The Mennonite Church 
 
 and Modernism 
 
 By John Horsch 
 
 Ws 
 
 Printed by 
 
 MENNONITE PUBLISHING HOUSE 
 Scottdale, Pa. 
 
 1924 
 

 
FOREWORD 
 
 The Mennonite Church of today finds itself 
 face to face with the most insidious foe of the 
 old Bible faith. Modernism is a perversion and 
 denial of the fundamentals of the faith yet, by ar 
 obvious distortion of church history, it claims to 
 be true Mennonitism, the faith of the Fathers. It 
 is safe to say that never before in her history has 
 the Church faced such a crisis. 
 
 A few years ago, in the book Modern Reli- 
 gious Liberahsm, the writer attempted to set 
 forth the issues involved in this conflict, and to 
 expose the institutions and persons that have 
 defended modernism. In this book liberalism in 
 the Mennonite Church was not considered. It is 
 a particularly disagreeable task to publicly oppose 
 those who are in the same fold with us. But in 
 recent years modernism within the Church has 
 become more aggressive and defiant in its attitude 
 toward the Church. While in the Church papers 
 controversy is, on the whole, undesirable and, as 
 is generally admitted, should be as much as pos- 
 sible avoided, yet it is necessary to meet the 
 modernist opposition and to give needed informa- 
 tion. There is reason to believe that the great ma- 
 jority of those on whom the modernist leaders 
 are counting, are lacking information as regards 
 their position. 
 
 The success of modernism is in general due 
 to its Christian appearance and its dissimulating 
 
suse of the language of orthodoxy. The principal 
 -danger arises from a possible failure on the part 
 cof the Church at large to see the real issue. A 
 ‘conservative, believing body, such as is the Men- 
 nonite Church, will not knowingly and consider- 
 ately yield to the liberalistic spirit of the age nor 
 accept the modernization and denial of the funda- 
 mentals of the faith. 
 
 This pamphlet contains various verbatim ex- 
 cerpts from the above mentioned book. 
 
 \ Pea 
 Scottdale, Pennsylvania. 
 
CAO Nib be NDS 
 Chapter Page 
 
 | MoprerNisM AND Our ATTITUDE TOWARD | 
 Lt Say A 
 
 Il Wuat 1s FUNDAMENTALISM? 14 
 
 III Arr A Person’s RELIGIOUS VIEWS OF 
 
 Minor IMPORTANCE? 17 
 
 IV THE GREATEST TRAGEDY 19 
 V Tue INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES 25 
 VI Tur AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE 31 
 VII Tue Deity oF CHRIST 35 
 
 VIII SALVATION AND CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 39 
 
 IX Tuer Mopernist VIEW oF MISSIONS 48. 
 X Tue Soctat GOSPEL 58 
 XI Do ScIENCE AND RELIGION CONFLICT? 62 
 
 XII NoONRESISTANCE AND IF UNDAMENTALISM 64 
 XIII NonresistANCE AND MoperRnist IDEALISM 71 
 XIV Wuat ts Rericious INDIVIDUALISM? 74 
 
 XV  Liperty oF CONSCIENCE 8k 
 
 XVI THe Fairy or Our FatTHERS 86 
 
AVII 
 XVIII 
 XIX 
 XX 
 XXI 
 
 XXII 
 XXII 
 XXIV 
 
 RESTRICTIONS 92 
 
 Rericious CERTAINTY 103 
 CoMPROMISE 107 
 Wuo Are TRAITORS? 110 
 
 THE CHURCH AND HIGHER EpDvu- . 
 CATION | “112 
 GOSHEN COLLEGE FORMERLY AND Now 122 
 THE CHRISTIAN EXPONENT 131 
 CoNCLUSION Py 
 
THE MENNONITE CHURCH 
 AND MODERNISM 
 
 I 
 
 MODERNISM AND OUR ATTITUDE 
 TOWARD IT 
 
 The following definition of modernism, as 
 contrasted with fundamentalism, has been pub- 
 lished in various liberal and conservative papers. 
 
 It is approved by leaders on both sides. 
 
 The 
 
 terms modernism, liberalism and modern theology 
 
 are synonyms.. 
 FUNDAMENTALISM 
 
 1. The Bible IS the Word 
 of God. 
 
 2. Jesus Christ is THE Son 
 of God in a sense in 
 which no other is. 
 
 3. The birth of Jesus was 
 SUPERNATURAL. 
 
 4. The death of Jesus was 
 EX'PIATORY. 
 
 5. Man is the product of 
 Se eClaA LL’ CREA- 
 TION. 
 
 6. Man is a SINNER, fall- 
 en from original right- 
 eousness, and, apart 
 from God’s redeeming 
 grace is hopelessly lost. 
 
 MODERNISM 
 
 . The Bible CONTAINS 
 
 the Word of God. 
 
 . Jesus Christ is A Son 
 
 of God in the sense 
 that ALL men are. 
 
 . The birth of Jesus was 
 
 NATURAL. 
 
 . The death of Jesus was 
 
 EXEMPLARY. 
 
 . Man is the product of 
 
 EVOLUTION. 
 
 . Man is the unfortunate 
 
 VICTIM of environ- 
 ment, but through 
 self-culture can make 
 good. 
 
8 “THE CHASM IS DEEP” 
 
 7 Man is justified by 7. Man is justified by 
 FAITH in the atoning WORKS in following 
 blood of Christ. Re- Re- 
 
 ist’ mple. 
 sult: Supernatural re- Christ's examp 
 generation from  A- sult: Natural -develop- 
 
 BOVE. ment from WITHIN. 
 
 It is seen that the differences and contrasts 
 between modernism and fundamentalism, are of 
 such nature that they could not be greater. The 
 one is the confession of the fundamentals of the 
 faith, and the other the denial. The one is faith, 
 the other unbelief. Both cannot be one and the 
 same religion. 
 
 President A. C. McGiffert, of the Union Theo- 
 logical Seminary, New York, a modernist institu- 
 tion, says: 
 
 We have learned, not to think of the Bible as the 
 final and infallible authority and have come to see 
 that there is no such authority and that we need none. 
 The result has been a change of simply untold con- ~ 
 secuence. The conservatives who feared and op- 
 posed Biblical criticism in its early days because 
 they saw what a revolution it portended were far 
 more clearsighted than most of the liberals who 
 thought that it meant simply a shifting of position. 
 —The chasm is deep. What is before us na one 
 knows. 
 
 One of the most noted defenders of religious 
 liberalism, the late Professor George Burman Fos- 
 ter, of the University of Chicago, said: 
 
 The sum of what I have just been urging amouats 
 to the profoundest change of religious thought known 
 to history. — One may say that not supernatural 
 regeneration, but natural growth; not divine sanctifi- 
 cation, but human education; not supernatural grace, 
 but natural morality; not the divine expiation of the 
 
TWO IRRECONCILABLE POSITIONS 9 
 
 cross, but the human heroism—or accident?—of the 
 cross; . . . not Christ the Lord, but the man 
 Jesus who was a child of his time; not God and 
 His providence, but evolution and its process without 
 an absolute goal—that all this, and such as this, is 
 the new turn in the affairs of religion at the tick of 
 the clock. 
 A writer~in The Moravian says: 
 
 It is every day becoming more apparent that in 
 our churches two irreconcilable theological drifts are 
 forcing themselves on our attention. The one we 
 might call the conservative or positive or evangelical 
 position. The other we might call the liberal or 
 speculative or higher-critical position. In the final 
 analysis of these two positions the former insists on a 
 supernatural basis for the Christian religion, while 
 the latter denies the supernatural and substitutes a 
 purely natural basis. 
 
 The former position has in our day found its 
 clearest expression through the Bible Institutes and 
 training schools, through evangelistic and missionary 
 activity; the latter through Unitarianism, and so-called 
 higher criticism in many of our theological seminaries 
 and liberal pulpits. Thinking people are discovering, 
 even if rather slowly, that these two positions can 
 never be reconciled. They have been, are, and always 
 will be, fundamentally at war with each other, and we 
 might just as well save our precious breath crying 
 “Peace! Peace!” when there can be no peace. 
 
 “Throughout all Protestantism,” says a recent 
 writer, “especially in the colleges and theological 
 training-schools under the guise of ‘higher criti- 
 cism’ and ‘liberal Christianity’ there is being waged 
 the most determined and far-reaching assault upon 
 our holy Christianity that it has ever endured 
 since. apostolic times. The Christian religion, 
 ‘wounded in the house of its friends’ must get 
 
10 MODERNISM ANOTHER RELIGION 
 
 the victory over these insidious but deadly foes.” 
 
 It would indeed be useless to deny or belittle. 
 the radical contrasts between the old Bible faith 
 and religious liberalism. So great and fundamen- 
 tal are these differences that, if the one is Christ- 
 janity, the other must be something else. It has 
 been said that liberalism has changed all the doc- 
 trines of the old faith as held by Christendom from 
 the beginning. The fact is, as pointed out in 
 preceding quotations, that liberalism sets aside 
 these doctrines and disowns them, Indeed, Chris- 
 tianity has more in common with Judaism and 
 some other non-Christian religions than with the 
 full-fledged modernism. 
 
 About a year ago Professor J. Gresham Ma- 
 chen, of Princeton Theological Seminary, pub- 
 lished his book Christianity and Liberalism in 
 which he definitely points out that modernism is 
 another religion, that it is not Christianity and has 
 its roots in non-Christian systems of thought. 
 More recently a number of leading modernists 
 have admitted that Professor Machen’s view is 
 correct. The editor of The Christian Century, one 
 of the most radically liberalistic journals, says (is- 
 sue of January 3, 1924): * 
 
 Christianity according to fundamentalism is one 
 religion. Christianity according to modernism is an- 
 other religion. There is a clash here as profound 
 and as grim as that between Christianity and Con- 
 fucianism. Amiable words cannot hide the differences. 
 The God of the fundamentalist is one God; the God 
 of the modernist in another. The Christ of the 
 fundamentalist is one Christ; the Christ of the 
 modernist is another. The Bible of fundamentalism 
 
DIFFERENCES MUST BE RECOGNIZED 11 
 
 is one Bible; the Bible of modernism is another. 
 That the issue is clear and that the inherent in- 
 compatibility of the two worlds (positions) has passed 
 the stage of mutual tolerance (in the same religious 
 fold) is a fact concerning which there hardly seems 
 room for any one to doubt. 
 
 The editor of the new Mennonite paper, The 
 Christian Exponent, says in an editorial article: 
 
 Let us not bring reproach upon ourselves and on 
 the Christ whom we profess by quarrelling among our- 
 selves, let us be Christians in the real and vital sense 
 of that term. Only thus can God bless us, and only 
 thus can we do our part in His great plan. 
 
 It is very true that those who are one in Christ, 
 one in faith, principle and practice, will bring re- 
 proach upon the cause by quarrelling among them- 
 selves, Even where such unity does not exist, quar- 
 relling (as this term is commonly used) is out of 
 place. But this does not mean that the Church 
 could extend the hand of Christian fellowship to 
 modernism. The point in question is, Can the 
 Church close her eyes to the fact that a number of 
 modernist leaders have risen among us and some of 
 them are taking an attitude of open revolt against 
 the Church, as may be shown elsewhere? 
 
 The editor of The Christian Exponent seems 
 to be of the opinion that love should overlook the 
 existing differences and wink at the defiant attitude 
 of some of the modernist leaders. Now this was the 
 position which Zwingli and his friends held against 
 the Fathers of the Mennonite Church in Switzer- 
 land. Their often repeated argument was that the 
 insistence of the Mennonite Fathers on separation 
 from the worldly state church was a proof that they 
 
12 “CONTEND EARNESTLY FOR THE FAITH” 
 
 were lacking in love toward that church. The state 
 church leaders claimed that love should cause the 
 early Mennonites to disregard the existing differ- 
 ences of faith and practice. And it is important to 
 notice that the points of difference which our Fa- 
 thers were asked to compromise and disregard, did 
 not concern the fundamentals of the faith. The 
 Fathers were not asked to extend the hand of fel- 
 lowship to people who differed from them so radi- 
 cally as modernism differs from the Mennonite 
 faith. Yet they were minded to endure the severest 
 persecution rather than confess to peace and unity 
 at the expense of loyalty to the Word. And the 
 principal writings of Menno Simons and Dirck 
 Philips consist in defences of the faith against 
 the attacks of their opponents and persecutors. 
 
 In spite of these outstanding pertinent facts 
 there are those who warn us that there should be 
 no controversy. A number of recent writers have 
 expressed the curious opinion that religious con- 
 troversy is contrary to the principle of love and 
 of nonresistance. They would press the principle 
 of peace to such a point that, rather than to 
 offend the modernists by defending the faith, they 
 are willing to make their peace with modernism 
 and let it take possession of the Church. The 
 apostles were evidently of different opinion. “Con- 
 tend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered 
 to the saints,” is their injunction. Our Lord 
 said, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me.” Unless 
 our faith is of the modern backbone-less variety, 
 we will uphold His testimony and defend the 
 truth in the face of the modern denial. 
 
DISSIMULATION 13 
 
 While modernists claim the right to deny and 
 attack the faith, they are of the opinion that to take 
 a decided position for the faith involves a violation 
 of the principle of nonresistance and Christian love. 
 
 Much as the renunciation of the old faith, on 
 the part of liberalists, is to be regretted, the most 
 offensive feature of religious liberalism is that it 
 uses, as a rule, the old Biblical expresisons, and 
 claims to be Christian theology—an improvement 
 on the old faith ;—all this in the face of the fact 
 that some of the liberalists themselves, as we have 
 seen, recognize the great chasm which separates 
 them from Biblical Christianity. 
 
Tul 
 WHAT IS FUNDAMENTALISM? 
 
 The term fundamentalism is not found in the 
 dictionaries. It is a new word which has been 
 coined after modernists had come forth with a 
 new theology in which the old words were used 
 in a new, modernized sense. Modernism was 
 spread under an evangelical cloak. In consequence 
 the believers of the old type were aroused to take 
 a decided position against this insidious foe. They 
 defend the fundamentals of the Christian faith 
 and hence are called fundamentalists. 
 
 t is true that modernists also, as a rule, claim 
 to accept the fundamentals, yet they are not and 
 do not desire to be regarded as fundamentalists. 
 The fact is that the real meaning of the term 
 fundamentalism is the rejection of modernism. 
 Fundamentalism is anti-modernism. | 
 
 Various modernists have asserted that fun- 
 damentalism is identical with premillennarianism. 
 But while fundamentalism teaches the literal, per- 
 sonal, visible second coming of Christ, the opinion 
 that fundamentalists agree in a belief in a literal 
 millennium is erroneous. This was made clear 
 in an editorial article published in a recent number 
 of one of the leading fundamentalist organs, The 
 Sunday School Times. The great majority of the 
 Lutheran Church as well as large sections of the 
 Presbyterian Church are anti-modernist as well as 
 anti-millenial. Professor J. Gresham Machen, of 
 Princeton Theological Seminary, as a representa- 
 
FUNDAMENTALISM NOT MILLENNIALISM 15 
 
 tive of fundamentalism, is second to no other 
 writer. His book Christianity and Liberalism is in 
 some respects the best defence of fundamentalism. 
 Professor Machen does not believe in a literal mil- 
 lennium. He says concerning the claim that fun- 
 damentalism is premillennialism: 
 
 It is highly misleading when modern liberals 
 represent the present issue in the Church, both in the 
 mission field and at home, as being an issue between 
 premillennialism and the opposite view. It is really 
 an issue between Christianity, whether premillennial 
 or not, on the one side, and a naturalistic negation of 
 all Christianity on the other. (Page 49.) 
 
 The editor of The Christian Exponent, in an 
 article on Nonresistance and Fundamentalism, ac- 
 cuses the conservatives of the Mennonite Church 
 of “throwing themselves unreservedly” with the 
 fundamentalists. He says: 
 
 One wonders sometimes how it is possible for so 
 many people who claim to be believers in the whole 
 Gospel and take literally the teachings of Christ, to 
 throw themselves so whole-heartedly and unreservedly 
 with a group which so utterly repudiates this principle 
 of nonresistance as does the militant group which 
 styles itself “Fundamentalists.” 
 
 The question regarding the attitude of the 
 fundamentalists toward nonresistance will be treat- 
 ed in another place. (See page 65). Speaking 
 of those “who claim to be believers in the whole 
 gospel,” the editor of The Christian Exponent is 
 evidently referring to the conservative Menno- 
 nites. But the claim that we are throwing our- 
 selves “whole-heartedly and unreservedly” with 
 any fundamentalists of other churches is not born 
 out by the facts. The fact that fundamentalists 
 
16 AN UNFOUNDED CHARGE 
 
 —anti-modernists—are found in various churches 
 makes it impossible to agree with them all on 
 
 every point. The case is somewhat similar to the. 
 
 temperance question as it concerns us. We are 
 opposed to the liquor traffic, yet the temperance 
 people are a motley crowd and we never thought 
 of throwing ourselves unreservedly with them. 
 Now the denial of the Christian fundamentals 
 is a greater menace to the Christian cause and 
 to the nation than the liquor traffic. And then, 
 prohibition savors of politics, it is in a measure a 
 political movement while fundamentalism is noth- 
 ing of the kind. We do not throw ourselves un- 
 reservedly with the anti-modernists of other 
 churches, but we rejoice because they are fighting 
 modern unbelief. We find ourselves fighting the 
 
 same enemy and for this we shall not apologize, — 
 
 neither have we deserved the censure which the 
 editor of The Christian Exponent sees fit to give 
 us. | 
 The question is pertinent: Have not liberal 
 Mennonites “thrown themselves” to a greater 
 extent with modernists than conservative Menno- 
 nites with fundamentalists of other churches? 
 Would not the editor of The Christian Exponent 
 have more cause, for example, to censure the 
 Mennonite institution in Ohio which called out- 
 spoken modernists such as Professor Rall, of 
 Fvanston, Ill., and Professor Richards, of Lan- 
 caster, Pa., to give courses of lectures in a Short 
 Bible Term, than to make the groundless assertion 
 that we throw ourselves unreservedly with any 
 fundamentalists of other churches? 
 
| RelA 
 
 ARE A PERSON’S RELIGIOUS VIEWS 
 OF MINOR IMPORTANCE? 
 
 Several months ago an American Mennonite 
 minister published an article in a Mennonite 
 periodical asserting that “our people are not in 
 danger of higher criticism.” A greater menace to 
 the Mennonite Church than the higher critics, 
 this writer says further, are. the “critics” who 
 believe that among American Mennonites there 
 are those. who have yielded to modernist in- 
 fluences. 
 
 The same writer, referring to several Menno- 
 nite educators who were reputed to entertain 
 modernist views, says: 
 
 Yet we who had not become prejudiced have 
 learned to love every one of these leaders. 
 
 There is not a word as to their attitude as 
 concerns the fundamentals of the Christian faith. 
 The inference is that, since the said writer found 
 them to be of an agreeable, gentleman-like dis- 
 position, he holds that their orthodoxy must not 
 be questioned. 
 
 Touching the same question, President S. K. 
 Mosiman, of Bluffton (Mennonite) College, wrote 
 in regard to the needed qualifications for teachers 
 in this institution: 
 | pli judging a man’s value to the College you 
 _ must depend on other factors than the question and 
 
 answer method. Of course, I have questioned men as 
 to their religious views, but I always consider that of 
 
i8 DOCTRINE OF PRIMARY IMPORTANCE 
 
 minor importance in estimating a man’s character.” 
 (Protocol of the Thirty-first Session of the Western. 
 District Conference, page 975). 
 
 Yet it is a fact not to be denied that there 
 are modernists and radical unbelievers who are 
 of an agreeable disposition and possess what is 
 generally spoken of as an unobjectionable moral 
 character. 
 
 One of the most attractive characters the 
 present writer has met was a young Unitarian 
 minister. While listening to one of his discourses 
 in which he questioned every fundamental of the 
 faith, including the immortality of the soul, and 
 asserted that morality was sufficient to save any 
 man, my heart burned within me in pity seeing 
 that he squandered his God-given talents for the 
 cause of modernism. He had been led astray and 
 was leading others in the wrong way though, 
 apparently, he believed that he was right. I have 
 yet somewhere a letter from him in which he 
 defends his views. Again, the greatest poet living, 
 whose gentleman-like attainments and agreeable 
 Gisposition cannot be questioned, is Tagore, of 
 India, a heathen who is an outspoken opponent of 
 the Christian faith. They say that even Robert 
 G. Ingersoll possessed ar attractive personality. 
 
 One could only wish that the argument of the 
 first mentioned writer were convincing and his 
 assertion as regards the freedom of the Menno- 
 nites of America from liberalism correct. There 
 
 is conclusive evidence that the contrary is. the 
 case. 
 
Fay, 
 THE GREATEST TRAGEDY 
 
 It is sad to see in our day many ministers and 
 educators busily engaged in spreading modernism, 
 and what is particularly tragical is the fact that 
 these men, at least some of them, think that they 
 are doing God a service. They have exposed them- 
 selves to liberalistic influences to the extent that 
 they have been led astray. They actually seem to 
 believe that modernism is superior to the old Bible 
 faith. How sad that a man may be sincere and 
 yet be in serious error; that his motives may be 
 good, and yet his teaching and influence detri- 
 mental to the Christian cause. 
 
 Yet it is a well-known fact that modernists, as 
 a rule, are inclined to conceal their real position. 
 They sail under false colors when they hide their 
 liberalism under the language of orthodoxy; when 
 they attempt to impress the Church that, regarding 
 the fundamentals of the faith, they take an ortho- 
 dox position which in reality they do not hold. 
 Now there is where sincerity ceases. It is impos- 
 sible to believe in the honesty and sincerity of 
 men who, when speaking about the most vital 
 questions, do not mean what they say nor say what 
 they mean. If it were a fact that they believe 
 liberalism to be superior to orthodoxy and that 
 their new faith is worth while, they would not 
 desire to be taken for orthodox Christians, The 
 fact is that such a lack of common honesty, as 
 their time-serving policy indicates, must be looked 
 
20 MORAL PERVERSION 
 
 upon as evidence of a break-down of moral integ- 
 rity in consequence of the denial of the old Bible 
 
 faith. 
 
 Zion’s Advocate said a few years ago: 
 
 When men surrender their faith in the super- 
 natural and in the fundamental doctrines of the Christ- 
 ian Church, and can no longer preach and teach them, 
 why do they not, like honorable gentlemen, resign the 
 responsibilities which they have accepted, and go out 
 and establish a platform of their own? If they have 
 the truth, why do they not show their confidence in 
 their teachings by organizing their own institutions 
 instead of continuing to receive their support from 
 those whose beliefs they have solemnly promised to 
 espouse? I think that common honor and honesty 
 wold lead them to such a step. 
 
 A striking evidence of an unsound moral at- 
 titude is found in the fact that some of the modern- 
 ized seminaries not only practice counterfeiting 
 and “hedging” but they do so against the will of 
 the churches who own and support the seminaries. 
 Without scruple, as it seems, the modernists, 
 though they admit that their teaching differs rad- 
 ically from the old faith, are using money designed 
 to the maintenance and propagation of the primi- 
 tive Bible faith. Mission money given by conse- 
 crated Christians for the propagation of the Gospel 
 is used by liberalists for the purpose of moderniz- 
 ing the Christian converts in heathen lands. 
 
 A most discouraging “sign of our time” is the 
 prevalence of the practice of “hedging” among 
 theological writers and professors, Men of high 
 position in the church are playing fast and loose 
 
 with words, they find it in their conscience to 
 
THEOLOGICAL HEDGING 21 
 
 make a statement of their faith with mental re- 
 servations; they are trifling with the Christian 
 religion and morality. It is all so different from 
 
 the transparent candor with which the believers 
 
 of all ages have stated their faith; it is even dif- 
 ferent from the method of scientists who would 
 deem it beneath: their moral dignity to stoop to 
 such more than questionable practices. In mod- 
 ern theology “hedging” and camouflage has been. 
 developed into a fine art. 
 
