequate explanation for the grip of the Bible on the heart of the world. To evangelicals it is per- fectly explicable, for it is accepted as God’s gift to men, representing the supreme idealism of the ages and defining the purpose of a Loving Father for a lost world. No other explanation can possibly meet the requirement. The Old Testament has the unqualified endorsement of Jesus Christ Who over and over again presented Himself as the fulfill- ment of its prophecies and declared unmistakably the credibility and genuineness of its utterances. The New Testament was, under Divine Inspira- tion, written by witnesses of what Jesus was, said and did, or by those who were intimately ac- quainted with men in the closest fellowship with FORTRESS OF REVELATION 57 Jesus Christ. Among these writers were unlettered fishermen, who, notwithstanding their unfamiliar- ity with the highest secular learning of their day, wrote so far above the level of the times that while nearly all contemporaneous literature is either wholly forgotten, or at most read by but few, the inspired records of the fishermen of Gali- lee and their associates in the production of the New Testament Scriptures, occupy the chief place in the thinking of today. It is utterly foolish to attempt to explain away the supernatural origin, Divine preservation and universal influence of this book. Yet it all be- comes perfectly natural when we accept the fact of the Bible as the Inspired Word of God hold- ing a fixed place in the Redemptive program of God Almighty. It is equally idle to undertake to, divorce the Bible from its actual authors and es- tablish for its various books a late date. We have not only copies of the manuscripts of the Bible itself accepted by the best authority as reli- able, but we have numerous quotations attesting to the fact that the New Testament was well known and widely read from the very period of the Apostles. Polycarp was a pupil of St. John, Papias was a disciple of Polycarp and Justin Martyr was born ten years before John’s death. All of these men were familiar with all the Books of the New Testament and quoted from them. ‘Tertullian in 58 FORTRESS OF REVELATION the second century, Clement in the year 194, Irenzus, the learned Origen, Gregory and Dio- nysius of Alexandria, all used the New Testa- ment Scriptures liberally. Origen quotes 5,745 passages and Tertullian more than 3,000 pas- sages from all the books of the New ‘Testament. Clement quotes 380 passages and Irenzus quotes 767 passages. In writing just one letter Polycarp, who was a disciple of John, uses thirty-six quotations from the Scriptures. How ridiculous in the face of these facts to attempt to prove that the Gospels and Epistles were written centuries after the Apostles had passed away. In the fourth century eleven catalogues of the books of the New Testament were made, and they include exactly the books of our own New ‘Testament. The fact is, for the first four or five centuries, the authenticity of the Books of the New Testament was assumed by all writers. Even the opponents of Christianity did not in the early centuries presume to call in ques- tion the authenticity of any of the books. In 361 Julian the Apostate used all his power of learning to undermine Christianity, but accepted the New Testament writings as too well known to be ques- tioned, as authentic, and concedes the correctness of their assigned dates. The same is true of Porphyry and Celsus and other infidel writers. There are the most suf- ficient reasons for accepting the Bible as God’s FORTRESS OF REVELATION 59 Word. As such it is credible, authentic, genuine, reliable. The Bible is the crux of the whole present-day controversy. Is it the Word of God? Has it a right to speak to us commandingly? May it properly exercise authority over the conscience? Are its commandments obligatory? Are its coun- sels a part of Infinite wisdom? Are its facts properly attested? The evangelical position regarding the Bible is often misunderstood. ‘There are extremists in all departments of religious thinking. Evangelicals accept without question the fact that the Bible pre- sents to us an inspired Revelation. It is a record of God’s dealings with mankind. It is a definite expression of the will of God. It deals with the development of a distinctive religion through a period of more than a thousand years. It is enough to say that taken in its entirety the Bible is genuine, authentic, trustworthy; and as a rule of faith and practice, infallible. By infallibility we mean it is absolutely without error as a guide to eternal life. And this is true of the Bible just as we have it today. In process of transmission there is not the slightest doubt that trifling and unim- portant errors in words, phrases and punctuation have occurred. When we say the Bible is Inspired we mean that the agents used of God for the trans- mission to the world of the expression of His holy will were Divinely guided and superintended. In- 60 FORTRESS OF REVELATION dividuality and personality, while subordinated, were not eliminated. When we speak of inerrancy the average evangelical means that the Bible is absolutely free from all mistakes in matters of spiritual direction.. It is to be absolutely trusted and the facts which are presented are not myth- ical but actual. The characters of the Bible are historic, except when otherwise represented, as for example in parables and illustrative examples. The authors of the series of revelations were Divinely selected and actuated in their thinking and writing by the Holy Spirit. They were in all cases competent to perform the tasks as- signed them, either because of immediate ac- quaintance with the facts presented or because of the trustworthy reception of truth revealed to them. We are not to think of them as mere amanuenses receiving dictation, but as intelligent men acting under Divine: influence to present to the world Divine truth. There is nothing fan- tastic about it and no more of mystery than there is in the spiritual relationships which subsist when the wisdom of man is controlled by the wisdom of God. No greater evidence of the fact of Divine super- intendence and direction could be given than the fact that these men spake so far above the intel- lectual and spiritual level of their own times. Educated men recognise that the Bible is not to be compared with contemporary literature, but con- FORTRESS OF REVELATION 61 trasted with it, in its exalted moral idealism and its definite spiritual insight. Another evidence of the inspiration of the Bible is its indestructible vitality. All the ingenuity of man has at times been Loncentrated on an effort to eliminate this Book from the face of the earth. All that human hate could accomplish, all that political and social force could do, all that incar- nate wickedness could express have invariably failed even to halt the progress of the multiplication and distribution of God’s Word. All we know of the New Testament writers makes certain that they must have received truth from higher than human sources in order to have given to the world such exalted messages of Divine purpose and love. They had no unusual natural equipment, and some of them had not enjoyed the privileges even of rudimentary schools. We should expect from them, therefore, just what we find,—an entire absence of everything in the nature of intrigue and conspiracy, an innocent frankness and faithful portrayal of just what they knew. ‘There is not one thing to indicate that they were the victims of any deception, and still less reason to believe that they were governed by some ulterior motive. The Gospels are narratives of events which were wit- nessed and well attested, and all of which trans- pired before the eyes of the disciples. In the Book of Acts the experiences of the Early Church are presented in a manner to assure complete confidence 62 FORTRESS OF REVELATION in the wisdom and purpose of the narrator, to give us the truth without gloss and without modifica- tion. From a human standpoint the master-mind of the New Testament is Paul. His profound scholarship qualified him to develop the teachings, the doing and the dying of Jesus into important doctrinal propositions. In all this the evangelicals unhesitatingly declare that the true Author of the New Testament is the Holy Ghost. Indeed, they affirm that this is true of the entire Bible, and the only explanation of the marvelous unity it presents, and its freedom from contradictions of such nature as would invalidate its reliability. We believe the statements of the Gospels are worthy of the fullest credence. The supreme and outstanding thing about the Bible is the fact that a reverent and unbiased mind everywhere beholds in it the face of Jesus Christ. Evangelicals do not regard it, therefore, as merely a book of facts, data and ethical teaching. We find it a living thing, pulsating with life, which is none other than the life of the Saviour of the world. To us it has heart beat, temple throb, sanctifying breath and healing touch. It is bound together part to part with the scarlet thread of promise and sacrifice. We find the Old Testament the revela- tion of a covenant between God and man. We find, moreover, at the very beginning, in the third chap- ter of Genesis, the promise of a coming Messiah. “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s FORTRESS OF REVELATION 63 head.” Beginning with that promise we find hun- dreds of definite prophetic assurances, with por- traiture, daring in its detail, and risking all upon the inevitable fulfillment of every distinct feature of the picture. With all the accuracy with which a cornerstone fits its appointed place, or a keystone its position in the arch, does the New Testament fit into the Old. Mortise and tenon never more perfectly matched than does prophecy match ful- fillment in the Bible. We find no place, therefore, for the accidental or the coincidental. All is providential. Now contrast this with modernism. Modernism finds both the Old and New Testaments a series of distinctively human documents. There is no Divine element to be discovered other than attaches to the writings of any earnest men. Tradition, folklore, imagination, theory, speculation, but no Holy Ghost. superintendence and no infallible rule of faith and practice. Modernism discovers no pro- phetic annunciations of the coming of a Redeemer in the Old Testament. The characters there por- trayed are not for the most part historic, but imaginary and employed exactly as the characters in a parable are employed. The element of un- reality becomes thus more pronounced than the element of reality. In the New Testament modern- ism recognises here and there important pronounce- ments and especially applauds the teachings of Jesus, which, however, are logically made uncertain 64 FORTRESS OF REVELATION from the deliberate surgery practiced on every un- desirable part of the New Testament, eliminating it at will. Not for one moment does modernism regard the Bible as authoritative in its commands. It becomes, therefore, purely a matter of individual acceptance or non-acceptance, the Bible subjected wholly to human judgment. Commandments are softened down to counsel. The convictions of evangelicals regarding the Bible rest on the surest evidence and the sanest reasoning. The preservation, protection, distri- bution and powerful influence of the Word of God are facts striking and well nigh miraculous. It is impossible to read such works as Urquhart’s The Bible, Its Structure and Purpose, or Bateman’s Romance of the Bible, or histories of the Christian Church, without being convinced that God has had a hand in carrying to the ends of the earth His own Book. Instead of diminishing, the call for its multiplication increases with every passing year. This is because it meets the wants of man as nothing else can meet them. Studied from the standpoint of its effect, the Bible is absolutely unique. What other book could be taken to half- civilised races and advance them with startling rapidity to a position of honour among the highly civilised and cultured people of the world? It has transformed communities, tribes and races from men and women, semi-savage, into cultured and refined peoples. Moreover in individual life its FORTRESS OF REVELATION 65 effect is not less apparent. When studied with a sincere desire to know the truth and obey it, the Bible exercises an influence resulting in ethical ele- vation, spiritual aspiration and character formation which cannot be gainsaid nor can it be explained on any other basis than that it contains for the mind of man a message from God. With all its learning, modernism can offer no substitute for this Holy Book. ‘There is not the slightest ground to doubt that this Inspired Book has been the dominant cause of human progress from the moment it began to be distributed as Christianity’s authoritative declaration of faith. Modernism is utterly unable to explain why it 1s that the Bible produces the results it does. There are other sacred books. ‘There are many books with a spiritual objective, yet no one thinks of comparing the Bible with any other book ever written. Could any work of fiction or any chi- merical scheme of human reformation and uplift hold the center of the stage through generations and for centuries? Yet what constitutes the con- trast, the real difference between the Bible and other books? ‘The answer is plain,—it is God’s Word, not alone to humanity as a whole, but to each individual who will receive it, meeting every need at every period of life, from the cradle to the grave. Its main truths are intelligible to childhood; they hold a spell over the mind of a child and mould it 66 FORTRESS OF REVELATION for righteousness. Youth with its ambitions and impulses finds that the Bible gives poise and pur- pose, exercises restraint and arouses compulsion which leads to success. Old age turns to it for consolation, for.assurance, and for final prepara- tion for the great adventure. In health it presents avenues making the investment of energy worth while. In sickness it connects us with the Great Physician. In sorrow it is a rest and peace which no other book even pretends to offer. When re- morse rests heavy on the heart on account of misdeeds, the Bible is the one Book which offers the restoration of a broken and lost fellowship, awakens courage and leads to a renewal of effort in the highest self-realisation. None of these things would be true, if you reduce the Bible to the level of a human production. It is all because of its unquestionable inspiration and its unfailing © trustworthiness as the Word of God, that the Bible makes its contribution to human need. How about the next world? Who knows any- thing about it? What is the source of our infor- mation? If the Bible is not God’s Revelation fully inspired, then no one in God’s universe knows one thing about the future life. Throw out the Bible, as God’s Word, and no one has one particle of positive assurance of a life of felicity beyond the grave. “The Land of the Leal” is illusory, imaginary, only a dream, unless God has positively and unequivocally spoken. But He has. The only FORTRESS OF REVELATION 67 gateway modernism can place before a man who is facing the future life is an interrogation point. What really consolatory word can modernism speak to the dying? It knows nothing of a com- plete salvation through an Atoning Sacrifice. It can, therefore, give no positive assurance of the forgiveness of sin. What a dreary and desolate thing the Bible itself becomes, after it leaves the hand of the modernist. Its song is changed from a Davidic to a Jeremiad, from a melody of joy to a gloomy dirge. The mighty current of truth being poured into the world by the Bible