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TORONTO LIBERAL CHRIS BY y) WILLIAM PIERSON MERRILL MINISTER OF THE BRICK PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK jRew Mork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1925 All rights reserved Copyricut, 1925, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1925. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE CORNWALL PRESS The chapters of this volume comprise a /series of lectures delivered by Dr. Perv under the auspices of the Stephen Greene Lectureship wm The Newton Theological Institution at New- ton Centre, Massachusetts, during the academic year of 1924-25. The donors of this foundation stipulated that ‘‘the ancome from the fund shall be used to secure from time to tume the services of scholars prepared to deliver lectures on amportant subjects related to Christian- ity wm recent history.’’ It is gratifying that this course of lectures, regarded as a notable contribution to the subject, may now have the wider appeal made possible through this publication. Digitized by the Internet Archive In 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/liberalchristianOOmerr CONTENTS ‘CHAPTER PAGE PTS OUTWARD AMARES) ace Crue i mamn ais 9 Pipa TST N WARD OPIRIT Jeni fae ch SV) teh Loker ee aa AII. Contrast With OTHER Types . . . .. 63 IV. LreeraL CHRISTIANITY AND THE New TEsta- MENTO tras ctene et Ure Lue trunh, MAL) Mica iis jhe Cpe LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY THE Reuicious Hore ORGITTEY EW. ORT Dail) leisy dette 4 Penh el au enon beso ARS 2 Ni « ie a ‘ art a nie Y ica \ ‘er ; “eA i i it ' Cir : i : Lal nA var hid Oe AG Or Mad Oa ite oy togieek. ; de yg! : co | byte ba i ay ‘ aris 1) . + aan ey Std) Av Aig. are ( : : A \ ; yr") 5 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY ‘ rf 4 ee inh ar) a ; 7 “be Gy 7ARs itu pads 2 as i’ on : 5 i “ey Jb bas rae D } i se mt ts 4 P : J NM ‘a ‘ hy ie a) 2 We en , ARE 8) DEE Sy pe PA Mi LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER I ITS OUTWARD MARKS LieerAL Christianity is a fact and a force in the reli- gion of the present time. It is a fact so plain and with implications so serious that it must be reckoned with; a force too potent to be ignored. No better proof could be asked of its significance and power than the attention given it by those who fear it, the attacks made upon it by those who would keep religion unchanged through the changing centuries, a closed ark carried along amid the advancing host of humanity, bearing sacred relics of a dead past. It is feared because it is real, and be- cause it is pregnant with mighty changes. There is always a large number to whom any change means degeneration. But it is feared, also, by some good people because it is not understood, and lies open to serious misconstruction. Many devout souls in the Church of Christ today shud- der at any person or idea bearing the name of ‘‘liberal,’’ as they would at a disease germ; people who, if they knew the truth about liberal Christianity, would thank God and take courage that such a movement is gaining 9 10 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY ground and that such views are winning a hearing. It is unfortunate that there is no thoroughly satisfactory name by which to denote liberal Christians. The word ‘‘liberal’’ is by far too wide-ranging, too open to widely different interpretations; it is applied not only to theo- logical and ecclesiastical views, but to political and eco- nomic; to some it savors of radicalism, even of Bol- shevism. It is eagerly claimed by men and movements away at the other end of the line from orthodox Chris- tianity. Although it is thus an unfortunate name, yet it is not easy to find a better. ‘‘Modernist’’ has its own faults and disadvantages. There is a suggestion in it of a temporary style or fashion of thought. ‘‘Pro- gressive’ is also open to serious objections. There is no name which really fits and does full justice to the liberal evangelical Christian. This fact reflects the general situation. Liberal Chris- tianity is vaguely and slightly understood. Liberals have been poor apologists for their own cause. That fact is not by any means wholly to their discredit. It springs in large part from the fact that liberal evan- gelical Christians have been busier with religion than with propaganda for their own views of it, more inter- ested in common Christianity than in any special phase of it, even their own. But the whole Church, and the whole religious world, it must be admitted, would be in a more wholesome state of clear-mindedness, were the real positions, meanings, beliefs and ends of liberal evan- gelical Christianity made very definite in the public mind. For, while liberals have been neglectful of their duties as apologists, their opponents and critics have missed ITS OUTWARD MARKS 11 no opportunity to impress upon the American people generally, and especially upon the people of the Churches, the worst possible interpretation of liberalism. Liberal Christianity has been held up to dishonor, scorn and reprobation ; has been twisted, distorted, misrepresented ; until numbers of sincere souls throughout the Churches think that everyone who in any sense calls himself a ‘‘liberal,’’ or has that label applied to him by others, is at heart an enemy of the Christian faith, an unbeliever or dishonest in his use of words, interested in Chris- tianity only as a useful cloak, one in his real point of view with Huxley or Spencer, or even one in mind and purpose with Thomas Paine or Nietzsche. This misrepresentation of liberal Christianity has even gone so far as to deny to liberals the right to be eonsid- ered Christians at all. A professor in one of the oldest and best known theological schools in America has pub- lished a book entitled, Christiamty and Inberalism, in which he seriously maintains that liberal Christians are in fact not Christians at all, but representatives of a new religion, not only different from, but ‘‘diamet- rically opposite to,’’ real Christianity. This startling judgment he supports by a very simple process, which has often proved useful in similar circumstances, the process of arbitrary definition. First he defines Chris- tianity as essentially synonymous with his own point of view; then he defines liberalism as essentially synony- mous with the views of extreme Unitarians, or even of agnostics and materialists; then he assumes that his definition is a fair description of every person and thing that can be called ‘‘liberal.’’ It is easy thereafter to show that Christianity and liberalism so defined are in- 12 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY compatible, and to ery, ‘‘If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him!’’ If you will take Baal to be the Baal that he has made by definition, there is an end to liberalism in the Christian Church. It goes out, with the dogs and the other abominations. If liberalism were in truth what Professor Machen says it is, his attacks upon it would have ample justifica- tion. But his book can be saved from condemnation as false witness only by a plea of crass ignorance. Hither he does not know the facts about the modern liberal movement in the Church, or he misstates the facts he knows. This is a serious charge Iam making. But it is abun- dantly sustained by the amazing character of his state- ments, such as the following, all taken from the hook mentioned :— ‘*Modern liberalism not only is a different religion from Christianity, but belongs in a totally different class of religions’’ (page 7). ‘“‘The liberal doctrines of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man are con- trary to the doctrines of the Christian religion’’ (page 18). ‘‘The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all’’ (page 52). Elsewhere he states that all liberalism is essentially naturalistie. “‘The chief modern rival of Christianity is ‘liberal- ism’ ’’ (page 53). ITS OUTWARD MARKS 13 **An examination of the teachings of liberalism in comparison with those of Christianity will show that at every point the two movements are in direct op- position’’ (page 53). ‘* According to the Bible, man is a sinner under the just condemnation of God; according to modern liberalism, there is really no such thing as sin.”’ ‘The modern liberal rejects not only the doctrine of plenary inspiration, but even such respect for the Bible as would be proper over against any ordinarily trustworthy book’’ (page 76). ‘*Christians stand in a religious relation to Jesus; liberals do not stand in a religious relation to Jesus”’ (page 85). “‘Miracles are rejected by the modern liberal Church and with the miracles the entirety of the supernatural Person of our Lord. Not some miracles are rejected, but all’’ (page 107). ‘‘The deity of our Lord, in any real sense of the word ‘deity’, is of course denied by modern liberal- ism’’ (page 112). ‘“‘The Grace of God is rejected by modern liberal- ism’’ (page 144). ‘‘The liberal believes that applied Christianity is all there is of Christianity’’ (page 155). ‘‘The greatest menace to the Christian Church to- day comes .. . from the presence within the Church of a type of faith and practice that is anti-Christian to the core’’ (page 160). ‘One thing is perfectly plain—whether or no liberals are Christians, it is at any rate perfectly clear that liberalism is not Christianity’’ (page 160). 14 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY ‘“‘The Christian man discovers to his consternation that the agencies of the Church are propagating not only the gospel, but also a type of religious teaching which is at every conceivable point the diametrical opposite of the Gospel’’ (page 177). I have quoted at great length to avoid any implica- tion of unfairness. It might be sufficient to let such words alone, to fall by their own weight of misstatement and prejudice. Nothing can be plainer than the fact that this professor first concocted in his study a fearsome wraith he ealls ‘‘liberalism,’’ and then proceeded against it with all his energy. If liberalism were what he says it is, then he ought to fight it to the bitter end. In that case, how- ever, most of those whom he labels ‘‘liberals’’? would fight on his side against the deadly and pernicious thing. But, one after another, we meet his assertions as to what liberal Christianity is with the simple statement: ‘That is not so.’’ And, for his view as a whole, we can only echo the exclamation called forth from the heart of one of our most brilliant and honored leaders of theological thought: ‘‘ Jesus marveled at the faith of the centurion. What would He do at the naive credulity of this Princeton Professor?’’ (Christian Ways of Salva- tion, page 220). Over against this opinion, assiduously and passion- ately cultivated by a group of determined propagandists, and thus imposed upon many sincere, misguided souls, that there is and can be no liberal Christianity, because liberalism and Christianity are mutually exclusive, I maintain with deep assurance and joy that liberal Chris- ITS OUTWARD MARKS 15 tianity is a legitimate and important part or phase of the development of Christian doctrine and practice; that it is as worthy of confidence and respect as are other well- known phases of religious experience today; that it is essentially in harmony with the New Testament; that the Church would be seriously impoverished if it should disappear; indeed, that at present, more than any other particular phase of Christianity, liberal Chris- tianity is the religious hope of the world. What is liberal Christianity? I can answer only as a witness, not as an authority. What I say will in- evitably be tinged with my own thinking and spiritual experiences. The full-rounded answer must come from many men of varying kinds. Yet I believe there is a real unity of thought and feeling and spirit among liberal Christians in the evangelical Churches, and that I may not wholly, or even in the main, misrepresent them when I try to say what it means to me to be a liberal in the Church of Christ today. The word ‘‘liberal’’ is commonly used in two senses, one of them more precise, the other more loose or inclu- sive. The one relates to the views one holds, the gen- eral attitude he adopts toward truth. The other relates to the way one holds his views, his attitude toward ecclesiastical processes and relationships, and toward those who share with him the fellowship of the Church. It may minister to clearness if we first think of the liberal in his general attitude toward truth, and then, in the second, the ecclesiastical sense. In the second chapter I shall want to go to the heart of the matter, asking what is the essential message of liberal Chris- tianity, its good news, its Gospel. 16 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY First, then, having regard to the way the Christian looks at truth, what distinguishes the liberal from other Christian men and groups? Three main characteristics appear: The liberal Christian accepts the scientific method; he is chiefly concerned with vital present spirit- ual experience; and he believes in the unity of spiritual experience. I. The liberal Christian believes in a thoroughgoing and confident use of the scientific method of determining what is fact. He is absolutely and utterly opposed to all obscurant- ism, to all dogmatism that would set bounds to the free spirit of man as it seeks to know all that can be known. He is not content grudgingly to give place to modern science; he welcomes it gladly as a servant of the glory of God and of the good of man. Since every day, all through his life, he uses the fruits of scientific study and finds them good, how can he reject or distrust the tree that bears such fruit? What a strange incongruity in the use of radio by fundamentalists to broadcast their opposition to science! The liberal Christian is eager for the extension of the use of the scientific method to all subjects and every field. He views it not as an enemy, slowly encroach- ing upon the domain of God and the soul, but as a noble, strong ally and comrade. To him nothing is more pathetic in its futility or more mistaken in its aim and spirit than the frantic efforts of successors of King Canute in Church or state to keep back the incoming tides of advancing knowledge. For the scientific method is to him one in heart with the Christian method and spirit, the very method and spirit of Jesus Christ. ITS OUTWARD MARKS 17 In the combined eagerness and humility of the true scientist, in his readiness to follow truth though it involve the surrender of all things, he sees the very spirit Christ would have in His disciples, a noble ex- ample of real trust in God and in the guidance of His Spirit. No one can read Huxley’s beautiful descrip- tion of the method of the scientist as sitting down in the presence of Nature in the spirit of a little child, pre- pared to follow wherever forthcoming facts may lead, and not feel that he is very near to the spirit the Master commended. This does not mean, of course, that the liberal Chris- tian accepts all that may be put forward by individuals in the name of science, or that he submits to dogmatism on the part of men of scientific eminence or pretensions —a dogmatism which is often no less offensive than the worst variety of theological absolutism. It is painfully true that good scientists may be very poor philosophers, and our glad trust in the scientific method and spirit and their well-established results, does not entail a belief in the infallibility of scientists in their theories and philosophizings and speculations about facts so ob- tained. A man may be unusually, or even uniquely, gifted in observing facts and deducing from them sound scientific inferences, and at the same time be danger- ously untrustworthy when he attempts to account for the causes and unseen realities and ultimate explanations lying back of the facts. The true liberal Christian subscribes to no dogma of the infallibility of science. Indeed, it is hard to con- ceive anything more thoroughly unscientific than a claim that science is infallible. The liberal Christian 18 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY bears clearly in mind the limitations of descriptive science, its helplessness when it attempts to deal with the world of personal values. But he believes heartily and unreservedly in the right of the scientific method to absolute control over the world of fact. Nowhere in God’s world does he want ‘‘No trespass’’ signs or ‘‘taboo,’’ warning science off the field. He is sure that God has given the human mind the right to range freely among all the facts of the universe, and to state frankly what it finds there; and he knows that it is not only foolish but impious to deny or restrict that right in any degree or under any plea. God meant us to know facts, all facts; and the scientific method is our one reliable means of knowing them. The liberal Christian courageously accepts this prin- ciple, with all its implications. He believes in, and main- tains, the right to use the scientific method to investi- gate all facts, even religious facts, and all books, even sacred books. It follows as a matter of course, that he accepts gladly and unreservedly the historical and critical method and its results as applied to the Bible and to the Christian © religion. He knows that he has no more right to refuse to consider seriously what critics say about the Bible than the papal authorities had to refuse to look through Galileo’s glass, lest their world might be upset for them. Here is one vital distinction in attitude between the real liberal and the man who merely has liberal sympa- thies. The latter will welcome new and different facts, so far as they can be reconciled with the system he holds; the former will take the facts, and their sure implica- ITS OUTWARD MARKS 19 tions, though they break his system to atoms. The true liberal acts unreservedly upon the dictum of a famous Scotch preacher: ‘‘A man who is afraid to face facts does not really believe in God.’’ The liberal Christian trusts the scientific method and spirit; he does not coquette with it. His relation to it is one of holy wedlock, and not a flirtation. He takes it “for better, for worse.’’ One finds here and there a specious profession of confidence in the scientific method, which is impaired or vitiated by secret reservations as to the outcome. There are Bible Schools and theological scholars that make much of their fidelity to the scientific method, and at the same time assure their friends, their patrons and the public that nothing which science may disclose can ever make them alter their opinions. To my mind, the learned, able, and valuable writings of Bishop Gore have their value seriously lessened at cer- tain points by obvious defects of this kind. He takes pains to assure his reader that he will pursue the scien- tific method; but you learn to know that from the be- ginning of his researches he has known pretty well just where he would come out as to certain facts and views. The true liberal is like Abraham, who ‘‘went out not knowing whither he went,’’ knowing only that he can trust his guide, the spirit of truth. II. As his second outstanding characteristic the liberal Christian is supremely interested in present vital sprr- ual experrence. | He is supremely concerned with life as it is today. Religion to him is essentially, and beyond all else, a matter of how living men and women and children are 20 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY to live and act as God would have them do. Of course, as a sensible man, he recognizes the enormous values of our heritage from the past. He knows that there are facts in that notable past which furnish solid support for right living today. But he feels that if one could discover all the truth that the past has to tell, such historical truth could never be a working substitute for the conerete, first-hand, living Christian experience of his fellows and himself today. The carelessness of the liberal as to historical fact, his indifference as to whether this or that bit of history happened precisely in this or that way—an attitude which often troubles or alarms his conservative brother—springs largely from this absorption in first-hand living spiritual experience. The liberal countersigns with hearty satisfaction William James’ assertion that only those truths are really essen- tial that make a difference in conduct—save that he would prefer to use a larger, deeper word than conduct. He would say ‘‘spiritual experience.’’ When the liberal Christian discloses an attitude of disbelief or indifference toward the story of an axe head that floated, or one of the other tales of miracle from the long past, that is by no means to be construed aS a mental bias against the possibility of miracle, or as evidence that the virus of anti-supernaturalism is at work in his system; or that he is at heart a skeptic or agnostic. He may heartily believe in the possibility of the miraculous. He may be, as I confess that I am, what William James calls ‘‘a piecemeal supernaturalist.’’ His attitude toward the literal, factual truth of the particular miracle tale may be, and probably is, deter- ITS OUTWARD MARKS 21 mined by his answer to the question, ‘‘ What difference does it make, in present vital experience, whether that particular incident ever happened or not?’”’ It is a refusal to become excited over that which does not and cannot make a real difference in the present living of human life. The liberal Christian may prefer to count the book of Jonah a parable rather than a bit of accurate history, not through a bias against the miraculous, but from an honest conviction that the book of Jonah will better accomplish what its author meant it to accom- plish if it be used as one uses the story of the Good Samaritan, 7.¢., without raising irrelevant questions as to the authentication of fact-details. To make prime issues out of such matters seems to the liberal Christian as incredibly futile as would be a re- fusal to honor George Washington, or draw lessons from his character and career, until the historical ac- curacy of the story of the cherry tree shall have been set beyond dispute or eavil. What do men live by? What is this life of ours? What is its chief end? What is God’s part init? What is our part in it? What is Christ? What is a Christian experience? What may I hope for? What does God want to see, in me and in the world? Those are the questions that count for the liberal Christian. Such are the only questions that count. For all questions about the past, all questions of any sort, are of value only in the degree that their answers make a difference in living. So the liberal thinks and feels; and he is very sure that he has the authority of the Master of Chris- tians to sustain him in that position. 22 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY Many of us, as a matter of fact, believe that Jesus walked on the water, and made the dead live. I gladly confess that it is a source of some satisfaction and joy to me thus to be confident that He did what other men have not been able to do. It fits in with my sense of His uniqueness among the sons of men. But, honestly, would it be of more than trifling and secondary value if I could persuade many men to believe that Jesus walked on the water, and made the dead come to life? He does not make believers now walk on the waves. He does not now bring the dead back to life. I know devout Christians who, at funeral occasions, have re- quested the officiating minister not to read the account of the raising of Lazarus, lest it set going in the heart of some one the painful query, ‘‘He did that for them; why not for me?”’ Other things Jesus did that he does still. Jesus saved men from sin. He set them free from their fears. He made them see God. He brought them to God and to eternal life. These things He does now. These facts are vital, are primary, are of absolute value, as no non- repeatable miracle-story, centuries distant, can ever be. If the liberal is indifferent or careless as to the his- toricity of the far away miraculous, it is only because his eyes are so focussed on that which makes a difference in the present living of life, that not much interest is left for what lies outside that field of vision. I hope it will not seem an invidious remark when I say that one chief reason why the liberal Christian is less concerned than his conservative brother over questions of accuracy of detail in stories from the past is that he brings not a less, but a more, direct religious interest to bear upon ITS OUTWARD MARKS 23 them and is too deeply concerned with the lives of living folk to care very greatly for anything that affects them so slightly. Til. A third outstanding characteristic of the general attitude of the liberal Christian in his view of truth is this: He belteves in the essential wmty of spiritual ex- perrence. He accepts the principle of continuity and refuses to believe that human life has ever been, or ever will be, essentially different from what it is now. To his view there is no ‘‘great gulf fixed’’ between one age and another, one set of folk and another. He builds his theology on the essential invariability of the phenomena in spiritual life as truly as the scientist builds his science on the invariability of phenomena in nature. He reads his sacred book, and says of the God found there, ‘‘ This God is our God’’; and he is quite sure that God was then just what He is now. All that he can find out about God from His living activities, and from life as it goes on in and around him, applies to ancient times, in his estimation, no less than to modern. When I was a boy I accepted implicitly the dictum that the people of the Bible were very different from the rest of mankind. Their experiences were radically different from any which we may have. They actually heard God speak; they saw Him act. He dealt with them at closer range than He deals with us. That was their distinction; and proofs were offered that God was thus superlatively with them. It constitutes a wonderful advance into deeper phases of reality to move forward from that state of mind to a conviction that life for the people of the Bible was essentially like ours, their experi- 24 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY ences similar to our own; that we may know God as they did; that the differences which used to seem so marked were very largely due to different ways of regarding the same facts, the primitive Oriental mind seeing and in- terpreting God and life in styles of thought that our scientific age does not and cannot use. One begins to wonder if even outward events in the method of their occurrence were so very- different then and now. Sta- tion a modern scientist at the Red Sea when Israel passed over, and you would probably get from him a thoroughly natural account of its passage. On the other hand set a Hebrew poet alongside Washington as he withdraws his little army from Long Island to Manhattan under cover of an opportune fog; or with Dr. Grenfell on the occasion of his rescue from the ice floe; and you would have as forthright a ne story as any in the Old Testament. But whatever may be true of outward happenings— and the liberal Christian may heartily believe in the occurrence of miracles as narrated in the Bible, finding in them natural concessions to a childish age—the liberal is sure that the spiritual experience of man has been essentially the same in all the ages. He says with the apostle that ‘‘Elijah was a man of like passions with us.’’ He is quite sure that the men of Bible days and Bible scenes had not only essentially the same life to live, the same problems to face, but also the same ways to work them out, the same spiritual resources on which to draw, that we have. Life is one in all vital matters. The things that matter most in the Bible are the things that are as true for us as for the men of Bible times. Here emerges and stands clear a striking difference ITS OUTWARD MARKS 25 between the liberal and the ultra-conservative, or fun- damentalist Christian. The fundamentalist lives in a night between two days. The times of the Bible were times of daylight; God could be seen and heard plainly. The ‘‘ Millennial Dawn’’ will usher in another day, when Christ will be visibly at hand, and men will see and hear and know God vividly and actually, as of old. But now we are between sunset and dawn, in a long and dark night, lighted only by faint glimmers from the Holy Spirit. The supernatural has withdrawn in large part from us; we grope in the natural world. But the liberal ‘‘sees life whole.’’ He is sure that the light of life vouchsafed to us is as bright and clear as the light in which the saints walked in Jerusalem and Galilee. He dares believe that experiences with Christ are open to us which may be one with those of Paul. The setting and description of fact and form may differ; the vital nature of the experience is the same. From this difference in view proceeds a characteristic and marked distinction between the attitudes of the liberal and the conservative (or fundamentalist) toward the discovery of likenesses between Biblical facts and the facts of our day, or toward interpretations which tend to treat Bible life as very like our normal life. Such discoveries and interpretations delight the liberal, but distress the fundamentalist. For the one to whom religion is essentially a marvel from outside, something to be attached to, or imposed upon, our natural life, religion is weakened and lessened in the degree that the Bible is revealed as less miraculous and more normal. But the one to whom religion is essentially the living 26 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY with God of our normal life finds more of religious value in the Bible emerging with every discovery or interpretation that brings Bible characters and events more nearly. into conformity with life as we know it. In all the Bible the liberal Christian can find no text better suited to be his motto than the great word of Paul: ‘‘The life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.”’ These seem to be the three outstanding characteristics of the liberal Christian in his view of the truth about God and life: he accepts the scientific method; he cares supremely about present vital spiritual experience, and he is sure of the essential unity of spiritual experi- ence, past, present and to come. We might sum it up by saying that he has a controlling passion for reality. I hope in the next chapter to set this forth in a way still more accurate and effective. But, as we have said, the word “‘liberal’’ is used not only in the foregoing sense, but also to characterize a general attitude toward fellow truth-seekers. And we would not be doing full justice to the word, or to many who deserve to be included in the ranks of ‘‘liberal Christians,’’ if we did not make the meaning clear also of ‘‘liberal’’ in this practical and ecclesiastical sense. A man may be a convinced conservative in his personal theological views, and yet be, in a very real sense of the word, a truly liberal Christian. For in the ranks of that strong and growing party in the Church are many who, though conservative or even fundamentalist in their theology, are liberal in their ecclesiastical atti- tude and action. At a recent ecclesiastical gathering, where lines were ITS OUTWARD MARKS 27 sharply drawn, and party spirit ran high, a man re- marked to me, “‘I’m a fundamentalist, and I’m a pre- millennarian ; but I won’t let anyone tell me what I have got to believe.’