 The writer has in mind a book on prayer 
 whose author is a pronounced liheralist, Thovoh 
 he does not believe in a God who answers prayer, 
 but holds that the effect of prayer is entirely sub- 
 jective, he has “hedged” to such extent and with 
 such success that believing Christians have read 
 his book, never suspecting that the author speaks 
 of prayer in an entirely new sense and that the 
 book is quite acceptable to radical liberalists. 
 Many theological books are published in our day 
 which the trained reader will recognize as unortho- 
 dox, but their authors are given to the practice of 
 “hedging.” They do not commit themselves. They 
 may speak of such fundamental doctrines as the 
 deity of Christ, in Incarnation, Atonement, the in- 
 spiration of Scripture. The reader is fully aware 
 that they do not defend orthodoxy but is left in the 
 dark regarding the question, what sort of “doxy” 
 they represent, or what they mean when they treat 
 of the said doctrines. None other than Dean Fenn, 
 of Harvard University, says that readers of current 
 theological literature must often wish that every 
 writer were obliged to furnish a vocabulary, ex- 
 
22 STUDIED MODERNIST INDEFINITENESS 
 
 plaining the meaning of terms which he uses. He 
 adds that theological writers can hardly expect a 
 ‘sympathetic hearing from thoughtful men unless 
 they are willing to let them know what they are 
 ‘talking about. The supreme need of modern liber- 
 alism, Dean Fenn says further, is for definite and 
 precise thinking and direct, plain speaking, - 
 
 The unvarnished fact is that a large number of 
 theological books has been published concerning 
 which it must be said, that it is impossible for 
 the readers to know what the authors are talking 
 about. And those for whom these unreal, non- 
 committal books were written are men and women 
 who, in their own opinion, are too far advanced in 
 mental development to accept the doctrines of the 
 Christian faith. Could there be ore convincing 
 proof of the superficiality and unworthiness of 
 modern liberalistic thought. Yet it is to the very 
 characteristic of hedging that some of the most 
 widely used theological books owe their popularity. 
 A British reviewer of the Theology by William 
 Newton Clarke says: “In America the fashion 
 seems to be to defend a foregone conclusion by 
 rhetoric. This makes the reviewing of the book 
 before us a peculiarly difficult task. It contains a 
 great deal of what is known as ‘hedging,’ ” 
 
 From the viewpoint of general morality and 
 common honesty, theological hedging and camou- 
 flage must be unconditionally condemned. Such 
 practices are unworthy of persons of serious pur- 
 pose. A man writing a book on theology who is 
 unwilling to commit himself and to let his readers 
 
 
 
DECEIVING THE UNWARY 23 
 
 know what he is talking about is clearly a double- 
 minded man — a sorry figure morally. 
 
 A representative of the Ethical Culture move- 
 ment, H. J. Bridges, of Chicago, writes: 
 
 The question of intellectual honesty in church and 
 pulpit has hitherto been utterly ignored by the mass 
 of the public. A distinguished teacher in the Divinity 
 School of a great university recently gave one of the 
 cleverest exhibitions of the art of riding two horses 
 at once that I ever witnessed. At a conference of 
 liberals he expressed his own views about God, Christ, 
 the Bible, and the Church, in language of masterly 
 vagueness and ambignity. 
 
 There is nothing more repellant than the preacher 
 who privately admits that he does not believe what 
 he publicly utters. It is simply a question of common 
 honesty and truthfulness in the pulpit. Nothing 
 could conceivably be more demoralizing than this 
 game of sanctified make-believe. None of the things 
 that preachers generally denounce, and not all of 
 them together are so profoundly corrupting, so ruinous 
 to the very principles and standards of moral integ- 
 rity as that which must be plainly called religious 
 lying—preaching doctrine that the preacher himself 
 thinks false. 
 
 This is what the editor of the Boston Herald 
 says in a recent issue about the dishonest attitude 
 of modernists in general: 
 
 From the beginning the overwhelming majority of 
 liberals in the orthodox churches have dodged the 
 issues—have hedged, evaded, qualified and compromised. 
 They have comforted their congregations with as- 
 surances that nothing was really happening in the 
 world of religious thought, and that they need not 
 therefore be disturbed. Black they have blithely called 
 white, and error truth. For one man in the liberal 
 camp who has the courage of his conviction, there 
 
24 
 
 COMMON HONESTY NEEDED 
 
 are a thousand, like Harry Emerson Fosdick, who 
 shift and shuffle on every question. Now come the 
 fundamentalists to demand a “show-down.” They 
 make their position clear and they ask that their 
 
 opponents do as much! 
 
 A prominent Unitarian writer, Edmund H, 
 
 Reeman, says: 
 
 If the modernist means anything, he means, we 
 take it, that he does not accept the Bible as the in- 
 fallible and authoritative Word of God. He means 
 that his God and the God of the fundamentalist are 
 as different as chalk and cheese. He means that he 
 does not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a 
 virgin, nor that his dead body was raised from a 
 Palestinian tomb, nor that this same Christ shall ever 
 come again in triumph from the cloud. 
 
 Why, then, does he not say so in terms as unequi- 
 vocal, as simple, and as straightforward as the fun- 
 damentalist uses? Why does he not openly and 
 frankly state that if fundamentalism is true Christ- 
 tianity then he is not a Christian and has no use for 
 Christianity? 
 
 The greatest calamity is to see congregations. 
 
 and churches, as it were, handing the key to the 
 citadel over to modernist leaders without knowing 
 what they are doing. A number of examples could 
 be given where churches failed to see the issue 
 clearly and were deceived by the smooth, orthodox 
 sounding words and suave attitude of modernists,. 
 until the latter have intrenched themselves in the 
 church in such a degree that it seems impossible. 
 to remove them. Among the instances of this kind 
 there is one of the most prominent nonresistant 
 denominations in America. 
 
 
 
V 
 THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES 
 
 In No, 3 of The Christian Exponent, a Menno- 
 nite writer (O. R. L.) confesses belief in the Deity 
 of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures, but 
 adds that “these indisputable verities have a thous- 
 and and one meanings for as many individuals.” 
 This writer does not believe in the verbal inspira- 
 tion of the Scriptures. On the same question 
 President S. K. Mosiman expresses himself in a 
 _ similar way. He says the doctrine of the verbal 
 inspiration of Scripture is “a combination of hea- 
 then philosophy and post-reformation theologies ” 
 (Protocol of the 3lst Session of the Western Dis- 
 trict Conference, 1922, p. 977). In the same place 
 the same writer confesses that he accepts the 
 Scriptures as the Word of God. Clearly he follows 
 the modernist usa°e of using an old orthodox 
 expression in a liberalistic, unreal sense. 
 
 The doctrine of the plenary or verbal inspira- 
 tion of the Scriptures is taught in the Bible and is 
 the only doctrine of Biblical inspiration that is con- 
 sistent with the claims and contents of the Bible 
 message. Its practical meaning is that the Bible 
 is infallible. This doctrine must not be con- 
 founded with the mechanical or dictation theory 
 which implies the suppression of the human ele- 
 ment altogether. Though mechanical inspiration is 
 not claimed for the Scriptures, it is necessary to 
 emphasize the fact that, whether the holy writers 
 committed to writing a direct message from God 
 (as did in many instances Moses and the pro- 
 
26 SCRIPTURE INERRANT 
 
 phets), or whether they stated the truth as they, 
 by divine illumination, saw it, or recorded what 
 they themselves had witnessed, or other facts of 
 history, they were in every instance moved by the 
 Holy Ghost to such extent that their writings are 
 not subject to error. This implies the principle 
 of verbal inspiration. The Holy Spirit guided 
 them in the choice of words to the end that the 
 truth was expressed and error avoided. The 
 original manuscripts of the Scriptures were in this 
 sense verbally inspired. 
 
 Inspiration, then, must be distinguished from 
 illumination, True, the holy writers were enlight- 
 ened by the Holy Spirit, but illumination alone 
 would not have enabled them to write the infallible 
 Word of God. Neither can verbal inspiration be 
 sufficiently accounted for on the ground that the 
 writers were holy men. Many other Christian 
 writers were true saints of the Lord. Again, it is 
 immaterial whether all the holy writers knew at 
 the time of their writing that the Holy Spirit was 
 guiding them to the extent that they wrote iner- 
 rantly. Nor can it be supposed that these writers 
 had the ability to write infallibly at all times. All 
 this means that the holy writers were, while they 
 wrote the Scriptures, in a very special sense the 
 tools of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is the result 
 of the supernatural working of God. It is the 
 Word of God. The old proof-text method of using 
 Scripture is the method of Christ and the apostles. 
 it is the only method consistent with Scripture 
 teaching as to the nature of the Scriptures. 
 
AN INFALLIBLE REVELATION 27 
 
 In recent times the opinion has been ad- 
 vanced that the inspiration of Scripture has to do 
 merely with the thought of Scripture. It is sup- 
 posed that the writers of the books of the Bible 
 wrote the thoughts, or the messages, that were 
 given them of God but were not under the special 
 guidance of God, Yet unless these writers were 
 led by God in the choice of their words to the 
 extent that they wrote inerrantly, we should have 
 in Scripture not the infallible revelation of God 
 but a mere record of revelation — a record which 
 would be human and therefore imperfect in char- 
 acter. “If inspiration does not render the holy 
 Scriptures infallible, their nature is no longer di- 
 vine but human,” says Professor George Johnson. 
 
 There are at the present time theologians 
 who would shift the authority from the infallible 
 Bible to the infallible Christ. They are of the 
 opinion that it matters little whether or no the 
 Bible is inerrant so long as we have Christ and 
 His word to build upon, just as we have Plato 
 or other great men of antiquity. But the words 
 of Plato can not be compared with Christ’s 
 words on point of importance. Plato did not 
 bring to men a supernatural revelation; his writ- 
 ings must be judged entirely by human standards. 
 Christ, on the other hand, taught truths that come 
 to us as divine revelation. Some of these truths 
 cannot be verified by experience or human know- 
 iedge. The fact that Christ was infallible would 
 not give us infallible divine authority if we had 
 not the inerrant statement or record of His words 
 
28 NOT A MERE HUMAN RECORD 
 
 and acts. What would Christ’s infallibility benefit 
 us if the record which we have of Him be unreli- 
 able? It is inconceivable—is it not?—that God 
 would accomplish the great work of the redemption 
 of mankind and reveal to fallen man the true way 
 of salvation, and then leave us with a fallible 
 account of it all—an unreliable record such as 
 modernists believe the Scriptures to be. 
 
 Modernists tell us, as already intimated, that 
 of the contents of Scripture only that which has to 
 do directly with the religious life of man was 
 given of God to the Biblical writers. This means 
 that inspiration, even in this loose sense, would not 
 apply to Scripture narration of historical events 
 and hence not to the record of miracles, If this 
 were the correct view you might believe in the 
 inspiration of Scripture and yet question the 
 miracles. They who hold such views deny the 
 vital importance of Scripture narration. They 
 ignore the fact that the truth of Christianity de- 
 pends on certain historical facts, such as the life, 
 death, and resurrection of Christ. Nevertheless 
 many of those who take such an attitude would 
 retain some of the moral and religious teaching 
 of the Bible. 
 
 Again if liberalistic theologians are asked how 
 they suppose that God revealed religious thoughts 
 to the holy writers, they answer, as a rule, that 
 these thoughts name to them through their reli- 
 gious experience. The above mentioned writer (O. 
 R. L.) says in the same article published in The 
 Christian Exponent that individual experience 
 
A MODERNIST VIEW OF INSPIRATION 29 
 
 (instead of divine inspiration) is the source of the 
 contents of the Scriptures. 
 
 Now the term “religious experience” is an 
 impressive one. But, as may be pointed out 
 elsewhere, “religious experience” has been de- 
 prived of all real meaning by the representatives 
 of liberalism. In the last analysis they hold that 
 the Bible is merely “the outgrowth of men’s 
 thinking,” just as all other religious books. These 
 modernistic theologians see in Scripture simply 
 “man’s enlarging thought and discovery of God, 
 not God’s progressive revelation of Himself to 
 nan.” Nevertheless they profess to believe in the 
 inspiration of Scripture. Now such a view of 
 inspiration cannot be taken seriously; it is a 
 mere make-believe. Modern theology denies the 
 personality of the Holy Spirit. Professor H. C. 
 Ackerman, an outspoken liberalist, asserts that 
 the spirit that is active in religious inspiration is 
 merely “a stirring interest” on the part of man 
 which leads to the discovery of religious truth. 
 In other words inspiration is not the work of the 
 divine Spirit but of the spirit of man. It is readily 
 seen that this doctrine of inspiration is mere word- 
 jugglery. 
 
 The leading modern critics, then, do not dis- 
 tinguish between divine inspiration, in the sense 
 in which this term is used when we speak of the 
 inspiration of Scripture, and the various other 
 uses of the word inspiration. They tell us that 
 the Scriptures are inspired in a similar sense as 
 some poem or some new idea may prove inspiring 
 
30 MODERNIST REJECTION OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 to us, In their opinion Shakespeare and Goethe 
 were inspired as well as the Biblical writers. Pro- 
 fessor Edward Scribner Ames, of the University of 
 Chicago, for example, mentions quite a number of 
 writers: Tennyson and Whittier and Bryant and 
 Lowell and Phillips Brooks and Shakespeare and 
 Maeterlinck and Kepler and Darwin and John 
 Locke and William James who, in his view, should 
 be included in the sacred canon of Scripture. 
 
 “Modern religious thinking,” says Gerald Bir- 
 ney Smith, “is learning to draw its inspiration 
 from the world in which we live.” 
 
Vi 
 THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 William Newton Clarke, the well-known ad- 
 vocate of modernism, wrote in his work on theo- 
 logy: “The authority of the Scriptures is the 
 authority of the truth that they convey.” In an 
 address given at the session of the All-Mennonite 
 Convention held in 1919 at Bluffton, Ohio, J. E. 
 Hartzler, president of Witmarsum (Mennonite) 
 Theological Seminary (formerly president of Go- 
 shen College) said: 
 
 Neither can we say that ultimate authority lies 
 in the mere letter of the Bible. We have too long 
 contented ourselves with the argument, “Because the 
 Bible says so.” The fact is that the Bible says so 
 and reports things because they are true. 
 
 In other words, the writer of these sentences 
 claims that he believes in the truths contained in 
 the Bible, but not because the Bible says so. A- 
 gain, he says, as we may directly see, that no 
 religious doctrine (though taught in Scripture) is 
 of value or fundamental which cannot be verified 
 by human experience. 
 
 Here is a strange piece of modernist reason- 
 ing. The fact is that if we let go of the fact 
 that things are true because the Bible says so, 
 we shall find ourselves at sea regarding the most 
 essential doctrines of the faith. The only con- 
 clusive proof which we have for the fundamental 
 Christian doctrines, is that they are taught in 
 Scripture. They are true because God’s Word says 
 so. Unless we are willing to accept them on the 
 
32 DENIAL OF SCRIPTURE AUTHORITY 
 
 authority of the Scriptures, we shall be in the dark 
 concerning the greatest questions regarding our 
 relation and duty to God and our destiny. 
 
 This writer says further in the same address: 
 
 We have too long satisfied ourselves on inefficient 
 tests of truth and validity. When we seek valid 
 tests for fundamental truths, we must seek higher 
 authority than personal opinions, than formal creeds 
 of the past, and we must go farther back than the 
 mere letter of the Bible itself. The source of truth 
 is in the eternal hills of God. 
 
 Here is dogmatic teaching forsooth. Can some 
 one explain what are the eternal hills of God, and 
 how we may draw truth from that source? If the 
 Scriptures are God’s Word, there cannot be a 
 higher authority than the Bible. 
 
 Again this writer, in the same address, sub- 
 stitutes experience for the authority of Scripture. 
 
 He says: ; 
 
 No religious doctrine is of value, or fundamental, 
 which cannot be verified by human experience; that. 
 is, which cannot become assimilated and united with 
 the spiritual system of man himself. A doctrine is 
 fundamental only when it is capable of experience in 
 the lives of individual men. No doctrine exists for 
 its own sake. It exists for the sake of man; and to 
 bless man it must be capable of becoming a part of 
 his spiritual being, the same as food does in the 
 natural body. We have too long believed certain 
 abstract statements for the sake of the statements them- 
 selves, rather than for the sake of man. We have been 
 too long swallowing theological indigestives. 
 
 The fact is that some of the most fundamental 
 doctrines of the Christian faith cannot be tested 
 or established by human experience; they must 
 
 be accepted on the authority of the Word. We 
 
BIBLE THE FOUNDATION OF CHURCH — 33 
 
 have believed them because they are revealed in 
 God’s Word, since disbelieving His Word, is in the 
 language of the apostle John, “making Him a 
 liar.” 
 
 And then there is the question of the relation- 
 ship between Christian: experience and the ordin- 
 ances. While there is such a relationship, since 
 true Christian experience causes a desire to obe- 
 dience, yet it is difficult to see how the ordinances 
 could be established on experience alone. It is 
 not claimed that they cleanse from sin and renew 
 the heart. The Quakers, therefore, do not keep 
 the ordinances. Nevertheless they observe cer- 
 tain regulations regarding dress and life in general, 
 though they do not believe that these things will 
 change the heart. The fact remains that it is not 
 clear how the ordinances and church regulations 
 could be maintained on no other ground than ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Dr. Robert Forman Horton, a conservative 
 Isritish theologian, wrote: 
 
 The real difficulty of our time, when we come to 
 probe it, is the dethronement of the Bible from its 
 position of unquestioned authority. From the earliest 
 period of Christianity, even in the writings of the 
 earliest Fathers, the sacred Scriptures were held to be 
 the standard and the test of Christian truth: nothing 
 was to be taught as essential except what was con- 
 tained in them or could be proven by them; and up to 
 the middle of the last century the imposing fortress 
 of the Book remained practically unquestioned and 
 certainly unbreached. No one within the borders of 
 the Church hesitated to regard the Bible as effect- 
 ively infallible. A quotation from any part of it 
 
34 
 
 BIBLE THE FOUNDATION 
 
 carried unquestionable weight, and decisions drawn from 
 its decretals were the settlement of all strife—Liberal 
 Protestants have lost their Bible, and in losing tt 
 have lost their religion. How can they shelter in a 
 building which is demolished or which is ever hidden 
 by the scaffolding about it, necessary for perpetual 
 repairs? 
 Charles Haddon Spurgeon has said: 
 
 The turning point of the battle between those who 
 hold “the faith once delivered to the saints” and their 
 opponents, lies in the true and real inspiration of the 
 Holy Scriptures. This is the Thermopylae of Christ- 
 endom. If we have in the Word of God no infallible 
 standard of truth, we are at sea without a compass, 
 and no danger from rough weather without can be 
 equal to this loss within. “If the foundations be 
 removed, what can the righteous do?” And this is a 
 foundation loss of the worst kind. 
 
 3 
 
 “Let us not deceive ourselves,” says Professor 
 
 John Gresham Machen, of Princeton Theological 
 Seminary, “the Bible is at the foundation of the 
 church. Undermine that foundation, and the 
 church will fall. It will fall and great will be 
 the fall of it.” 
 
Vial 
 iii oil YO be Cit RTS Fe 
 
 In another place reference has been made to 
 a recent writer in The .Christian Exponent who 
 says that such doctrines as the Deity of Christ 
 “necessarily have a thousand and one meanings for 
 as many different individuals.” Now this is the 
 language of modernism. The said statement is true 
 in regard to those who reject the supernatural 
 birth and true Deity of Christ. To the believer 
 in God’s Word, the Deity of Christ has only 
 cne meaning. It means that Christ had the divine 
 nature in a very particular sense, being superna- 
 turally born and coming to ity world from another 
 realm. 
 
 Among the “thousand and one meanings” that 
 liberalism ascribes to the Deity of Christ, the most 
 widely accepted view, perhaps, is the one defended 
 in a tract published by the Unitarians. The title 
 of this tract is Divine Because Human. They hold 
 that God is not what Scripture says He is, but is 
 “the collective mind of mankind.” Therefore all 
 that is human is divine, divinity is humanity and 
 the Deity of Christ means simply that He is 
 human. But why speak of Deity at all if it has 
 no real meaning? 
 
 In the address given at a session of the All- 
 ‘Mennonite Convention mentioned ADOVE, Fs en tee 
 Hartzler said: 
 
 When Jesus came He spoke of God as “Father.” 
 Jesus called God His Father. The term implies 
 
36 A DOCTRINAL QUESTION 
 
 moral not biological relationship. [The term biolo- 
 ‘gical means pertaining to the origin of life]. Jesus 
 recognizes God as the Father of mankind. 
 
 Yet the Scriptures teach distinctly Christ’s 
 Sonship in a biological and not merely moral 
 sense. | 
 
 Under the title “What Thnk ye of Christ?” 
 Lester Hostetler has a sermon in No. 5 of The 
 Christian Exponent. The article is an eulogy of 
 Christ, yet the writer makes the statement that he 
 does not consider this a theological (or doctrinal) 
 question. In fact he never mentions the superna- 
 tural birth of Christ. This is singular indeed in 
 view of the fact that the supernatural birth of 
 Christ is one of the great storm centers around 
 which the conflict between the Christian faith and 
 modernism is waged. To preach on the subject 
 What Thirk ye of Christ? and never mention this 
 point is to evade the issue. To say that this is not 
 a theological question is to speak from the view- 
 point of modernism. 
 
 Such language as is found in this article is 
 often used by modernists. They say that we see 
 God in Jesus, yet they hold that we see God in all 
 men, but in Jesus in a special sense because He 
 was a religious genius. They confess that we 
 have in Jesus a dynamic for living and that men 
 are changed through the presence of Christ, and 
 they have other beautiful words on the same strain, 
 and yet they deny the true Deity of Christ. As a 
 rule they have much to say of the Cross and yet 
 they do not accept the Scriptural doctrine of the 
 Atonement. Some have even confessed that He 
 is risen and by this expression meant simply that, 
 
DENIAL OF RESURRECTION 37 
 
 since man is immortal, Jesus continued to live 
 when He died physically. A conspicuous example 
 of such camouflage is that of Harry Emerson Fos- 
 dick, who in a recent statement of his faith (made 
 because his orthodoxy was questioned), asserts his 
 pelief in “the resurrected life of Jesus,” while in 
 fact he denies that Jesus’ body came forth from 
 the grave. 
 
 While the writer of the article What Think 
 
 ye of Christ? was a student in Union Theological 
 Seminary (New York) the present writer in a 
 
 letter to him gave him a word of caution, since 
 it was generally known that this institution is 
 notorious for its bold denial of the fundamentals of 
 the faith. His reply was that he was of age and 
 could guard against wrong teachings. Later there 
 was evidence that he accepted the Union Seminary 
 position in regard to certain doctrines. 
 
 Dr. K. C. Anderson, of Dundee, Scotland, 
 says well concerning the importance of the miracu- 
 lous birth of Christ: 
 
 Christianity from the beginning has been conceived 
 as a redemptive plan, the good news of a divine being 
 coming down from heaven to rescue fallen man, the 
 Christ or Savior not being a member of the fallen 
 race, but apart from it and superior to it. To make 
 the Christ or Savior a member of the race, no matter 
 how specially endowed with moral and spiritual quali- 
 ties, is to alter the whole conception and to tear out 
 the heart of the evangelic story. The Christian church 
 has never yet consented to put its Christ into the 
 same category as the prophets of the Old Testament 
 or the philosophers of Greece, but this is just what 
 will have to be done if the Jesus of the critics is to be 
 accepted as the Christ. 
 
38 
 
 DESTRUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 The triumph of liberalism is really a defeat, for it 
 means the destruction of Christianity as Christianity 
 has been known in all ages of history. — If Jesus was 
 a man as Socrates, Alexander, Isaiah, and Jeremiah 
 were men, then the whole Christian world has been 
 under a delusion. The discovery that Jesus was a 
 man merely as those named were men, would be 
 regarded as destructive to Christianity just as would 
 be the discovery that Jesus never lived at all. It 
 would be the destruction of Christianity as Chris- 
 tianity has been understood by the great saints and 
 theologians of the past. 
 
Vill 
 
 SALVATION AND CHRISTIAN 
 EXPERIENCE 
 
 
 
 The Gospel of salvation through the blood 
 | of Christ is to unregenérate, worldly-minded hu- 
 
 manity as, well as to an apostate church, a foolish, 
 _ despisable thing. Modernists have referred to it 
 as “pestilential” teaching, Not a few well-known 
 liberalistic theologians have only scoffing and ridi- 
 cule for it. It is a stumbling block to the self- 
 sufficient, self-righteous carnal modern mind. It 
 is unpopular among those who would tune their 
 faith to the spirit of the age. “For the preaching 
 of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; 
 but unto us who are saved tt is the power of God. 
 —We preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a 
 stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness ; 
 but unto them which are called, both Jews and 
 Greeks, Christ the power and wisdom of God.” 
 (1 Cor. 1:18, 23, 24). 
 