Societies, through the channels offered by distinctively evan- gelical institutions, will tear asunder any dam that may be temporarily thrown across its current. You can no more stop this Amazon of revelation from irrigating the world than a child could stop the Amazon River with a blow-pipe. No effort is more futile than that of modernism to disrupt or destroy the “ Impregnable Rock of Holy Scrip- ture.” All the efforts of unbelief, under whatever guise or name, have not succeeded in making even the slightest dent upon this imposing Matterhorn of Revelation. You can no more stop the steady, persistent, onward movement of God’s Holy Word than you can stop the advance of an avalanche with an alpine pike staff, or the advance of an ocean tide with the sand barricade builded by children on the beach. Many are being led to believe that the findings 68 . FORTRESS OF REVELATION of science make impossible and irrational the ac- ceptance of the Bible as the Word of God. This is done, however, by mere assertion and not by one particle of actual evidence. We are being told that the discovery of ancient manuscripts has changed the attitude of scholars toward the Bible. Refer- ence is made to the discoveries of Tischendorf and others which have led to new translations and the corrections of many former errors. Now what are the facts? The gratifying and even startling facts are that not one single doctrine of Christian- ity has been affected one iota or changed in the slightest degree by any revelations of ancient manuscripts. A book which has recently issued from the press, Here and There Among the Papyri, is fascinating in the story it tells about the uncover- ing of manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts. It reveals to us the fact that we have many thou- sands of these papyri and translations by the hun- dreds making clear to us the habits and practices in common life as far back as the third and fourth centuries before Christ. Many New Testament quotations are presented, almost the entire first chapter of Matthew, and yet in all this accumulated information not one syllable from first to last would lead to the slightest revision of the traditional doc- trines of the Church of Christ. Precisely the same result is noted in all depart- ments of archzological research. One of the more recent works, Archeology and the Bible, tells a FORTRESS OF REVELATION 69 surprising story of the discovery of ancient libra- ries, but insofar as these discoveries relate to the Bible they are invariably in corroboration of it and never in contradiction. What, then, becomes of all this talk about discrediting the Bible through the pronouncements of science and, recent discoy- eries? There is absolutely nothing in it. Nothing could be more deceptive or misleading than talk along these lines. The claim is unfounded and wholly untrue. Happily all this information is available to every student of the Word of God. Such men as Prof. Sayce speak authoritatively and with a positiveness not to be misunderstood; they declare that while new light has been thrown upon many uncertain facts recorded in Scripture the result has been to make more sure the truth, of every nature, revealed in Holy Writ. With these incontrovertible facts before us, why should we permit modernism to go unchallenged in its effort to discredit the Bible as the Word of God? The foundations stand sure. ‘They are unshakeable, immovable. We can rest absolutely certain that not one jot or tittle of Holy Scripture will fall or fail. If a new alignment is inevitable, we need have no regrets that the hour has come for dissipating the fog which modernism has caused to rest upon the Christian world by its obscurations, its evasions, its negations and positive denials. It is time to build the altar and place the sacrifice 70 FORTRESS OF REVELATION and let the old time scene be repeated while the priests of Baal make their futile cry and Elijah again breathes his prayer of faith. We can well afford to accept the consequences. ‘“‘ The God that answereth by fire, let him be God.” No believer in Jesus Christ as “ the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” can longer be silent without guilt. Modernism is illogical and inconsistent in the — extreme. It denies the trustworthiness of the Bible in one breath and in the next quotes it'in support of some favourite proposition. It deals recklessly with all the criteria of truth. It is adrift on an open sea without chart or compass. It depends upon theory for fact and arbitrarily throws out the best attested truths simply because they do not fit into its own predetermined scheme of things. Its intense concern for recentness betrays it into the strangest misconceptions and misinterpretations. I am persuaded that a majority of the most cultured and best educated people are heartily opposed to the present-day anti-supernatural drift with its Gospel of doubt and denial. It is all so unreal and so subversive of soul interest. It is as full of peril to the spiritual life as is poison gas to the body. Thousands have become inoculated with the virus of unbelief and no longer find that peace of mind and that food for mind and heart which alone can insure the realisation of the highest spiritual ideals. Nothing more completely expresses the painful ex- FORTRESS OF REVELATION 71 perience of a soul whose faith has lapsed than the sentiment of the following hymn: “ How tedious and tasteless the hours When Jesus no longer I see. Sweet prospects, sweet birds and sweet flowers Have all lost their sweetness to me. The midsummer’s sun shines but dim, The fields strive in vain to look gay, But when I am happy in Him December's as pleasant as May.” “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall never pass away.” ‘Trust it; love it; live it. It is the truth that lifts humanity to the heights. VII THE VIRGIN BIRTH UST now the question of the Virgin Birth of Christ is right in the forefront of religious controversy. Probably the explanation is to be found in two facts. It is the easiest approach to the question of the Deity of Christ, and can be attacked with the assurance that popular prejudice can easily be aroused in support of opposition to the doctrine. Secondly, because as an entering wedge to the denial of Biblical authority and the Deity of Christ, it is likely to arouse less suspicion than an out and out pronouncement against the great doctrines of the Church, which, however, stand or fall with the truth or untruth of the Virgin Birth, At any rate, the question is definitely before us. | The Biblical position is so unmistakable, so un- compromising, so unequivocal, so commanding, that to accept the Gospels at their face value neces- sitates acceptance of the Virgin Birth. If language has any definite meaning whatsoever, then Matt. 1: 18-24 leaves not the slightest room to doubt the Virgin Birth of Christ. Equally forceful and ex- plicit is the statement of Luke, Luke 1: 26-38. The 72 THE VIRGIN BIRTH 73 genuineness, the authenticity, the credibility and the trustworthiness of these two Gospels are doubted by no one who believes in the Gospels in any true sense or belief. The authors are regarded as sane men, fully competent to record facts and to witness to the facts recorded, as worthy of credence by everybody. One of two things must happen,—either the Virgin Birth must be accepted or the Gospels denied the right to complete recog- nition. Exactly this is the situation that confronts us. Evangelicals hold without a doubt to the stu- pendous fact of the Incarnation as here narrated, while modernists arbitrarily select such portions of the Gospels as their preconceived notions allow them to believe, and reject the remainder. If 1n- consistency ever had complete demonstration it has it in this wilful, groundless, irrational ecclecticism. With all the ardour of positiveness we find mod- ernists quoting from Matthew and Luke, though logically they have invalidated every statement of both Gospels by the repudiation of sections as well accredited as any other part of the Bible. Sanity, seriousness, logic, all the laws of think- ing, all the requirements of evidence, all the cri- teria of truth demand either an acceptance of a fact so clearly stated that it cannot be misunder- stood, given without an “if” or a “but’’; or, a frank declaration that the whole Gospel is a matter of conjecture, and, as history, unreliable. Modernists with much show of learning talk 74 THE VIRGIN BIRTH about the later discoveries of science as prohibitive of acceptance of the fact of the supernatural birth of Christ. What science? What pronouncement has science of any kind when we enter the realm of the divinely revealed? What could be more unscientific than to declare that a Personality so unlike any other the world has ever seen that He has to be contrasted with all the rest of humanity; in wisdom, moral perfection, commanding power of personality so great that He stands forth in isolated grandeur, when contrasted with the noblest and the best, is simply a human product coming through ordinary process of generation, and can be accounted for on the basis of heredity alone? On a scientific basis, where causes and effects are interpreted on the basis of fixed laws, Christ is absolutely inexplicable and impossible. On the naturalistic hypothesis no such character could be factual. Approaching the sacred circle circum- scribed about Jesus Christ, science stops, mute, dumb, or closes its eyes and denies that there is any reality beyond the natural order. Real science calmly recognises the limitations of its wisdom, and makes no attempt to prescribe in the realm of the supernatural Christ. Science does not even pretend to deal with the question of the Virgin Birth. It deals with the inexplicable and accountable facts of nature. The Virgin Birth is readily conceded as wholly super- natural by evangelicals, notwithstanding Huxley’s THE VIRGIN BIRTH 75 statement that this Virgin Birth is entirely possible on naturalistic grounds; in spite of this, I say, we accept it solely on the authority of Revelation, and as a necessary corollary of Redemption. It may appropriately be stated anew that not one discrediting word is spoken by recovered codexes or deciphered papyri, gathered from the accumu- lated sands of the centuries, concerning the nativity accounts of Matthew and Luke. The oldest re- covered manuscripts that contain these Gospels never omit even a sentence of the story of Christ’s supernatural birth. What is this new light that forbids further confidence in this statement of fact regarding the Human beginning of the Human Life of God? Is it light at all? Is it not, rather, deliberate denial of the great truth which compels acceptance of the whole redemptive programme of Jesus Christ? Once accept the supernatural birth and you are irresistibly led on to belief in the Atonement and the Resurrection, both of which require a recognition of the sinfulness of sin and the reality of judgment. The denial of the Virgin Birth leads inevitably to a denial of the true Deity of Christ. On the other hand, acceptance of the fact so clearly set forth in two Gospels makes the Deity of Christ sure beyond a peradventure. The Virgin Birth was prophesied: “The Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14. From the very first pre- 76 THE VIRGIN BIRTH diction of Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head,” to the end of the Old Testament we have not alone repeated predictions and elaborate descriptions which make the Virgin Birth and the redemptive work of Christ only the fulfilment of prophecy, but we have also the fact that the Old Testament is symbolic. The Talmud truly says, “All the prophets prophesied only of the days of the Mes- siah and the world was created only for the Messiah.” Sanh. 98b. Modernists seek to cast aspersions on Isaiah 7:14 by stating that the word translated “ virgin ” does not necessarily mean “ virgin.” Edersheim says, the fact that the Seventy who were the most eminent Hebrew scholars in the world translated the word “virgin” is sufficient evidence that in this connection the word could have no other mean- ing. Probably no “Life” of Christ extant pre- sents a higher order of scholarship than Eder- sheim’s Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. Surely Edersheim cannot be accused of prejudice in favour of Christianity. He was independent, erudite, and naturally biased—if biased at all—on the side of Hebraic interpretation. Dr. Edward S. Niles, President of the Hebrew Messianic Council, says: ‘‘ Married women are called, by the original Old Testament Scriptures, Ishshah; unmarried women are called Neshim; THE VIRGIN BIRTH cc mature young women are called Bethulah, and girls not mature, under thirteen years of age, are called Alma. ‘Translations into English, Greek, Latin and Syriac all speak of Mary the Virgin (Alma). With regard to the matter of prophecy and the Messiah, Edersheim says: ‘‘ The ancient Synagogue found references to the Messiah in many more passages than those verbal predictions to which we generally appeal, and the latter formed (as in the New Testament) a proportionately small and sec- ondary element in the conception of the Messianic era. This is fully borne out by a detailed analysis of those passages in the Old Testament to which the ancient Synagogue referred as Messianic. Their number amounts to 456 (75 from the Penta- teuch, 243 from the Prophets and 138 from the Hagiographa) and their Messianic application is supported by more than 558 references to the most ancient Rabbinic writings. But comparatively few of these are what would be termed verbal predic- tions. Rather it would seem as if every event were regarded as prophetic and every prophesy, whether by fact or by word (prediction), as a light to cast its sheen on the future, until the pic- ture of the Messianic age in the far background stood out in the hundredfold variegated brightness of prophetic events, and prophetic utterances; or, as regards the then state of Israel, ’til the dark- ness of their present night was lit up by a hundred constellations kindling in the sky overhead, and its 78 THE VIRGIN BIRTH lonely silence broken by echoes of heavenly voices, and strains of prophetic hymns borne on the breeze.” To modernism such a picture represents only the chimerical dreams of disordered fancy. It sees no definite prediction representing Jesus of Nazareth as a virgin-Born Redeemer; a royal personage; “God manifest in the flesh.”’ The fact is, all the ordinances and institutions of the Old Testament are types of which Jesus was the anti-type. Modernists conceive of the Old Testament as the natural literature of a race yet in its childhood, and little worthy of recognition in our estimates of real religion. There is not only nothing inconsonant with the entire Old Testa- ment teaching, in accepting the Virgin Birth, but it is the actual fulfilment of the clearest declara- tions concerning the personality of Jesus and His nature and His work. “Son of God and Servant of the Lord ” is declared of Him who was to come. In the Targum on Isaiah 9:6, the pre-mundane existence of the Messiah appears as a common belief. It is objected that the genealogies in both Matthew and Luke refer to Joseph and not to Mary. Suppose this to be true, what then? It only makes sure that Jesus’ legal and regal stand- ing is established. This was the more necessary to show from the very fact that He was not the son of Joseph by nature. THE VIRGIN BIRTH 79 Regarding the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, Edersheim says: “‘ Whatever view may be taken of the genealogies in the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke, whether they be regarded as those of Joseph and of Mary, or, which seems the more likely, as those of Joseph only making his legal descent from David, or vice versa, there can be no question that both Joseph and Mary were of the royal lineage of David. Most probably the two were nearly related, while Mary could also claim kinship with the Priesthood, being, no doubt, on her mother’s side a blood relative of Elisabeth, the priest-wife of Zacharias.” The most powerful influence on earth to glorify motherhood has been the fact of the Virgin Birth of Christ. It is astounding that intelligent men will be so strangely blind and so warped in judg- ment as to make an attempt to show that the Virgin Birth is in any sense a reflection on ordi- nary motherhood. Every feature and phase of pure womanhood has been beautified and made adorable by this great event of history. Instead of being hidden forever, the method of the advent of Jesus has been made absolutely sure beyond a rea- sonable doubt through the testimony of the Holy Spirit as recorded in the Gospels. This is in no sense a speculative question. It is a fact, “ God- wrought and God-attested.”’ Intelligent people know perfectly well the impossibility of repudi- ating the Virgin birth and at the same time 80 THE VIRGIN BIRTH claiming any sort of credibility, authenticity or reliability for the remainder of God’s Word. Pre-determining God’s programs and dictating His limitations is disastrous business and sooner or later brings the would-be prophet into disrepute. To the man who disbelieves the Atonement, doubts the Resurrection, the question of the Incarnation is, of course, unimportant. However, since it is basic in the whole Redemptive scheme it is vitally important to those who accept Jesus Christ not alone as God’s prophet but also as God’s priest who offered Himself a living sacrifice on Calvary for the sins of the world. The noted and sagacious minister of the Word, Henry Ward Beecher, could most certainly not be accused of being either dogmatic or ultra con- servative. His observations have especial point in the present controversy. He says: “ We scarcely need to say, that we shall take our stand with those who accept the New Testament as a collection of veritable historical documents, with the record of miracles, and with the train of spiritual phenom- ena, as of absolute and literal truth. The miracu- lous element constitutes the very nerve-system of the Gospel. To withdraw it from credence, is to leave the Gospel histories a mere shapeless mass of pulp.” Life of Jesus Christ, page 9. “The Word was God.” “ And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” This is all the ex- planation given by the disciple who was most in THE VIRGIN BIRTH 81 sympathy with Jesus. Jesus was God and He was made flesh. The simplest rendering of these words would seem to be, that the Divine Spirit had en- veloped Himself in a human body, and in that con- dition been subject to the indispensable limitations of material laws.” Life of Jesus Christ, p. 49. “The superiority of spiritual over sensuous, is the illuminating truth of the New Testament. The Gospels should be taken or rejected unmutilated. But our sceptical believers take from the New Testament its supernatural element,—rub out the wheat—and eat the chaff. . . . Miracles are to be accepted boldly, or not at all. They are jewels and sparkle with divine light, or they are nothing.” Life of Jesus Christ, p. 37. Vill REDEMPTION T no point is modernism more completely outside the plain teaching of the Scripture than in the matter of Redemption. There is not the slightest doubt that evolution has worked havoc with the faith of many men. Accepted in its rationalistic form, it necessarily divests sin of its Scriptural significance, since man becomes a victim of heredity and environment, and in no such sense responsible for his acts as to insure condem- nation and penalty. If no sin in the sense of guilt before God, then, of course, no Redemption. The Bible definitely teaches that man is a free moral agent, and that violation of God’s law, or want of conformity to it, entails a guilt and alienation from God. This estrangement cannot be changed by a mere desire that it shall be removed. A Holy God demands justice in His Universe, and His very nature is so utterly opposed to every form of evil that man must be freed from the bondage entailed by sin before he can possibly be accepted into fel- lowship with a Holy God. The coming of Jesus Christ to the world had the single object of effecting a complete restora- 82 REDEMPTION 83 tion of amicable relations between man who has sinned and God who is holy. The coming of Christ was definitely an act of God, and prompted wholly through love. The incarnation is a neces- sary prerequisite to a Redeemer. In order to ac- complish redemption, Christ was God-man. He partook of our nature, and at the same time was in very truth God. In Himself God and man per- fectly met. The Bible employs the word “ re- demption”’ as a designation of Christ’s work, and the term “ Redeemer” for Christ as the agent whereby redemption is secured. Had there been no sin, with the result of fixing the incline of life downward, there would have been no need of a Saviour. Every individual carries in himself suf- ficient evidence of sin and guilt to require no reve- lation other than his own consciousness that he is not at one with his Creator. ‘That the sense of guilt is universal, the smoking altars of tribes and nations of all lands and all ages testify. The Bible doctrine of sin is perfectly clear. Through disobedience we became alienated from God. Sin entails guilt, and guilt entails judgment. “The wages of sin is death.” ‘Through sin the sum of the forces of evil in the soul becomes greater than the sum of the forces of righteous- ness, and the inevitable consequence is death, spir- itual death. To change the balance so that the life forces shall predominate was God’s problem, and He solved it through redemption. “God so 84 REDEMPTION loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” ‘ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” The promise of redemption was given in Gen. 3:15: “ And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” The idea of substitttion whereby Christ takes in some real sense the place of the sinner who accepts Him is found in Psalm 51, and Isaiah 43:24, 25: “Thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine in- iquities. I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not re- member thy sins.” The New Testament teaches that redemption is a ransom. “ The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” “and to give his life a ransom for many.” “In whom we have redemption through his blood, and forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace,’ Eph. 1:7. “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins,” Col. 1:14. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree,’ Gal. 3:13. ‘To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons,” Gal. 4:5. Christ thus redeems us from REDEMPTION 85 all unrighteousness. The power and dominion of sin are gone. We are not alone delivered from guilt, but also from the love of sinning, and thus become free indeed. All this comes by faith in the “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” The redemption effected by Christ is a deliver- ance from guilt so that the forgiveness of sins is made possible and consistent with God’s holiness. “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace,” Eph. 1:7. “In whom we have re- demption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins,’ Col. 1:14. We are thus made new creatures and a true possession of Christ by faith. “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works,’ Titus 2:14. “ Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tra- dition from your fathers,” I Pet. 1:18. The very power of the devil is mastered through this re- demptive work of Christ. ‘‘ Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out,’ John 12:31. “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it,’ Col. 2:15. The whole motive for redemption is found in the love of God. Christ is redemption offered freely 86 REDEMPTION to all men, on condition that they repent and trust- ingly accept Him. Redemption is a release from the power of sin. In the face of Scripture, who can have the temerity to say we need no redemp- tion, and at the same time quote passages from God’s Word in support of their own preferred claims? God’s Word is not ambiguous. There is no explaining away its meaning. “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” Rom. 3:24. “ And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan within our- selves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the re- demption of our body,” Rom. 8:23. “ But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption,’ I Cor. 1:30. “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace,” Eph. 1:7. “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption,” Eph. 4:30. “In. whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins,” Col. 1:14. “ Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal re- demption for us,” Heb. 9:12. “ For this cause he is the mediator of the new testament that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions REDEMPTION 87 that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal in- heritance,’ Heb. 9: 15. Nothing is more definitely declared in God’s Word than that every man is lost until he finds Jesus Christ. If he has never heard of the historic Christ, then, as Joseph Cook was wont to say, he is saved by loyalty and faith in the essential Christ of conscience. At any rate, LOST is a definite Bible word and cannot be softened down to mean any- thing other than impoverishment and ruin. “ For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”, Matt. 16:26. “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?” “ And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.” “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found. And they began to be merry.” “It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found,’ Luke 15:24, 32. “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” Luke 19: 10. In direct contrast with this condition of lostness, we have the blessed fact of salvation. More than 88 REDEMPTION a score of times Jesus is designated as Saviour. His mission to earth was a mission of salvation. “For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the spirit by measure unto him,” John 3:34. “But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,” John 5:17. “ Some said, This is he: others said, he is like him: but he said, I am he,” John 9:9. “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved,” Acts 2:21. “ Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved,’ Acts 4:12. “ And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house,” Acts 16:31. “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life,’ Rom. 5:10. “‘ Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)” Eph. 2:5. All these inspired Scriptures evangelicals thor- oughly believe. Modernists repudiate the whole doctrine of salvation thus set forth, What man needs is education and unfolding, according to the modernists. But they find no way to accomplish the very thing they proclaim necessary. Nothing is SO visionary and unreal as the salvation effected by good works. In the very nature of the case good works cannot atone for evil already done. REDEMPTION 89 Modernists leave the soul under conviction of sin without the assurance of Divine acceptance. E-van- gelicals do not undertake to explain just how God accomplished redemption through the self-giving of the God-man, Jesus Christ. They know two things, and know them well, namely, that the Bible definitely declares the fact, and also that 1t works. It emancipates, renovates, revolutionizes and makes man receiving this salvation a “new creature.” It works. It gives true peace and adequate power. It starts a soul up the sunlit slopes toward the gates of pearl. The power of Christ dwells in the redeemed soul, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding abides there. The Incarnation, obedience and death of Christ all contribute to the redemption He accomplished, but the chief fact is the cross. The supreme thing Jesus came to earth for was to die that men might live. God was the center and soul of Calvary. Christ on the Cross was God doing His utmost for man. It is this very fact that has given the Cross such unmeasured sig- nificance as a symbol. It represents the last word in Divine Love. The salvation thus accomplished effects the whole man. The intellect is quickened and stimulated so that thinking is deeper and straighter. It delivers man from that mental darkness which makes him blind to the higher truths. The will is endowed with a new power of determination which con- quers temptation and solicitation to evil. He who 90 REDEMPTION believes in Christ as Saviour already has eternal life. Not a single one of the manifestly revealed truths is agreeable or acceptable to liberalism. The whole thing is repudiated. It is stigmatized as a religion of the shambles. The supreme sin of humanity is the sin of unbelief. “ When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall convince the world of sin... because they believe not on me.” “He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” “Be ye reconciled to God.” Could anything be more deplorable than the effort of modernism to destroy the very faith without which no man shall see God? IX THE, EFEICACY OR PRAYER ODERNISM believes in prayer simply as a subjective influence. It produces a good state of mind. It helps to concentrate the thought on spiritual ideals. It aids in realising the fact of God. It secures communion, of a more or less attenuated kind, with the Eternal. The better elements of modernism agree that there may be, through prayer, a keener realisation of the Per- sonality of God. ‘The very fact of addressing Deity serves to establish the fact that there is Divine superintendence over the affairs of life. The man who prays is less likely to drift into com- plete agnosticism or atheism than the man who never lifts up his thought to the Creator. Materialistic evolution has no place for prayer in any true sense of the word. The universe runs as a watch runs because it contains within itself the forces that make it go, independently of any personality whatsoever. But for those who even pretend to be really Christian, there is still left, even with modernists, a place for prayer. It is likely to inculcate a reverence and develop a de- voutness which is wholesome. It may lead to an 91 92 THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER appreciation of the nature of God and bring the soul into closer relationship with Him. All this, and more, is certainly true as to the subjective in- fluence of prayer. When men pray sincerely there is developed a fellowship with the Creator and Author of our being. In the very act and attitude of prayer humility is encouraged in one’s self, and a mood is created which permits the Spirit to teach and inspire the soul. Man is naturally proud and self-sufficient and prayer awakens a sense of real dependence. Hence many reject it. | But this is not all of prayer. Nothing is more clearly taught than that God is a giver of every good and perfect gift, through prayer. Prayer is confession of sin and of need. In that confession the door is open for Divine entrance. Jesus never enters bolted doors. He will not and cannot force His way against the human will. The key must be turned from the inside. He stands at the door and knocks, but only enters when a confessing and penitent soul swings wide the door. Prayer as a procuring cause is foreign to mod- ernism. Right