? That man was a liberal in a very real sense, and quite without knowing it. What are the characteristic marks of liberal Chris- tianity, in this more inclusive sense? irst of all, the liberal Christian is one who keeps an open mind toward truth.) I do not mean that he keeps it open at both ends, so that it leaks. Nor need he pull down his walls. But he does not pull down the shades. He keeps his mental windows open. That is to say, he refuses to admit to himself that any question is ever irrevocably settled. There are no doc- © trines, no experiences, no matters of any sort, in the } presence of which he closes his eyes, and refuses to think, or to consider new evidence seriously offered. This does not mean that the liberal Christian has no decided opinions or convictions. He may be very sure of some truths, so very sure that in his heart he is serenely confident that never can they be disproved for him. But even these he will gladly set out in the sun- light for all men to see and examine. Even these he will hold subject to review, if what purports to be new evidence of real worth is produced. He will hold to his views, but open-mindedly, not blindly. He will fight for his convictions, but fairly, as a man of honor, not shrinking from the challenge of any honest foe or critic. He believes, with Bishop Watson, that ‘‘whoever is afraid of submitting any question, civil or religious, to the test of free discussion is more in love with his own opinion than with truth.’’ 28 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY (‘The second characteristic of the liberal Christian in this broader and more pragmatic definition, is his belief in the comprehensive nature and range of the true Church,| This does not mean that the liberal Christian is not in any sense a partisan. It would be quite too much to claim exemption for him from that common virtue, or vice, of humanity. He may hold his own views tena- ciously, and defend them vigorously, and still be a liberal. But emphatically he does not want the Church re- stricted to any one type of thought or experience, not even his own type. He feels that such restriction would be an impoverishment, not a gain. He desires to see the Church grow into a unity of faith and love, but his is a dream totally different from that of the fanatic who sees the whole world at last converted to his own particular variety of opinion, so that thought and opin- ion shall be uniform. The liberal would count that a curse, not a blessing. Whatever his own views may be, and however proudly or tightly he may hold them, he wants the Church, his Church, to be broad enough to include not only all who hold those views, but all who do not, and who nevertheless have undoubted Christian faith, as proved by its fruits; all who have real Chris- tian experience of soul, and good motives and purposes for the service of God and His Kingdom. Tt follows that the liberal desires to make the Church as broad and inclusive as he can, while the man at the other extreme endeavors to make the Church as narrow and exclusive as he can. The liberal would rather err ITS OUTWARD MARKS 29 by keeping some in who should be out, than by keeping any out who should be in. (The third outstanding characteristic of the practical liberal is his trust in spirit and truth, rather than in authority and foree.] This is true of the basis on which his own faith and practice is built. He rests on spiritual conviction, rather than on compulsion of logic or of ecclesiastical au- thority. fw hy does he believe on Christ 2) Not because the Church commands him to do so; nor because his mind is confronted with irrefutable proofs; but/because his soul in experience finds Christ not only trustworthy, but irresistible] So it is that the Bible claims him, and speaks to him with divine authority. It is for the reason stated with majestic simplicity in the Westminster Con- fession of Faith. After pointing out that the testimony of the Church may well move us to high regard for the Seriptures, and that the many excellencies of the Bible, and its ‘‘entire perfection’’ may well be received as evi- dence of its being the Word of God, that Confession goes on to say, ‘‘ Yet, notwithstanding, our full persua-— sion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.’’ It is equally true of the liberal Christian in his atti- tude to truth in general and to authority in general, that he rests fully and wholly on spirit, not on force; on truth, not on dogma. He trusts for the triumph of the truth in which he believes, or of the party to which he belongs, to free speech, clear argument, free judg- 30 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY ment; not to ecclesiastical process, or dogmatic asser- tion. During the past few years some talk has been heard about ‘‘liberal propaganda.’’ Charges have been made that liberals were trying to capture the Church, trying to advance their cause to victory through controlling or conquering the conservative forces by some eccle- slastical process. But it should always be borne in mind that one of the very conspicuous differences between lib- eral and fundamentalist propaganda is that the attitude of the fundamentalists toward their fellow truth-seekers permits the aggressive use of ecclesiastical weapons, and the attitude of the liberals does not. It is so evident that no one can successfully deny—probably no one would attempt to deny—that the fundamentalist groups have been using ecclesiastical processes wherever pos- sible to make their view and their party the authorita- tive view and the controlling party, and to drive liberals out of the Church. So far as I am aware, no liberal anywhere, individual or group, has made the slightest effort to use ecclesiastical weapons for the disfranchise- ment of any conservative, or for the restriction of his liberty of thought or action. Liberals ask only freedom to say what they think, and to have a fair field and no favor, with the conscience of the Christian public as the judge. They appeal, as Paul did, to ‘‘every man’s conscience in the sight of God.’’ An appeal to ecclesiastical authority or process in support of his beliefs would be, for any liberal, dis- loyalty to one of his fundamental convictions, which is that truth, not authority, spirit, not force, should be the final arbiter in whose hands the decision should rest. ITS OUTWARD MARKS ol This is a hasty sketch of the outward marks of liberal Christianity. Yet I trust it may not wholly fail to show something of its value and beauty. It will be obvious to any thoughtful mind that there are dangers attendant upon such a position and attitude. The liberal Chris- tian needs to be on guard continually, watching and praying lest his very virtues run him into excesses, and lest he sin at unguarded moments—drop into looseness, indifference and indolence, or easy-going contentment with that which claims to be ‘‘normal’’ but may in reality be only low, cheap, and easy. We have com- pared the liberal Christian to Abraham who ‘‘went out not knowing whither he was going.’’ But the liberal should beware lest he conform rather to the picture drawn by the backwoods preacher, who misquoted the text thus: ‘‘Abraham went out, not knowing whether he was goin’ or not.”’ But the dangers attendant upon the liberal Christian position are just such as Americans and Christians are accustomed to face; such as true Americans and true Christians accept as part of the price they must pay for freedom. It is a great thing to be free. ‘‘Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.’’ ‘‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’’ It is a great thing to be liberal Christians, ‘‘not afraid to open our eyes in the pres- ence of facts, nor ashamed to close our eyes in the pres- ence of God’’; and yet never surer of God, never nearer to Him, than when, open-eyed, we look through nature and life fearlessly and eagerly to the God Whose hands ‘‘reach through nature, moulding men.’’ CHAPTER II ITS INWARD SPIRIT In the preceding chapter we looked at liberal Chris- tianity from the outside. We stood at a distance and took a general view of the outstanding characteristics of the liberal Christian, as a factor in the Church, and as distinguished by certain mental and practical attitudes. Something more important remains to be done, if we would have a just and generous understanding of what liberal Christianity really is. We must ask to be taken into its heart in order to find the secret of the faith by which and in which it lives and works. What is the real basis of the religion of liberal Christians? Have they a genuine Gospel to preach, a religion which is really good news of redeeming grace? Or is liberal Christianity nothing more than modern science and philosophy with a religious flavor added? The grave charge is made against liberal Christians that they have no real message to men and women in need; that they are essayists, whose message, reduced to its real meaning, runs something like this: ‘‘Good people, this is a beautiful world; and you ought to be very happy in it.’’ It is commonly asserted that the sense of sin dies under liberal preaching; that the liberal pulpit sends forth a mere humanitarian Gospel, lovely and graceful, but lacking a deep sense of those stern 32 ITS INWARD SPIRIT 33 realities which have ever been the ground of true Chris- tian thought and preaching—God, sin, redemption, atone- ment, grace. The oft-repeated charge is widely believed that the liberal preacher’s use of old phrases and ideas deprives them of their ancient and virile meaning; that with dextrous skill he deliberately forces well-known and time-honored words to mean new things that take all their old vigor from them. He talks of salvation, grace, atonement, and the like, but what the fathers meant by those great words is missing. The power has gone out of the phrases. If there be truth in this charge that liberal Chris- tianity has no positive Gospel to present to sinful, suf- fering, needy men, then the matter is very serious. Has the liberal Christian nothing to offer in the name of religion except a graceful use of old words, and a set of modern ethical principles? Is he, in fact, under cover of talk about the grace of God in Christ, preaching self-righteousness and humanitarianism ? I think it must be admitted that liberal preaching is not so sharp and exact in its terminology as the older forms of preaching were and are. This is inevitable, for one of the clear distinctions between the liberal Christian and the ultra-conservative or fundamentalist Christian is this: the latter thrives amid definitions, and is never happy or at ease until he has his religious reali- ties caught and caged in a formula, while the liberal knows that ‘‘nothing worthy proving can be proved,”’ that no ultimate reality of the spiritual life can ever be adequately expressed in a definition or a formula. He is never so sure of truth as when he can watch it soar, free and unfettered, up into the light, and can catch o4 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY its fleeting song. The fundamentalist keeps his truths in a corral where he knows they cannot get away and he can study them at close range. The liberal steals out with his glass, to observe them where they live; they elude him, but he follows; and he is sure he knows them the better for leaving them free in order that he may watch them in action, There must be thus an elasticity and even a vague- ness about the faith of a liberal Christian which makes it hard to express it in precise terms. It is true also that liberals have on the whole paid too little attention to the careful study and close formu~ lation of their positive message. Liberal Christianity is still young, and is still finding and fighting its way. It has had to attempt an immense, even a gigantic task. On the one hand it has felt called to wrestle with the amazing, overwhelming body of new knowledge ‘which the scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century have made available, the most stupendous, overpowering mass of fresh data that the human soul has ever had to meet and seek to assimilate in so short a period. Accompany- ing this great wealth of new knowledge has come an im- mense amount of crude theorizing, hasty assumption, daring and eonfident philosophizing, much of the old temper of materialism, and more of a temper so new that a new word, ‘‘agnosticism,’’ had to be coined to express it. On the other hand, liberal Christianity has had to face a Church reluctant to make adjustments, obstinately standing in the old dugouts and clinging to the old weapons, and quick to condemn as a ‘‘traitor’’ any one who should dare suggest any thoroughgoing modifications of old ereeds or customs. Subject to a ITS INWARD SPIRIT 30 eross-fire from these two forces, liberal Christianity has had to fight desperately for its very life, defending the rights of faith against agnostic and materialistic science, and defending its right to think freely against ecclesi- astical timidity, obstinacy, prejudice and inertia. Is it eause for wonder, when liberals have thus spent them- selves so largely on the mere defense of their rights, that their work has been to so great an extent critical, negative, protesting, rather than constructive, positive, and appealing? It was inevitable that much should have to be done by way of awakening the Church to the in- adequacy of old, accepted views and ways, before the necessity or value of the new views could be made ap- parent. ‘It may also be admitted, and with regret, that liberals have been too often and too greatly content to settle down in a negative and critical position, too little eon- cerned with a positive Gospel. I recall with some shame a sermon I preached some years ago on the Bible. Two acute, open-minded young men told me afterwards that they went away quite awake to the inadequacy of the old, mechanical view of the Word of God, but with very little knowledge of any better view to put in its place. A few months ago a thoughtful man told me of a ser- mon he heard a liberal minister preach on ‘‘ Repentance.’’ He said, ‘‘ When the sermon was over, everybody in the | congregation knew all about repentance, the history of the doctrine, and the various meanings and theories of it; but nobody wanted to repent, or thought of doing so.’’ It may be that liberal Christians are open to these charges to an extent that calls for their serious consid- eration; that they are too academic, too cold, too apt to 36 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY look on religion as a subject for study, too critical and negative. In the degree that there is any truth in such tharges, liberal preachers should repent and forsake their false ways. But I believe the fact to be that this condition has already been largely remedied. There were some years in the recent past during which it seemed as if we had but two kinds of preachers, both ineffective: the modern men, well-equipped intellectually, but cold in heart, and the narrow and reactionary men, preaching with fervor an impossible theology. One side had all the light, the other all the heat. Physicists have talked much of late about the problem of developing a *‘eold light.’? They might have found it not so long ago in some liberal pulpits. But that situation is changing fast. More and more liberals are preaching a positive, saving Gospel. Now that they are near to winning their fight for a reason- able freedom for themselves, they can give the larger share of their minds and hearts to their positive message. Nevertheless, as we have suggested, the liberal can never hope to state his views with the sharp definiteness that marks the theology of the older school. For he is dealing, or attempting to deal, with life, not with the forms it takes; with reality, not with theories about it. It is always easier to lead men to use formulas than to make them conscious of living processes, always easier to get them to accept a creed than to bring about a living experience in their souls. It is also harder to check up results when one is dealing with spiritual processes. Liberal Christianity must be content to carry on under these disadvantages. It must patiently seek ITS INWARD SPIRIT ov to exert a steady, lasting influence, rather than strive for sudden crises; and must put its stress and emphasis on the education, growth, and secret renewal of the soul’s life. But it may be sustained at its long, slow task, by the realization that it is thus taking, as the best norm of spiritual experience, the Lord Jesus, rather than Paul or Augustine. The liberal is, as we have said, profoundly interested in the life that now is. That fact deeply conditions his religion, his theology, his message. To him theology is primarily not an account of what once was in the past, or of what will be in some distant realm, but an attempt to explain the present living of this life of ours, in terms of spiritual reality. What distinguishes the religion of the liberal Chris- tian is the fact that to him religion is wholly concerned with the personal. To him, Christianity is distinctively and above all, the religion of personality. The primary antithesis of which the liberal is vividly conscious is the antithesis confronting him at every turn between matter and spirit, or, to state it more accurately, between the personal and the impersonal. He knows two sets of facts and only two, one impersonal and the other personal. On the one hand are matter and energy, with all their range of interest and meaning and power; on the other hand is the soul of man, and all its mar-- velous world of spiritual realities and forces. Of the documents of a generation ago that read like prophecies of modern liberal Christianity, one of the best is Horace Bushnell’s great treatise, Nature and the Supernatural, in which the two worlds of the impersonal and the per- sonal confront and face each other. 38 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY To the liberal the personal is supreme, is well-nigh all. Personal, spiritual, vital, real, these are the great words which to him sum up the meaning, scope, and value of religion. They are synonymous each with the other in his thinking. Yes, and the lofty religious term ‘‘eternal’’ is but another expression to denote the one great thought back of all these words. When we have said that, to the liberal Christian, the personal, the spiritual, the vital, the real, the eternal, are varying terms that all apply to the same funda- mental fact or force or reality, we have furnished an explanation of certain facts about him which at times distress his brothers at the other end of the theological line. To them, there must be something tangible, phys- ical, material, substantial, if anything is to be real. Undoubtedly that is one powerful reason why its advo- cates contend so inflexibly for the famous five points of fundamentalist faith, namely, the errorless original manuscripts of the Bible, the virgin birth of our Lord, the blood atonement, the resurrection of the body, and the second coming of Christ in physical presence. They are uneasy in regard to the position taken by the liberal; worried over his Bible, equally inspired whether in the form of original manuscript or copy or translation, a trustworthy and authoritative guide simply because of the Spirit which is manifest in it; troubled about his faith in the deity of Christ—a faith quite independent of how He was born, and glad of every indication that He was a man in the fullest sense; disturbed by his view of redemption, as something done not only once on Calvary, but again and again, in every human heart that will receive the grace of God, and done in the ITS INWARD SPIRIT 39 spirit even more than with flesh and blood; concerned over his indifference to the question whether our Lord’s resurrection was bodily, so long as it was truly in the living spirit; and amazed at his joyous assurance that Christ is as really with us now as He could be if He came again in bodily presence. It seems to the funda- mentalist that the liberal is giving up the reality in these great facts when he is content with a ‘‘spiritual’’ inter- pretation of them. But to the liberal, the spiritual is the real. Matter is but the passing form which reality takes and then leaves. ‘‘The things that are seen are for the time; the things that are unseen are for the ages.’’ To the liberal it manifests ‘‘an evil heart of un- belief’’ to set so much store by physical, material, formal facts. [The reality of the personal—that is the basic position of the theology of the liberal. } To him religion has wholly to do with personal values, issues and processes of life. All else is secondary or remote in importance. The liberal Christian cares infinitely more for spirit than for the forms spirit assumes, for experience than for the creeds in which they express themselves, for life than for the instruments which it uses. This is why the liberal Christian and his views seem so alarmingly vague and uncertain, often indeed irritat- ing, to all externalists, all who are severely logical in matters of creed, meticulous in matters of form, or punctilious in matters of organization. Debate about errors in the Bible, or about ‘‘the historic episcopate,’’ or about the form of baptism, or about the minute im- plications of a creed—all such disputing seems to him a fruitless proceeding, if not actually irreligious. In 40 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY the face of open evidence that the Spirit of God is speaking through a man, or using him, to say that he is not really a minister in the Church because some par- ticular form has not been observed, seems like saying that a glorious singer is not a singer unless he holds a certificate from some recognized teacher. By all means let there be order and discipline. But let such questions be taken frankly as questions of order, of expediency, not as of divine right. To the liberal the spiritual is so absolutely identical with the real that he cannot whip himself into any very great concern over questions of outward form, definition, or organization. This is what religion means to him—the supremacy, splendor, and normality of the personal in life. It has to do mainly or exclusively with personal life, personal relations. [fo the liberal Christian, God is personal.) And nothing else matters much to him in his thinking about God. God is the supreme Person, of whom our little person- alities supply but dim reflections, yet the best we have from which to form our impressions of Him. Forced to choose, the liberal would take all the definitions of God to be found in the theologies, and gladly surrender them all in exchange for the one simple, profound state- ment of Christ, ‘‘God is spirit; and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in reality.’’ He is very sure that God is more like what we call ‘‘human nature’’ than He is like what we call ‘‘nature.’’ He is very sure that the men who ‘‘go to nature’’ to find God, who think they honor God by using ‘‘It’’ as their pronoun of reference rather than ‘‘He,’’ who talk of ‘‘Infinite Energy’’ rather than of ‘‘Infinite Spirit,’’ ITS INWARD SPIRIT 41 are on the wrong track. He feels that no other sincere men have ever lost God so completely and painfully as have those who, to use Henry Adams’ startling phrase, have exchanged the Virgin for the dynamo, and worship blind force instead of pitying love. “We know not whether you are kind Or cruel, in your fiercer mood; But, be you matter, be you mind, We think we know that you are blind, And we alone are good.” Is there anything in the world more tragic than such a picture of the human soul standing alone in the uni- verse, alone good, alone personal? Life is a hideous farce unless the heart of things is like the heart of a man instead of the coils of a dynamo. The liberal Christian knows this of God—and in com- parison cares for little else—that God is more like man than like anything else that He has made or is making; that the surest facts about Him are that He knows, loves, wills as we do, and is free, as we are, only gloriously, infinitely more so. God is personal. With all his heart the liberal Christian confesses his faith in ““God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.’’ When he says ‘‘maker,’’ his thoughts rove not back, however, to a distant point when God made all things at onee. His thoughts fly to the Father, who ‘‘worketh even until now,’’ making, creating, ‘‘center and soul of every sphere.’? He makes this day, this life I live, this world I live in. The liberal Christian sees God about him, in the act, now, of making the heaven and the earth. He is, to use Paul’s poetic phrase, ‘‘alive unto 42 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY God.’’ The world he lives in is a home, touched with the personality of the divine homemaker. The faith of the liberal fits in readily with any and every theory or view of how the world has come to be what it is, which is not mechanical or materialistic, every explanation which leaves room for the Living God. The liberal is not at all disturbed by the theory of evolution; rather he welcomes it,_as vastly more worthy than is any fiat theory of a God who thinks, works, and wills, a ‘‘poetic’’ God, in the original sense of the Greek word, in which the poet is the creator, the maker. The world revealed to the evolutionist seems to the liberal to eall for vast patience, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and vital energy on the part of its Maker—qualities all personal and spiritual. How that great Personality we call God makes His connections with the world of matter and force the liberal does not know. But neither does he know how human personality makes its will effective in the control of its body and its world. He is keenly in- terested in developments of modern physical theory, wherein all matter seems to be resolved into whirls of energy, and energy seems to draw very near in its nature to what we call will-power. On the other hand, the liberal Christian also has Bergsonian moments, when his impression is very clear of a God struggling with His world, fighting His way, hard-pressed. Yet of this the liberal Christian is sure—that spirit will win: that the chief glory of that ‘‘far-off, divine event to which the whole creation moves,’’ is its coming ‘‘not by might, nor by power, but by spirit.’’ Because he cares so supremely about the personality of God, other ideas of God fade for him in comparison ITS INWARD SPIRIT 43 into a place of secondary importance or meaning. Specu- lations about the ‘‘divine substance’’ lie outside the range of his interests. Declarations about God’s sov- ereignty, or His transcendence, or, for that matter, His immanence, may be interesting as speculation; they can- not be primary for faith and practice. ‘‘God is Spirit’’; there is the one great truth. God is personal, God is *‘Our Father’’; that is the one sure, fixed doctrine about God. That means that He is holy and loving and wise. It means that we can depend on His providence. It saves the soul from the terror of being caged in a me- chanical universe, and encourages to prayer, and to seeking after God. “Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, And Spirit with Spirit can meet.” The liberal Christian is very sure also that the per- sonal God is best revealed in and through the personal; indeed that there alone, in personality, do we adequately find a God adequate for the full needs and uses of our souls. | The liberal enters gladly into Paul’s thought, that “the invisible things of God are understood by the things which are made’’; but he is very sure that God is best seen in the persons He makes; indeed that there alone is He seen without distortion. ‘‘The heavens de- clare the glory of God’’: yes—but the glory of God is seen in higher manifestation in the face of a pure, loving little child than it can ever be seen by the aid of the mightiest telescope in all the marvel of the Galaxy. We see what God is far better in the Book of Psalms than through the use of the spectroscope. Human per- 44 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY sonality is the one satisfying place to look for knowledge of God as He really is. For this reason the Bible is deeply satisfying to the liberal Christian; it means more to him than it could possibly mean were not God and life to him wholly defined in terms of personality. He values the Bible not primarily as a flawless law book, an unimpeachable code of ethics, or an authoritative system of doctrine. It is not to him, first of all or most of all, a statement of facts or principles. It is the revelation of Person- ality, God made clear in the lives and spirits of men and women. He values the Bible for what it is, a rich, glorious, tangled, wildflower garden of human person- alities, alight and alive with the life of the Divine Person, walking in the garden and loving it. What a strange sort of book to be the revelation of God, if God were first of all and most of all the Absolute, the Great First Cause, a theological Being, the Sustainer of the moral order, primarily something to be understood, cor- rectly defined, and apprehended by the intellect. Never so foolish a book if that were its end and object! But what a perfect book to reveal Him, if He is utterly and wholly Person, so that spirit only can reveal what He is, so that He can best be made known in the flash and play of human personality, of love and goodness and sacrifice and courage, and joy and the beauty of holi- ness. We know God through the Bible as we never can through the creeds, because there is logic in the creeds but life in the Bible, thoughts in the creeds but men in the Bible. We know God supremely through the Bible, not by reason of its intellectual content, its ma- jestic thoughts, calm meditations, and inspired bits of ITS INWARD SPIRIT 45 theological speculation; but because we find Him in Abraham and Moses, in David, Elijah, Isaiah, Jere- miah, Peter, Paul, John, and over all, in all and above all, in Christ Jesus. Was not Jesus the greatest of teachers about God? And did He not deliberately use parables, stories with human interest and color in them? He did not define God: He showed us God in the life of man and of the world. To use the words of Professor Deissmann: ‘‘ Jesus did not lecture de deo. He bore witness of God. His teaching of God is a prophetic testimony born out of His inner experience. Jesus preaches about what has been experienced, what has been given, what has been striven for, not what has been brooded over and studied. It is not His system, which one finds in His words, it is His soul. His words and works are self-revealing; when we hear Him speak, we listen to the heart-throb of His faith and hope.”’ It is because the liberal Christian thus cares only for God as personal, and for the revelation of Him in terms of personality, that he is so cheerfully careless—so dan- gerously careless, his over-orthodox brother thinks—as to some of the questions men raise about the Bible. Is it wholly without error? Are its lists of kings and its statements of historical fact accurate? Are its science and philosophy unimpeachable? Is its account of crea- tion to be defended at all hazards and in every detail, no matter what modern science and philosophy may dis- cover or declare? The liberal Christian cannot be worked up to any high pitch of excitement over such questions. All around him he sees personality at work 46 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY revealing and expressing itself in an amazing variety of manifestations. You never can tell what human per- sonality will do. How then can one lay down in ad- vance the way Divine Personality must take or be dis- credited? He is quite content to have God reveal Him- self in any way He will. To him it is incredibly, pathetically childish for any one to wish to keep the Bible away from the critics, erying out, ‘‘If errors and human weaknesses are found in it, the Bible cannot make good its claim to reveal God.’’