 Is it not an appalling fact that there are in 
 our day men, supposed to be ministers of the 
 Gospel, who openly declare that the crucified 
 Christ, as the Apostles preached Him — or, in 
 cther words, the message of salvation through the 
 Blood — is to them as well as to their congrega- 
 tions a stumbling block and an offense? But to 
 us who are saved, says the apostle, He is “the 
 power of God and the wisdom of God.” Now 
 here is clear evidence of the fundamental con- 
 trast between the non-believer and the believer. 
 
40 THE ATONEMENT 
 
 What the one considers foolishness, the other finds 
 to be the power of God. To him who has ac- 
 cepted the Gospel message and is experiencing its 
 power in his own life there is nothing so vital, 
 nothing so satisfying, nothing to make his heart 
 burn within him, as the sweet story of the Gospel 
 the message that Christ gave His life for us, “the 
 just for the unjust that He might bring us to 
 God” (I Pet. 3:18),..On the other hand, the 
 preaching of a modernized gospel is indeed an 
 offence. You cannot blame those who say they 
 find it an uninteresting, lifeless thing. It is at 
 best a form of Gospel minus the power thereof. 
 
 It is interesting to notice, in this connection, 
 that modernism rejects also the Biblical doctrine 
 of the Atonement as immoral. It is immoral, they 
 say, that one person should be sentenced to bear 
 another’s sins. That this is said in connection with 
 the Atonement is due to a strange perversion of 
 this Bible doctrine. The fact is that no one was 
 compelled to suffer for another’s sin. God Him- 
 self became man in order that He might, of His 
 own free will, bear the sin of the world. Christ 
 is God. He became man and acted in accordance 
 with the Father’s will when He became the sin- 
 bearer of the world. The Father, according to 
 the eternal plan of love “laid upon Him the ini- 
 quity of us all,” but He did so in accordance with 
 the Son’s own free will and plan. And mark well, 
 the purpose of it all was to do a wonderful work 
 of grace for those who accept the great sacrifice, 
 namely to put away their. sin and effect in them 
 a miraculous change of heart, that henceforth they 
 
DIVINE FATHERHOOD 41 
 
 will not serve sin. To say that this greatest of all 
 divine plans and works is of an immoral character, 
 is to take what for want of a more appropriate 
 name, may be fitly called a satanic view of the 
 Atonement. 
 
 In a word, the world and the apostate church 
 are openly despising the old Bible faith. And 
 those who stand loyally for the Christian faith 
 will not fare better at their hands than did Christ 
 and the apostles at the hands of the high priests 
 and scribes. The days are again upon us when to 
 bear “the reproach of Christ” means something 
 similar as it did in the primitive Christian period. 
 
 Modern theology makes much of the father- 
 hood of God. For God’s fatherhood in the Scrip- 
 tural sense it has substituted a new doctrine which 
 exalts God’s love at the expense of His righteous- 
 ness and holiness. The modern view of God’s fa- 
 therhood leaves out of consideration the fact that, 
 unless God is truth and holiness as well as love, 
 He cannot be love in any real sense. This new 
 doctrine ignores “the sinfulness of sin.” It stands 
 for an indulgent but soft and weak fatherhood of 
 God; too weak to deal appropriately with sin; too 
 sentimental to insist on the sinner taking the only 
 way of salvation from sin. But all the glib modern 
 talk of God’s love, which ignores the Scripture 
 teaching of sin and salvation, is nothing beyond a 
 sickly sentimentalism which has never saved a soul 
 nor ever will, 
 
 Hand in hand, with the rejection of the 
 thought of Christ as the Redeemer goes the mod- 
 ern doctrine of salvation by character. This doc- 
 
42 SALVATION BY CHARACTER 
 
 trine means that a good moral character, such as 
 respectable people are supposed to have, is suf- 
 ficient for salvation. It is a doctrine for those who 
 feel that their own righteousness fills all require- 
 ments, Religious liberalism has no message for 
 the sinner, be he respectable or not, who realizes 
 that he is lost. The Gospel message, on the other 
 hand, is for him who is “down and out” as well 
 as for the one of respectable character, provided) 
 that they realize their need of salvation. The offer 
 is to all. The vilest of sinners may come and 
 accept it by believing that Christ, his substitute, 
 died for him and shed His blood for his sin. The 
 guilt and stain of sin is cancelled and the new | 
 nature implanted in him. 
 
 The Bible comes to you with a message. The 
 message, if true, is of incomparable value. You 
 are called upon tto experience the truth of its mes-_ 
 sage. It consists of truths, or doctrines, Sones 
 ing God and His nature, man and his condition, 
 the way of salvation, etc. You are bidden to be- 
 lieve and fully accept the message. There are, 
 excellent reasons for believing that the message 
 is true. The most convincing reason, perhaps, i is 
 that Christianity will do for you what it claims dl 
 do. If you are conscious of personal sin and of an” 
 unsatisfactory relation to God, Christianity offers a_ 
 way for fully removing the burden of sin and 
 guilt and giving you a deep consciousness of a 
 vital relationship to God, the relation of a child to 
 his loving father. The Christian message points’ 
 out a way to make you abound in all the fruits of 
 the Spirit. You will be enabled to lead a life” 
 
 
 
FAILURE OF MODERNISM 43 
 
 jof victory over sin and over the adverse condi- 
 itions and failures of life. When the real tests 
 come which prove the modern conceptions of God 
 and of religion to be utterly inadequate, Christian- 
 ity will make you “more than conqueror.” It will 
 turn your defeats into victories. It will make 
 you the stronger spiritually and morally for ad- 
 verse experiences. 
 
 True Christian experience will also cure you 
 of the worldly-wise idea that the endeavor to 
 ‘improve social conditions is the essence of Chris- 
 tianity and is of greater importance than main- 
 taining the proper personal relationship to God and 
 
 
 
 bringing others into such relationship. Unless 
 your Christain faith is mere show and pretence, 
 you will clearly see that it is the greatest treasure 
 which you possess. You would willingly give 
 your earthly possessions and social advantages 
 for your faith. You are convinced that you can 
 render no greater service to your fellow-man than 
 ‘to get him to accept the Christian message. 
 Christian experience, to be worthy of the 
 name, presupposes Christian faith. Such exper- 
 ience is excluded where the fundamentals of the 
 faith are treated with indifference or denied. Dis- 
 counting the truth of the Gospel makes Christian 
 experience impossible. Deny the Deity of Christ 
 and the Atonement and you destroy the possibility 
 of true Christian experience. Again, accept the 
 Gospel message unreservedly and you will exper- 
 ience a great change of mind and heart. If your 
 faith is steadfast, the reality of this change will 
 become more and more clear to you. The change 
 
44 CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 
 
 is the result of personal faith in Jesus Christ — 
 not of following a natural impulse but of giving 
 heed to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. It is 
 not mere development of natural religious powers, 
 but is of a supernatural character — not your 
 own work but the work of God. 
 
 Christian experience, then, is the consciousness 
 of a supernatural personal relationship to God, the 
 realization of being right with God, being His 
 child, through the great work of Jesus Christ. Let 
 no one suppose that this means simply a belief in 
 the popular doctrine of the fatherhood of God. 
 On the contrary, it means a realization of the con-| 
 trast between being God’s child by regeneration © 
 and being His child in the sense as taught by mod- 
 ern theology, namely in the sense that you were 
 His child before your conversion. True Christian 
 experience brings the firm conviction of the reality 
 of the great redemption wrought by Christ; of the 
 reality of personal salvation through Him. 
 
 Liberalistic leaders have asserted that the 
 Biblical doctrine of salvation is unacceptable to 
 them because, so they tell us, it concerns itself 
 only with the individual, and not with society and 
 its great needs. We are told that the modern 
 mind will not accept an individualistic gospel and 
 that religion must be socialized. Salvation must 
 be interpreted in terms of social service and social 
 reconstruction. The representatives of religious 
 liberalism ignore the fact that the greatest factor 
 for substantially improving things on earth is the 
 personal inward transformation through the Gos- 
 pel. This is the great power to produce moral 
 
PERSONAL SALVATION PRICELESS 45 
 
 jIcharacter without which true social improvement 
 is impossible. There will always be social improve- 
 ment to the extent that the message of the Gospel 
 is accepted and the precepts of the Gospel are 
 lived. 
 
 Furthermore, modernism overlooks the fact 
 that personal salvation is also a far more import- 
 ant matter for the individual than the privilege 
 to live in a socially improved society. It is more 
 important to have the victory of the spirit through 
 a personal relationship to God than to have one’s 
 social and political and economic desires satisfied. 
 And the thought that the world may be regener- 
 ated through human instrumentality, or in other 
 words, that conditions on earth may be improved 
 to such extent that men are no longer born in sin 
 and do no longer need personal salvation through 
 jesus Christ — this thought is utterly fallacious. 
 lf individual reformation does not change the 
 -heart of the one who reforms, neither will im- 
 provement of social conditions break the organized 
 power of evil that is manifest in the world. It 
 is quite true that desirable reforms may often be 
 accomplished, but to reconstruct, or regenerate 
 the world through human instrumentality is im- 
 possible. It is not a man’s job. 
 
 While these facts should not be lost sight of, 
 it is on the other hand, as intimated in a preceding 
 paragraph, just as important to remember that the 
 Christian church, in so far as she fulfills her calling, 
 is the light of the world and the salt of the earth. 
 It is a matter of the utmost importance that the 
 
46 CHRISTIAN RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 influence of a Christian’s life is what God has de- 
 signed it to be. The fact that the world cannot 
 be regenerated through human effort can by no 
 manner of means be interpreted to mean that the 
 believer has no responsibility as to the temporal 
 and eternal well-being of his fellows. Biblical 
 orthodoxy, unless it be unreal “dead” orthodoxy, | 
 manifests itself by a deep sense of responsibility — 
 toward those who need the Christian’s service. — 
 The Christian’s responsibility is as great as his | 
 opportunity for service. But to render such ser- 
 vice effectively, the principle of separation from 
 worldliness is essential. Worldly, liberalistic re- 
 ligiousness ceases to be a light of the world and 
 a salt to the earth. 
 President S. K. Mosiman says concerning the 
 work of Christ: | 
 Jesus Christ did not come to bring a set of 
 theological doctrines; the apostles were not interested 
 in teaching a set of theological doctrines. Christ came 
 to live a life and in His life and death to reveal 
 God the Father, to mankind. Christianity today is a 
 
 life lived in Christ and not a set of theological for- 
 mulas over which to quarrel. 
 
 Similar expressions to the point could be 
 quoted from certain other Mennonite writers, if 
 space would permit. Doctrine is discounted and 
 practical life emphasized. But the most important 
 question, Who was Christ and what did He do 
 for fallen man? — is a doctrinal one. And if 
 Christ had done nothing more than to live a life 
 and in His life and death reveal God (who is also 
 revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures) He 
 would not be the Redeemer of mankind. The 
 
CHRIST THE REDEEMER . 47 
 
 
 
 
 reatest work of Christ was the Atonement: shed- 
 ing His blood and giving His life, “the just for 
 he unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 
 :18). Living the right kind of life is of the great- 
 st importance provided that it is preceded and 
 .ccompanied by faith in Christ and in His Atone- 
 nent for sin. Man could never save himself by 
 ollowing a good example; he could not be his own 
 savior. Salvation is the work of Christ on condi- 
 ion of faith and repentance. 
 
IX 
 
 THE MODERNIST VIEW OF MISSION 
 WORK 
 
 Religious liberalism has from the beginning 
 been either indifferent or antagonistic to Chris-' 
 tian missions, In recent years there has been a 
 change in its attitude to missions. Liberalism, | 
 as represented by those who have accepted modern 
 theology, is now professing friendliness to mission 
 work. This change of attitude is due to a new 
 view regarding the nature and purpose of missions 
 which has come to prevail in liberalistic circles. 
 The modern view of missions stands in strong 
 contrast to the evangelical view. 
 
 Professor Edward Caldwell Moore, of Har- 
 vard University, in an article on The _ Liberal 
 Movement and Missions, points out that “for the 
 missionary achievements of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury the churches described as orthodox have 
 been almost wholly responsible.’ He says further: 
 
 Hostility to missions, lack of sympathy with the 
 aims, dissent from the methods of those eager in the 
 missionary propaganda, have been almost a party badge 
 of the so-called liberal Christianity. 
 
 The same author in his book on The Spread 
 of Christianity im ‘the Modern World, shows that 
 rationalists and liberalists were “hostile to mis- 
 sions” for the reason that missions stood for the 
 Biblical doctrine of salvation, just as the liberals 
 were also “alienated from the church at home” 
 for the same reason, namely because of the fidelity 
 
“THERE ARE NO HEATHEN” 49 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 { 
 
 of the church to the old Bible faith. This testi- 
 mony is altogether in accordance with fact. 
 | The real cause for this negative, declining 
 ittitude of liberalism to Christian missions is not 
 lar to seek. True missionary work is always based 
 pn the conviction that you have the truth and the 
 ruth must be given to others. “The real belief 
 n absolute truth,” says a writer in The Unpopular 
 Review, “is a missionary state of mind, and carries 
 vith it the faith that truth is the one thing worth 
 iaving.” Modern liberalism denies the possibility 
 »bf knowing absolute religious truth. Furthermore 
 't considers all questions of religious doctrine and 
 iruth as secondary. Therefore it has no positive 
 religious message. The best in Christianity and 
 ihe best in heathen religions is, according to the 
 1ew theology, only relatively true. If Christian- 
 ty be better than some of the non-Christian re- 
 igions, we are told, the difference is only in degree, 
 deed in some instances in but slight degree. The 
 act is that some of the liberals—the Unitarians, 
 or example—frankly confess to their own sub- 
 stantial unity with certain heathen religions. A 
 nitarian writer, having called attention to the 
 fact that religious liberalists have more in common 
 vith the Liberal Jews, than with orthodox Chris- 
 lanity, proceeds to say: 
 : Then we think of other non-Christian religions. 
 Has it not been the Unitarian group that has led in 
 : the affirimation that there are no heathen religions, 
 _ that there is one Father over all, and all true thought 
 and feeling, yes, all dim groping after truth and 
 
 right, as is divine in origin as the word of Hebrew 
 seer or Christian leader? 
 
 
 
50 HEATHEN NOT TO BE CONVERTED 
 
 One of the editors of The Christian Exponent 
 in No. 1 of this paper, relates, as an example oi 
 Christian courtesy, that a missionary to Japan 
 John Hyde De Forest, refused to speak of the 
 Japanese as heathen. But why should it be dis- 
 courteous to speak of those who do not believe 
 in God and are worshipping idols as heathen} 
 The fact is that John Hyde De Forest was, ag 
 his biography shows, an outspoken higher critic. 
 He believed that there is no essential differenc 
 between heathenism and Christianity. 
 
 Representatives of religious liberalism in var- 
 ious denominations are of the opinion that the 
 missionary should not come to the heathen ba 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ing that Christianity is the one true religion, bu 
 le should appreciate the heathen religions and 
 learn of them, and in turn have the heathen people 
 appreciate Christianity and learn of it. 
 
 The science of Comparative Religion “has 
 flooded the world with a new light,” says Dr. 
 William R. Lawrence. It has shown that “back 
 of religions (both Christian and heathen) is re- 
 jligion, and each (religion of the world) is ap- 
 _preciated and the whole (namely universal re- 
 ligion) is apprehended through sympathy.” The 
 great heathen faiths should be studied, says this 
 writer, “not to catalogue their errors, but to under- 
 stand them.” Missionary education should teach 
 Christians “to appreciate non-Christian peoples 
 and their religious faith, and to approach them 
 _{on the platform of universal religion) in a’ spirit 
 of helpful comradeship,” instead of undertaking: 
 
 
 
PAGAN FAITHS TO BE PRESERVED 51 
 
 sof the University of Chicago, says: “Gradually 
 we have come to see that it is religiously desir- 
 , able that the Christianizing of non-Christian peo- 
 ‘ples shall mean the strengthening and purification 
 dof the best religious and moral traits of their 
 yuative faith, rather than its complete eradication.” 
 4Dr. John Herman Randall writes: “What an 
 ‘ opportunity is presented today for religion to 
 | realize, at last, its true mission in the world and, 
 /minimizing all differences, begin to magnify those 
 \things common to all religions.” 
 
 
 
 The view, held by the representatives of the 
 new theology, that mission work means the “in- 
 i terpretation” of Christianity to the heathen peo- 
 ples on the one hand, and the “interpretation” of 
 @ the heathen religions to Christendom on the other, 
 raises a number of puzzling questions. It is read- 
 ily seen that the supposed task of such interpre- 
 itation could not furnish the essential motive for 
 mission work, This modern way of reciprocal 
 ‘religious interpreting implies that heathenism is 
 ‘-}met on a common basis and is recognized as one in 
 --essence with modern Christianity. Besides, if the 
 modernist view of the Christian faith is ac- 
 cepted, namely that Christian doctrine is to be 
 ‘considered as of only secondary importance, to ac- 
 ouaint heathen peoples with it must also be a 
 secondary matter. Neither could religious liberal- 
 ists consistently expect to find the doctrines of 
 non-Christian religions to be of a more vital char- 
 acter than the doctrines of the Christian faith. It 
 follows that interpreting the West to the East 
 
52 SALVATION BY POLITICAL ENDEAVORS 
 
 and the East to the West can not be a matter of 
 
 primary religious import. And such interpretation 
 
 cannot be reasonably named mission work. Be 
 
 it repeated here for emphasis that the Unitarians 
 
 are showing good sense by their refusal to speak | 
 of their own work as mission work when they 
 
 simply enter into fellowship with representatives | 
 of heathen religions recognizing them as co-work- F 
 ers in a common cause. 
 
 But the new view of missions includes more 
 than mere mutual interpretation of religion. Its) 
 burden is the social gospel. Instead of working” 
 for the salvation of individuals by faith in our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, modernist missionary endeavor — 
 undertakes to save society by socialization and 
 reforms of various description. Dean Shailer: 
 Mathews, of the theological department of the™ 
 University of Chicago, says on this point: | 
 
 We used to regard the foreign missionary as try- 
 ing to save brands from the burning. Now we can see 
 he is also putting out the conflagration (making en- | 
 deavor for individual salvation wunnecessary). — If 
 Christianity can only rescue brands from the burning 
 but has no power to put out the fire (then we have) 
 a religion doomed to disappear with the advance of 
 ethical liberalism. — The new social interest of 
 Protestant Christianity..__....wants to save men into’ 
 heaven by embodying the principles of the kingdom of 
 heaven in the state. It is less concerned in rescuing 
 
 people than in educating them to keep them out of 
 danger. 
 
 A writer who was formerly connected with 
 
 a Christian college in China says: _ : 
 | The church of today is increasingly emphasizing 
 that part of its message which has to do with trans- 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 THE NEW MISSIONARY APPEAL 53 
 
 forming this world into the Kingdom of God. Chris- 
 tians are today attacking sin by trying to abolish 
 poverty ignorance and disease. Pursuant to this con- 
 ception missionaries art emphasizing in China, educa- 
 tion, medical work, famine relief, and help for the 
 unfortunate members of «society. In all this they 
 meet with a hearty response, for the Confucian 
 school that has so dominated Chinese thought through 
 the ages directs its energies largely toward making 
 
 human society ideal. — The social message of Chris- 
 tianity is strikingly in accord with the best of Chinese 
 tradition. 
 
 All unbiased students will admit that religious 
 | liberalism is more nearly akin to Confucianism 
 than to New Testament Christianity. 
 
 | Modernists regard religion as a means of 
 ' what they suppose to be a higher end, namely 
 | the improvement of conditions on earth, Professor 
 J. Gresham Machen writes on this point: 
 
 Fifty years ago, missionaries made their appeal 
 in the light of eternity. “Millions of men,” they were 
 accustomed to say, “are going down to eternal de- 
 struction; Jesus is a Savior sufficient for all; send 
 us out therefore with the message of salvation while 
 yet there is time.” Some missionaries thank God, 
 still speak in that way. But very many missionaries 
 make quite a different appeal. “We are missionaries 
 to India,” they say. “Now India is in ferment; 
 Bolshevism is creeping in; send us out to India that the 
 menace may be checked.” Or else they say: “We are 
 missionaries to Japan; Japan will be dominated by 
 militarism unless the principles of Jesus have sway; 
 send us therefore to prevent the calamity of war.’ 
 
 | Another object included in the modern view 
 of missions is stated by Gerald Birney Smith: 
 “One of the supreme tasks of the church (both 
 
54 LACK OF MISSIONARY MOTIVE 
 
 West and East) in a democratic age is to make, | 
 universally accessible the historical interpretation 
 «of the Bible” i. e. the liberalistic religious views. 
 In other words, the defenders of modernism con- 
 ‘sider it the church’s business to spread the mod- | 
 ‘ernist theology. Nothing is more natural than 
 this. You could not expect a liberalistic church 
 to propagate the evangelical faith, could you? 
 Now the greatest impediment in the way of such 
 liberalistic endeavor is old fashioned New Testa- 
 ment Christianity. As for heathenism it decidedly 
 has liberalistic tendencies 
 
 Professor William Brenton Greene, Jr., of 
 Princeton Theological Seminary, in a timely ar- 
 ticle on The Crises of Christianity, writes, 
 
 Again, the crisis of Christianity appears in this. that 
 while her missionaries are multiplying, their gospel, it 
 would seem, here and there, little by little, is being de- 
 pleted and emasculated. Such is the warning that is 
 now coming to us from China. Such is the warning 
 that is beginning to come to us from other fields. Could. 
 anything be so appalling? We have been wont to look 
 on our Foreign Missions as the demonstration that the 
 church is obeying her Lord’s last and great commission 
 to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to the 
 whole creation.” But what if the gospel which some 
 missionaries preach is another gospel which is not a 
 
 gospel? This would prove treason both in the council 
 tent and on the firing line. | 
 
 The representatives of the modern view of. 
 missions have done very little along any line 
 for the heathen nations. They have a way, how- 
 ever, of diverting eangelical mission effort into 
 liberalistic channels. Liberalism, by the con- 
 fession of some of its own adherents, lacks the 
 
 
 
ba 
 
 
 
 DISHONEST USE OF MONEY 55 
 
 true missionary motive. Has it ever been heard 
 of, that people are tithing themselves in order to 
 spread the modern religious liberalism among 
 heathen nations? We think not. But there are 
 _many, many loyal Christian believers who tithe 
 themselves to assist in bringing the precious Gos- 
 pel of salvation to those who grope in heathen 
 darkness. They have the missionary spirit for the 
 _ reason that they are convinced to have in the Chris- 
 _ tian faith the most valuable treasure. They real- 
 ize that the greatest service to be rendered to 
 others is to spread the faith through which they 
 have found salvation. There are those who give 
 tithes of their income though they themselves are 
 doing without some things that are generally 
 supposed to be needful. Some do not have the 
 means to educate their own children properly. 
 They make sacrifices out of love to their Lord, to 
 bring to the heathen this priceless treasure. Now 
 for religious liberalists to use such money for 
 | liberalistic purposes in accordance with the new 
 _ view of missions, is by all odds the greatest off- 
 fence of which liberalism is guilty. That such 
 conditions are possible is also a serious blot on the 
 good name of the Christian Church, It is only 
 fair to say that liberalism should not undertake 
 
 | the liberalization and socialization of the world 
 
 
 
 if its own constituency is unwilling to support this 
 work by furnishing the needed means. 
 