here is the radical difference be- tween the evangelical and the modernist. Evan- gelicals accept unhesitatingly that this is God’s World and that He rules over it. Recognising the reign of law, the evangelical knows well that human intelligence has not yet compassed ail law. Behind the scenes God stands ready to change the pattern of the weaving tapestry to meet changed THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER 93 conditions. There are many things God can and will give in answer to prayer, just because asking for them capacitates the soul to receive them. A parent can do many things for a child, if the child is obedient and in an attitude of appeal, which could not possibly be done with safety if the same child were independent and self-assertive. Jesus taught that God does things in answer to prayer. The Bible language is explicit: “ Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? ” Material blessings are given in answer to prayer. The sick are healed. The weak are given strength for the battle. The joyless are given a new atti- tude toward life and enter upon the songful way. Business interests are utterly changed by prayer. Prayer adds to the success of the merchant, the lawyer, the physician, the mechanic, the clerk and people of every occupation and profession. “Prayer moves the arm that moves the universe.” Let no man rob you of the benefits, the advan- tages, the riches, that prayer secures. Things are wrought through prayer that would not and could not be achieved without it. Nor is it a merely subjective matter. It is objective as well. It is not that God has to be teased for things He knows we 94 THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER need. It is that while He knows our needs, He cannot wisely meet them unless we ask Him. “No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” Yes, but a large part of walking uprightly is manifest in appeal for the wisdom, the strength and the desire to walk up- rightly. There is not one thing of interest to an immortal soul that is foreign to the Divine thought and will. Nothing is too trivial to take to God, if it bears upon our well-doing and our well-being. Many who have come under the influence of me- chanical and material evolution have reached the conclusion that as the wheels of a watch move with an inexorableness due to its mechanism, so every- thing in the world moves arbitrarily, and there is no eye to pity and no ear attentive to our call. Nothing could be farther from the fact. God hears. God cares. God answers. God gives. True prayer always breathes “ Thy will be done.” It is not demand. It is trustful appeal and loving petition. Xx CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE T best life is a struggle. We make every advance in the teeth of storm. Inclination calls for indulgence. Passion is always ap- pealing for satisfaction. ‘The flesh warreth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” ‘The lawlessness of today is only the outbreak of an inner rebellion that is ever ready to assert itself when restraints are demanded. Appreciating the value of char- acter, the determination to put down the unholy usurpations of the flesh costs. It is not easy. It means something to practice self-denial. Altru- ism is not a fleshly inclination. In the business world competitions are fierce. Short cuts to suc- cess are ever a temptation. The evidence of this is seen in the series of investigations demanded by Congress, because men supposed to be far beyond yielding to unrighteous temptations, have done so. Righteousness never has an easy time of it. It has to fight its way out and on and up. All this is to emphasise the fact that a righteous life must rest On an assurance positive and final. We want 95 96 CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE to know that after the toil there will be rest. We want to know that God is and is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. We want to be sure that we have not run in vain. We have a right to be assured that it is worth the effort and the self-sacrifice and the pain to “fight the good fight of faith.” Again, we see the great procession moving out of sight into the shadows. The friends of youth are one by one passing out. At mid-life half of them have gone. At three score years we begin to be lonely. At three score and ten how few remain! At four score the sun sets and the day is done. What then? We have toiled labouriously and we have fought evil in all of its forms. We have met disappointment. We have been under the fire of unjust criticism, and perhaps have suffered from the malignity of the evil minded or the misin- formed. Well, what then? Has the struggle been for nought? We might have drifted along the easiest way. Has all the effort paid? Must we pass into the night with no assurance of dawn? It is not enough to accept the guesses, or even the probabilities, the perhaps and the maybe. It will not do to say it is probable that a Good God will some way see us safely through. We want to know that there is a Good God. We want to know that our relations with Him are forever settled. We want to know that we have entered into a fellow- ship that nothing can destroy, and that will con- CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE 97 tinue through all eternity. We must have assur- ance or we have no peace. Science, with all its marvels of wisdom and knowledge, stops abruptly at the bedside of the dying. It offers no companionship for one single second beyond the last breath. It has spoken well and eloquently regarding mental and bodily facts and forces. It has compelled nature to yield her remedial secrets. It has taught faithfully of processes. But here at the moment of all moments serious and supreme, science has not a word to say. She is dumb. The soul is left to pass out, if there be a soul that survives death, without one single assurance from science that a morning dawn will follow the night. No philosophy speaks with a single word that is positive, unequivocal, final, re- specting that “undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.” What is the best word modernism can speak in that hour of unspeakable solemnity? It brings no unquestionable message from an inspired Revela- tion, because it knows no such revelation. Whether God has actually spoken must be determined by each individual. The evidence is not final that any single verse in the Bible is the unmistakable Word of God. No one has ever come back to relate the experiences beyond the vale. Since Jesus was but a man, though exalted, He knew no more about the life beyond than other men. Modern- ism knows no authority save that of experience. 98 CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE But here experience teaches us nothing, since we may not call upon the experience of the de- parted for evidence and testimony. Where, then, is assurance? Evangelicals are not left suspended in the cloud of uncertainty. We have a sure word of Revela- tion. God has spoken. He has spoken regarding life here and hereafter. Jesus had much to say about the life to come. On His word of honour as God, He declared Eternal Life was within His power to give. Faith resulting from repentance and remission of sin identifies the disciple with his Lord. ‘“ He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” “ Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: ... I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go... I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also,” “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” The Apostle Paul over and over again presents the future life of blessedness as the surest of all sure things. “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.” “We know that if our CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE 99 earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” More than two hundred of the most positive declarations of the life everlasting are to be found in the Gospels and Epistles. When the Bible is known to be the very Word of God, then doubts disappear. Faith blos- soms into the completest soul knowledge. Here is the peace that passeth all understanding. It is one thing stoically to close the eyes and meet the in- evitable, steeling one’s self against a display of weakness. The pagan and the atheist can do that. It is quite another matter to see Heaven advancing as earth is receding, and eagerly reach out for the new day. It is one thing to entertain a hope that all will be well, and trust, though without knowl- edge, that “ Morn shall tearless be.” But it is all so different when one has experienced the joys of regeneration, born anew, in Jesus Christ and knows in his heart of hearts that as Christ rose from the dead, so resurrection to eternal life is guaranteed to all who trust Him and have become identified with Him. It is in the fact of Incarnation which became the foundation for the Cross; the fact of the Cross which opened the way for the Resurrection; the fact of the Resurrection which opened the way for the Ascension; the fact of the Ascension which returned Jesus Christ to the Throne: it is in these facts, I say, that we have our assurance. ‘The 100 CHRISTIAN ASSURANCE ‘“‘T know ” repeatedly expressed in the first, second and third Epistles of St. John all rest back on the everlasting certitudes above mentioned. When you drift into the camp of modernism, you have left the eternal foundations. You have changed pe- riods to interrogation points, and they are so many that they obscure the heavens, as I have seen the swarms of locusts obscure the sun, in their flight through the sky. The struggle up is worth while. All the way through, the believer in the Christ of the Manger, Cross and Throne, carries with him the conscious- ness of Divine approval and of Divine help. Nothing but real progress can ever give soul peace. We are entreated to “ grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” “Go on unto perfection.” What an implication of approach to God! ‘“ More and more unto the per- fect day.” “I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.” “ He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” “Unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the pres- ence of His glory with exceeding joy.” What zest it gives to life to know! How it stabilises the soul amid storms of doubt and denial to know! The one sure ground of knowledge is the Blessed Word of God, which finds corroboration and certification in experience, for those who have a true vision of the supernatural, saving Christ. XI THE MINISTRY AND MODERNISM HY is it so difficult today to secure recruits for the Christian ministry? Every kind of reason but the right one has been as- signed. The old-time call to the ministry was no myth. It had in it no sinister motive. It was a holy, soul compulsion, such as actuated Paul, who said, “ Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.” It was just such an appeal, only upon the spiritual plane, as is made when a victim is sinking beneath the wave and is calling for help. Who would plunge into the icy waters of a river, endangering life and health, merely to make the effort a little lighter for one who would reach shore without assistance? ‘There would be no sufficient appeal in such a condition. We are told that men refuse to enter the ministry because salaries are inade- quate to comfort. ‘There is not a word of truth in it, though it is a fact that the salary of the average minister has been shamefully small. We are also told that appeals in business and profes- sional lines absorb the attention and control the action of youth to the detriment of the ministry. None of these things would have any weight as 101 102 THE MINISTRY AND MODERNISM against the redemptive compulsion and passion which led Jesus to His Cross. When you dilute and soften down the meaning of sin, and declare that humanity is safe without the sacrificial Atone- ment of Christ, you have taken away the supreme incentive to the Christian ministry. Preaching the ‘‘ modern” Jesus makes the whole matter of religion not one of life and death, but merely of culture and improvement, with no ade- quate motive for either. Why is it that many of the theological seminaries are able to call but a handful of men for instruction, while institutions holding loyalty to Christ and the Word, success- fully appeal to hundreds of American youth to receive the intellectual discipline necessary for efficiency in proclaiming “ The Story of Jesus’? It is because these institutions have not lost the vision of the Christ of Calvary. This is the only explanation. Confidence in the overthrow of evil, in the victory of right and in the establishment of righteousness lies in implicit trust and faith, not in a dead Jesus, but in a living, imperial, victorious Christ. The pale-faced, soft-spoken, unauthori- tative, impotent Jesus of modernism, is in no respect related to the splendour-robed, glory- crowned, wave-walking, storm-defying, miracle- working, life-giving, peace-empowering Christ. The most powerful factor in the world today is the Christ who said, “TI, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” Legislation, THE MINISTRY AND MODERNISM 1038 the so-called “ Social Gospel” and humanitarian societies have a certain influence, but merely as palliatives. The hurt of the world knows only one healing balm, and that is poured into the gaping wounds made by sin from the pierced hand of the world’s Saviour. We are told that the Sermon on the Mount is the Magna Charta of true religion, but note this: that modernism has no evidence that Jesus ever spoke the Sermon on the Mount, which is any stronger than the evidence for His super- natural birth, His atoning death and His resurrec- tion. ‘They have no manuscripts or documents which give any evidence that Jesus ever lived, except the very documents which with equal posi- tiveness and clarity declare for the whole super- natural program narrated in the Gospels. The Christ of the Cross, and He alone, is the sinner’s Saviour, by virtue of His Divine sacrifice. He is the living consoler of the sad, the strength of sufferers, the companion of the lonely, the one su- preme inspirer to great leadership, the infallible counselor, the abiding peace-giver, the full assur- ance of everlasting life to the dying, and to all who trust in Him. To be sure, the preachers of modernism are lavish in their applause of Jesus. They are un- stinted in ecomiums and laudations. The unwary are deceived by such utterances. Jesus Christ asks no applause, no laudation; He will have no patron- age, no eulogy. He asks worship, adoration and , 104 THE MINISTRY AND MODERNISM trust. A Gospel which represents the Jesus whose love is anemic, mere sentiment, is the Gospel which led Germany into her contempt for Christianity and her repudiation of it as a religion for ineffectives. The love of Christ is infinitely above mere kindli- ness and benignity. It is an eternal principle, com- passionate but commanding, and rests upon great basic facts. The higher spiritual intelligence re- coils from the findings of a distinctively material- istic science or an impotent liberalism. Every great discovery in the natural world is hailed with delight and satisfaction by believers in the Eternal Christ. On the other hand, we appreciate perfectly well that in the domain of the spiritual no one can speak authoritatively but Almighty God. The only truth which can permanently grip the human con- science or the spiritual intelligence, is truth which found its complete and perfect enunciation and final demonstration in the Christ whose leadership has guided on and on, until five hundred millions of people worship at His footstool and proclaim Him Lord