 The Indianapolis Convention 
 
 The annual convention of the World’s Student 
 
56 MODERNIZATION OF STUDENTS MOVEMENT 
 
 Volunteer Movement was held a few months ago 
 in Indianapolis. This organization represents the 
 cause of missions at large. It works in the interest 
 of Protestant mission endeavors regardless of diver- 
 gencies of creed. It does not differentiate between 
 the old Bible faith and modernism. ‘The organ- 
 ization seeks to advance the general mission 
 cause without taking into consideration the fact 
 that this cause is only partially given to the 
 propagation of the Christian faith. The fact is 
 disregarded that a large number of modernists 
 have in the last decade been sent by Protestant 
 mission societies and that these modernists on the 
 mission fields are engaged in spreading the prin- 
 ciples of modernism. Among the delegates as- 
 embled in Indianapolis many came from the most 
 outspokenly liberalistic American colleges and sem- 
 inaries. In England the modernization of this 
 movement has progressed to such a degree that 
 the Publishing House of the British branch of 
 the organization has issued liberalistic literature 
 of various description. The following quotation 
 
 is taken from a book published by this publishing 
 
 house: 
 We may perhaps in some things be driven to 
 modify or to ignore certain views of Christ, for exam- 
 
 ple, in his theological or scientific statements where | 
 
 they seem to conflict with His spirit or with nese | 
 
 gated facts. 
 
 In other words, in no line whatever, not even 
 
 in matters of faith and theology, is Christ con- 
 sidered an authority. In consequence of this 
 attitude of pronounced liberalism a large number 
 
 | 
 
A CONTRAST 57 
 
 of evangelical student volunteers in England have 
 renounced this organization to form a separate 
 body standing for the fundamentals of the Chris- 
 tian faith. 
 
 As Christian believers we are not in the least 
 interested in the missionary efforts put forth by 
 modernists, On the contrary, we are interested in 
 counteracting their destructive work on the mission 
 field. It is a significant fact that The Christian 
 i-xponent has published two long articles — one 
 of them an editorial — describing the Indianapolis 
 Convention, without a word to indicate the real 
 character of this movement. On the other hand, 
 the same paper gave only a short notice (such 
 as one should have supposed might have sufficed, 
 as an item of news, on the said convention) to the 
 Mennonite Fundamentals Conference held recently 
 in Fulton County, Ohio. 
 
x 
 THE SOCIAL GOSEEE 
 
 Modernism rejects the Bible teaching on || 
 man’s sinfulness and the Biblical conception of the | 
 world. The “exceeding sinfulness of sin,” the | 
 existence of Satan and his kingdom, and the need 
 of supernatural salvation are denied. For the Bible 
 message of personal reconstruction the social gos- 
 pel substitutes the call to social reconstruction. | 
 
 Not long ago the General Secretary of Home — 
 Missions of one of the more prominent denomina- 
 tions in a public address set forth the nature and 
 meaning of the social gospel, he himself being an 
 
 ardent advocate of it. His address in substance | 
 
 follows. . 
 The thought that there is a kingdom of evil besides 
 the kingdom of God is all wrong. There is only one 
 kingdom and every man is a citizen of it. Since there 
 is only one immanent life force, the world is a unit 
 and man is also a unit. There is no room therefore 
 for the old conception of sin. Furthermore there 
 should be no attempt made to draw a line of dis- 
 tinction between things religious and secular, holy 
 and unholy, Christian and non-Christian, the church il 
 and the world. Sin is, in the last analysis, not a 
 personal but a social evil. It is the result of improper _ 
 social conditions. This means that sin and evil cannot 
 be quite so bad as they seem to be. Considered from | 
 the viewpoint of the social gospel the thought that — 
 God would condemn a man because of sin is offensive. 
 Since man is inherently good and all men are 
 God’s children, there is in modern religion no place 
 for individual salvation. The divine plan of sal- 
 vation of which conservatives still speak is super- 
 
 
 
 
 
SALVATION A SOCIAL TERM 59 
 
 stition. What is needed is not individual but social 
 salvation. For although the world is God’s kingdom, 
 it does not follow that all is developed to perfection, 
 or is incapable of further improvement. Such a con- 
 ception would not fit into the scheme of general 
 evolution. Salvation has, become a social term. It 
 means that the world must be made better socially 
 by reforms and social improvements of various kinds, 
 by education and moral advancement. 
 
 In a word, the social gospel addresses itself to the 
 task to make the world a decent place to live in. 
 This is the business of the church in the new age. 
 What was formrely spoken of as religious endeavor is 
 of value only in so far as it serves social ends. 
 
 The social gospel, in other words, lays enormous 
 emphasis on man’s physical and material well- 
 being. Religion is held to be nothing more than a 
 plan for social welfare. Christianity is considered 
 a scheme of social improvement. It is reduced 
 to humanitarian and social endeavors, Education 
 and sanitation take the place of personal regenera- 
 tion and the Holy Spirit. True spiritual Chris- 
 tianity is denied. “Our old religion was a process 
 
 of saving a few souls here and there out of a 
 
 ’ 
 
 world that we condemned as bad,” says a promin- 
 ent Methodist preacher of the state of New York; 
 “the new religion is a community affair, and we 
 will make our towns and our cities the right kind 
 of places so that everybody will be a Christian as a 
 matter of course. When it used to be hard to be 
 good, it will become difficult to be bad.” Individual 
 salvation is practically spurned and denied. 
 Considering the question from the viewpoint 
 of New Testament Christianity some fatal weak- 
 nesses of the social gospel are in evidence. The 
 

 
 60 ESSENCE OR FRUIT? 
 
 new gospel identifies essence and fruit. Making 
 social service the most important feature of Chris-| 
 tianity, the fruit is mistaken for the essence. In 
 fact, the fruit is divorced from the tree that prog 
 duces it. Social betterment is excellent as the} 
 outgrowth of Christianity; the attempts to make 
 it a substitute for the Christian religion have 
 signally failed. The social gospel overlooks the 
 fact that man’s greatest needs are of a spiritual 
 nature, and hence the greatest service to man is 
 to supply these needs. The new gospel ignores the| 
 vital and fundamental isues that have to do with’ 
 man’s spiritual well-being and true betterment. 
 The primary duty of the church, namely, to give 
 spiritual food to the souls of men, is set aside. 
 It is a wholesale effort for the improvement of 
 mankind on the surface rather than for better- 
 ment in the mainspring of the heart where the 
 seat of evil lies. [ 
 
 
 
 The social gospel, then, fails to dist itiole 
 between Christian service and social service. But 
 the two are not identical. The successful business 
 man, or laborer, is rendering valuable social ser- 
 vice though he may not be a Christian, or he may 
 be a Christian only nominally and hence may be 
 lacking the Christian motive that is essential to 
 Christian service. 
 
 Rejecting, in short, the Christian view o 
 man’s sinfulness and of an evil world, the socia 
 gospel prescribes reformation as the needed rem 
 edy. Reformation and man-wrought changes ar 
 Lelieved adequate to make the individual as wel 
 
REFORMATION OR REGENERATION? 61 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 as the world all that is to be desired. Now it 
 cannot be questioned for a moment that reform 
 is good in its place. If a thief ceases to steal 
 nd begins to work for an honest living, he is 
 oing a praiseworthy thing. Christianity does 
 not hold the absurd view that the vicious and 
 rofligate are as desirable members of society 
 s they who live honorable lives. But it is the 
 hurch’s business to stand for Christianization 
 in the New Testament sense, not for mere refor- 
 mation. A sinner who reforms is not for that 
 reason a Christian. Reformation will not change 
 the human heart. Regeneration is the work of 
 God. 
 
 Social service as a substitute for the old 
 Gospel message has been tried out by Unitarians 
 and other liberal churches. There is abundant 
 proof to show that it has utterly failed, a fact 
 that is persistently ignored by its present advo- 
 cates. The churches which have embraced the 
 social gospel, says a writer in The Harvard 
 Theological Review, “have distinctly weakened 
 their life and influence.” A writer in The Biblical 
 World says: “The secularization of the activities 
 of the church has weakened its spiritual life 
 and emptied its pews of devout worshippers.” 
 
XI 
 DO SCIENCE AND RELIGION CONFLICT? 
 
 Between the natural and the supernatural, 
 or miraculous, there is a vital difference, yet it is 
 needful to keep in mind that God may use natural 
 law to accomplish a particular purpose. The super- 
 natural, on the other hand, is done above and be- 
 yond natural law. To say with modernism that 
 the supernatural is impossible is to deny the omni- 
 potence of God. 
 
 The statement that there is no conflict be- 
 tween science and religion has various meanings 
 depending upon the personal position of the one 
 who may use such an expression. A Christian be- 
 liever saying that there is no conflict between 
 science and religion means that the claims of 
 modern science, in so far as they are antagonistic 
 to Scripture, are unfounded. A modernist using 
 the same expression means the very contrary, 
 namely that religion is acceptable only in so far 
 as it is based on natural law and is explainable by 
 science. 
 
 Now the principal facts on which the Chris- 
 tian religion is founded are of miraculous nature. 
 The incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
 and other miracles cannot be explained by natural 
 law or science, neither can the divine work of 
 grace in the human heart be so explained. It is 
 due to the direct working of the Holy Spirit. 
 These things are consequently disowned by the 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL IS MIRACULOUS _ 63 
 
 more advanced modernists. They hold a monistic 
 view of the world and insist that there is no such 
 thing as the working of God above and beyond 
 natural law. They declare that all truth is 
 uniform with the same laws of nature and there- 
 fore the supernatural is unreal. They deny that 
 something that is out of harmony with the truth 
 of natural law ever took pace. 
 
 In an article in the Goshen College Record, 
 
 a few years ago, it was stated that “two sets of 
 truth’ could not well be taught in the same school. 
 N. E. Byers, in an article entitled Our Future Place 
 im Christian Education, published in The Christian 
 Evangel, says that for our colleges we need 
 teachers “who can lead our best students to 
 see that truth as we believe it is in full harmony 
 with all truth as they know it.” If this meant 
 simply that they should be led to see that Menno- 
 nite doctrine is true, the question would be in 
 order, why should it be only “our best students” 
 that are led to recognize this? Is it not a fact that 
 this is believed by Mennonites in general? Liberalistic 
 science claims that the Bible is unreliable on ques- 
 tions in which it differs from certain suppositions 
 and hypotheses of modern science. And instead of 
 recognizing that the supernatural is not within the 
 province of scientific investigation, modern science 
 claims that all must be tested by science and natur- 
 al law (science is, in fact, the truth of natural 
 law) and that all real truth is in accordance with 
 the same. Yet the supernatural does not agree with 
 natural law. The most fundamental doctrines of 
 
64 NATURE A TESTIMONY FOR GOD 
 
 the faith are not in agreement with such truth as 
 applies to natural occurrences. 
 
 Now modern science by taking an attitude of 
 negation with reference to the supernatural, over- 
 steps the bounds of its own realm. The fact is 
 that nature itself and natural law is a proof of the 
 possibility of the miracle. Nothing less than the 
 supernatural, miraculous work of God can ac- 
 count for the existence of nature. Evolution does 
 not offer a real explanation. Evolutionists them- 
 selves admit that they cannot explain how life 
 criginated upon earth. The origin of life calls for 
 a work that is superior to natural law — a miracle. 
 Again they who assert that man is nothing more 
 than a highly developed animal make an assertion 
 which is not only incapable of evidence but is 
 clearly contrary to fact. 
 
 A miracle cannot be explained by natural 
 law or by science, yet science is unscientific when 
 it asserts that a miracle is impossible to God. There 
 is no scientific evidence whatever against the om- 
 nipotence of God, or the Deity of Christ, or any 
 other doctrine of the Christian faith. On the 
 contrary, as already stated, nature itself is a wit- 
 ness for God, and there is in Christian experience 
 abundant proof of the possibility of the super- 
 natural and miraculous. The Christian believer 
 who makes faithful use of his privileges, lives in 
 the atmosphere of the supernatural. So far from 
 believing that the supernatural is impossible, he 
 is convinced that God’s Word is true, 
 
XII 
 
 NONRESISTANCE AND 
 FUNDAMENTALISM 
 
 Under this title an editorial article was printed 
 in The Christian Exponent, as already noted. The 
 editor makes the following sweeping statement 
 concerning the fundamentalists. 
 
 We remember that in the late war they spoke of 
 Jesus Christ as walking up and down through the 
 
 trenches on the battle fields blessing the war, and 
 those who fought in it.” 
 
 Now this is clearly an unwarranted generaliza- 
 tion, It is true that some of the fundamentalists 
 (outside of nonresistant churches) as well as some 
 of the modernists did this sort of thing. Yet 
 the anti-modernists (not taking into consideration 
 those within the nonresistant churches) have a 
 better record in regard to this matter than the 
 modernists. 
 
 The editor of The Christian Exponent refers 
 to the modernist leader Harry Emerson Fosdick as 
 one who has expressed himself approvingly on the 
 point of nonresistance. However, the fact is that 
 Fosdick has a decidedly unfavorable personal re- 
 cord as concerns this question. Before the war he, 
 like other liberalists, believed that the world had 
 reached such a stage of betterment and Christian- 
 ization that war was a thing of the past; he held 
 that an armed conflict is never justifiable. When 
 the great war came, Fosdick published a pamphlet 
 in which he explained that “circumstances alter 
 
66 OPPOSITION TO NONRESISTANCE 
 
 eases.” He called upon the Christian church of 
 America to support the war. Again in 1919 he 
 published an article in the Atlantic Monthly, pre- 
 dicting a great revival of religion through the in- 
 fluence of the soldiers returning from France. At 
 the present time he has swung back to the position 
 which he held before the war. He now again 
 admits that war is unchristian in character, though 
 he is careful not to reject it outright. He says: 
 I find it difficult to imagine any situation in which 
 I shall feel justified in sanctioning or participating in 
 another war. 
 
 This means that his attitude on the point in 
 question will depend on the situation that may a- 
 rise. As for the stand which the Conscientious 
 Objectors — the real nonresistants — took in the 
 war, he expressly repudiates their position. In the 
 final analysis his position on the point in question 
 does not differ from that of Lloyd George, who 
 said recently: “As is well known, I was strongly 
 for the war while the war lasted. Now I am just 
 as strongly for peace.” | 
 
 Nor is Fosdick alone among the modernist 
 leaders in taking a spineless attitude like this so 
 long as the war continued, More than a dozen of 
 these leaders could be named that have a similar 
 record. Shailer Mathews, the head of the theologi- 
 cal department of the University of Chicago, be- 
 fore the war actually defended the principle of 
 nonresistance, and he maintained this position 
 during the first stages of the conflict. But after 
 America had become involved he wrote an editor- 
 ial article in The Biblical World saying the most 
 
EFFECTS OF “WAR FEVER” 67 
 
 unkind words about the Conscientious Objectors. 
 In a recent article he again disapproves of war, 
 though he does not defend the principle of non- 
 resistance. He also warns of religious controversy, 
 which obviously means that in his opinion no 
 impediment should be laid in the way of modern- 
 ism. 
 
 Now the facts are these: Before the war the 
 modernists as a class declared that war was un- 
 justifiable, since it did not fit into their scheme of 
 world-improvement. The fundamentalists as a 
 class did not believe that war was a thing of the 
 past. When the war came there was no difference 
 between these two classes. The modernists as 
 well as the fundamentalists outside of the nonre- 
 istant churches supported the war while it lasted. 
 Yet it is interesting to notice that among the more 
 prominent church leaders of America there was 
 apparently only one who for a long period gave 
 practically all his time to war propaganda, and he 
 is a modernist: Newell Dwight Hillis, D. D., of 
 New York (now occupying the pulpit of Henry 
 Ward Beecher) who by many is considered the 
 greatest pulpit orator of America. He travelled 
 through the land giving addresses in which he told 
 hair-raising stories about Hun-atrocities and abject- 
 ness. On the other hand, the well-known fun- 
 damentalist leader, Philip Mauro, set an example 
 which to all appearance none of the modernist 
 leaders followed: He visited training camps to 
 encourage Conscientious Objectors in their noble 
 stand for Christian principle. That all the funda- 
 
68 IMPORTANCE OF NONRESISTANCE 
 
 ‘mentalists outside of the nonresistant churches 
 4avored the war is an obvious error. 
 
 It should be remembered that a man who 
 ‘denies Christ, disbelieving His Deity, His super- 
 natural birth, and His resurrection, is not a Chris- 
 tian, even if he believed in the principle of non- 
 resistance. It cannot be denied that there are 
 Christians — believers in Christ — who are in 
 error on the very important point of nonresistance. 
 You would not say that there were no Christians 
 among those who supported the last war, would 
 your There were Christians among them; but they 
 were either unenlightened or disobedient. Impor- 
 tant as is the principle of nonresistance, the doc- 
 trine of the Deity of Christ is more important. 
 Placing first things first we have the fundamentals 
 of the faith and then the principles and command- 
 ments that have reference to practical life and 
 conduct. If you deny Christ, these principles 
 lose their importance. Therefore, even if it were 
 correct that Fosdick accepts the principle of non- 
 resistance (which is not the case), the distance be- 
 tween us and a modernist, such as he is, would be 
 greater than that between us and the fundamentalists 
 (anti-modernists) even though many of them 
 do not teach nonresistance. After all is said, the 
 fact remains that fundamentalists in other churches 
 have more in common with us than modernists 
 who disown the fundamentals of the Christian 
 faith. If there were liberalists who agree with the 
 position which the conservative Mennonites take 
 on the point of nonresistance (a supposition 
 
 — 
 
FIRST THINGS TO COME FIRST : 69 
 
 that is quite improbable) this would not pL: 
 the said fact. 
 
 To illustrate the point. The most eminent 
 Russian writer, Tolstoy, defended the principlé of 
 nonresistance, but was not a Christian believer. 
 Yherefore, though he was right on an important 
 point, his influence did not count for the Christian . 
 cause. On the contrary, his rejection of supernat- 
 ural religion, his teachings on communism and oth- 
 er points had a decidedly detrimental influence on 
 the Russian people. In spite of his views on non- 
 resistance, Tolstoy was largely instrumental in pre- 
 paring the way for Bolshevism in Russia. The 
 Greek Catholic Russian state church has a long 
 register of misdeeds and sins standing against her, 
 yet she had the courage to excommunicate the 
 greatest writer and most famous man of Russia 
 tor his flagrant infidelity, a man whom some of our 
 popular American churches would doubtless have 
 welcomed into their fold — Tolstoy. 
 
 Another illustration. The Mennonite Church 
 at Ouddorp in Holland has been without a minister 
 for two years. The congregation declined the 
 offer to have their pulpit supplied at intervals by 
 ministers of neighboring Mennonite churches, for 
 the reason that these ministers are radically liber- 
 alistic. The congregation would have no services 
 rather than listen to a preacher who denies the 
 fundamentals of the faith. A# efforts to secure a 
 Mennonite minister who believes in the Scriptures 
 as God’s Word proved fruitless. Recently the con- 
 gregation has extended a call to an anti-modernist 
 
70 A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE ONLY? 
 
 minister of the Reformed Church to become their 
 pastor, presumably on the condition that he for- 
 mally unite with the church. It need not be 
 said that to call a Reformed preacher to the pas- 
 torate of a Mennonite Church is inconsistent, yet 
 it is not so inconsistent as to give such a call to 
 a modernist though he may be a Mennonite by 
 name. 
 
 Then again we will do well to remember that 
 the attitude of some of the Mennonites of Amer- 
 ica on the question of war did not differ so much 
 from that of the outspoken supporters of the war. 
 Normar. Thomas, in his book, The Conscientious 
 Objector in America, points out that President 
 S. K. Mosiman gave the following advice to Men- 
 nonite boys: 
 
 It is impossible for me to tell you what to do. 
 
 This is a matter of conscience and it is your conscience 
 that must decide. 
 
 The Mennonite Church has, on the contrary, 
 always held that God’s Word is the final authority. 
 The point in question is, What does the Word 
 teach regarding the principle of nonresistance? 
 it cannot be doubted that thousands of Christian 
 professors have served in the war without com- 
 punction of conscience. Conscience is a_ safe 
 
 guide only when it is enlightened by the Word of 
 God. 
 
XIII 
 
 NONRESISTANCE AND MODERNIST 
 IDEALISM 
 
 N. E. Byers writes in The Christian Exponent, 
 No. 5: 
 
 During the world war men were rallied to a high 
 sounding slogan (“to make the world safe for demo- 
 cracy”) at the time of a crisis, under the stress of a 
 great excitement, by mass movement. Individuals by 
 themselves had never been educated to such high and 
 all-inclusive sympathies [to make the world safe for 
 democracy through war] and when the excitement was 
 over (as soon as the armistice was signed) each one 
 dropped to his own level of character. 
 
 In the opinion of this writer then, those who 
 took an active part in the world war were, 
 while engaged in war, standing on a higher level 
 of character than before or after the war. He 
 thinks, when the excitement of war was over, 
 they dropped to their former level because they 
 had never been educated to such high and all-in- 
 clusive sympathies as they manifested during the 
 war. We realize that the said writer does not 
 desire to approve of war, and yet he thinks the 
 men who were engaged in war were standing on a 
 higher level of character while the war lasted. 
 
 The question is here in order, If this was the 
 case, how is it to be accounted for that so many 
 of the men lost out entirely both morally and re- 
 ligiously while engaged in military service? How 
 is it possible that army chaplains even excused the 
 
72 A HIGHER LEVEL OF CHARACTER? 
 
 shocking profanity that the soldiers as a rule in- 
 dulged in? How can men who are engaged in 
 such exercises as bayonet practice in the camps 
 and the horrors of actual warfare, stand on a 
 higher level of character? Obviously the said 
 writer does not speak here of character from the 
 Christian viewpoint but from the point of view of 
 modernist idealism. He has much to say in praise 
 cf such idealism but is there not here a striking 
 proof of the inferiority of modern idealism? 
 
 There is not an unfavorable word to be said 
 concerning true ideals, yet the modern idealism 
 lacks the Christian foundation, motive and back- 
 ground. It has no true foundation to build upon, 
 therefore it suffers from uncertainty and spineless- 
 ness. No philosophical idealism can do away with 
 the fact that the longer the war lasted, the more 
 unfit became the men for effecting a betterment of 
 conditions in church and state after their return. 
 And a few more years of war would have meant 
 the end of European civilization. The fact remains 
 that war is the greatest curse and enemy of man- 
 kind. A great many of those who once believed 
 that it meant a step upward for them to become a 
 part of the military machine are of different opin- 
 ion today. 
 
 The editor of a religious weekly published in 
 Chicago has recently expressed himself on the 
 point in question in a way that deserves attention. 
 The following quotation is somewhat lengthy but 
 is just to the point and is worth reading. 
 
 A great question mark has been written over the 
 whole war. Steadily the truth has been forcing itself 
 
A WAR TO END WAR? 73 
 
 upon us all that what was passed for idealism during 
 the war was a compound of sentimentality and pro- 
 paganda. It served its purpose of stimulating the 
 people to fight; it won the war. But when the tumult 
 and shouting had died this pseudo-idealism could not 
 stand the test of reality. It was not idealism at all. 
 It was an artificial though marvelously skillful manipu- 
 lation of idealistic concepts which could not in the 
 nature of things have the backing of reality. This 
 is simply an abstract way of saying that the ideal 
 aims and motives with which Mr. Wilson sought to 
 sublimate the war and make it a holy thing were all 
 along and have since proved to be false to fact. It is 
 a hard thing to say, but it no longer requires courage 
 to say it, since practically every voice from that of 
 Mr. Lloyd George to the Chicago Tribune now joins 
 in an almost unanimous verdict that the war was a 
 dead loss even to the victors. 
 
 Our world war did just the same thing that war 
 ‘has always done — it sought to sanctify itself with 
 the vestments of the highest idealism it could com- 
 mand. Mr. Wilson declared that this was God’s war, 
 a war for human liberty. And men believed him. He 
 believed himself. The spirit of war had filled the 
 world. It held us all. It held our scholar president. 
 In our war mood he seemed a prophet, a spokesman 
 for God. Our idealism was the idealism of a dream. 
 We had been caught up into the air of unreality and 
 there was a wide space between us and the firm ground 
 of truth. 
 
 We now begin to see that we have believed lies. 
 This war was not waged to end war. It was not a 
 universal errand of chivalry on behalf of the op- 
 pressed. It was not a war to make the world safe 
 for democracy. 
 
 The opinion that the soldiers during the war 
 had risen above their former level of character, is not 
 
 true to fact. 
 
XIV 
 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS INDIVIDUALISM? 
 
 One of the innate characteristics of modernism 
 is an aversion against authority, especially against 
 authoritative statement of doctrine and against 
 doctrinal tests of any kind. 
 
 J. E. Hartzler said in the address previously 
 mentioned, given at a session of the All-Mennonite 
 Convention: 
 
 How the church ever passed from the Sermon 
 on the Mount to the Nicene Creed will always be a 
 mystery. Nothing but a philosophical acrobatic stunt 
 will explain. 
 
 As if the Nicene Creed, that is to say, the con- 
 fession of the fundamentals of the Christian faith, 
 were not in perfect agreement with the Sermon 
 on the Mount. In fact, a number of the funda- 
 mentals are either expressed or implied in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, and the rest of the funda- 
 mentals are taught in other parts of the Scriptures. 
 That they are not all mentioned in the Sermon 
 on the Mount does not detract from their authori- 
 tative value. 
 
 The editor of The Christian Exponent, in a 
 recent editorial, declares that “we stand solidly on 
 the evangelical faith and the principles of Christ” 
 and then says nevertheless that theology, or doc- 
 trine, and faith are of minor importance. These 
 are his words: 
 
 We offer as a basis for unity and for the solution 
 of our present difficulties only one remedy and one 
 rule, viz., that Christians so-called will really follow 
 
DOCTRINE CONSIDERED SECONDARY 75 
 
 the Christ whom they profess, and that all of us 
 will make a sincere and earnest effort to make our 
 first and primary concern not theology, creed or cus- 
 tom, but to know and to do His will. 
 
 A superficial reading of these sentences may 
 not disclose their real meaning. Certainly no 
 Christian believer would think of saying a word 
 against the importance of knowing and doing the 
 will of Christ. This is of the utmost importance 
 provided you accept the doctrine of the true Deity 
 of Christ, that is to say, that you do not have a 
 modernized view of it such, for example, as the 
 socialists have who claim that Christ was a great 
 social reformer and they are following Him and 
 doing His will when they devote themselves to 
 socialistic propaganda. 
 
 S.. Burkhard, in the letter mentioned before, 
 says: 
 
 Jesus is the champion of life and dedicated his 
 whole life to the program of bringing the more 
 abundant life to every man. 
 
 This writer gives a description of the life of 
 which, in his opinion, Jesus was the champion. 
 His statements on this point are shocking to the 
 believing Christian. He defines Christianity as 
 liberty and demands a life free from the restraint 
 which Christ himself and all His true followers | 
 believed essential. 
 
 Modernism holds that questions of theology, 
 creed and doctrine are of comparatively little im- 
 portance, Therefore, they tell us, it is the proper 
 thing for Christian believers to extend the hand 
 of Christian fellowship to those who question and 
 
76 AN INADEQUATE BASIS 
 
 modernize the fundamentals of the faith. Now any 
 one who is used to doing his own thinking will 
 readily see that such doctrines as the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures and the supernatural birth of 
 Christ are of the most fundamental importance. 
 If Christ were not the one He said He was, 
 then His precepts and commands would lose 
 much, if not all, of their importance. Nor can 
 the Conservative Mennonite Church be accused 
 of making light of the commands of the Lord, 
 though we are emphasizing the fundamentals as 
 of the greatest importance. On the other hand, 
 an inquiry into the question, whether or not mod- 
 ernist congregations are keeping the commands of 
 Christ will lead to surprising results. The fact is, 
 that, as a rule, the modernists who consider the 
 fundamentals of the faith as of secondary import- 
 ance, hold the commands of Christ as of even less 
 importance than they do the fundamentals. 
 
 In a recent number of De Zondagsbode, for 
 example, the Mennonite minister of. Dordrecht 
 emphasizes this leading principle of liberalism, viz., 
 that theology, doctrine and creed are secondary 
 matters and should be treated as such. Yet no one 
 who is acquainted with the facts would claim that 
 the Mennonites of Holland, though they hold that 
 practical questions are of greater importance, con- 
 cern themselves as much about knowing and doing 
 the will of Christ, as do those who hold that doc- 
 trine is of primary importance. 
 
 A basis of union, such as the editor of The 
 Christian Exponent suggests, making theology 
 
“PROVE THE SPIRITS” 77 
 
 and creed secondary matters, is not a Scriptural 
 basis. It is, in essence, liberalistic and in positive 
 contradiction to Mennonite principles. 
 
 In an article The Faith of Our Fathers, pub- 
 lished in The Christian Exponent, J. E. Hartzler 
 says: The Fathers of the Church “knew that 
 Christianity was not a religion which imposed 
 dogmatic uniformity in matters of creed.” He 
 asserts further that they defended “the right of 
 any person under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
 to freely interpret the Bible for him or herself.” 
 On the same question, C. Henry Smith, in his 
 book, The Mennonites, has the following to say: 
 
 Mennonitism is the essence of individualism. 
 The individual is to interpret the Bible for himself; 
 he is to worship as he pleases and to obey only his 
 Own conscience in all matters of religious faith. 
 
 The assertion of “the right of any person, 
 under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to freely 
 interpret the Bible for him or herself’ may sound 
 ‘innocent enough. Certainly no church would put 
 itself on record as taking issue with the Holy 
 Spirit’s guidance. But the point in question is, 
 how it is to be decided whether, in a given case, 
 the claim of the Spirit’s guidance is correct. We 
 are told that every person must decide for himself. 
 This is true in a sense. Religion is an individual, 
 personal matter. But this does not answer the 
 question what is to be done when there is dis- 
 agreement in some particular case as to the cor- 
 rectness of a claim of the Holy Spirit’s guidance 
 in the interpretation of the Word. The early 
 Mennonites disapproved the view that this matter 
 
78 A WELL-DEFINED FAITH 
 
 can be left entirely to the individual. In other 
 words, they did not believe that every claim of the 
 Spirit’s guidance must be recognized by the 
 Church, They insisted, on the contrary, that the 
 spirits must be proved. So far from considering 
 this a strictly individual matter, the right to 
 decide the more serious questions of this sort 
 was not even exercised by the congregation. The 
 early Mennonites believed that it is the province 
 of the Church as a unit, that is to say, the spokes- 
 men or representatives of the various congrega- 
 tions, to decide on questions of faith and practice. 
 History records a number of conferences held by 
 Menno Simons and his co-workers to decide on 
 important questions of doctrine and practice. The 
 brotherhood evidently believed that the church 
 leaders were best qualified to give such decisions. 
 
 That the early Mennonite Church held a well- 
 defined position as to creed, doctrine and practice 
 is an established fact. Only a few of the proofs 
 can here be given. The writings of Menno Si- 
 mons, Dirck Philips and others are defences of the 
 faith and practice of the Church. Menno Simons’ 
 writings show that there arose in his day a 
 numerous party advancing the claim that obedience 
 to Christ’s commands was not required where 
 serious danger was involved. Since baptism was 
 forbidden by the authorities, it was not to be 
 practiced. Those who entertained such views 
 were not recognized as members of the Church, 
 any more than others who held that the position 
 
 of the Church on the point of nonresistance was 
 
POSITIVE IN DENIAL 79 
 
 wrong. There were in Menno Simons’ time many 
 Christian professors who claimed that the Scrip- 
 tures teach infant baptism. It need not be said 
 that such could not hold membership in the Men- 
 noniie Church. One of the bishops of the early 
 Mennonite Church, Adam Pastor, gradually drifted 
 into Unitarianism: the denial of the Deity of 
 Christ. After earnest efforts had been made to 
 reclaim him, he was excommunicated, notwith- 
 standing his assertion that his view was Scriptural. 
 In our day there are those who used to be mem- 
 bers of the Mennonite Church and claim that they 
 were led into Russellism by the guidance of the 
 Holy Spirit. In a word, the Church would lose 
 its identity if the question of the Holy Spirit’s 
 leading would be left entirely to the individual 
 members. 
 
 The opinion that it is not the Church’s busi- 
 ness to uphold a definite creed and that the Church 
 should consider questions of doctrine and faith as 
 secondary and leave them to the individual mem- 
 bers to decide, is called individualism. It is readily 
 seen that individualism is but another word for 
 modernism. It means that there is to be no au- 
 thority above the individual self. Today the 
 strongest organization standing for religious indi- 
 vidualism are the Unitarians. They claim to be 
 absolute individualists but this is, after all, not a 
 fact, A Unitarian professor wrote: “The bond of 
 union among us all is the fight against the deity 
 of Jesus Christ.” So they, after all, take a position 
 as concerns Christian doctrine, viz., a position of a 
 
80 INFALLIBLE INTERPRETERS NEEDED? 
 
 hegative character. You are welcome to hold 
 membership with them so long as you deny the 
 fundamentals of the faith, However, many of 
 the Unitarians realize that they are not a church; 
 they call themselves a society. For this they 
 deserve credit. 
 
 The state has its laws to which the citizens 
 must conform and those who break the laws are 
 temporarily separated by confinement in prisons. 
 The church also has its creed according to which 
 it is maintained and those who do not abide by 
 it will lose their membership. The principle that 
 every inhabitant of a given land should make his 
 own laws, or, in other words, that every man 
 should be a law unto himself, and that the state 
 has no right to make binding laws — this is the 
 principle of anarchy. Just so the assertion that 
 the church should have no well-defined or binding 
 creed, that she should not defend anything definite 
 as concerns matters doctrinal and religious — that 
 every member should follow his own autonomous 
 conscience — this is the principle of religious 
 anarchy. A group of people, or the population of a 
 given territory, recognizing no civil authority, 
 would not constitute a state. Neither is a group 
 of persons defending religious individualism a 
 church. 
 
XV 
 LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE 
 
 Several Mennonite writers have advanced a 
 strange interpretation of the principle of liberty 
 of conscience, They say the early Mennonites 
 defended this principle, which is a fact. Menno 
 Simons and his co-workers held that neither civil 
 government nor any person in authority should 
 compel people to unite with a church. The 
 Mennonite Fathers protested against the union of 
 church and state and against persecution. Mod- 
 ernism on the other hand, claims that according 
 to the principle of liberty of conscience, the 
 Church should permit any one of its members 
 to teach or practice anything that his own 
 conscience may permit. Modernists say that the 
 Church has no right to take to account a member 
 whose conscience may be so wide and flexible as to 
 permit him to do that which is clearly contrary 
 to his own good and the good of the Christian 
 cause. 
 
 In other words, modernism interprets the prin- 
 ciple of liberty of conscience to mean religious 
 individualism. This modern notion of liberty of 
 conscience has, as already intimated, been as- 
 cribed by liberalistic writers to the early Menno- 
 nites. For example, in the circular letter sent by 
 S. Burkhard to the Alumni of Goshen College, in 
 March 1923, the following passage occurs: 
 
 The present crisis of the college and the church 
 
82 MODERN PERVERSION OF LIBERTY 
 
 at large involves two historic issues. The one is the 
 cardinal doctrine which the church in its early his- 
 tory made one of its chief foundation stones. it. is 
 the doctrine of the right of one to live by the 
 dictates of his own conscience. Today we are again 
 facing this issue and are wondering whether the 
 church will remain true to its historic foundations, or 
 whether it will forget this cardinal doctrine and [re- 
 fusing to give liberty on the points at issue] as a 
 consequence divide itself into small and petty factions. 
 This is obviously the modernist view of 
 iiberty of conscience. And it is erroneously as- 
 cribed to the fathers of the Mennonite Church. 
 Giving this question a little thought will show 
 that the modern view of liberty of conscience is 
 the very opposite of the true view of religious 
 liberty. An example may make this point clear. 
 The Mennonite Church consists of persons who 
 have united upon a creed concerning doctrine and 
 practice. Unless you are a member only nominally, 
 you believe in the doctrines and principles of the 
 Church. Now suppose the case that a member 
 turns Russellite (or modernist, as the case may 
 be) and claims that according to the principle of 
 liberty of conscience the Church cannot censure 
 or exclude him. It seems almost impossible that 
 such a claim could be seriously made. The fact 
 is that to retain a Russellite as a member would 
 be to burden the conscience of the loyal members 
 of the Church. The Church could not with a good 
 conscience grant such a thing. Unless the prin- 
 ciple of liberty of conscience is nothing but a 
 farce, it must give the Church the right to main- 
 tain a clear conscience and to exclude the Rus- 
 
IS IT PERSECUTION? | 83 
 
 sellite or the modernist. On the other hand, it 
 would be absurd to say that leaving the Menno- 
 nite Church would burden the Russellite’s con- 
 science. If he desired to retain his membership it 
 would probably be for the reason that he has more 
 influence over Mennonites so long as he is a mem- 
 ber of the Church, or because he has some other 
 ax to grind. 
 
 Modernism has developed a type of con- 
 science that differs radically from the Christian 
 conscience of the old heroes of the faith. In our 
 day liberalistic professors who have discarded 
 the Bible faith think, as a rule, that to ask them to 
 resign their office in an orthodox church is to 
 oppress. their conscience and to persecute them. 
 When a number of years ago a minister in a prom- 
 ‘inent denomination offended his church by his 
 new theology views, the opinion was_ publicly 
 expressed that to ask him to resign his paying 
 position would be a form of persecution, since 
 he could probably not earn as much in another 
 profession. On the other hand the mighty men of 
 faith who defended the principle of religious 
 freedom did not find it in their conscience to 
 remain in a church from which they differed in 
 faith; they withdrew, though to do so may have 
 meant for them the most cruel persecution. 
 
 S. Burkhard says in the letter quoted above: 
 
 Yesterday our people died for their liberty of 
 conscience, but today in turn we are telling our chil- 
 dren that if they wish to remain in the church they 
 
 must submit their consciences to the dictates of the 
 ‘authorities.’ The word ‘authority’ is a much over- 
 
34 “A GRAVEYARD OF CONSCIENCES” 
 
 worked word in the circles of the church, and its 
 administration often is a flat denial of the validity of 
 the idealism for which we propose to stand. | . 
 
 When once the ‘authorities’ of the church succeed 
 in crushing out all liberty of conscience and thought, 
 and have denied one the right of self-respect, and have 
 taken away ones life (not physical) and have turned 
 the college into a graveyard of consciences, then they 
 will sncceed in crushing out all rebellion from the 
 college, and there will be no spirit of revolt there, 
 because there is no life. 
 
 The spirit of revolt will always be found in a 
 man when someone else is holding him down and deny- 
 ing him the right of freedom and self-respect. 
 
 Is this not strange language from a Menno- 
 nite educator? And is not his position as regards 
 the question of liberty of conscience unacceptable 
 to thinking persons? The question regarding the 
 influence of such Mennonite educators is a serious 
 one. Could it be possible, we must ask, that our 
 young people who are attending state schools are 
 exposed to greater dangers than those who are 
 sitting at the feet of a Mennonite professor who 
 defines Mennonitism as liberty and uses language 
 such as this writer regarding the Church? The 
 often repeated claim of such men that it is their 
 business to train the future leaders of the Church 
 is significant. 
 
 A Charge Against the Bishops 
 
 In No. 6 of The Christian Exponent, J. E. 
 Hartzler expresses the opinion that “overhead 
 human authority” and “government by bishops” 
 can not dwell under the same roof with freedom of 
 
DISCIPLINE NECESSARY 85 
 
 conscience. If this view were correct, bishops 
 would find themselves evidently in a serious pre- 
 dicament. The constitution of practically all civil- 
 ized countries guarantees liberty of conscience to 
 every person, To take a position against freedom 
 of conscience is to violate the Constitution of the 
 United States. He who dares to do this makes: 
 himself liable to prosecution. 
 
 But on what ground is this charge made? 
 Do the bishops of any church offend against the 
 principle of liberty of conscience? Do they compet 
 people to unite with the organization which they 
 represent, or to remain in the church, against their 
 own will? Not by any means. They do not inter- 
 fere with any one’s religious liberty by “keeping 
 house” in accordance with the creed and regula- 
 tions of the Church. Enforcing church regula- 
 tions is not contrary to the principle of liberty of 
 conscience, else the churches which have no bish- 
 ops and yet maintain proper discipline would of- 
 fend against this principle the same as the churches 
 that have bishops. The fact is that stricter order 
 and discipline is maintained in certain denomina- 
 tions having a strictly congregational polity than 
 in some other churches that are ruled by bishops. 
 The Methodists are an illustration to the point. 
 Some of the smaller Methodist bodies, that have no 
 bishops, as for example, the Primitive and Wes- 
 leyan Methodists, maintain far stricter discipline 
 than the Methodist Episcopal Church which is 
 ruled: by bishops. 
 
ONG 
 THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS 
 
 Under this heading J. E. Hartzler, President 
 of Witmarsum Theological Seminary (formerly 
 President of Goshen College) published two ar- 
 ticles in The Christian Exponent. With reference 
 to the faith of our Fathers he claims that there 
 were “four fundamental principles which inspired 
 them to action and which led finally to the es- 
 tablishment of the Church.” Now of the four 
 principles which this writer enumerates, three are 
 merely interpretations of the principle of liberty. 
 They are: The right of the interpretation of 
 Scripture for any person; the right of liberty of 
 conscience; and the right of religious toleration. 
 
 While the said writer claims that of the four 
 fundamental principles of Mennonitism three have 
 to do with liberty or freedom, another Mennonite 
 writer goes even farther. S. Burkhard says, in 
 the letter mentioned before, that “the historic 
 idealism of the Mennonite Church” is nothing 
 more nor less than the assertion of the principle 
 of liberty. This “historic idealism,’ he states, 
 consists in upholding the two cardinal doctrines 
 of liberty of conscience and nonresistance. The 
 first of these doctrines he interprets to mean the 
 autonomy of conscience, or the rejection of all 
 authority higher than the individual self. 
 
 Still more strange is his interpretation of the 
 
CURIOUS VIEW OF NONRESISTANCE — 87 
 
 doctrine of nonresistance. He says this doctrine 
 means more than that one should not take the 
 life of another (which is, of course, true). He 
 claims the meaning of the doctrine of nonresist- 
 ance is that every one should be permitted to live, 
 and to live as he may desire. He says nonresist- 
 ance means that the Church must give every 
 member the right to live as he may desire. He 
 says further that the Church is violating the 
 principle of nonresistance by setting up regulations 
 and restrictions, Now this is a view of nonresist- 
 ance that cannot be taken seriously. The opinion 
 that such is “the historic idealism of the Menno- 
 nite Church,” that is to say, this was the position 
 of the Fathers of the Church, is absurd. 
 
 Speaking of “the two historic issues” of the 
 Church, this writer, thus, interprets the one (liberty 
 of conscience) to mean that you insist on your 
 own personal liberty; and the other (nonresistance) 
 that you grant personal liberty to others. These 
 two principles, he says, “form the heart and core 
 of the religion of Jesus.’ All this means that in 
 his view the cardinal doctrines of the Mennonite 
 Church may be defined by one word: liberty. 
 
 It cannot be denied that liberty is an import- 
 ant factor in religious and moral endeavor. Yet 
 liberty is of real value only as it presents oppor- 
 tunity to pursue some worthy purpose. The 
 Fathers of the Mennonite Church protested a- 
 gainst the tyranny of those who denied them the 
 right of liberty of conscience, the right to worship 
 and live in accordance with their Christian con- 
 
88 LIBERTY A MEANS TO AN END 
 
 viction. They did not appreciate liberty so much 
 as an end in itself but rather as a means to a higher 
 end. They were interested in liberty in so far 
 as it would enable them to live the doctrine of 
 Christ unmolested. They desired no other liberty. 
 The cardinal principle of the Church is not liberty 
 but it is to lay hold on God’s Word in simple 
 faith and to order one’s life according to it. 
 
 Modernism substitutes the principle of liberty 
 for the fundamentals of the faith. It sets aside 
 the faith once for all delivered to the saints and 
 makes liberty the principal thing. It makes an 
 idol of liberty. Christianity teaches that there 
 is something higher than liberty. In fact, liberty 
 as an end in itself, that is to say, if it has no 
 religious or moral objective, is not true liberty, no 
 more than that anarchy is political liberty. 
 
 The Mennonites of Holland furnish an object 
 lesson. About the year 1860 they began to drift 
 into theological liberalism. ‘Today they are radi- 
 cally modernistic. The general condition of the 
 Mennonite Churches of Holland is sad indeed. To 
 what length they go in the open denial of the 
 faith is well-nigh unbelievable. A majority of 
 their ministers do not believe that answer to 
 prayer is possible. Now Professor Leuba, of 
 Bryn Mawr College, who is an avowed unbeliever, 
 classifies those who do not believe in a God 
 who answers prayer as atheists, though they may 
 profess faith in God. If his view is right, all who 
 do not recognize the existence of a God who in 
 His omnipotence can answer prayer, are to be 
 
MODERNIST MENNONITES 89 
 
 classed with atheists. One of the smal] number of 
 the more conservative Mennonite ministers of Hol- 
 
 land mentioned recently in their church paper that 
 a Mennonite minister had reproved one of his 
 members for “saying grace” i. e. having prayer 
 before meals. 
 
 The principles held by the more advanced 
 modernist Mennonites of America are fully ac- 
 cepted and practiced by the Mennonites of Holland. 
 They hold questions of faith and doctrine as strictly 
 secondary matters on which they grant full liber- 
 ty. In fact they stand for nothing else but liberty. 
 They are identified with individualism which 
 means that each individual is considered an author- 
 ity unto itself and will recognize no other author- 
 ity. They defend the autonomy of the individual. 
 Each church member is to be governed by the 
 rules that he may lay down for himself. The 
 right of the Church to formulate such rules for 
 the members is denied. The Church is not permit- 
 ted to have any say in the point of faith of the 
 church members, This means that these churches 
 are like the most radical type of Unitarian church- 
 es, or societies, in America. Like our Unitarians, 
 they have no positive teachings except their posi- 
 tive denial of the old Bible faith. And again 
 they are like our Unitarians in spending their 
 energies in their opposition to the Christian faith. 
 As one of the Holland Mennonite ministers has 
 said, “Our business is to fight orthodoxy.” They 
 find themselves obliged to apply to the Menno- 
 nites of other countries to assist them in the sup- 
 
90 FAILURE OF MODERNISM 
 
 port of their missions, but at the same time the 
 reports published in their church paper show that 
 they give thousands of dollars for the strengthen- 
 ing of modernism in Germany and Austria. In 
 fact the principal modernist paper of Germany, 
 Die Christliche Welt, would probably have ceased 
 to exist were it not for the financial help of mod- 
 ernists of other countries, and the Mennonites of 
 Holland are among those whose aid has kept this 
 paper alive. 
 
 To return, after this digression, to our sub- 
 ject: religious liberty, we shall quote one of the 
 most prominent modernist Mennonite ministers of 
 Holland, Ds. F. Dijkema, of Amsterdam, on the 
 point in question. His statement is important 
 showing, as it does, that the substitution of the 
 principle of liberty for the Christian faith has 
 proved a failure. This writer readily admits that 
 modernism, having repudiated the authority of 
 Scripture, is lacking a foundation and that, unless 
 a foundation may be found for it, it has no future 
 as a substitute for the Christian faith. He says: 
 
 What the last half century has taught us is that 
 the modernistic teachings did not show the vitality 
 which we had expected them to have. And if we 
 ask for the reason why we have been disappointed in 
 our hope the answer is principally twofold: Modernism 
 has found it impossible to create for itself a theologi- 
 cal foundation; it has no unifying theology, no com- 
 mon fundamental principle, and secondly the masses 
 of the people have not been attracted by it; we did 
 
 not succeed in the effort to interest them in the 
 liberalistic teachings. 
 
 We have no settled points of doctrine, but what 
 
MODERNISM WITHOUT A FOUNDATION 91 
 
 do we have? Is there not more clearness of aim 
 needed, a greater certainty than we now have? 
 
 The question remains, Can there be found for 
 modernism a positive fundamental principle? It has 
 been supposed that the principle of liberty or freedom 
 will serve this purpose. But, as Professor Opzoomer 
 has recently said, “To be a Protestant it is not 
 sufficient to have a zeal for liberty. It is true that 
 the principle of faith loses its strength without the 
 principle of freedom, but the principle of freedom 
 is meaningless without the principle of faith.” Liberty 
 is after all a negative conception and can therefore 
 not be considered the common fundamental principle 
 of the modernists. 
 
 Professor Roessingh has shown that now, since 
 the modernists have dropped the belief in an authori- 
 tative divine revelation, they are lacking a foundation. 
 
Ve 
 RESTRICTIONS 
 
 We have seen that, in the view of modernist 
 Mennonites, “the historic faith of the Church” of 
 which they have so much to say, may be summed 
 up in one word: liberty. If this were the correct 
 view, it would follow that what is known as 
 restrictions would be the greatest violation of 
 Mennonite principle. 
 