of all. The human will is free to make its own choices. It is contrary to the policy and principle of Gov- ernment to curtail the rights of a man to believe what he will and to make proclamation of that belief so long as it does not interfere with consti- tuted authority. When out in the open, making clear and unconcealed declaration against belief in the only Christ proclaimed in the Gospels, modern- THE MINISTRY AND MODERNISM = 105 ism is well within its rights. When it uses words and phrases just as though evangelical, it is to be unsparingly condemned. But realising its error and mistaken claims, it is the duty of every true believer in our Lord Jesus Christ to present the truth which hitherto has been, and forever must be, the saving and building truth for humanity. There are no compulsions but the compulsions of conscience and cultivated intelligence, and when™ unhindered, these will lead straight to the Christ of the Manger, Cross and Throne. XII SCHOLARSHIP HE claim that all scholarship is on the side of modernism is nothing but brazen inso- lence and pompous assertion. With a super- ciliousness sufficient to discredit it, modernism claims the earth in the matter of intellectualism and has given no slightest evidence that its claims are true. We hear over and over again, ad nauseam, that “all scholars’”’ have repudiated the Deity of Christ, the Inspiration of the Word of God, Mir- acles, Redemption and all the rest that is held dear by those whose transactions with God make sure the everlasting foundations. Now, all this is weak, shallow, bubble-blowing. Who have been the promoters of learning? Who founded Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Am- herst, Dartmouth, Williams, Brown, Oberlin, Carleton, Wheaton and a score more educational institutions in America? Were they men repudiating the great doctrines of the Bible? Were they men who had no confi- dence in the Bible as God’s Word? He who runs may read. It is indubitably the fact that from the standpoint of mere intellectuality all shades of 106 SCHOLARSHIP 107 belief and unbelief can present illustrious names. Deism was advocated by men of large learning. Pantheism, agnosticism, rationalism, materialism, and even rank infidelity, can all illustrate their in- tellectual claims to recognition, by introducing us to men of intellectual renown. It is utterly absurd for modernism to boast of a superior scholarship, when as a matter of fact the very greatest pro- moters and exemplars of advanced education, and the most eminent men of science and philosophy by the scores and hundreds have been, and today are, avowedly evangelical in faith and accept with- out equivocation or apology the Bible as God’s Word and Christ as an Atoning Saviour. It is sheer presumption and arrogant conceit for mod- ernism to go up and down the earth megaphoning a monopoly of learning, while it impudently and insolently ignores a multitude of the most eminent men in the world of thought today. But one thing further is in point respecting the matter of scholarship. There are some things it can accomplish and some things it cannot accom- plish. The very highest attainments in intellectual discipline and mental acumen must be humble in the presence of Jesus Christ or become hopelessly confused. Christianity is not a man-made reli- gion. It rests on facts. These facts are discernible without University training. In a Court of Justice a witness of average in- telligence is just as capable of testifying that on a 108 SCHOLARSHIP certain day the sun shone, as the wisest astronomer. A farmer does not need to be a chemist to testify that seed cast into the ground, watered and sun- blessed, will germinate and produce after its kind. Few people can give a correct analysis of the processes whereby bread becomes bone and brain, but it requires no physiological training in the schools to know that food vitalises. A man need not be a botanist to appreciate the fact that a rose is beautiful and filled with fra- grance. It is desirable that the very largest acqui- sitions in the realm of learning be realised, but the supreme facts of life are so attested that the av- erage intelligence is capable of appreciation and appropriation. Modernism seeks to make people feel that some new and wonderful light has re- cently been vouchsafed the group classed as mod- ernist. Christianity rests upon a series of facts which can be studied with success by the man in the street, as effectively as by the man in the seat of learning. During three years of the study of philosophy in the University of the City of New York, I was profoundly impressed with the endless variety of theories, put forth by men of eminence, during the nineteen hundred years of Christianity, in an effort to account for human progress without giving credit to Christianity. Theories, speculations, guesses, yes, but no truth to which sin-laden, sorrow-stricken, overburdened humanity could go with the slightest hope of relief. SCHOLARSHIP 109 When it comes to matters of the soul, no man, however learned, can present a humanly constructed system that satisfies the need. In the realm of Spirit, none but God can speak. Who would sit and allow any man on his own say so to declare “Thou shalt,” “ Thou shalt not’? Where is the ground of obligation? Who has a right to impose his will wpon my conscience? Certainly no man who has no other claim to authority than his own conclusions, unaided by the light of Revelation. All the learning of the world for nineteen hun- dred years has been unable to produce any ade- quate reason for the rejection of the “ Glorious Gospel of the Blessed God.” Not supercilious pomposity, but humble teachableness, is the proper attitude. Among the men of learning with whom I have become acquainted, I know of none whose logic was more irresistible, or whose clear analytic | thinking was more admirable than that of Dr. W. G. T. Shedd, and he was accustomed to say: “Gentlemen, acquire all the learning possible and let your minds be disciplined to the most accurate thinking; but remember when it comes to matters of the soul, only God can make full revelation, and you must enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a little child.” All this is obnoxious to modernism. Modernism is not inclined to kneel. It wants to enter the Kingdom, but not with bowed head. It wishes to substitute “Thus saith science” for “Thus saith the Lord.” It brings no results in 110 SCHOLARSHIP repentance and remission of sin. It leaves man haughty, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, unforgiven. It knows too much that is not true. Evangelicals hail with delight each new achieve- ment of science. We admire the ventures and adventures of daring men in the fields of learning. We appreciate fully the value of scholarship in a thousand fields of inquiry, but when the issue is spiritual life and death, we well know that science is absolutely speechless. If God has not broken the silence and shown the way to life, then we are helpless and hopeless. But we know He has. The natural sciences have made such strides in almost every department that many have become intoxi- cated with modern achievement and assume that no Divine revelation is necessary. Man, we are told, carries within himself a sufficiency for his own self-realisation, which is equivalent to salvation. But assertion is not argument, nor does vociferous declaration long accredit a statement to the confi- dence of the commonsense of mankind. There is a line beyond which science cannot speak with authority. All types of ethical theory fail to sat- isfy, except those that recognise God as a personal Being, with full authority to command, whose authority is permeated with both wisdom and love. Science knows nothing of eternal life. Science knows nothing of the supernatural. Here we walk alone with God. Hence the un- speakable importance of that vision of truth which SCHOLARSHIP 111 comes from seeing the invisible and that appreci- ation of truth which comes through Divine inspi- ration and healing whereby we hear the inaudible. The humblest child of humanity may find and love God without the aid of “all scholars.” The wisest need to acquire a higher learning in the School of Christ. As a matter of fact, no mind reaches its best until it fellowships with the Infi- nite Teacher. The master minds in science, art and philosophy have been vitamised by a real impinge- ment of the mind of God through Jesus Christ, God’s Only Begotten Son. Evangelicals present no humanly devised schemes of ethical and spiritual truth. We have “ the more sure word of prophecy.” We offer not theory or cunningly devised sophistries, but ‘ Thus saith the Lord.” We know whom we have believed. Mod- ernism has no “ sure word of prophecy.” It knows nothing about “ Holy men of old moved by the Holy Ghost.” It cannot say with Christ, “ Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” Yielding not an iota to modernism in appreci- ation of the most advanced human learning, pro- vided it is in very truth learning, the evangelical turns to a higher and holier scholarship for its inspirations and messages to a wounded world. There are many men intellectually well equipped who are living on the lower levels spiritually. Is inability to understand how God could create a 112 SCHOLARSHIP universe governed by law and yet leave room for Himself to act above the level of ordinary modes, a mark of superior learning? It is rather a mark of shriveled faith and arrested spuritual develop- ment. ‘To reject Revelation and sneer at miracles requires no prodigious mental effort. The veriest tyro can deal in negations and utter denials. Unbelief is thought to be a mark of pro- found learning and deep thinking. How absurd! No group of men are better entitled to respect on the mere ground of power of mentality than the Rationalists of Germany. But where were they leading the world religiously? Into chaos and worse. They did not know even the rudiments of Chris- tianity. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. What did Jesus mean when He said, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and pru- dent, and hast revealed them unto babes”? Surely not to reflect on learning, but to declare that the things of the Spirit are not dependent on worldly wisdom. The Apostolic College was not composed of the modernists of that day. Not the Greek philoso- pher, or the professional religionist from the school of Gamaliel. It was composed of men unlettered, and yet competent to understand the mysteries sufficiently to become the vehicles through whom Christ could give His message of salvation to the SCHOLARSHIP 113 world. ‘“ Where is boasting, then? It is ex- cluded.” No man can make too great an effort to develop to the utmost the talent God has given him, but after he has availed himself of all the schools can give, he is yet in the kindergarten, spiritually, until illuminated and empowered by the Holy Spirit. ‘“‘ When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” DOUG RELIGIOUS AWAKENING NE of the most practical tests of religious ideal and programme and of religious doc- trine is ability to awaken and arouse the neglectful and indifferent and turn the thought to spiritual responsibility. ‘The whole history of re- ligious progress is one of advance and decline. Christianity has made rapid strides forward and then periods of indifference have followed and sometimes an utter degeneracy in spiritual mat- ters. Fluctuations have been so obvious that one naturally seeks to discover the reasons. Sinful propensities assert themselves, and protest against commands and restraints becomes accentuated. Then conscience becomes dulled and self-indulgence runs riot. After about so long there is a reaction against the reign of passion. Religion is invoked to correct the evils which have become intolerable, and what is known as a “revival” brings thou- sands to the standard of the Cross. Jesus Christ becomes the center of thought and the whole moral nature undergoes complete transformation. Since Pentecost, these especial manifestations of the Holy Spirit have periodically taken place. 114 RELIGIOUS AWAKENING 115 Growth in grace is not an accident. Untiring vigilance, constant prayerfulness and fight against evil must be vigourous and unrelenting. But re- laxation is very likely to be experienced. ‘Then occurs decline. Lukewarmness, coldness and then death logically follow the arrest of spiritual fer- vour. Various influences combine to bring about a decline in faith and fervour in the entire world. This has repeatedly happened. In the early Church genuine revivals attended and fol- lowed persecution. The ranks were recruited by widespread proclamation of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of men. The Pauline revival spread through Asia Minor and Greece. It was preach- ing of Christ and the doctrines Apostolic that produced the remarkable ingathering. Powerful effusions of the Holy Spirit brought thousands to repentance. Tertullian, at the beginning of the third century, said: “ We have filled all places in your dominions, cities, islands, corporations, coun- cils, armies, tribes, the senate, the palace and the court of judicature.” The Protestant Revival begun by Huss and Wycliff, and later increased by Luther, Calvin and their associates, became a world movement on a colossal scale. It was a call to the Word of God and to Jesus Christ. Tens of thousands were born of the Spirit and turned from death to life. It was far and away the greatest revival of religion in the world’s history. The call to repentance and 116 RELIGIOUS AWAKENING to the acceptance of Christ occasioned it. Among the great leaders there was not one who did not believe in the inspiration of the Bible, the Atone- ment of Christ on Calvary, His Resurrection and every cardinal doctrine that is stressed today by evangelicals. The whole movement was inaugu- rated by men who had experienced the new birth. It was a gospel of regeneration that was preached, and not moral repair, which never has and never can transform a life and give to it Godlikeness. For a period of four hundred years there have been times of refreshing through the Spirit of God, and without a single exception they have been inaugurated by fervent, consecrated evangelicals. Under the preaching of John Knox, then of Wish- att, Cooper and Welsh, Scotland was pervaded with a religious awakening that completely transformed the life of the whole people. We read of the Gen- eral Assembly, numbering more than four hundred ministers and elders “ renewing their covenant with sighs and groans and tears as they were swayed by the Holy Spirit as the leaves of the trees are swayed by the wind and by the rushing mighty wind of a driving tempest.” This was at the close of the sixteenth century. The preaching of Bruce and Livingstone, in Scotland, in 1630, resulted in thou- sands turning to God, five hundred being converted in a single day. Livingstone wrote: “I have seen more than a thousand at once lifting up their hands and the tears falling down from their eyes as they RELIGIOUS AWAKENING 117 solemnly surrendered themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ’ After Cromwell and the Commonwealth there set in a period of profligacy and degeneracy of an appalling nature. It continued until devout men and women feared lest God Almighty would de- stroy the world. There was no sin that was not practiced with brazenness. Unbelief was assertive. Infidelity made boasts of the complete debacle of Christianity. Unbelief was everywhere, even in the Church. Religion was formal and a matter of convenience. Every fundamental of Christianity was denied. The modernists of the period sneered at miracles and denounced the doctrine of an In- spired Bible as a ridiculous fiction of the weak minded. With an effrontery and presumption ex- actly like that of today the claim was made that no educated or intelligent person could longer accept as true the deity of Christ or the Atonement or the Resurrection. Every educational institution had its infidel group and the caricature of Chris- tianity was the chief entertainment. It looked as though the knell of doom had sounded for the Church. Yet there were thousands who were loyal to Christ, and who knew that God Almighty could not and would not see the ruin of His Church. Groups gathered in prayer for revival. The “rushing mighty wind”’ of Pentecost came again. A new and wonderful effusion of the Holy Ghost 118 RELIGIOUS AWAKENING was felt throughout England. The leaders were the Wesleys and Whitefield and other devout men of kindred belief. The revival swept over all En- gland and Scotland and Ireland and through the British Colonies. America felt its power, es- pecially New England. So tremendous was it that it became known as the era of “ Great Awaken- ing.’ Later followed wars: the French war, the War of the Revolution, and a great political and social upheaval. Religious life once more sunk to a low ebb. The most outrageous profanity and ‘blatant infidelity defied every law of God and de- nounced the doctrines and creeds of the Church as outworn fables. But once again men of faith with a passion for the lost prayed God for new power and a return to the fountain of salvation. A series of revivals began which brought people by tens of thousands to God through Christ. From 1796 to 1809 revivals were constant in various sections of the United States. In sections where apostasy and unbelief were most pronounced re- vivals were few until the great era of modern revivals. Men like Nettleton and Finney insti- tuted what came to be known as protracted meet- ings and the most marvelous results attended the preaching of Salvation through Faith in Jesus Christ. From 1827 to 1833 the whole nation was shaken by the revival wave. In 1858 another mighty movement set in and nearly half a million were RELIGIOUS AWAKENING 119 converted in a single year. The Moody Revivals are too recent to require especial mention. From the Atlantic to the Pacific the revival spirit called people to renewed consecration and brought scores of thousands to acknowledge Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour. Now these are facts. Did a single one of these revival movements from Pente- cost to the present have its origin in the heart of a man who rejected the Virgin Birth of Christ, or the fact of a Redeeming Sacrifice, or the Resur- rection and Ascension? Not one! Men imbued with the spirit of the modernism of today cannot point to one single work of Grace started by them. Modernism sneers at revivals of religion. It is incapable of appreciating such a work of the Holy Spirit. It invokes psychology and mesmeric influence to account for the phenomenon known as revival conversion. The churches where modernism is preached are without fervour and have no converting message. It is useless to deny it. Liberalism has had not one thing that even ap- proximates a revival in arousing spiritual zeal. It is indeed the reactions from its dreary desola- tions and powerless ethical appeals that produce revivals. Right now a great revival is due from the very lengths to which apostasy has gone. In the vain hope of saving a church from wreck, not a few men who have ceased to believe and teach the evangelical truths, call in some one who feels 120 RELIGIOUS AWAKENING the redemptive passion stirring in his soul, and sit by while he does his utmost to arrest the spiritual degeneracy which invariably sets in under the bar- ren platitudes of modernistic preaching. “ We unhesitatingly confess,” said a prominent Boston liberalist to me recently, “that our church is not calculated to minister to the masses. We are called to teach the select few who live on the higher ethical levels.” Yes, and teach them— what? The utterly false and un-Biblical doctrine of self-salvation. It requires only a fair intelligence and an open mind to see that a form of faith which has never yet produced a spiritual awakening is not at all Christianity, whatever else it may be. It is easy to pose and proclaim, but if no results are seen, assumed superiority counts for absolutely nothing with sensible people. A revival of pure and undefiled religion requires a hearty acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Regeneration is a work of the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost never, never, never works apart from Jesus Christ. Hold that truth. Do not expect that the Holy Spirit will come to your aid while you deny the Lord of Glory in His supernatural birth, His supernatural life, His su- pernatural atonement on Calvary, His supernatural resurrection, His supernatural enthronement in glory. Power is gone when you leave out the Cross. Hark back, you Ministers of Religion, to RELIGIOUS AWAKENING 121 the source of wisdom and power, the Inspired Book, the Redeeming Christ, for then, and only then, will your ministry be with power to save the lost. XIV THE BLIGHT OF MODERNISM HE, best test of a proposition or a pro- gramme is the result of its application. Russia is a world demonstration of the utter failure of applied Communism to do any- thing but wreck. It had long been claimed that all the world needed to convince it of the paradise to be enjoyed through Communism was a demon- stration on a large scale with facilities to make it effective. ‘The opportunity came. The “ No king,” “No God” slogan worked its inevitable results. This world has never witnessed a more awful catastrophe. The leaders bathed in blood to the armpits. Poverty constantly increasing; every manner of infamy practiced through the arbitrary decisions of the most colossal murderers in history ; ruthlessness never was more red handed and never more cruel and pitiless. Russia has been made a desolation more desolate than the Sahara. Thus it is necessary to have an actual applica- tion of a theory before you can be sure that it will work; and if it works, what its work will be. Great claims have been made for modernism. ‘The 122 THE BLIGHT OF MODERNISM 123 distinctive social gospel, completely separated from the doctrine of regeneration, has been declared to be the solution of most of our political, social and religious ills. There is a true social gospel, but it is the Gospel of transformed lives, and an applica- tion of redemptive truth through the individual, with results contributed to the mass. E'vangelicals are tremendously interested in every feature and form of human progress, but we well know that the units of the mass have to be changed before you can change the mass. There is no reform that has not had the earnest and intense advocacy of evangelicals. They are foremost in insistence on such movements as the Prohibition Amend- ment and Law Enforcement. In the “ World and Religion’? Movement there was a revelation of the apathy of the “Friendly Citizen,” the man outside the lines of religious activity. There are notable and splendid exceptions to the rule. Now, turning to the effect of modernism ap- plied to church life, what do we find? With hardly an exception, it means waning interest, decreased attendance, the abandonment of the evening ser- vice, the substitution of some sort of a lecture or entertainment for the mid-week meeting. It re- sults in a steadily diminishing ardour in the spir- itual side of life, with a hundred different things to keep the fading faith from complete extinction. Five specific instances have been brought to my attention by officials of churches in Maine and 124 THE BLIGHT OF MODERNISM New Hampshire. In each instance the story was the same. It runs as follows: “ People in the community had been interested in the maintenance of worship in our village church. Many of our young people haye gone to the city. We had recommended to us a man from the Seminary. He talked very eagerly of his admiration for Jesus and of the remarkable ethical value of the Bible. We soon found that he did not believe in a Super- natural Christ, or in the Bible as Inspired. Interest in the church steadily decreased. We have had moving pictures, and we have had the minister leading the dance, but the church has been dying and we are in despair. Can you recommend a man who really believes something, and knows what he believes? We do not care how old or how young, or what College he graduated from. We have a heart hunger entirely unmet, and we know the blight that has come on religion in this community is due to departure from the Christ of the Gos- pels. What can you do for us?” In four of these churches I was able to recom- mend men who had passed through that blessed experience of being born from above. Each had a passion like the redemptive passion of Jesus Christ. Each of those churches at once began an upward movement. The entire community was changed. A few years ago, three deacons of a church in Greater Boston came to my study and asked if THE BLIGHT OF MODERNISM 125 something could not be done either to get their pastor to see the folly of preaching against the authority of the Word of God, or to help him to get connected elsewhere, that they might have once more the Living Christ proclaimed. In tears one of them said that as a result of the modernistic negations, the young people almost all entirely neglected the church and attended only on the occasion of some social event. JI answered, that right here the laymen of the churches had so far neglected their obligations that they were respon- sible for results. I stated what I believe, that the immediate future of the church rests with the laymen, who should see to it that a Minister called to the church gives the most assuring evidence of a positive and constructive belief in the great doc- trine of the Bible and the Church. Ordaining Councils are often composed of men who have no valid vision of a Saving Christ, and simply do not believe that Christ’s death on Calvary was a true atonement for sin. I stated to these brethren that until laymen who are serving on committees in search of a pastor and teacher, make their own investigation, and refuse to leave the matter to Ordaining Councils, there will continue to be dis- appointment and just such experiences as they were passing through. I advised them to talk frankly with their pastor and state clearly their views. ‘They said it was hopeless, unless outside pressure could be brought to bear, because many 126 THE BLIGHT OF MODERNISM who had never given the slightest evidence of con- version had been admitted to membership, and that the requirements for membership were no more than they would be to unite with any secular organ- isation in the contmunity. I have seen, in the West, a field of a hundred acres of Osaka wheat, all headed out and the pros- pects of a great harvest excellent. I have seen such a field struck with blight from a single night of heavy fog, and from that hour there was no further development. The straw was there. The wheat heads were there, but there was no kernel. The blight left the field useless and worthless. I do not know what more truly illustrates the effect of modernism on a church. The heavy perilous fog of doubt settles down upon the field, and hopes of a harvest are gone. We read that even Jesus in some instances “could there do no mighty work... because of their unbelief.” Have you noted how few children of the second generation of liberals attend church? Have you also noted that liberal churches are largely re- cruited from the derelicts of evangelical churches? It furnishes a stopping place on the downward incline and temporarily opiates the conscience, after the demand for regeneration and the author- ity of the Book of God has been surrendered. Churches desirous of retaining a living faith in a Living Christ must take no chances with men who stammer and hesitate and give evasive answers to THE BLIGHT OF MODERNISM 127 questions as to the supernatural birth of Christ, His redemptive work on Calvary or His triumph- ant resurrection. It is, of course, possible that a man may hold all these views and not be fitted for leadership. No one doubts the immense importance of being assured that the life habits and practices of the Minister of the Word be Godly, and that he be filled with the Spirit of Christ. What is more pitiful than to find a church and community, once strong for God and God- liness, barren and desolate with the dying embers of a former life and beauty, telling of the dev- astating fires of anti-supernaturalistic teaching. The churches that are filled with worshipers are, with few exceptions, those that hold firmly to the Inspired Word, and above all to the Christ of Calvary, as the Redeemer, Friend and Infallible Counsellor. Who has not watched the process of preaching a church empty, and then abandoning it as beyond resuscitation? ‘Then has followed a testing of the promise of Jesus, “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” As if by mir- acle the impossible has happened. Repentant men and women at the altar of God, and adequate means for the advancement of the Kingdom in that community ! Modernists like to give the impression that lay- men are not competent to deal with questions of 128 THE BLIGHT OF MODERNISM religious doctrine. Ministers who do not wish to be closely questioned, declare that the average man should not undertake to determine what he should be taught. Do not be deceived by such foolish- ness. No man can speak with authority save Christ. Any commonsense layman knows that safety lies in securing a preacher who is in league with the Christ who “ spake as never man spake.” The average Church Committee needs a new con- fidence in itself to determine the kind of minister that can be trusted to teach the sons and daughters of the church and the community. Men are to be selected, not because of mere brilliancy, but be- cause of their unyielding hold on infallible truth. You want men who are preaching, not their own theories and opinions, but who are doing exactly what St. Paul did, preaching Jesus and the resur- rection. “Preach . . . the preaching that I bid thee,” |. Preach the (Word?) Here lemsarer strength and progress. Pulpit supply committees should understand that it is no sure evidence that a minister is evangelical merely because an Ecclesiastical Council has ac- cepted him. Councils and presbyteries will often pass any man with good moral character who believes in a Supreme Being. Make your own ex- amination before the call is issued, asking straight- forward questions as to belief in the Bible as God’s Inspired Word, and the Deity of Christ including the supernatural birth, the atonement and the resur- THE BLIGHT OF MODERNISM 129 rection; if the candidate answers these questions positively and without evasion you may be sure he is doctrinally right. When a man says he person- ally believes in the Virgin Birth, etc., but does not regard it essential he places himself in an anoma- lous position, — If he believes in the Virgin Birth, it is because it is revealed in God’s Word, and if so revealed it is revealed as vitally important. The assumption of great breadth and magnanimity in such a posi- tion is wretchedly weak. If such a doctrine is to be believed at all, it is because it is fundamental in the Christian system of truth. XV EVANGELICAL INITIATIVE O power has greater value than the power of initiative. To follow along in beaten trails is not sufficient. To strike out for new conquests requires a peculiar ability and great courage. The modernist will at once claim that precisely this is what he is doing. We answer that the mere fact of a new adventure is no indication of wisdom. It is possible to abandon the only sources of power and thus make the venture futile. The army that leaves altogether its base of supplies may make a rapid march, but it will be to its own destruction. Modernism is right now riding to a fall. Great adventures that have succeeded have been those that kept contact with the forces which have been proven trustworthy. It is no reflection on modernism that it ventures, but that it ventures irrationally, and without the Faith that alone can give it power. The great law of the tides is everywhere in evidence. ‘There are times when the gathered forces of past years are invoked suc- cessfully in launching anew some mighty spiritual enterprise. 