 From the earliest time the Mennonite Church 
 has laid down certain restrictions — rules of 
 conduct — that were obligatory for the members. 
 These restrictions had reference to worldliness in 
 general and to such points as dress, manner of 
 life, worldly amusements, etc., in particular, If 
 the church members were convinced Mennonites, 
 they believed such restrictions to be a necessary 
 characteristic of a true Christian Church. The cry 
 that the restrictions are conflicting with the per- 
 sonal liberty of those who were “set free” by 
 Christ was in those early days raised, not by church 
 members (who by their free choice had united 
 with the Church) but by outside opponents of the 
 Church and enemies of the cause. 
 
 In our day there are those within the borders 
 of the Church who have raised the fervent cry, 
 “no restrictions.” An expression on this point is 
 found in the letter mentioned in a previous para- 
 graph which was sent by Samuel Burkhard, to 
 
ACCUSATIONS AGAINST CHURCH 93 
 
 the Alumni of Goshen College. In this letter 
 the words of Christ concerning the more abundant 
 life, are quoted and it is claimed that this life 
 cannot be lived under the restrictions imposed 
 by the Church. With reference to these restric- 
 tions the letter says: 
 
 Many men and women have been denied the 
 birthright for which their nature called because some- 
 ene had forced upon them to live within a man-made 
 cage. 
 
 The writer of the letter set himself the task 
 to show that to accept the said restrictions is 
 contrary to the teachings of the Fathers of the 
 Church. To quote again from the letter: 
 
 The fathers of the Church revolted for the same 
 reason that our young people are now in a spirit of 
 revolt. 
 
 Again J. E. Hartzler, in his article The Faith 
 of Our Fathers, says with clear reference to these 
 restrictions : 
 
 Instead of making it impossible for our young 
 people to stay in the Church, we must set in motion 
 forces that will make it practically impossible for them 
 to leave the Church. 
 
 This is a most remarkable statement. It ‘is 
 made by the president of the institution which 
 claims to be the theological seminary, or ministers’ 
 training school, of five branches of the Menno- 
 nites, including our Church. The regulations in 
 force in the Church, says this writer, compel 
 our young people to leave the Church. Now 
 these restrictions are upheld not merely by indi- 
 viduals, or sections of the Church, but by the 
 whole Church, as represented by our conferences. 
 
94 IS DRESS AN INDIFFERENT MATTER? 
 
 It is not almost unbelievable that the President of 
 the institution which claims to be the theological 
 seminary of the Church has the courage to make 
 such insinuations—that he comes out in what 1s 
 nothing less than open revolt against the Church in 
 which he also personally claims membership. It 
 is safe to say that a parallel case can scarcely be 
 found in history. And President Hartzler is evi- 
 dently doing his best to lead our young people in 
 the the way he has chosen. (Witmarsum Theo- 
 logical Seminary, though located in Bluffton, Ohio, 
 is not the same institution as Bluffton College.) 
 
 The general position of Witmarsum Theological 
 Seminary is clear from various expressions both 
 written and oral of its president as well as of some 
 of its professors. One of the latter has given grave 
 offence in various places by his bold denial of the 
 resurrection of Christ. Why are these things men- 
 tioned here? Would it not be better to pass them 
 over in silence? It would indeed be right to do so 
 if the questions involved were not issues of life and 
 death to the Church. The question of avoiding the 
 displeasure of individuals must in such matters al- 
 ways be a secondary consideration. If it is necessary 
 to speak plainly concerning non-Mennonite modernist 
 schools, it is even more needful to do so regarding 
 Mennonite institutions. 
 
 Those of our educators who are attempting to 
 lead our young people in a revolt against the 
 Church have asserted that dress is a matter that 
 is religiously indifferent and the Church has no 
 right to make rules in regard to it. They deny 
 
PETER CARTWRIGHT’S TESTIMONY 95 
 
 that there is a close relationship between this mat- 
 ter and Christian experience. This is indeed 
 strange. Clearly it is easy to dress in a way that 
 is inconsistent for a Christian professor. The early 
 Christians, in accordance with Scripture teaching 
 and principle, stood for simplicity of attire. And 
 all churches that believed it to be the church’s 
 calling to teach and testify against worldliness 
 have generally followed their example on this 
 point. 
 
 To make clear the point of the original 
 position of one of the larger denominations — 
 the Methodists — on the question of worldliness, 
 we shall quote from the writings of one of the 
 Methodist pioneer preachers in the Middle West, 
 Peter Cartwright. The following is taken from 
 his autobiography, which he wrote when he was 
 well advanced in years, in 1856. He says: 
 
 I wish to say a few things here on the usages of 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church. When I joined the 
 Church, her ministers and members were a plain peo- 
 ple; plain in dress and address. You could know a 
 Methodist preacher by his plain dress as far as you 
 could see him. The members were also plain, very 
 plain in dress. They were not permitted to wear 
 jewelry, or superfluous ornament, or extravagant dress 
 of any kind, and this was the rule by which we 
 walked, whether poor or rich, young or old. And 
 although we knew then, well as we do now, that the 
 religion of the Lord Jesus Christ does not consist in 
 dress, or the cut of the garment, yet we then knew 
 and know now that extravagant dress and superfluous 
 ornaments engender pride, and lead to many hurtful 
 lusts, directly at war with that humility and godly 
 
96 
 
 A ZEALOUS CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 example that becomes our relation to Christ, that sc 
 preeminently becomes Christians. 
 
 In another chapter Cartwright says: 
 
 In these early days we had no pewed churches, 
 no choirs, no organs; in a word we had no instrumen- 
 tal music in our churches anywhere. The Methodists 
 in that early day dressed plain, attended their meet- 
 ings faithfully, especially preaching, prayer and class- 
 meetings. They wore no jewelry, no ruffles. They 
 would frequently walk three or four miles to class- 
 meetings and home again, on Sundays. They would 
 go thirty or forty miles to their quarterly meetings. 
 They could, nearly every soul of them, sing our 
 hymns and spiritual songs. The Methodists of that 
 day stood up and faced their preacher when they 
 sung; they kneeled down in the public congregations 
 as well as elsewhere, when the preacher said, “Let us 
 pray.” The abominable practice of sitting down 
 during prayer was unknown among early Methodists. 
 Parents did not allow their children to go to balls or 
 plays; they did not send them to dancing schools. 
 If Methodists had dressed in the same “superfluity 
 of naughtiness’ then as they do now, there were very 
 few even out of the church that would have any 
 confidence in their religion. But O, how things have 
 changed in this age of the world. I do declare there 
 was little or no necessity for preachers to say any- 
 thing against fashionable and superfluous dressing in 
 those primitive times of early Methodism; the very 
 wicked themselves knew it was wrong and spoke out 
 against it in the members of the church. The moment 
 we saw members begin to trim in dress after the 
 fashionable world, we all knew they would not hold 
 out. 
 
 Again this writer says: 
 
 On the other hand, if religion must be defeated, 
 the obligations of the Gospel loosened, the rules of the 
 Church not exacted, a time-serving ministry employed, 
 

 
 AGAINST LUXURIOUS CHURCHES 97 
 
 this is, and has been, the death-knell to all churches 
 so far as inward piety is concerned. Look at the need- 
 less, not to say sinful expenditures in older cities and 
 districts of country; the unnecessary thousands ex- 
 pended, not in building needful and decent churches, 
 for this is right, but ornamented churches to make a 
 vain show and gratify pampered pride. Look at the 
 ornamented pulpits, pewed and cushioned seats, organs 
 and almost all kinds of instruments, with salaried 
 choirs, and as proud and graceless as a fallen ghost, 
 while millions upon millions of our fallen race are 
 dying daily and peopling the regions of eternal woe 
 for the want of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Having related a few instances of persons 
 who laid aside superfluities of dress without being 
 . asked to do so, when they were converted, Cart- 
 wright says: 
 
 I state these cases to show that unless the heart 
 is desperately hardened through the deceitfulness of 
 sin, there is a solemn conviction on all minds that 
 fashionable frivolities are all contrary to the humble 
 spirit of our Saviour. But idolatry is dreadfully 
 deceptive, and we must remember that no _ idolator 
 hath any inheritance in the kingdom of God. Let 
 Methodists take care. 
 
 If in the preceding paragraphs you substitute 
 the word Mennonite for Methodist, you have a 
 correct description of the early Mennonite con- 
 gregations as concerns the point of unworldliness. 
 
 What may be the cause for the departure of the 
 Methodist Church from the original ground held 
 on the point in question? The answer is, of course, 
 that there was a lapse in spirituality. But this is 
 not the whole reason. It is sometimes said that 
 where true spirituality exists, rules and regulations 
 in regard to this point are unnecessary, Yet, even 
 
98 WESLEY ON DRESS 
 
 for spiritual persons it is not impossible to be led 
 into error. The fact is that there are spiritually 
 minded persons who counteract their good in- 
 fluence by their worldliness. 
 
 Some of the Methodist circles of England began 
 to grow cold and drift into worldliness before the 
 death of John Wesley. When well advanced in 
 years Wesley realized that he might have stemmed 
 the tide of worldliness in dress if he and his co- 
 workers had laid down more defininte rules and 
 restrictions on this point. An important expres- 
 sion on worldliness in dress and its prevention 1s 
 found in his sermons. He says in sermon 120, part 
 12: ; 
 
 I am distressed. I know not what to do. I see 
 what I might have done once. I might have said 
 peremptorily and expressly, “Here I am; I and my 
 Bible. I will not, I dare not vary from this book, 
 either in great or small. I have no power to dis- 
 pense with one jot or tittle of what is contained 
 therein. I am determined to be a Bible Christian, 
 not almost but altogether. Who will meet me on this 
 ground- Join me on this, or not at all.’ With regard 
 to dress in particular, I might have been as firm 
 (and I now see it would have been far better) as 
 either the people called Quakers or the Moravian 
 brethren; — I might have said, “This is our manner 
 of dress, which we know is both Scriptural and ration- 
 al. If you join with us, you are to dress as we do; 
 but you need not join us unless you please.” But, 
 alas! the time is now past; and what I can do now, I 
 cannot tell.” 
 
 In contrast with these sentiments of John 
 Wesley we quote here from an article of N. E. 
 Byers in The Christian Exponent, No. 10: 
 
 ‘ah 
 7) 
 
STANDARD TO BE LOWERED? 99 
 
 We have been more interested in conserving cus- 
 toms and traditional beliefs than in getting insight into 
 saving truth and giving it to the world. In our home 
 mission work have we not put our effort on a fight to 
 save man-made customs of dress at the sacrifice of the 
 saving of souls and the Christianizing of communities? 
 
 This question must be answered negatively. 
 The fact is that our home missions have been suc- 
 cessful in winning people for Christ. It is true 
 that many of the converts were not willing to 
 accept the restrictions asked by the Church. But 
 discarding these restrictions would not remedy 
 matters. If the Church would drop her unpopular 
 teachings and regulations, there would be no 
 good reason why we should desire converts to 
 unite with our communion in preference to more 
 popular churches. As for being interested in 
 “traditional beliefs more than in getting insight 
 into saving truth,” it must be said that the supposed 
 new insight into saving truth at the expense of the 
 so-called traditional beliefs is unacceptable to us. 
 
 The quotation from John Wesley shows that 
 he agreed with the position of the Mennonite 
 Church on two important points: He considered 
 principle of more importance than numbers (and 
 yet he was a great missionary); and he believed 
 the Church has the right to make regulations in 
 regard to dress. This has always been the posi- 
 tion of the Mennonite Church. Particularly in 
 regard to the head dress of the sisters, the Church 
 has always insisted. on uniformity. Until less 
 than a century ago in all the Mennonite churches 
 of Switzerland, France, Baden, Wurttemberg, 
 
100 AN INTERESTING TESTIMONY 
 
 Bavaria and Hesse the bonnet which is used in 
 the Sonnenberg Church in Ohio was in use. When 
 the writer was a boy in his teens there were in 
 our congregation near Wuerzburg in Bavaria a 
 few sisters left who wore this headgear, while 
 about a score of years earlier it had been obliga- 
 tory to wear it. 
 
 Ds. J. M. Leendertz, the Mennonite minister 
 of Holland who visited the United States a few 
 years ago, has written a pamphlet in the Dutch 
 language on Mennonite life in America. It will 
 be remembered that he is one of the most con- 
 servative Mennonite ministers in his fatherland, 
 yet he cannot be said to be conservative in the 
 sense we are using the term. What he says on 
 the point of restrictions is of particular interest. 
 Having mentioned various regulations of the 
 Church in America, he continues: 
 
 But these Mennonite peculiarities are not without 
 spiritual value. The young people, who are brought 
 up under these strict rules, have a very real feeling 
 that the Christian life imposes special obligations. 
 
 I am in doubt that it was to the benefit of the 
 spiritual life of the Mennonites of Holland that 
 during the last century they were spared these diffi- 
 culties (arising from the observation and enforcement 
 of such strict regulations), and that the dividing line 
 between them and the worldly life has been weli-nigh 
 obliterated. I found among the American Mennonites 
 a deep-rooted feeling of obligation toward God, a 
 great moral and religious fervour, which is contin- 
 ually nourished and kept alive by their attitude of 
 separation from the world. 
 
ed 68 i | 
 RELIGIOUS CERTAINTY 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact that, as shown in the 
 preceding paragraph, one of the liberal Menno- 
 nites of Holland admits that modernist religion has 
 no foundation. That religious liberals agree in the 
 rejection of the authority of Scripture is generally 
 known. Disowning the Scriptures as the final 
 authority, they cannot consistently fall back on 
 Scripture as an authority for the theology, or 
 doctrine, which they may defend. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, not a few of the 
 modernist theologians have asserted that their 
 theology really needs no foundation. They are 
 of the opinion that there is no religious truth that 
 can be proven or established. All religious truth, 
 they say, is relative, or subjective, or individual- 
 istic, which means that it is in fact not true, though 
 for practical purposes it may be well to let it pass 
 as acceptable. Modernists tell us that religious 
 doctrine is to be used rather than accepted as true. 
 Therefore the question of religious assurance is 
 superfluous. There is indeed no occasion to speak 
 of assurance with reference to a supposition that 
 is not claimed to be true. Our Lord has said, 
 it is foolish to build upon a foundation of sand, 
 but what about those who are building without a 
 foundation or, in other words, whose building is 
 not real? 
 
 Methinks some one will here raise the ques- 
 
102 SHOULD CHURCH ABANDON RELIGION? 
 
 tion, Are you not overstating the case? Is it 
 possible that modernists do not claim that the 
 religious opinions which they defend are true. Do 
 they really admit that those opinions are only 
 suppositions that are serving a useful purpose? 
 Can it -be that intelligent persons accept views 
 which by their own advocates are not supposed to 
 be true? To answer such queries we shall here 
 quote a number of liberalistic writers on the point 
 in question. 
 
 Dean Fenn, of Harvard University, a radical 
 Unitarian, points out that modernists are “per- 
 fectly aware” that the liberalistic view of Jesus 
 {denying His Deity) is incompatible with religious 
 certainty and finality. “Liberalism can develop a 
 conistently strong position,” said a speaker in a 
 liberal religious congress, “only as a basis of faith 
 shall be discovered.” Dr. William Adams Brown, 
 foriner President of Union Theological Seminary, 
 New York, has expressed the same opinion. Pro- 
 fessor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of 
 Chicago, a prominent modernist leader, says the 
 religious uncertainty that comes with the re- 
 jection of the authority of Scripture, has become 
 “a burden that is fast becoming unendurable.” In 
 another instance the same author speaks of “the 
 agony of uncertainty which is so prevalent in our 
 day.” He says further: “Thoughtful men and con- 
 scientious people are painfully aware that as yet 
 nothing of a strong, positive. character has come 
 to take the place of the older type of theology.” 
 Professor Roy Wood Sellars, of the University of 
 
BUILDING WITHOUT FOUNDATION 103 
 
 Michigan, known to be an outspoken atheist, says: 
 “The church must give up the idea that it can teach 
 final truth on any subject.” Therefore, so Professor 
 Sellars argues, the church should leave religious 
 questions alone. 
 
 Clearly, then, the modernist religion is lacking 
 the most important part, namely a foundation. 
 Could there be a more striking evidence of its 
 secondary non-vital character? And must it not 
 be assumed that people wo do their own thinking 
 will eventually realize the unreasonableness of 
 such a theology? An American President is cre- 
 dited with the saying that “you cannot fool the 
 people all the time.” But some of the modernist 
 theologians are seeking a foundation for their posi- 
 tion. And what sort of a foundation do they seek? 
 Evidently not one of supernatural character, for 
 they, in principle, reject supernaturalism inclusive 
 of divine revelation as given in Scripture. The at- 
 tempt to find a foundation, outside of Scripture, 
 for the shreds of Christian theology which they 
 may desire to maintain, is evidently futile. Science 
 is silent on the points in question. The hope 
 that something may “turn up” which may serve 
 this purpose is indeed pathetic. It reminds one of 
 the story of the shepherd who went to a goldsmith 
 to inquire concerning the value of a big lump of 
 gold. Asked if he had one, he replied, no, but he 
 hoped to find one, How strange that in an age 
 which boasts of its enlightenment there are those 
 who will accept a theology which its defenders 
 are laboring to maintain without a foundation. 
 
XIX 
 COMPROMISE 
 
 The following passage is taken from the pre- 
 viously mentioned article The Faith of Our Fa- 
 thers, by J. E. Hartzler: 
 
 There are two enemies at work today with the 
 express purpose of eliminating this faith from the earth. 
 The one is an unreasonable and unwise liberalism; and 
 the second is an unreasonable and un-Christian con- 
 servatism., 
 
 This writer, then, favors a compromise be- 
 tween liberalism and conservatism. What sort of 
 a compromise he has in mind is evident from his 
 expressions that have been quoted elsewhere. 
 Now, in the opinion of the Fathers of the Menno- 
 nite Church, compromise is one of the chief ene- 
 mies of the Christian cause. 
 
 It will be recalled that the early Mennonite 
 Fathers originally started out on the same road 
 as the leading reformers, Luther and Zwingli. 
 But when these reformers, for reasons of ex- 
 pediency and outward success, accepted a union 
 of the church with the state, they consented to 
 compromise a number of teachings that they had 
 formerly defended, especially such as concern the 
 ordinances and the principle of nonresistance. 
 Consequently the fathers of the Mennonite Church 
 saw themselves compelled to part company with 
 them. (On the question of the original attitude 
 of the leading reformers on the question of infant 
 
A POSITION OF NONCOMPROMISE 105 
 
 baptism see the little book Infant Baptism, to be 
 obtained from our Publishing House), 
 
 It is worth noticing that while in our day the 
 Church is bidden to compromise the fundamentals 
 of the faith, such was not the case in those early 
 days. The early Mennonites were asked by the 
 most prominent Protestant leaders to enter into a 
 compromise as concerned points of the ordinances, 
 nonresistance, separation from the world, etc. Had 
 they yielded these points, they would have avoided 
 persecution. Believing the Scripture to be God’s 
 Word, they were minded to abide by their teach- 
 ings. They pointed out that to do less was (in 
 the language of Menno Simons) “to regard God 
 as a dreamer and His Word as a fairly tale.” 
 Had the Fathers of the Church consented to com- 
 promise, there would never have been a Menno- 
 nite Church nor a single Mennonite martyr. While 
 they counted not their own lives dear when loyal- 
 ty to the Word was at stake, shall we compromise 
 the fundamentals of the faith simply to please the 
 world and a few anti-fundamentalist leaders? 
 
 Some of our Mennonite educators protest 
 against dogmatic teaching but, strange to say, 
 they teach dogmatically that the early Mennonites 
 were individualists and that therefore the modern- 
 ists are their true followers, while the Mennonite 
 Church has departed from the faith of the Fathers. 
 Such is the teaching to which some of our Menno- 
 nite young people are exposed today. There is 
 no proof whatever for this modernist dogma. It 
 is, by the way, a matter of regret that we do not 
 
106 IMPORTANCE OF CHURCH HISTORY 
 
 have in any language a Mennonite history that 
 gives information, with quotations from the origin- 
 al sources, on these most important questions. A 
 number of non-Mennonite scholars have pro- 
 nounced the opinion that the Mennonites have the 
 most interesting history. We have sadly neg- 
 lected our own history. 
 
X X 
 WHO ARE TRAITORS? 
 
 In an editorial article published in The Chris- 
 tian Exponent, fundamentalists are criticized for 
 referring to modernists as “traitors.” This natur- 
 ally raises the question, “Who is a traitor?’ A 
 traitor, in the primary sense of the word, is a 
 person who pretends to be a friend of the country 
 in which he holds citizenship, but in reality gives 
 aid to the cause of the enemies of the country. 
 It is readily seen that the term traitor is properly 
 applied to a modernist who attempts to hide his 
 denial of Christian truth under the language of 
 orthodoxy ; one who gives himself the appearance 
 of a believer when in fact he represents the 
 cause of modernism. It is a matter of common 
 knowledge that a majority, perhaps, of modernists 
 permit themselves to be guided by the time-serving 
 principle that you must be careful in your state- 
 ments as concerns your actual belief. You must 
 hide your liberalistic position on points that con- 
 cern the fundamentals, and must speak so ambig- 
 uously that a Christian believer will never suspect 
 that you disbelieve the fundamentals of the faith. 
 This means that modernists, as a rule, consider 
 their own faith of little consequence. If they be- 
 lieved that their modernized faith is a thing of real 
 value, as compared with the old Bible faith, 
 should they not have the courage of their con- 
 
108 ADVISE TO “HEDGE” 
 
 viction (if they hold their views from conviction) 
 and freely proclaim their faith without dissimula- 
 tion and hypocrisy? The fact is that such modern- 
 ists show clearly that they consider their new 
 faith as a matter of little consequence. They do 
 not have sufficient faith in their faith to confess 
 it. Has the world ever seen so weak a thing as 
 this modernized faith? It consists in the last 
 analysis of mere negations. 
 
 The editor of The Christian Exponent men- 
 tions in this connection the name of the modern- 
 ist, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and his recent ex- 
 pression on the subject of war, as an example of 
 courage. He thinks the term traitor is misapplied 
 with reference to such a man. However, it would 
 obviously be difficult to find a more conspicuous 
 example of a radical modernist masquerading un- 
 der the guise of a Christian believer, than that 
 of Harry Emerson Fosdick, He has written re- 
 ligious books in which he is “hedging” to such 
 extent that his modernism is hard to detect. His 
 real colors he has shown in the published sermon, 
 Can the Fundamentalists Win? Some of his mod- 
 ernist friends, as represented in a certain commit- 
 tee, have rebuked him for various statements made 
 in that sermon, and have advised him to be more 
 discreet and careful in the future. In a recent 
 statement of his faith he is given to ambiguous 
 terms to such extent that he was criticized even by 
 Unitarians, 
 
X XI 
 THE CHURCH AND HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 Education is development and training of the 
 mind. It is storing the mind with facts and ideas 
 and learning how to use them. Education in 
 itself is religiously and morally indifferent. Its 
 use will depend on the character of the person who 
 has acquired it. You may be an exemplary Chris- 
 tian and never have mastered your Grammar. 
 Again there are those who are highly educated 
 and do not have the wisdom to enter into the 
 right relationship with God. Sometimes it is said 
 that they who refuse “to become obedient to 
 the Gospel” may be educated, but they are not 
 educated in the right way. Yet a little reflection 
 shows that salvation does not come by education 
 but by faith and repentance and a consequent 
 divine work of grace resulting in a change of heart. 
 
 One of the prominent educators of America, 
 Professor Nathaniel Butler, says: 
 
 We live no longer in the expectation that the 
 millennium will come through education. We once 
 thought that if we were in condition to found good 
 schools and to bring the boys and girls under the 
 influence of a good education, we could finally put a 
 stop to all unrighteousness and sin. But the fact of it 
 is that education with reference to that point is a 
 total failure. Men do not act according to their 
 knowledge, but they do the things they love to do. 
 It matters not how highly we may educate the under- 
 standing, the man can, in spite of it, remain a slave to 
 his passions. Mankind do not act according to their 
 
110 EDUCATION A TOOL 
 
 best knowledge and wisdom, but do the things they 
 love to do. While education of the intellect may cause 
 its possessor to beware of the grosser sins, it, at the 
 same time, may be only a means of making the man 
 more cunning. 
 
 While this is true, it is likewise true that 
 education is or may be made a most useful tool 
 for the Lord’s service. The Church needs her own 
 schools for various reasons. ‘Though education 
 in itself is morally and religiously indifferent, the 
 character of the teacher, — whether or not he is 
 a Christian, whether a believer in the old Bible 
 faith or a modernist, — is by no means a matter 
 of indifference. The relationship between the 
 teacher and student is such that the personal 
 influence of the teacher can hardly be overestimat- 
 ed. Besides, the modernist teacher, with his pre 
 judice against that which is supernatural; with 
 his refusal to recognize Scripture as the final au- 
 thority in all matters of which it treats, will in- 
 variably make assertions regarding certain ques- 
 tions of science, history, etc., that are mere un- 
 proven theories and suppositions. A case to the 
 point is the definition of “the historic faith of the 
 Church” which some of our liberalistic Menno- 
 nites have given. Along various lines unsupport- 
 able theories have been taught and accepted as 
 facts. 
 
 The Mennonite Church has, in her endeavors 
 in the way of higher education, encountered some 
 rough waters. There were marked differences of 
 opinion on various questions between those who 
 were in immediate charge of our oldest institution 
 
CHURCH A SERVANT OF SCHOOLS? i111 
 
 of higher learning and the Church, as represented 
 by the Mennonite Board of Education. 
 
 About a year ago, N. E. Byers, Dean of 
 Bluffton College, had an article on higher education 
 in The Christian Evangel, the church paper of the 
 Central Illinois Conference of Mennonites, In this 
 article are found a number of statements that will 
 go far to explain the cause of the difficulties which 
 this writer had, as President of Goshen College, 
 with the Mennonite Board of Education. Hav- 
 ing referred to Menno Simons’ appreciation of 
 education, if it is used to the glory of God, he 
 says: 
 
 It is, however, true that churches have been in- 
 clined to subordinate the interests of the individual to 
 that of the church, and so have at times been a hin- 
 drance to true education. It has always been true that 
 institutions [such as the church] tend to become an 
 end in themselves and thus become a burden rather 
 than a help to man. As a result of this tendency in 
 the past it has often been true that real progress in 
 education was made only when it was taken out of the 
 church. 
 
 These sentences will bear a second reading. 
 Clearly the meaning is that the interests of the 
 Church are of less importance than the interests 
 of the individual and of education. In other 
 words, in the opinion of the writer of this article, 
 the Church should not be looked upon as an end 
 in itself; she should not merely be interested in 
 education to the extent that education is serving 
 her purposes, but the cause of education should be 
 considered superior to the cause of the Church. 
 This means that in the view of the same writer, 
 
112 THE HIGHEST CAUSE 
 
 the Church exists for a higher end and this end 
 is education. The context shows that the writer 
 here speaks of higher education and this, after 
 all, is the privilege of comparatively few individuals, 
 and he tells us that the interests of individuals should 
 supersede those of the Church. 
 
 Menno Simons defines the church as the as- 
 sembly of those who hear, believe, accept, and 
 rightly fulfill the teachings of the Word. The 
 church, in so far as it rightfully bears its name, 
 is spoken of in Scripture as the body of Christ. 
 The church is His bride who, under the leading 
 of the Holy Spirit, is representing Him on earth 
 and carrying on His work. The cause of the 
 Church is the cause of the kingdom of God. There 
 is no higher cause. The Church is an end in itself 
 in so far as it is the body of Christ or, in other 
 words, as it measures up to the Scripture stan- 
 dard. To say that the interests of individuals and 
 of education are of more importance than the inter- 
 ests of the church is to make a statement that 
 would have been shocking to the fathers of the 
 Mennonite Church, if in their day some one would 
 have made so unreasonable an assertion. It is a 
 statement that is inspired by modernist idealism. 
 
 The Mennonite view of the Church is ex- 
 pressed in various places in the writings of the 
 early Mennonites. In present-day literature some 
 notable expressions are found in our hymns. We 
 sing, for example: 
 
 I fove thy kingdom, Lord, 
 The house of thine abode— 
 
IS RELIGION THE HIGHEST CAUSE? 113 
 
 The Church our blest Redeemer saved 
 With His own precious blood. 
 
 I love thy church, O God, 
 Her walls before thee stand, 
 
 Dear as the apple of thine eye, 
 And graven on thy hand. 
 
 For her my tears shall fall, 
 For her my prayers ascend; 
 To her my cares and toils be giv’n 
 Till toils and cares shall end. 
 Beyond my highest joy 
 I prize her heav’nly ways, 
 Her sweet communion, solemn vows, 
 Her hymns of love and praise. 
 
 The Mennonite Church has always held that 
 the Church, in so far as it measures up to the 
 Scripture standard, is an end in itself, as already 
 intimated. In other words, there is no higher end, 
 no higher cause, than that of the Church of Jesus 
 Christ. But the writer quoted above expresses the 
 opinion, that the interests of the Church should be 
 subordinated to the interests of individuals, and 
 of education. Evidently in his view education 
 should be considered the principal task of the 
 Church. 
 
 And what, in the said writer’s opinion, would 
 be the duty or task of the Church in the way of 
 higher education? We shall let him speak for 
 himself in reply to this question. He says in the 
 article mentioned above, published in The Chris- 
 tian Evangel: 
 
 To do all this work so as to give it prestige 
 
 that will not only commend it to our young people, 
 but also have influence in the educational world, we 
 
114 ANOTHER GOSPEL 
 
 must give our colleges the financial support needed 
 for the highest type of work. Our teachers must 
 have the means to study, travel, do research work, 
 and secure libraries, and be unhampered by financial 
 worries in order to do this highest grade of service. 
 We cannot depend upon men of independent means to 
 do all this work. A good example of what a people 
 really devoted to such a cause really can do, is shown 
 in the history of Haverford College. This institution 
 is controlled by a group of only forty-five hundred 
 conservative orthodox Quakers, and is not much older 
 than some of our Mennonite Colleges and yet they 
 have a fine campus and equipment and an endowment 
 fund of over three million dollars. As a result they 
 have a small college recognized by all Educators as 
 one of the strongest in America. Consequently, what 
 they do there may influence higher education in gener- 
 al. 
 
 This is an expression of the first president of 
 our college in Indiana on the question, what kind 
 of a school it would be desirable for us to have. 
 Obviously in his capacity as president of this in- 
 stitution he finally lost the hope of procuring 
 sufficient support to make Goshen College such 
 an institution. He consequently conceived of the 
 idea of accomplishing this purpose by establishing 
 a school by the cooperation of practically all 
 Mennonites of America. Hence he went to Bluff- 
 ton, Ohio, to undertake, with the help of others, 
 to make of Bluffton College what for lack of sup- 
 port he failed to accomplish in Goshen. It is the 
 former president of Goshen College who is prin- 
 cipally responsible for the existence of the insti- 
 tution in Bluffton in its present form. Bluffton 
 
THE CHURCH’S CALLING 115 
 
 College was formerly a school of the General 
 Conference Mennonites only. 
 
 The question may here be raised, what would 
 have been the result, the practical consequences, 
 if the attempt to develop one of our institutions 
 into a school such as described above would have 
 been successful? Let us see. 
 
 In the first place we should notice that there 
 is nothing whatever in Scripture to justify an 
 endeavor on the part of the Church to establish a 
 school with the aim of “influencing higher educa- 
 tion in general.” And it cannot be supposed that 
 even Haverford College is measuring up to such a 
 standard, though a professor here has all oppor- 
 iunity for study and travel, drawing a salary of 
 at least five thousand dollars a year. The church 
 cannot compete with the state and with worldly 
 corporations on the field of higher education, at 
 Jeast not a numerically weak body such as the 
 Mennonite Church. To attempt such a thing 
 would be uncalled for and unwise. It could not 
 help but spell disaster for the Church, Why? 
 Simply because the motive prompting the Church 
 to such an undertaking would not be in accord to 
 the trust committed to her. 
 
 To undertake such a thing would be incom- 
 patible with the calling of the Church. If the 
 Church would bend her energies upon establishing 
 a great institution to influence higher education 
 in general, instead of giving the Gospel to a sin- 
 sick world, this would be a plain indication that 
 through worldly ambition she is fallen from her 
 
116 HAVERFORD COLLEGE 
 
 first estate and is no longer the bride of Him 
 whom the world rewarded with a crown of thorns. 
 The doctors who prescribe education as the means . 
 of salvation for the world are preaching “another 
 gospel.” Modernistic idealism is not Christianity 
 though it come under a Mennonite cloak. Incom- 
 paratively great strides have been made in the 
 world in the way of education, yet the nature of 
 the world remains the same. The Church is in- 
 terested in education, not as an end in itself, but 
 in so far as it may be a means for advancing the 
 cause of the Gospel. 
 
 The same writer says that Haverford College 
 is controlled by a group of conservative, orthodox 
 Quakers. A little investigation will show this. to 
 be incorrect. If the men who control this college 
 are conservatives, then there is no such thing as 
 modernism. They are in fact outspoken modern- 
 ists. One fact must suffice as evidence. Recently 
 the income of one of the endowments of this 
 college has been used to produce a book that is 
 radically liberalistic. Out of this endowment a 
 number of men, including some Haverford pro- 
 fessors, have been paid for writing articles on 
 various topics. These articles have been published 
 in a book under the title Religious Foundations. 
 The book is highly recommended by modernist 
 writers. The church paper of the Unitarians came 
 out with a review under the significant heading 
 An Antidote to Fundamentalism. The book is 
 ommended by liberalists for use in modernist propa- 
 ganda. 
 
MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH 117 
 
 It is true that in the eyes of the world, in the 
 view of the worldly minded, the interests of an 
 institution like Haverford are of more importance 
 than the interests of the Church. But to con- 
 sider her interests inferior to those of individuals 
 and of education and exert her energies in main- 
 taining an institution such as described, with the 
 aim of “influencing education in general,” would 
 be for the Church to sell her birthright for a mess 
 of pottage. Not that education is to be discounted. 
 Let the Church use it as it may serve her purposes, 
 but the Church is not here for the sake of it. Our 
 schools are here to serve the purposes and safe- 
 guard the interests of the Church; they are the 
 servants of the Church and of the kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 Jesus Christ “loved the Church and gave Him- 
 self for it,’—-He did not consider His own inter- 
 ests of more importance than those of the Church, 
 though He had great reason to do so, If He had 
 believed that the interests of the Church should 
 be subordinated to those of education, He would 
 probably have gone to Athens, the great intellect- 
 ual center of the world, to become the leading 
 educator and bring to Himself glory before the 
 wise of this world. He gave His life and His 
 blood on the cross for the Church. His message 
 is one of redemption from sin and eternal sal- 
 vation. His true bride will not betray her great 
 trust, even though the Gospel is unpopular in the 
 eyes of the world and of modernist idealism. It 
 
' 
 
 418 MODERNIZATION OF CHURCH 
 
 “does not behoove the bride of Christ to lust after 
 ‘vain worldly glory. 
 
 So soon as the Church considers her own in- | 
 ~terests of less importance than the interests of 
 ‘education, just so soon she may be sure to be 
 Yed astray by education. It cannot possibly be 
 otherwise. And obviously only a worldly, modernist 
 church will consent to such a thing. 
 
 The fact deserves notice that those who con- 
 sider the Church merely the servant of the schools, 
 would abolish certain doctrines and regulations of 
 the Church. The obvious reason is that an ortho- 
 dox church will not accept the viewpoint of these 
 men and hence will not support schools such as 
 they desire. They consider religious doctrine as 
 a secondary matter and are interested in religion 
 principally for the reason and to the extent that 
 religion (the Church) supports their educational 
 undertakings. 
 
XXII 
 
 GOSHEN COLLEGE FORMERLY AND NOW 
 
 S. Burkhard, a prominent alumnus of Goshen 
 College, who has held professorships in Menno- 
 nite colleges says in the letter to the Alumni of 
 Goshen College, that was mentioned before: 
 
 The mission of Goshen College is not to teach 
 either a liberal or conservative theology. In and of 
 themselves no systems of thought are large enough to 
 encircle the whole of life. Some men can honestly 
 live best within a conservative system of thought 
 and others just as honestly must have a more liberal 
 system. “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” 
 The mission of Christian education is not to become 
 a partisan to any system of thought. 
 
 _ The letter from which this quotation is taken 
 was, of course, sent out on the personal responsi- 
 bility of the writer, though he may have had the 
 assistance of others in preparing it. Yet the letter 
 is a document of some importance. N. E. Byers, 
 in the before mentioned circular letter, says he 
 has read the letter and also the many replies 
 the writer of it received. The writer himself in 
 his second letter speaks of a great number of re- 
 plies. It is widely known that various similar 
 statements were made by other representatives of 
 this institution who admitted that it was in their 
 opinion not the mission of the college to teach 
 conservative theology. It is known to all who 
 were acquainted with actual conditions prevailing 
 
120 TRUTH OR USEFULNESS? 
 
 in Goshen College that this sentiment was shared 
 by the two first presidents of the college and by 
 most of the teachers in the Biblical or theological 
 department. Even some of the more conservative. 
 Bible teachers held modernized views. They were 
 trained in liberalistic institutions and would not 
 admit that there is a vital difference between the 
 liberalistic and conservative theology. Though 
 they were careful in their expressions with refer- 
 ence to the points at issue, some of them repeatedly 
 made statements which any modernist would re- 
 cognize as liberalistic, yet when they were ques- 
 tioned, they never admitted such a thing. They 
 seemed to have unlearned the art of speaking 
 plainly, without ambiguity, on the most vital 
 points. They determinately refused to approve of 
 the anti-modernist attitude of the Church. They 
 refused to loyally support the Church and to re- 
 cognize her right to define her own principles, doc- 
 trines and regulations. Their attitude was that the 
 position of the Church was unacceptable to them. 
 
 For a few years the Theology of William 
 Newton Clarke, a modernist theologian, was used 
 as a text book. There was a lack of positiveness 
 on the part of the teachers. On the whole, Chris- 
 tian doctrine was not treated as dogma founded 
 on the infallible Word of God, but as human 
 opinion in which every one could follow his own 
 choice. There seemed to be a desire to develop 
 in the student a tendency, as William Herbert 
 Hobbs says, “to see both sides of every question 
 and actually to be proud of never reaching a 
 
DEMAND FOR LOYAL SCHOOL 121 
 
 definite decision as to which side was wrong and 
 which right.” Undoubtedly this would be the 
 right position if we had not in the Scripture an 
 authoritative divine revelation. 
 
 It may be recalled that Professor Albrecht 
 Ritschl, the founder of the modernist theology, 
 taught that there is no such thing as religious 
 certainty. He held that, as concerns a given 
 doctrine, the question is not whether it is true but 
 whether it is useful. He shifted the issue from the 
 truth of a doctrine to that of its value, or useful- 
 ness. Yet there are those who, in spite of the 
 scorn of the world, continue to hold fast to the 
 old-fashioned principle that truth is of more value 
 than other values, 
 
 The Goshen Daily News-Times in an editorial 
 article published less than a year ago, speaks of 
 the cause of the difficulty between the Mennonite 
 Board of Education and some of our’ educators. 
 The editor says correctly that the immediate 
 cause is to be sought in an effort, on the part of 
 the Board, “to convert the college into an insti- 
 tution where teaching the tenets of religious faith 
 will be a dominant factor.” In other words, the 
 Board insisted that the school should be conducted 
 in harmony with the principles and regulations of 
 the Church in order to serve the purpose for which 
 it was established and maintained. 
 
 Now, in a circular letter written by N. E. 
 Byers, dated May 15, 1923, the assertion is made 
 that “the leaders on the present Board are not 
 capable of properly conducting our educational 
 
122 UN-MENNONITE VIEWPOINT 
 
 work.” Again, the members of the Board of Edu- 
 cation are referred to in the same letter as “sincere 
 but blind leaders.” These statements throw an 
 interesting light on a situation that existed for a 
 long period. For fifteen years the brethren in the 
 Board exercised patience and forbearance toward 
 one who refers to them in such terms as quoted 
 above. 
 
 The cause of the difficulty obviously lies in 
 fundamental differences of viewpoint between the 
 Board and the former president of the said in- 
 stitution. The Mennonite Board of Education 
 stands for the principle that there are no higher 
 interests than those of the Church and that the 
 schools .are maintained for the sake of the cause 
 of the Church. The Board, to repeat the language 
 of the paper mentioned in a previous paragraph, 
 takes the position that “the teachings of the tenets 
 of religious faith should be the dominant factor,” 
 and the institution should serve the purposes of the 
 Church. The president of the institution, on the 
 contrary, claimed that the Board did not represent 
 true Mennonitism, while he and the school stood 
 for “the historic principles of the Church.” He 
 took the position that on the question of true 
 Mennonitism he could speak more authoritatively 
 than the Conferences and Boards. The question 
 also, what the products of a Mennonite college 
 should be like, he believed he could answer better 
 than the Church. The fact is that he did not 
 consider the question from a Mennonite viewpoint 
 at all, but from the point of view of modernistic 
 
A CALL TO REVOLT 123 
 
 idealism as held forth in many American institu- 
 tions, notably Harvard University where he has 
 been a student. Fiom this viewpoint it matters 
 little for what dectrine the Mennonite Church or 
 any other church may stand, so long as the Church 
 is willing to make education her highest end. 
 
 The opposition on the part of the first presi- 
 dent of Goshen College and others to making Go- 
 shen College a Mennonite institution (as Menno- 
 nitism is defined by the Conferences and Boards 
 of the Church) was very determinate and did not 
 cease when these men severed their connection 
 with Goshen College. The repeatedly mentioned 
 letter by S. Burkhard calls upon the students and 
 alumni to rise in revolt against the attempt to 
 make Goshen College an institution meeting the 
 demands of the Church. He says that to submit 
 to the Church would be the end of “the idealism 
 of our historic foundations.” He says further: 
 
 Unless the church will change its attitude toward 
 an energetic young people and their education, there 
 will always be unrest. When once the “authorities” 
 [of the Church] succeed in crushing out all liberty 
 of conscience and thought, and have denied one the 
 right to self-respect, and have taken away one’s life 
 (not physical) and have turned the collegg into a 
 graveyard of consciences, then they will have succeeded 
 in crushing out all rebellion from the college, and there 
 will be no spirit of revolt there because there is no 
 life. If this comes to pass, how dare we look into the 
 face of our Master who said: “I have come that ye 
 might have life, and that ye might have it more 
 abundantly.” 
 
 It is shocking that even the name of Christ 
 
124 PRE-EMINENCE OF SPORT 
 
 is used and His words quoted as favoring a revolt 
 of our young people against the Church. His 
 words concerning the more abundant life have been 
 repeatedly used in a way that is nothing less than 
 sacreligious. 
 
 It may be worth noticing that one of the 
 points at which the writer of the said letter is 
 finding fault with the Board of Education is their 
 decided stand against intercollegiate competitive 
 athletic games, The Board would not represent 
 the Church if it approved of such games. Neither 
 are the conservative Mennonite people standing 
 alone in their declining attitude on this point: 
 The following is a pertinent expression from Pro- 
 fessor James Taft Hatfield, of Northwestern Uni- 
 versity, as published in a weekly paper. 
 
 We have abdicated our high mission to college 
 athletics. The whole spirit of the institution centers 
 in a small band of highly specialized, husky sport- 
 giants. That a center of higher learning should support 
 such a college of gladiators is no more defensible, in 
 strict logic, than the maintaining of a-stud of racing- 
 horses. A stadium where the games are held, costing 
 $2,000,000 implies interest charge of at least $100,000 
 a year for the orgiastic spectacles; their delirious in- 
 fluence swamps the whole concern, like a mad, big- 
 eared African elephant smashing through a missionary’s 
 prayer meeting. The finer values have about as fair 
 a fighting chance to survive as a snowball in the Sa- 
 hara. 
 
 And so, looking back on a long educational career, 
 I feel that we suffer from an appalling waste of fine 
 resources; we lack leadership toward the true values 
 of living; we are asphyxiated with worldliness. 
 
LIBERALISM AND MISSIONS 125 
 
 In a weekly paper of a certain Mennonite college 
 athletics is the dominant interest. This is the rule 
 in fashionable higher institutions of learning. 
 
 The writer of the above mentioned letter says 
 further: 
 
 Goshen College has been the institution that has 
 furnished most of our missionaries for India and 
 South America. Does the Board of Education also 
 want to issue the death warrant, for these mission 
 stations in the name of the will of the church? 
 
 It is true that most of our missionaries have 
 studied at Goshen College. Goshen was until 
 more recently our only institution offering a com- 
 plete college course and the school was older and 
 better equipped than our other schools. To speak 
 intelligently on the point raised in the above quo- 
 tation it would be necessary to ascertain how many 
 of our missionaries, that attended Goshen College, 
 had decided to take up mission work before they 
 went to Goshen. Again we should want to know 
 kow many of our young people felt a call for ™ 
 mission work before they attended college and 
 changed their minds while they were students. 
 
 To persons who do their own thinking it is 
 clear that the liberalistic attitude of Goshen can 
 not be given credit for the large number of mis- 
 sionaries. To test modernism as to its effective- 
 ness on this line, it would be necessary to work 
 with young people that were brought up under 
 modernist influences, in liberalistic families. Take 
 a college that stands for the same “historic ideal- 
 ism” for which Goshen College until recently stood 
 and that has for its students young people coming 
 
126 RELIGION TO BE LIBERALIZED 
 
 from homes in which liberalistic influences pre- 
 vail, and then see how many of such students 
 will become foreign missionaries. The fact is that 
 there are schools of this description, having stu- 
 dents from modernist homes. It is extremely 
 difficult to persuade such young people to join any 
 church, whether modernist or evangelical, and 
 the percentage of such students taking up re- 
 ligious work of any kind is negligible. This is an 
 interesting study in itself. Only a few facts 
 can here be given. 
 
 As already said, children brought up in liber- 
 alistic homes and educated in liberalistic schools 
 are exceedingly difficult to win for any church. 
 Only a small percentage of them will unite with 
 the liberalistic church of their elders. The mem- 
 bership of the Unitarian Church, for example, 
 recruits itself principally, in some sections almost 
 wholly, from the ranks of the more conservative 
 churches, that is to say from those who have been 
 won for Christianity through evangelical influences 
 but have made shipwreck of faith. The cause for 
 this interesting fact is incidentally given by Pro- 
 fessor Edward Caldwell Moore, of. Harvard Uni- 
 versity, as follows: 
 
 The true course is apparently to have religion 
 and then to liberalize it. It is seemingly futile to have 
 liberalism and then seek to inject religion into it. 
 
 In other words: If you desire that young 
 people embrace religion, do not have them brought 
 up in liberalistic homes or preach to them liberal- 
 ism, for if they become liberalistic in thought, 
 
TWO SCHOOLS COMPARED 127 
 
 you will find it difficult to arouse in them a real 
 religious interest. But after they have become 
 religious through conservative influences, you may 
 win them for modernism and still hope that they 
 will remain religious and be willing to take upon 
 themselves the duties of membership in a liberalis- 
 tic church. 
 
 Professor Douglas C. Macintosh, of Yale 
 University, says similarly, liberalism “is much 
 more efficient in conserving the faith of modern- 
 minded men who are already Christian” than it 
 is in the endeavor to lead non-Christians to regard 
 Christianity as even probably true. This is an ac- 
 knowledgment of the fact that persons brought up 
 in liberalistic circles are admittedly difficult to 
 win for a liberal church. Though such young 
 people are liberalists, they evidently fail to see 
 sufficient reason for the existence of the liberalistic 
 church. Also, of the very small number of students 
 in Unitarian theological seminaries only a minor- 
 ity is of Unitarian parentage, 
 
 The Mennonites in Holland, though they have 
 their own theological seminary, had in forty years 
 not a single missionary come from their own mem- 
 bership. 
 
 N. E. Byers says in the circular letter men- 
 tioned before that, as concerns the historic ideals 
 for which Goshen College stood, these ideals are 
 realized more fully in Bluffton College than they 
 were in Goshen. If this be true and such ideal- 
 ism is to be given credit for the number of 
 missionaries which attended Goshen, it follows 
 
128 FORMIDABLE AGENCIES OF EVIL 
 
 that the number of missionaries from Bluffton 
 College would be even larger than of those from 
 Goshen. The quotations from the letter follow 
 without further comment. 
 