130 EVANGELICAL INITIATIVE 131 The great Methodist movement was initiated by a group of men who had a passion for the salva- tion of the lost. Religion was at a low ebb. It was formalistic, and the Gospel was half believed or disbelieved, with the result of a moral slump, graphically portrayed in Lecky’s ‘“ European Morals.” Getting close to the heart of Jesus Christ, and with a new vision of the meaning of the Cross, the Wesleys, Whitefield and such men inaugurated a mighty religious movement. It grew in intensity and in breadth until it circled the globe. Millions were brought face to face with the inevitable judgment, and with strong crying and tears sought forgiveness. The very face of the world was changed by the wonderful Wesleyan Revival. The massive and mighty Methodist Church is a monument to this power of initiative. What is more inconceivable than that modernism could produce a Wesley who with an abiding belief in the Word and the Regnant Christ, dwelt in the inner chamber until the power of the Highest filled his very soul? Modernism has no such appeal to the heart of the world. Who inaugurated the Young Men’s Christian Association? Did George Williams have in mind merely the repair and ethical improvement of way- ward and homeless youth? He yearned for their salvation. He entered upon a new way of inter- esting and reaching young men, but ever and always with their soul transformation in view. ‘To 132 EVANGELICAL INITIATIVE be sure, there have followed in the wake of the movement many social activities and many organi- sations calculated to brighten and cheer the lives of young men and ensure their improvement. Modernism is_absolutely without any illustration of an initiative that has succeeded along distinc- tively spiritual and soul-saving lines. ‘Today the fruits of George Williams’ initiative are seen in every country on earth, and the future of the As- sociation hinges upon the same loyalty to Christ that was demonstrated in its founder. Let any movement, started as a spiritual force and with the purpose of complete salvation through regeneration, degenerate to the materialistic plane and the power goes out. This great movement in the interest of the world’s manhood was not inaugurated by a liberal or a modernist. It is true kindred efforts had been made by men merely philanthropic, but they had a short and impotent life. Turn again to another of the tidal movements of Christian History,—the Sunday School. Who had the wisdom and the purpose to start in operation so tremendous a movement looking to a world-wide knowledge of the Word of God? Was it some man who questioned the integrity and the authenticity and the Inspiration of the Word of God? Hardly. Could you conceive of the apostles of negation beginning anything like the Sunday School movement? But, you answer, EVANGELICAL INITIATIVE 133 today these are most active in what they call the educational programme of the church. Yes, after the believers in a Saving Christ have carried the movement on to a world-wide influence, it is true modernists have discovered in the Bible Schools a chance to impress their anti-supernatural theories and are using the very agency intended to proclaim redemption through Calvary, to undermine the only Faith that can save and build. Nevertheless, the fact remains that this splendid movement had its incentive and its initiative in the soul of Robert Raikes, a man saved by grace and approved of God. He never even so much as ques- tioned the realities of the Atoning work of Christ on Calvary. He never doubted that the Bible is God’s message to a lost world. He was sure re- garding the secret of Eternal Life. Note, then, that it was an evangelical, and no modernist, who brought millions of youth and of adults face to face with the portrait of a Redeeming Saviour in the Blessed Word of God. Now these are facts. How do you account for the fact that no such initiative is ever found in liberalism? Once more: Consider the Christian Endeavour Society. Here was evidently a true inspiration. The youth of the world had had little part in public testimony. The Church had found no active place for the young people. Their witnessing for Christ had not been greatly encouraged. Thousands grew up comparatively indifferent and largely ineffective 134 EVANGELICAL INITIATIVE because they had no training in the most blessed of all work, soul saving. Why did not some lib- eral or modernist inaugurate a movement that has girdled the globe and done more to develop the idea of world brotherhood than almost any other in history? This movement originated just where God Almighty inaugurates all of His great move- ments,—in the soul of a man regenerated by the Holy Ghost and faithful to Covenant truth. Dr. Francis E. Clark was used of the Holy Spirit to bring the youth of the world to face the responsi- bility of making declaration of Faith in Jesus Christ as the one and only Saviour. Like all true evangelicals, Dr. Clark was liberal, but not a lib- eral. He was clear-visioned, with broad sympathy and deep love for his fellow men, but he was and is an evangelical of evangelicals, and the very heart of his great message is loyalty to the Christ of the Cross. Today there are more than three million mem- bers of this Society in all countries. Modernists do not look with favour upon it. Many modern- ised churches eliminated the Society from their list of organisations. But where this has been done, unless an organisation builded on the same plat- form of faith has taken its place, like the Epworth League, the Young People’s Societies of the Pres- byterian Church and the Baptist Young People’s Union, all of which are Christian Endeavour So- cieties under another name; unless, I say, an or- EVANGELICAL INITIATIVE 135 ganisation with a soul-saving programme has taken the place of the Endeavour Society, spiritual de- cline has followed the dissolving of the Society. Today the Christian Endeavour Society is one of the great factors in the religious life of the world. It has had much to do in preparing youth for the tests of faith incident to college life and has enabled hundreds and thousands to stand the test and later to join the great Student Volunteer Movement. This movement was inaugurated by an evangelical who heartily accepts every great fundamental of Christianity and the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Is it a mere accident that every one of these great World Movements had its origin in the heart and mind of evangelicals? Nothing could be more irrational than such a conclusion. ‘There is a reason. There was a dynamic adequate to the stupendous achievement in each case and _ that dynamic was the Redemptive Passion. Nothing else can or does give the urge within that drives on or the wisdom that directs. Hardly a better illustration could be given of the utter failure of liberalism to carry to successful issue anything in the nature of a Mission to the needy than the Morgan Memorial in Boston. Liberalists expended much money on the plant; after trying in vain to work it, and finding they had no appeal and no message that would draw the people, they turned it over to the Methodists who have been success- 136 EVANGELICAL INITIATIVE fully ministering to the needs of thousands. A social gospel merely as a social gospel is the most unworkable, absurd and unsuccessful of modern misconceptions. There is a true Social Gospel, but it is based wholly on personal regeneration and appreciates that the individual is the unit of society. Even settlement work without Christ is a poor, twilight affair. XVI ii, LOST CHRIS TF OR two thousand years all human progress has followed the lead of the Atoning Christ. The best in human thinking, the best in human doing, the best in human feeling have been incited by a contemplation of the life and sacrifice of the Nazarene. The tremendous influence He has exercised and is now exercising is due in part to His exalted life and in part to His matchless teaching, but principally to the Cross and all that it represents. Suppose Christ were lost to human faith and human thought! Have you ever contemplated the awful poverty which would result? Imagine where it would leave the Art Galleries of the world! The bare spaces which would result from the removal of the Christ of art would be typical of the blank emptiness in human thought and life. Suppose Christ were lost to music. What could be substituted for Him? It would mean that the most glorious of all music would be silent. Turn again to the world’s notable libraries. Do you realise what a proportion of the finest literature has been inspired by the Christ of the Manger, the Cross and the Throne? ‘The 137 138 THE LOST CHRIST empty shelves in our public libraries would be their most conspicuous feature if Christ were lost. The Madonnas represent the story of the Virgin Birth. The period of the Renaissance is occupied largely with religious art, and the Virgin and her Divine Child engaged the effort of the most illus- trious artists. If the Madonnas are only perpetu- ating a falsehood in telling the Christ story of the Nativity, of course they should be removed from the realm of reality. What, then, becomes of Bot- ticelli’s “‘ Madonna Dolorosa,” now in the National Gallery, London, or Belini’s “ Madonna” in the same Gallery? We would lose all the notable works of Fra Angelico. We could no more look with any satisfaction upon the Madonna of price- less beauty by Perugino. All these represent only a lost Christ, if the Virgin Birth was a myth. Who would wish to remove from their places of honour the Madonnas of Raphael or Correggio or daVinci? Modernism has no true place for Rossetti’s “‘ Annunciation,” or “ Botticelli’s “ The Nativity,’ or “ Correggio’s “Adoration of the Shepherds,” in Dresden, and the long list of pic- tures of the Nativity, all with a Divine content. What shall we do with Albrecht Durer’s ‘ Resur- rection,’ and the same Gospel proclaimed by scores of the world’s great artists? If Christ did not rise from the dead, all these things are a mockery. Turn for a moment to music. What gave to the world its most Divinely inspired of all music, THE LOST CHRIST 139 the great Oratorios and hymns of the Church? Deny the Adorable Christ His rightful place, and you can no more sing with any sincerity the “ Mes- siah”’ or the “ Redemption.” We must lose for- ever the sweet strains of “ Unto us a child is born; unto us a Son is given, and the Government shall be upon His shoulders, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Just as little would we be able to listen with the slightest enthusiasm or satisfac- tion to ‘ He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” What possible significance could attach to the “ Halle- lujah Chorus”? Think what an impoverishment it would mean if the Christmas carols were all eliminated and scores of the great anthems which convey their marvelous message of salvation. What becomes of the “ Spirituals,” that long line of sympathetic and appealing messages in song directed straight to the soul? When Christ is lost, these also are all lost. It is doubtful if the Christian religion could ever successfully have made its appeal to the world through the generations, without music. Modern- ism draws a black line through the hymns which from our childhood have been instructive, inspiring and uplifting. We could hear no more “ Alas, and did my Saviour bleed,” “ All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?” “Beneath the Cross of Jesus,” ‘‘ Christ for the 140 THE LOST CHRIST World we Sing,” “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” “ He Lives, the Great Redeemer Lives,” “How Firm a Foundation,’ “I am Trusting Thee, Lord Jesus.” Would you wish to be unable to sing with any. possible enthusiasm and belief, “In the Cross of Christ I Glory”? Who would want to give up the sense of deep resolve sug- gested in “ Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken,” or in “Jesus, Lover of My Soul’? How impossible if Christ died and did not rise again to sing, “ Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me,” or “ Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun.” We must halt once and for all that almost endless procession moving into the Kingdom singing, “ Just as 1 Am.” We must drop out of our hymn books, “ Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,”’ “ Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned,” “My Dear Redeemer and My Lord,” and “ My Faith Looks up to Thee.” How much the spir- itual life would lose were we compelled to tear from our hymn books, “‘ My Jesus as Thou Wilt,” “O, Could I Speak the Matchless Worth,” “O Holy Saviour, Friend Unseen,” “O Love Divine that Stooped to Share.’ How can modernism make any great appeal to you when you know it forbids you longer to sing “ Saviour, Thy Dying Love,” “ Stand up, Stand up for Jesus,” “ Sun of My Soul, Thou Saviour Dear,” “ The Son of God Goes Forth to War,” “We Would See Jesus”? How could we get on without that great hymn of the Church, “ Rock of Ages”? Then how utterly THE LOST CHRIST 141 absurd would be the celebration of Christmas if the Birth of the Babe of Bethlehem were no more than the birth of Abraham Lincoln, important an event as that was! Christmas festivities for liber- alism are a travesty. The great spiritual signifi- cance of the Incarnation is what gives Christmas Day its meaning. Rob it of this and it is nothing. Equally true is all this of Easter. To deny the resurrection of Jesus and then go through the forms of Easter celebration is nothing less than sacrilegious. It is bold, barren pretense. Not less true is this of the Lord’s Supper. With what con- sistency or sense can the Lord’s Supper be cele- brated when His Redemption is denied? Jesus said, ““ As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.” To eliminate its sacrificial suggestiveness and make merely a fellowship meeting of it can win the approbation neither of God nor of men. There is nothing more pathetic than the descent of a soul once holding with faith the great truths) of our holy religion, but now sinking into the dismal swamps of modernism. XVII THE BRIGHTER DAY CTION and reaction are the law of life. For twenty-five years the drift has been strong toward rationalism, radicalism and anti-supernaturalism in its varied forms. The dynamic of truth is blasting away the foundations of structures erected on human speculation, and they are toppling over. Erecting houses on sand dunes is not a profitable business. Sooner or later the insecurity of such structures becomes apparent and sensible people are unwilling to occupy them. People are wearying of negations. The everlast- ing apology for the interrogation point is palling on the taste. A tremendous demand for positive and constructive truth is everywhere apparent. Thousands of people have been living in the fog of a fading faith. The world’s unrest is not a little due to a consciousness of spiritual insecurity, and this insecurity has been brought about by visionless professors, preachers and teachers. Pre- suming to be wise above what is written, hundreds of men have substituted theory and speculation for Revelation, and with monumental conceit have pre- sumptuously cast aspersions at traditional truth, 142 THE BRIGHTER DAY 143 and have sought, by sarcasm and ridicule, to alien- ate the Christian Church herself, from the great fundamentals of Christianity. We attribute the moral slump of today to. the effect of the Great War. As a matter of fact, the war itself, and all its consequences, are attributable to a contempt for the Bible as an authoritative guide to truth and righteousness, and to the vicious doctrine that there is no authority save the author- ity of individual experience. As a consequence of all this, the sense of moral accountability has weak- ened; a belief in judgment to come has been super- seded by either an open question as to the reality of the life to come, at all, or a weakening of the truth of the love of God, which has left men free to follow their own devices without a fear of consequences. All these things affect not an iota the eternal truth, the indestructibility of the Word of God, the vitality of the Church, and that supremest of all realities, Redemption through Jesus Christ. The mass of the people come to recognise and dis- criminate between the true and the false, and a misguided Church discovers, sometimes after years of decline, that the only real hope of the world lies in accepting and appropriating as true and trust- worthy what God has revealed to man through the Bible and through experience. That is precisely what is happening today: a return to the Cross of Christ in all the fullness of 144 THE BRIGHTER DAY its Divine meaning. Unbelief and indifference have not gone to the extremes, during this more ration- alistic movement, that characterised the Church of one hundred and twenty-five years ago. The re- action from infidelity is sure to be strong and ~ steady. The Bible will be restored to its rightful place. Jesus Christ, as the Son of God with power, will be recognised in His kingship and Saviour- hood; and the Church will forge ahead on stronger and truer lines to a realization of the kingdom of Christ in the world. Fifty years from now, the Christian Church will be a far greater power in shaping social activities and in directing great political agencies through the influence of her members. There will be no closer relation between Church and State than today. But as a great social and political influence, the Church will become directive and controlling. That regal thing, public sentiment, which is the uncrowned king of America, will become sufficiently Christianised to secure re- straining legislation, holding in check manifold ills, and will become also sufficiently compelling in spiritual lines to lift the ethical tone of so- ciety to a far higher level. The Church will be recognised as the one and only power capable of holding back the tides of iniquity which are ever seeking to engulf the world. Few misconceptions are more absurd than that the Church is simply a passing phase of religion THE BRIGHTER DAY 145 which can be dispensed with. On the contrary, it is God’s permanent instrumentality to accomplish and achieve the purposes of Christ among men. It is filled with a true divinity. With all its defects and imperfections it is destined to increase in power until, through the religious sentiment it creates, it will dominate the world. Here we have our hope for the future. Here lies our truest ground of expectation, that the antagonisms engendered by human selfishness will give place to pacific and fra- ternal activities relating mankind amicably together. There are a hundred reasons why we may enter- tain the largest hope for humanity, and the chief reason is that God is active among men. He is not an absentee God. He is taking a hand in human affairs. But He is working through His Church, and there can be no higher honour than to co- operate with Him as a member of the visible body of Christ in bringing to a final consummation the purposes of the Almighty. The Church of Christ has passed through many cyclonic outbursts of unbelief. Men wise above what is written, have sought to substitute their own judgments or misjudgments for the inspired Word. An unsatisfied world, protesting against the stern demands of the religion of Jesus, turns to the man- made schemes and theories in the hope of finding an easier route to spiritual satisfaction. But this satisfaction never lasts long. Great revivals of pure and undefiled religion have always followed 146 THE BRIGHTER DAY the times of bold assertion, unrestrained denial and repudiation of the doctrines of Grace and In- spiration. Every heart carries within itself the evidence of its sin and its need of a Saviour. Thirst seeks the fountain, hunger seeks bread; and Christ is both, exactly as He declared. Man was made for God, and finds no peace until He finds God. Man finds God in Christ, or nowhere. The Church is the Bride of Christ. He knows how to take care of her. A return to the Christ of the Manger, Cross and Throne is the hope of the world. The Kingship of Jesus fully recog- nised will transform the whole world. In His own time Jesus will return in triumph. He will come as Master of the world. How and when have never been revealed. It is enough to know He is even now enthroned in Glory. He is a Living Chnist. Meanwhile the witnesses must testify faithfully. Christ has laid upon His disciples the responsibility of warning, and of witnessing, pleading and appeal- ing. The moral slump into which America has fallen is more largely due to false teaching than to any other cause. It is utterly impossible to deny the mandatory nature of God’s Word and at the same time to maintain public morale. The very exuberance of youth will lead to dire results if the powerful inner compulsions and wholesome restraints of revealed religion are withdrawn. In the last analysis authority resides not in the human conscience, understanding or will, but in THE BRIGHTER DAY 147 God. When “ought” and “must” are blotted out of the vocabulary of experience, sentimentality is substituted for conviction, preference takes the place of purpose, and personality becomes. flabby and weak. It is then that the powerful undertow of passion pulls the soul under the waves of the sea of sensual satisfactions. The arrest of the downward trend of today will begin and continue when the Christian ministry faithfully proclaims the whole counsel of God, concealing nothing, diluting nothing, camouflaging nothing; but on the contrary, engages in revealing the inevitable results of sin and sinning. Thousands of twice-born men and women, sure of the Word of God, sure of Jesus Christ, sure of redeeming grace, are being commissioned to preach Christ and Him crucified. In these thoughtful evangelicals, grounded in the truth, burning with zeal, radiating the light and heat of Divine Love, rests the assurance of the world’s brighter day. What Abraham Lincoln said of the nation in his day, is true of the Church today. Note the parallel- ism: “ A house divided against itself can not stand. I believe this Government can not endure perma- nently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind 148 THE BRIGHTER DAY shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful,-in all the States.” Lincoln knew which would win. So do we, in the present issue. God Almighty will never see His Blessed Word permanently borne down and defeated. The ultimate outcome is as sure as God’s Throne. ‘The great Evangel is final and eternal. | STRIKING ADDRESSES JOHN HENRY JOWETT,D.D, God Our Contemporary A Series of Complete Addresses $1.50. Among the pulpit-giants of to-day Dr. Jowett has been given a high place. Every preacher will want at once this latest product of his fertile mind. It consists of a series of full length sermons which are intended to show that only in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ can we find the resources to meet the needs of human life. SIDNEY BERRY, M.A. e se Revealing Light $1.50. A volume of addresses by the sutcessor to Dr. Jowett at Carr’s Lane Church, Birmingham, the underlying aim of which is to show what the Christian revelation means in relation to the great historic facts of the Faith and the response which those facts must awaken in the hearts of men to-day. Every address is an example of the best preaching of this famous ‘‘preacher to young men.” FREDERICK C. SPURR Last Minister of Regent’s Park Chapel, Loudon. The Master Key A Study in World-Problems $1.35. A fearless, clearly-reasoned restatement of the terms of the Christian Gospel and its relation to the travail through which the world is passing. Mr. Spurr is a man in the vanguard of religious thought, yet just as emphatically as any thinker of the old school, he insists on one Physician able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity. RUSSELL H. CONWELL, D.D. Pastor Baptist Temple, Philadeiphia, Unused Powers $1.25, To “Acres of Diamonds,” “The Angel’s Lily,” ““Why Lincoln Laughed,” “How to Live the Christ Life,” and many other stirring volumes, Dr. Conwell has just added another made up of some of his choicest addresses. Dr. Conwell speaks, as he has always spoken, out of the ex- perimental knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, wha having long faced the stark realities of life, has been exalted thereby. GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D. Minister of the First Congregational Church, Detroit, Michigan. ® The Undiscovered Country $1.50. A group of addresses marked by distinction of style and originality of approach. The title discourse furnishes a central theme to which those following stand in rela- tion. Dr. Atkins’? work, throughout, is marked by clarity of presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing. EVANGELISTIC WORK OZORA HR. DAVIS, DID; President Chicago Theological Seminary. Preaching the Social Gospel : 1.50. The new book by the author of “Evangelistic Preach- ing” is the next book every preacher should read. As a high authority recently said “Every preacher needs to read books on preaching and the problems of preaching and should read one such book every year.” It would be difficult to find a book that fits this need better than this latest work of President Davis’, J. WILBUR CHAPMAN, D.D. Evangelistic Sermons Edited and Compiled by Edgar - Whitaker Work, D.D., with Frontispiece. $1.50. Strong, fervid gospel addresses, eminently character- istic of one of the great evangelists of his time. Dr. Work has used his editorial prerogatives with pronounced skill. As a result every paragraph is reminiscent of Dr. Chapman, and from every page of the book one seems to hear again the voice and compelling message of one who while living preached to possibly as many people as any man of his generation, who “being dead yet speaketh.” EOUIS ALBERT BANKS, D.D. Author of '' Thirty-one Revival Sermons” The New Ten Commandments and Other Sermons. $1.50. Strong, stirring id addresses reflecting the true evangelical note, Dr. Banks’ latest volume, fully main- tains his impressive, picturesque style of presentation. Apt quotation, fitting illustration, drawn from literature and human life give point and color to his work, which is without a dull or meaningless page. FRANK CHALMERS McKEAN, A.M., D.D. The Magnetism of Mystery and Other Sermons Introduction by J. A. Marquis, D.D. $1.25 Dr. John A. Marquis says: “Dr. McKean’s sermons are shafts with points, and he hurls them with vigor and sure- ness, They will be read with interest, not only for what they are in themselves, but as types of the pulpit ministry that is making the Church of the Middle West.” EVANGELISTIC METHODS, ETC. senor ees eens R. A. TORREY, D.D. The Gospel for To-day New Evangelistic Sermons for a New Day. $1.50. A new volume of appealing addresses by the well-known evangelist and Bible teacher, characterized by unusual clearness of statement and frankness of appeal. The Christian Endeavor World says of ae Torrey’s sermons: “They are full of power. They have Moody’s earnest- ness and pith, They are sound to the core. They will make revivals even in their printed form,” R. A. TORREY. ; D.D. Personal Work $1.25. A new edition of Dr. Torrey’s pertinent and timely yolume for evangelistic work. As one reviewer said: “Dr. Torrey is not one of the men who ‘aim at nothing and hit it.’ He is no trifler, and does not act as if he imagined that one bit of argument or appeal is not about as good as another irrespective of the particular state of mind of the person appealed to.’ wl grt DWIGHT MALLORY PRATT, D.D. APs Pee The Master’s Method of Winning Men Introduction by Frederick L. Fagley, D.D. $1.00. A plea for “personal evangelism.’? While not unmind- ful of the usefulness and practicability of other ways of bringing men to Christ, Dr. Pratt gives pride of place to personal contact as the most effectual method of win- ning souls. He adds the records of a number of striking instances of how it has shown itself to be one of the chief glories and most effective agencies of the Christian religion. JOHN TIMOTHY STONE Recruiting for Christ Hand-to-Hand Methods with Men. New Edition. $1.50. An up-to-date edition of this helpful book on Evan- hl ve work of which The Presbyterian Advance said: ‘Preaching is no less necessary than formerly, but must be supplemented by personal appeal. This remarkably helpful book contains many suggestions, drawn largely from personal experience, as to the men to reach, prep- aration for, the work, aieihats of approach, methods of work, etc.” HELPFUL SERMONS stent SAT RRR SR NED RPS eA ESHER ae ASIC TER JAMES I. VANCE, D.D., LL.D. Pastor First Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tenn. In the Breaking of the Bread Communion Addresses. $1.25. “4 volume of communion addresses marked by deep spiritual insight.and knowledge of the human heart. They are well adapted to awaken the spiritual conceptions which should accompany the observance of the Lord’s Supper— suggestions fitted for a communion occasion. The _ad- dresses all bear upon the general theme of the Lord’s Sup- per and showed marked spirituality of thought and fervency of expression.”’—Uwmited Presbyterian. TEUNIS E. GOUWENS Pastor Second Presbyterian RRR! Church, Louisville, Ky, The Rock That Is Higher And Other Addresses. $1.25. An unusually successful volume of discourses of which Dr, Charles §. Macfarland of the Church Federal Council, says: ‘“‘Contents the intellect because it first satisfies the heart, and commands the incontestable assent of human experience........ As I have read it I have found my conscience penetrated, my faith deepened and my hope quickened.” WW", RUSSELL BOWIE, D.D. Rector of St. Paul’s Church, Richmond, Va, The Road of the Star and Other Sermons, $1.50. A volume of addresses which bring the message of Christianity with fresh and kindling interpretation to the immediate needs of men. ‘The extraordinary distinction of Dr. Bowie’s preaching rises from the fact that to great vigor of thought he has added the winged power of an imagination essentially poetic. JOSEPH JUDSON TAYLOR, D. D,, LUD, Author of “The Sabbatic Quesiton,” *‘The God of War,” etc. Radiant Hopefulness $1.00. A message of enheartenment, a word of cheer, for men and women whose hearts have been fearful, whose spirits have been shaken in the turbulent times through which the world has passed in recent years, with which man- kind still finds itself faced. In this volume of addresses, Dr. Taylor points the way to comfort amid confusion, to peaceful harborage amid the prevailing storm. DATE DUE Pet 2 om ¢ F by, GAYLORD PRINTEDINU.S.A. 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