 The progressive group at Goshen and the Bluff- 
 ton Union group are so similar in their aims and needs 
 that it will be for the mutual benefit of all to combine 
 resources, faculty, student body and alumni to build 
 up a strong college. 
 
 While Goshen College for the present seems dead 
 I think we can say that really Goshen has started 
 rebuilding at Bluffton. Goshen supporters have always 
 had three representatives on the Bluffton Board. At 
 present there are seven former Goshenites on the faculty, 
 and three others have put in two or more years each 
 on the faculty. Some who had prominent positions on 
 the Goshen faculty hold similar positions at Bluffton. 
 Because of these facts I think we can say that a Goshen 
 greater in possibilities than the first has been started 
 at Bluffton with the cooperation of others with very 
 similar aims, so that now, in the providence of God, 
 our real cause can move forward unhindered. 
 
 I feel that I know our young people well enough 
 to be sure that many of them will see this larger cause 
 and will rally to it. They were loyal to Goshen when 
 they could not have the college they wanted, so I am 
 sure they will be happy in a college which is in most 
 respects all they have longed for and at the same time 
 they can retain the unity of their group. 
 
 _ The closing of our oldest and largest colldse 
 for a year has by many persons been considered a 
 curious thing. Such a thing had never been 
 heard of before. Many Christian denominations 
 of America have witnessed their colleges and 
 theological schools being slowly but surely con- 
 quered by modernism. This has resulted in con- 
 
MODERNIST INSTITUTIONS 129 
 
 ditions that are unspeakably sad. The institutions 
 in which the ministers of various denominations 
 are educated have become hotbeds of modernism. 
 Now a more formidable agency of evil, a more 
 effective tool in the hands of the enemy, than such 
 church schools cannot be named. The said de- 
 nominations take the attitude that they need 
 the higher institutions of learning even if they 
 prove disloyal. There were protests against the 
 modernism of their schools but this, as a rule, 
 made no impression on those in charge of the 
 professorships. 
 
 Our Board is led by the conviction that, im- 
 portant as educational institutions are, the Church 
 eannot support schools that fail in loyalty to the 
 Church, fail to safeguard our young people against 
 dangers in evidence in other schools. A church 
 schoo] taking an attitude of defiance against the 
 Church forfeits its right to exist. Though to close 
 the institution, in order to build from a new foun- 
 dation, was an unpopular, unmodern thing, yet in 
 all probability an action that is more characteristi- 
 cally Mennonite, more perfectly in harmony with — 
 the spirit of the Mennonite Fathers was never 
 taken by the Church. 
 
 Arrangements have been made for the open- 
 ing of Goshen College with a full college course. 
 The President of the college is well-known to the 
 Church at large and has the confidence of the 
 Church. His position as regards the points at 
 issue is above question. The Dean also who re- 
 ceived his training in a conservative theological 
 
130 LOYAL ATTITUDE 
 
 institution, may be relied upon to champion the 
 doctrines for which the Mennonite Church stands. 
 They are convinced, with the heads of our other 
 schools, that scholarship and the old Bible faith 
 are not antagonistic to each other and what has 
 been done by some other denominations in the 
 way of maintaining fully accredited colleges that 
 take a definite conservative position as to the 
 fundamentals and serve the cause of the church, 
 can be done by the Mennonites. We feel that the 
 Church may safely entrust the school to their 
 hands and that the institution will be maintained 
 in a way calculated to be of real service to the 
 Church. Doubtless there will be problems, local 
 and general, that will involve difficulties but we 
 may be sure that the foundation is true. Let us, 
 who believe in prayer, not forget Goshen College. 
 There is no more valuable service that we may 
 render. 
 
Awe LAP 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN EXPONENT 
 
 Various quotations have been given from The 
 Christian Exponent. The following sentence from 
 an editorial article shows the eencrAl attitude and 
 aim of this paper. 
 
 To our sorrow and shame it must be admitted 
 that as a church we have during these past few years 
 been drifting more and more into two groups, each 
 opposed to the other. 
 
 No one doubts the statement that two groups 
 exist, though it would be more correct to say 
 that a small group has risen besides the great 
 body of the Church. This group, being of recent 
 origin, has accepted the leadership of a few men 
 who claim that the Church, as represented by our 
 conferences, does not stand for true Mennonitism. 
 These men take the position that the Church is not 
 well informed on the question wherein Menno- 
 nitism really consists. They advance the view that 
 the early Fathers of the Church held a position 
 which is practically identical with modernism. 
 The position of these men is one of anti-funda- 
 mentalism while the Church holds a strong anti- 
 modernist position. They are out of sympathy with 
 the anti-modernism of the Church. It is these men 
 that have called The Christian Exponent into 
 existence. The assertion of the editor that this 
 paper does not stand for any particular group is 
 unacceptable. The publishers and editors of this 
 
132 TWO GROUPS 
 
 paper are almost exclusively Goshen College alumni 
 and former professors. The starting of the paper 
 shows that they believed the time for a more 
 aggressive attitude against conservative Menno- 
 nitism as represented by our conferences and 
 leaders had come, 
 
 It is important to notice that evidently most 
 of those who show an inclination to follow the 
 way pointed out by the leaders in this group, are 
 not fully aware of the real issues involved. Small 
 as this group is, there is reason to believe that 
 it would be far’ smaller, if it had been generally 
 known that the principal leaders hold modernized 
 religious views and consider questions of theology 
 and creed as of secondary importance. 
 
 Evidently the expression that to our shame 
 we have lost our unity and drifted into two groups 
 has necessarily one of two meanings. It means either 
 that the liberals are to be blamed for failing to win 
 the whole Church for modernized religious views and 
 thus to maintain unity; or it means that it is to 
 our shame that the conservative Church declines 
 to follow the leadership of the said few men into 
 an attitude of anti-fundamentalism. It is clear 
 that only in either one of these two ways could the 
 drifting into two groups be avoided. 
 
 Without question The Christian Exponent, 
 being the mouthpiece of the one group, takes the 
 second of these views. In the same article the 
 editor says: | 
 
 Another phase of the problem is that so far as any 
 
 official bodies are concerned, there has been no conflict 
 to speak of. At the last General Conference all seemed 
 
MENNONITES ARE CONSERVATIVE 133 
 
 harmonious...... Only one group is in evidence. — Un- 
 less we are willing to hear each other and to give to 
 others the same privileges and rights which we expect 
 ourselves, we can hardly be said to have done our part 
 in securing a proper understanding and solution of our 
 problem. , 
 
 In other words, it is the editor’s opinion that 
 the group which he represents should be granted 
 equal rights and privileges with those who stand 
 loyally for the doctrines and regulations of the 
 Church. The question is, Could the Church grant 
 such a desire? It is a matter of general knowledge 
 that our bishops and leaders have been harshly 
 censured and accused for taking an unyielding at- 
 titude toward modernism in its various phases. 
 
 Now viewing the question from the stand- 
 point of the Mennonite faith and principles, it is 
 clear that it would mean a calamity to the Church 
 if our leaders were taking another attitude in the 
 issues involved. And suppose the case that at this 
 time of crisis the Church had leaders that yielded 
 to the spirit of the age, such leaders could ob- 
 viously not hope to win the Church as a whole for 
 modernism. Only to the extent that they might 
 succeed in keeping the real issue from the people, 
 (or, in plain English, in winning the people by 
 underhanded, deceptive methods) would they 
 stand a chance to get the conservative Mennonites 
 to follow them in the way of modernism, and it 
 cannot be supposed that such leaders would find 
 it possible to modernize the church as a whole in 
 such a way. There would doubtless be many who 
 would see the issue clearly and, instead of fol- 
 
134 MODERNIST BOOKS 
 
 ‘owing such leaders, would decide to “go out from 
 “among them and be separate.” It follows therefore 
 that even if the Church at the present time had 
 ‘unfaithful leaders who acted on the principle that 
 ‘creed and doctrine are of only secondary import- 
 ance (which is the most fundamental principle of 
 Ynodernism), such an attitude on the part of the 
 leaders would not have prevented the Church 
 from drifting into two groups. The question is, 
 Can the conservatives be blamed for their loyalty 
 to their conviction, or is the blame for the existence 
 of two groups to be ascribed to the rise of a new 
 party? 
 
 It is a significant fact that some of the books 
 the readers of The Christian Exponent have been 
 advised to read defend modernism. The book, Lay | 
 Religion, by H. T. Hodgkin, is reviewed in No. 2 
 by one of the editors. It is warmly recommended. 
 A more dangerous book would be hard to find. 
 The author frankly denies the fundamentals of the 
 faith, A number of rankly liberalistic statements 
 from this book are quoted in the book Modern 
 Religious Liberalism. 
 
 The book Things Fundamental, by C. E. Jef- 
 tferson, is advertised and recommended in No. 8 
 of The Christian Exponent. This book in one of 
 a most dangerous type. Besides containing much 
 that is unobjectionable it defends the most serious 
 errors. The author does not believe that the op- 
 portunity to be saved ends with death. He gives 
 strange definitions of the doctrine of inspiration. 
 The Bible, he claims, is not God’s Word (page 
 
NOT A PERSONAL MATTER 135 
 
 134). He speaks of the doctrine of verbal in- 
 spiration as “a silly superstition, a veritable rep- 
 tile in the garden of the Lord.” “Because of 
 this dogma of inspiration,’ he says, “Christianity 
 in the popular mind has been arrayed against 
 science’ (page 121). The first chapters of Gene- 
 sis, he believes to be not history but fable. 
 
 It is to be remembered that the question 
 regarding the nature and tendency of The Chris- 
 tian Exponent must be kept separate from the 
 question of the motives and sincerity of the edi- 
 tor. Without question, a man may be in error and 
 sincerely believe that he is right. It would be 
 an evident misrepresentation to say that the edi- 
 tor is taking the same radical position on the 
 points at issue, as do some of those that have elec- 
 ted him to-this position and who are con- 
 tributors to the paper. In the present pamphlet 
 we have to do only with the position which the 
 paper is taking and with its tendency and in- 
 fluence. The question of the motive of the editor 
 and other leaders, or how they were led to such 
 an attitude, is a secondary one and does not con- 
 cern us here, except perhaps in a general way. 
 
 A number of papers are published in America 
 by Mennonite bodies that are less conservative 
 than our own communion, yet none of these pa- 
 pers is taking so outspoken an attitude of anti- 
 fundamentalism as the new paper that is published 
 by men of our own connection. This is a fact 
 that is distressing. This paper claims to stand 
 for the evangelical faith and in many instances 
 
136 MENNONITE PUBLISHING INTERESTS 
 
 makes use of the language of such faith, and 
 again, as cannot be denied, it also speaks the lan- 
 guage of modernism. Now if our people in gene- 
 ral would read such literature and expose them- 
 selves to such influences, there could be only one 
 outcome. The American Mennonite Church would 
 go the way the Church in Holland and North Ger- 
 many has gone. In Holland the rise of modernism 
 was similar to its rise among us. In fact the first 
 representatives of modernism among the Menno- 
 nites of Holland were more conservative than are 
 the leaders in our liberalistic group. On the other 
 hand, there are numerous non-Mennonite publi- 
 cations that are taking an uncompromising attitude 
 against modernism and are satisfactory as concerns 
 their position on the fundamentals of the faith. 
 
 The existence of such a paper brings home to us 
 the fact that our Publishing House is doing the 
 Church a service which can scarcely be overesti- 
 mated. Not that the brethren of the Publication 
 Board or those in immediate charge at the House 
 make the claim that the work done is beyond im- 
 provement, but the loyalty of the House to the 
 faith and the Church in its general attitude and 
 particularly as regards the issues at stake in the 
 present time of crisis, is beyond question. 
 
OAR TeV: 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 There may be those who, when they read the 
 definition of modernism in the first part of the 
 present pamphlet, said to themselves that not all 
 modernists in the Mennonite Church hold such 
 views, at least not in regard to every point men- 
 tioned. This is cheerfully admitted, as has been 
 repeatedly intimated. The point is — and this can 
 not be doubted — that there is a group of modernist 
 Mennonite leaders, some of them decidedly radical, 
 and that they are taking a more or less aggressive 
 and defiant attitude against the Church, It must 
 be believed that most of those who show an inclina- 
 tion to follow these men are not fully informed as 
 concerns their real position. 
 
 To what length some of our modernists are 
 going in the rejection of the fundamentals of the 
 faith, is almost unbelievable. The letter by S. 
 Burkhard which has been repeatedly mentioned, is 
 one among various examples. The writer of this 
 letter holds that true Mennonitism may be defined 
 in one word: liberty. He disowns conservative 
 theology (theology is but another word for Chris- 
 tian doctrine) and all restrictions, claiming that 
 they are contrary to the historic Mennonite faith. 
 Indeed he says that he is opposed to making any 
 theology, whether conservative or todetnist, a 
 paramount issue. 
 
138 LIBERALISTIC MENNONITES 
 
 If this writer’s definition of Mennonitism were 
 correct, it would follow that there is not one-true 
 Mennonite congregation among the Mennonites of 
 America. There is in America not one congregation 
 having the Mennonite name that goes to such ex- 
 tremes of liberalism. One would have to go to the 
 Unitarians and Universalists to find congregations 
 such as this writer considers truly Mennonite. But 
 these people are not Mennonites and do not desire 
 to be known as such. 
 
 The Mennonites of Holland who, as pointed 
 out elsewhere, hoid similar ground with our out- 
 spoken modernists, do not claim to represent the 
 historic faith of the Mennonite Church, They do 
 not pretend to be followers of the early Fathers of 
 the Church. So far from making any such claim, 
 inany of them have an unfavorable opinion of Menno 
 Simons and the early Mennonites. At the time 
 when the Life of Menno Simons, written by a 
 Mennonite minister and historian of Holland, ap- 
 peared, a number of years ago, the editor of The 
 Mennonite said in a review that here the expres- 
 sion “wounded in the house of his friends” was 
 applicable concerning Menno Simons.. In fact, 
 among the Roman Catholic authors that have 
 written biographies of Martin Luther, there is at 
 least one whose book is more satisfactory, consid- 
 ered from the Lutheran viewpoint, than is this 
 biography of Menno Simons from the Mennonite 
 standpoint, though it was written by a Mennonite 
 minister. We repeat that the modernist Menno- 
 nites of Holland do not claim to be followers of 
 
FALSE VIEW OF LIBERTY 139 
 
 the early Mennonites and that they do not 
 call themselves Mennonites, but Doopsgezinden. 
 On the other hand, our American modernists claim 
 that their modernism is the true Mennonitism, “the 
 historic faith of the Church.” They tell us that the 
 conservative Mennonites have forsaken the faith of 
 the Fathers. The most charitable view to take of 
 such an assertion is that it is due to a lack of knowl- 
 edge of Mennonite history. 
 
 It is a matter of common knowedge that our 
 Mennonite modernists advance the claim that but 
 for the attitude of a few conservative leaders, the 
 Church would extend to them the rights and privi- 
 leges which they desire. Some of them denounce 
 the leaders, bishops and conferences, and claim 
 that they are wielding authority that does not right- 
 fully belong to them. There are two facts which 
 they overlook, The first is that our people (leaving 
 the bishops out of consideration) are with few ex- 
 ceptions decidedly conservative, anti-modernist. 
 
 The other fact overlooked by the modernists is 
 that their attitude toward the Church is inconsist- 
 ent with the principles which they defend. They 
 say the principle of liberty is the essence of the 
 historic faith of the Church but, like the opponents 
 of the Church in the times of persecution, they do 
 not recognize the liberty (or right) of the Church 
 to continue steadfast in her conservative faith and 
 practice. They claim that the Church has no right 
 to maintain certain regulations. If they believed 
 in the principle of liberty for others as well as for 
 themselves they, instead of disturbing the peace of 
 
140 IS THE CHURCH FREE TO ACT? 
 
 the Church by their attitude of defiance and revolt 
 (this is the expression used by some of them) would 
 withdraw from a body whose position they do not 
 share. Though these men are only a small hand- 
 ful as compared with the bishops and leaders of the 
 Church, they would force their own position upon 
 the Church at large. 
 
 The modernists and those who accept their 
 leadership have undertaken to compel the Church 
 to forsake her anti-modernist attitude and to give 
 more liberty as concerns various regulations and 
 restrictions. They think that they can force the 
 Church to adopt a strictly congregational polity 
 where conferencés have no authority and every con- 
 gtegation is free as concerns its attitude to modern- 
 ism, restrictions and regulations. Now by taking 
 such an attitude toward the Church, the modernist 
 leaders, as intimated above, are assuming far greater 
 authority than our bishops ate exercising. It is 
 strange indeed that they denounce all ‘overhead 
 authority” and then usurp authority which would 
 exceed the power of those who have been chosen by 
 the Church to fill places of authority. While some 
 of them, on the one hand, claim that their attitude is 
 one of loyalty to the Church, they, on the other hand, 
 confess that they are in a state of revolt and encour- 
 age our young people to rise in revolt against the 
 Church. 
 
 There are those who show an inclination to 
 follow the modernist leaders for no other reason 
 than because they desite a let-up on the part of the 
 Church as concerns various regulations. But so 
 
AN ILLUSTRATION 141 
 
 long as some of the principal leaders in the newly 
 risen group are modernists, there can be no quest- 
 as to the tendency of the movement, Experience 
 shows that churches that befriend themselves with 
 modernism are fast forsaking the Christian faith. 
 This is the inevitable consequence. 
 
 If an illustration is permissible, modernism 
 claims that the vines that are planted in the vineyard 
 and are cultivated by the Church are not true 
 grape vines. The more radical modernists would 
 not recognize any of the vines as acceptable, while 
 the more moderate ones disapprove of some of 
 them. They assert that something better should 
 be planted, yet they are willing to let the Church, 
 or the conservatives, retain the belief that the old- 
 fashioned grape vines are the real vines. All 
 they ask of the Church is to give to modernist 
 plants the same right as to the vines. 
 
 The plants of the Church and the plants of 
 modernism are opposites and cannot both be grape 
 vines. The plants of modernism have, as a rule, 
 well-sounding names. When viewed in the light 
 of Scripture, they turn out to be of the nature of 
 briars and burdock and the like. Some one may 
 say it is harsh language to speak of the doctrines 
 of modernism as briars and weeds, But if the 
 denial of the Christian truth did not deserve the 
 predicate of weeds, it would follow that the evan- 
 gelical doctrines are not grape vines. 
 
 Modernists say, it is wrong for the Church to 
 be dogmatic and define which plants are true 
 grape vines. They hold that the nature of the 
 
142 NEW PLANTS IN VINEYARD 
 
 plants that are to be cultivated is a secondary 
 matter, therefore the Church is out of place when 
 it insists on having only the old-fashioned vines. 
 They hold that Mennonitism means liberty, and 
 that it is contrary to the historic faith of the 
 Church to deny them the right to plant in the 
 vineyard what they may choose. Instead of starting 
 their own vineyard, they insist that a true Menno- 
 nite Church must permit them to set out their 
 own plants in the Church’s vineyard. They de- 
 mand that their plants must be given the same 
 rights in the vineyard as the vines which the 
 Church is planting and cultivating. They hold 
 that the right of the Church to cultivate the vine- 
 yard does not mean that the plants of modernism 
 may be destroyed. The most offensive claim of 
 modernists is that the Fathers of the Church have 
 ste the plants of modernism in the vineyard 
 
 Now unless the Church maintains the right 
 to treat the modernist plants as that which they 
 are in the light of God’s word, there can be only 
 one outcome. The briars and weeds of anti-fun- 
 damentalism and modernism will take possession 
 of the vineyard of the Lord. The grape vines 
 stand no chance where weeds are given a chance. 
 Such a place would not deserve the name of a 
 vineyard. 
 
 Let no one suppose for a moment that in this 
 time of apostasy and worldliness the Church can 
 maintain the faith without taking a decided stand 
 against modernism, making an earnest effort, 
 heeding the admonition to “put on the whole ar- 
 
“STAND FAST IN THE FAITH” 143 
 
 mor of God.” Human nature is prone to err. 
 Even Goethe, the greatest German poet, though 
 he was not a Christian believer said, men follow 
 error for the reason that to do so is easier than 
 to embrace truth. To take the course of least re- 
 sistance and yield to the anti-Christian spirit of 
 the age is easier than to be loyal to Jesus Christ 
 and fight the good fight of faith. It requires 
 more earnest and determined effort to follow the 
 truth than to yield to error. 
 
 It cannot be too strongly emphasized that 
 compromise with modernism means defeat. The 
 thought that the cause of the old faith can be 
 enhanced by a small measure of modernization 
 is a delusion. “One thing is certain,’ says Dr. 
 Henry B. Smith, “that infidel science will rout 
 everything except thorough-going Christian or- 
 thodoxy. All the flabby theories will go over- 
 board. The fight will be between a stiff, thorough- 
 going orthodoxy and a stiff, thorough-going infi- 
 delity.” A position of compromise is a losing 
 position. It means that you virtually accept the 
 liberal viewpoint. 
 
 We, as Mennonites, realize that we fall far 
 short of exemplifying the Christian life in its 
 fullness and of carrying out the will of the Lord. 
 Yet as concerns faith and principles, we believe 
 the Church would be disloyal to God’s Word if 
 it compromised them. Our faith and principles 
 are our great treasure and it is for us to heed 
 the injunction, “Hold fast that which thou hast, 
 that no man take thy crown.” 
 
BY THE SAME 
 
 AUTHOR 
 
 Modern Religious Liberalism 
 EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS 
 
 The Princeton Theological Re- 
 view:— ‘A book of unique worth. 
 There is none more urgently need- 
 ed today, and there is none that 
 could take its place.” 
 
 The Presbyterian:—‘We know 
 of no other book that in plain 
 language so well sets forth the 
 real nature of the modern reli- 
 gious views.” . 
 
 The Free Methodist:—‘‘This is 
 by far the strongest and _ best 
 work on the question of the 
 higher criticism that we have 
 
 read. Do not fail to secure a 
 copy.” 
 The King’s Business:—‘‘This 
 
 is one of the strongest and most 
 timely books that has come to 
 our notice for some time. If you 
 want a summing up of the mod- 
 ern apostasy with plenty of proof 
 in the shape of actual quotations 
 from leading theological professors 
 and ministers of the liberal 
 stamp—here it is.” 
 
 Lutheran Witness:—"This is a 
 book which harrows the soul. It 
 is the voluntary plea in bank- 
 ruptey of the modern leaders of 
 the Church. There is no other 
 book like it. In all our reading 
 we have never found such a com- 
 plete and conclusive indictment of 
 the New Theology. We recom- 
 mend this book especially to our 
 pastors.” 
 
 Union Theological Seminary 
 Review (Richmond, Va.) :—‘‘None 
 
 of us can afford to close his eyes 
 to what is here disclosed. Our 
 counsel is, read this book and 
 then square your shoulders and © 
 tighten your belt.” 
 
 The Christian (London) :—‘“Tho 
 many have taken in hand to ex- 
 pose Modernist negations of the 
 Faith, no one has done this im- 
 portant work with greater thor- 
 oughness than the author of the 
 volume before us. This is a book 
 for which we are _ profoundly 
 thankful.” 
 
 Lutheran Standard:—‘‘This book 
 stands up clean-limbed, straight 
 and rugged like a young oak tree, 
 with not so much as a leaf or 
 twig wilted or withered. The 
 author makes a clean-cut defence 
 of the old Bible doctrine.” 
 
 Herald and Presbyter:—‘This 
 volume is a sturdy, loyal and vi- 
 tal defense of the Gospel, and 
 an unanswerable arraignment of 
 the destructive and irrational new 
 theology.” 
 
 Professor Gerald Birney Smith, 
 of the University of Chicago, in 
 a review—decidedly unapprecia- 
 tive, on the whole—published in 
 The Journal of Religion, says: 
 “The book is marked by an ear- 
 nest spirit, and the author has 
 evidently endeavored to pile up 
 the evidence in scholarly and 
 dignified form. As he presents it, 
 it is well calculated to make a 
 profound impression.” 
 
 320 pages, cloth binding. Price $1.50 postpaid 
 ORDER FROM 
 MENNONITE PUBLISHING HOUSE 
 
 Scottdale, 
 
 Pa. 
 
Pamedg 
 ‘ 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 GAYLORD PRINTEDINU.S A.