? He knows well that the Personal God can reveal Himself only through Personality; and none of the per- sons he knows are free from human weaknesses. What if the Book which acquaints us with the varied persons used of God to reveal His true nature as nowhere else, exhibits the defects of those persons in its very fiber? Does it not become thereby the more faithful record of those personal experiences in which alone the person- ality of God can be made clear? It seems to the liberal Christian arrogant presumption to say, ‘‘The Bible can- not be from God, the true revelation of Him, unless it conform to what I and others agree in advance that a revelation of God should be.’’? He takes the book as it is, freely investigated and judged in the light of the best and sanest critical common sense of which scholars are capable, and finds God in it, the Personal Spirit, speaking to his own soul. If the message authenticates itself by its spiritual character and appeal as from his Father, what should he care about the sort of envelope in which it is enclosed, or the postmark it bears, or whether here or there the one who pens it has missed a letter or misspelled a word? The Bible is important ITS INWARD SPIRIT 47 and valuable to the extent that it is a revelation of the Infinite Person through varied human personalities. It is authoritative, not because it can be shown to have no flaw in it, but because so evidently God is in it. To the ultra-conservative such an ordered creed as the West- minster Confession of Faith must seem much more ade- quate and satisfactory as a revelation of the truth of God than the loosely ordered material in the Bible. But, here as everywhere, ‘‘the foolishness of God is wiser than men’’; the power of the great Confession is wan- ing, while the Bible continues to meet and serve every new age with renewed and youthful vigor. The more the liberal studies his Bible, the more clear and wonderful appears the plain evidence of its time- lessness, its fresh, vital meaning for every new age. Truly the Book is eternal, and that because it is the revelation of personality, the only eternal reality we know. The wonder of the Scriptures to the liberal Christian, the plainest proof of their inspiration, is not that they re- eord facts of long ago with meticulous and unerring ac- curacy, but that they hold the mirror up to contem- porary life with a startling freshness seldom found even in the daily newspaper. The teachings of the Bible are always coming out in new patterns. There is a kaleido- scopic quality about them. At every turn of the wheel of time the old bits of color and form fall into new beauties of alignment. Take a man who ean see straight, one who is no longer the slave of the conventional, and really knows his Bible, and let such an one gain a new idea as to the conduct of life, find a fresh way of looking at it, and then take up his Bible. Out from it will flash lights on that new idea, that will startle and amaze 48 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY him, and establish him in a new reverence and confidence toward this ‘‘ Word of God that liveth and abideth for- ever.’’ | The liberal arises from his study of the Bible, under the full and free light of all that the critics and scholars say about it, joyously repeating what one of the New Testament writers said of the Word of God, ‘‘We have also the Word of prophecy made more sure, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts’’—a wonderful example of inspired insight, clearly pointing out the principle that the value of the Bible is in its ministry in promoting spiritual ex- perience, in guiding us until in our own hearts arises the light of God’s presence, and the saving personal knowledge of His will. To the liberal, Christianity, the religion of person- ality, finds its climax in Jesus Christ, the supreme per- sonality of history, the pre-eminent abiding and grow- ing personal force in the world’s long life. Whatever else may be doubtful about the religion and theology of the liberal Christian, this is sure, that it loses itself and finds itself wholly in Christ. If there is in the whole Bible one little phrase which, more than any other, sums up his faith and spiritual experience, that phrase is Paul’s—‘‘in Christ.’’ The liberal would move, live and have his whole being in Christ. Christ is to him the perfect and complete revelation of God tomen. Just because God is to him wholly per- sonal, and can be adequately revealed only in person- ality, it follows that God is supremely and finally re- vealed in the supreme and ideal man. All of God that ITS INWARD SPIRIT 49 man can know in personal experience is in Jesus. And the liberal Christian is sure of this, as of nothing else, that, rove as far as the mind of man can through the vast ranges of the universe of facts and forces, wherever God is found we find One who is essentially Christlike. ‘‘God is always and everywhere like Jesus.’’ That is the surest element in the faith of the liberal Christian. What impresses him in Jesus is simply and well-nigh wholly His personality. The stories told of Him are of importance only as faithfully revealing what He realiy was, and how He impressed the men who walked and talked with Him. Did He work miracles? I speak for many liberals when I say that I am sure He did; that the power to work miracles fits in with what I feel and know to have been in Him. Who shall set bounds to what a personality infinitely perfect can do? But I am sure I speak for all true liberals when I say that the question as to whether He worked miracles is a question of secondary importance. If we believe He worked miracles, we believe it because we have first seen in Him one who cannot have bounds set to His possibilities, - one who could work a miracle without having it turn into a bit of cheap magic, a trick to catch the crowd. As one of the greatest preachers of our day has said, ‘How small other miracles look alongside the fact that this man, in three short years, so lived, taught and died as to change the whole current of human history.’’ What He was is what counts; yes, and what He 1s, even more. Here also the liberal lays himself open to misunder- standing and suspicion of looseness in belief, through the fact that his utter absorption in the height and depth 50 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY and breadth of meaning in the personality of Jesus makes him indifferent to problems that to the older theology and its adherents seem of prime importance. All the metaphysical questions tangled with the idea of sub- stance, of two natures and one person; all the minutize of the process whereby God could effect an entrance into human life, speculations about the pre-existence of Christ, and about the limits and bounds of the divine and human in Him—judgment on all these, interesting as they may be, important as some of them are, may be suspended and not seriously affect the faith of the liberal that in Jesus we have the supreme, final, satis- fying revelation of the Living and Loving God, our Father. On the indisputably essential points he is or- thodox as few have been. To him Jesus Christ is wholly and absolutely man, as the creeds have declared Him to be; wholly and absolutely God, as the creeds have de- elared Him to be. For God is personal, and man is per- sonal. God is love; and love cannot be one thing in God, and another in us. Christ is perfect love, personality at its highest. So the man, Christ Jesus, is God in human experience, God in man. “Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, Thou.” One mistake the liberal Christian avoids, a mistake prolific of trouble through all the Christian centuries. To him the truth of the divinity, or deity, of Jesus means that God is to be construed in the terms of Jesus, even more than that Jesus is to be construed in the terms of God. Christ comes to men as Paul did to the Athenians, to point to their altars and theologies, built ‘‘to an unknown God,’’ and ery, ‘‘ Whom therefore ITS INWARD SPIRIT ol ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.’”’ Jesus makes the unknown God known in terms of human per- sonality. And at once they begin to say ‘‘Jesus is God,’’ and to entangle that clear, definite, human figure of Jesus in all their older thoughts and speculations about the unknown God, so that in the end He becomes a misty, remote figure in the heavens. Tt is as if, in algebra, having an equation, x equals a plus b, in which x, the unknown, is expressed in terms of a and b, the known, we should proceed to try to find the value of a and b in terms of x. Why, the only intelligible meaning of the equation, the only possibility of its practical and satisfying solution, consists in seeking the value of the unknown in terms of the known. And the whole practical value of the equation, ‘‘ Jesus is God,’’ is the knowledge of God to which it leads in terms of the ‘‘warm, sweet, tender,’’ human personality of Jesus, to know Him through the one whom He has sent. In this way, the liberal Christian is completely pro- tected from the ever-present doctrinal danger of taking Christ as a sort of second God, coming to earth to do a particular act in the interests of God the Father. To the liberal, what Christ was, God is; what Christ did, God does. The life and death of Jesus, unique story of a unique life and death, are to him like a crucial chapter in the biography of a friend, giving an account of how He did something once that makes us all forever sure of Him and of how He will always act every- where. To the liberal Christian, the very heart of the Chris- tian religion is this finding in Christ of the eternal God. God is what Jesus was: God does what Jesus did. We o2 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY find God in Him. We come to God through Him. We know God and love God in Him. It is here that the liberal Christian finds the true meaning and efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ. To his mind that atoning sacrifice loses in part its value and power when treated as an isolated event, a ‘‘thing in it- self.’’ It was indeed ‘‘once for all,’’ a sacrifice never to be repeated, a definite act at a definite time, wherein the justice and love of God meet. It is simple history, a fact nevertheless of immense significance, as Harnack points out, that men always had altars of sacrifice until Christ came, and ever since have ceased to sacrifice wherever Christ comes. But to the liberal Christian that death on the cross is powerful and divinely signifi- cant in a way it could not have been had it been a single event only—something that might have been done as well on Mars or in heaven as here on earth, a transaction to placate God. To the liberal Christian, that death gathers its most powerful significance from the fact that it. is one with the life of Jesus and one with the life of all humanity and with all the life of God in His world, tied in with all history before itself, and with all that comes after, intimately associated with all that is meant everywhere else by death, suffering, sacrifice, martyr- dom; above all a deep sounding in the revelation of God as the Father, showing how far He will go to deal with sin and suffering, and how absolutely He relies on spiritual power to save; it is powerful as a revelation, because it gives in one supreme object lesson the key to the understanding of what God is doing all the time, saving our souls by living, suffering, dying with us—by full identification of His personal life with ours. ‘In ITS INWARD SPIRIT 53 all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them.’’ That is the eternal truth of atonement. The Son of God is the ‘‘lamb slain from the foundation of the world,’’ and the one perfect forth- setting down. to the end of time, of the ‘‘love that will not let us go,’’ but stands ever ready to redeem, at any cost. ‘ I know some will say that this reduces the theology of the cross to a ‘‘moral influence theory.’’ But thatis — not true. It is not the moral influence that counts and that saves. It is an overwhelming recognition of God in Christ, now saving us by His present living grace, of which Calvary is the perfect symbol and expression. Here again the liberal Christian is not primarily con- cerned with matters that lie far back. He is very little interested in Adam and his first sin—as little as the Master was. He recalls how once the disciples raised the question of transmitted guilt, ‘‘Master, who did sin, this man or his parents?’’ and Jesus let that question slip by, caring only that ‘‘the works of God might be manifested,’’ supremely interested in present salvation. The liberal believes that that disposition represents the eternal attitude of God as well as of Christ, and that it should be his own attitude. Here is sin, and here is the present grace of God; let them come together. That is all. The charge is often made that the liberal takes a light view of sin. So far as it is true, it is a serious charge. For certainly the Master took no light view of sin. No one can quite deserve the name of Christian, in his theology, who does not see sin as the great force to grapple with, the taproot of all misery. 54 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY But, often, all there is to this charge that the liberal deals lightly with sin, is the fact that his vision of sin is different from that of the older theology. The true liberal has a tremendous sense of the reality and curse of social sins, and of our personal responsibility for them. I dare to say that liberal preachers, as a whole, are more sensitive to the real sins of our day, and more severe and outspoken in dealing with them, than are any other class of preachers. Certain popular evangel- ists, for example, have poured out the whole wealth of their powers of invective against small peccadillos or doubtful practices, but have remained silent in regard to the really terrible evils of our time—war, wage slayv- ery, mMammon-worship, commercialized amusement, ex- ploitation of persons for gain, materialistic thinking and living and the like—though earnestly urged to bring their power over the people to bear upon these outstand- ing sins. Liberal Christians are alive to these sins, and believe that the grace of God in Christ alone can deliver us from them. © In line with the faith of the liberal Christian that religion is fundamentally personal, his view of sin is mainly of a wrong personal relationship between the sinner and God. That is, his chief concern over sin is not over a violation of legal requirements, a breach of law and order, over something forensic or govern- mental in its bearing. Sin presents itself to him chiefly as a personal breach with, an offense against, the love and goodness of the Father. The break in these per- sonal relations is the feature that most weighs on him. And nothing can set that right but the restoration of right personal relations, the personal return to God. It ITS INWARD SPIRIT 5D is safe to say that the parable of the Prodigal Son means more to the liberal, is more satisfying to him just as it stands, than to any other variety of Christian. In that parable the son stands in need of no one to come between himself and his Father. He ‘‘comes to himself,’’ and then comes home. That is all. And the death of Christ is to the liberal Christian the eternal proof that God will always welcome the returning sinner. More—that He will go to any lengths to save him from his sin. It is clear to him that the acceptance of no formula, no ritual acts, can make one right with God; nothing, in- deed, but personal penitence, change of heart, and trust. What can any one offer that is acceptable to his Father except honest love and trust? Saving Faith, to the liberal Christian, is entirely per- sonal. It is trust in Some One, not belief in some thing. Of the two definitions of faith found in the Westminster theology, the liberal Christian accepts more readily the noble statement, ‘‘Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation, as He is offered to us in the Gospel.’’ He prefers it to the statement that faith means taking as true whatever God tells us in His Word. For he knows that one might take as fact every word in the Bible, and yet not be saved in the least by that mental exercise; whereas one cannot ‘‘receive and rest upon’’ the grace of God in Christ, and not find the truth and beauty of salvation coming to him. To the liberal Christian salvation is a very real, liy- ing experience, though complex as life itself and as hard to define accurately. For salvation is life. It is a personal experience enriched by an enormous fund of 56 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY fresh meaning. It is in growing fullness the life God meant us to live, the “‘life that is life indeed.’’ To the liveral salvation is not only related to goodness: the goodness is the salvation. And it is a goodness full of joy. Were the liberal Christian asked to attempt a definition of what he means by being ‘‘saved,’’ his answer might be that to be saved is to enjoy being holy and loving. : The blessedness hoped for in the future may enter largely into the conception of salvation. But, even so, the liberal knows, as Stopford Brooke states in one of his hymns, that ‘‘goodness is my only heaven.’’ One should desire to be pure and right and loving not be- cause heaven is the reward of such character, but be- cause such character 7s heaven. Heaven is the eternal enjoyment of Christliness. The liberal Christian is very clear also as to the means and the way by which salvation comes to one. The grace of God, clearly seen in Christ, coming through the Spirit of God to everyone who truly hungers and thirsts after salvation, that ‘‘bread of God, which comes down from heaven and gives life unto the world,’’ is the secret of true life. It comes to humble souls, ‘‘poor in spirit,’’ willing and glad to come to God as little children, asking questions of Him as children do, but making no attempt at bargains as grown men are too apt to do. It may use, but is not inseparably tied to nor solely dependent on any formula, any creed, any sac- rament, any ritual. This grace of God comes, bringing salvation into one’s life, or wells up within one’s being, in response to a real, living hunger and thirst for the ITS INWARD SPIRIT o7 Living God, revealed in Jesus, who draws near to us in the Holy Spirit. The liberal Christian’s faith in the life eternal is strong. Like all his faiths, it proceeds from and cen- ters around the great fact of personality. By so much as personality is the best thing in God’s world, are we sure that it will not terminate with the breath, but will last and live on in the unseen world. This world would lack meaning and dignity, become a ‘‘blot or a blank,”’ if death could make an end of the spirit of man. It is in the glory of Christ’s personality that the liberal finds the surest proof of His resurrection from the dead. He is well aware that the external and con- temporary testimony to that event is such as would not hold in any court. His joyous assurance, nevertheless, matches that which Peter stated so forcibly and simply when, speaking of Jesus and death, he said, ‘‘It was not possible that He should be holden of ¢t.’? For the spirit of Jesus, the personality of Jesus, to have been overcome of death, for that Holy One to have seen cor- ruption, would turn life into a hideous jest. But the liberal Christian is more or less indifferent to the question whether it was in the body or in the spirit that Jesus rose; whether it was in the ‘‘same body in which He suffered,’’ or in the new “‘spiritual body,’’ of which Paul speaks with such confidence. This he knows, that the Lord really lived after His death on the cross, and that the belief of His disciples that He was living and had triumphed over death, was due not to excited imaginations which misled them into taking fancies for facts, but to Jesus Himself, their 08 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY Lord and ours, who made them conscious of His living presence. How He did this, the liberal can content himself to let remain an unsettled question, whether through spiritual visions, or through the assumption of a physical form. The crucial fact, that which counts, is the indestructi- ble persuasion that He lives, and is with us now, our Lord, our Master, through whom God draws near to us and we to Him. There is left for mention one more strong, outstand- ing element in the faith of the liberal Christian, as definitely distinctive as any of the others. It is a pro- found conviction from which there is no escape for him that the way of Jesus is meant to be, and can be, trodden by men led by the grace of God; the faith that Jesus’ way of life is practicable. It is astonishing how often, in the history of the Christian religion, orthodox belief in creeds and doc- trines, even extreme and fanatical orthodoxy, has gone hand in hand with practical disbelief in the workability of the teachings and ideals of Jesus: how ready men have been to persuade themselves and others that the teachings of Jesus have no vital connection with salva- tion, save as beautiful statements of the sort of life we may expect to issue from the right sort of belief. This at least the liberal Christian has in his religion, a down- right, thoroughgoing conviction that Jesus meant us to live, here and now, in the way of His teachings and example. Many of the ultra-orthodox seem to have forgotten that severe question of the Master, ‘‘Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?’’ They ITS INWARD SPIRIT 59 seem never to have discerned what Roswell D. Hitchcock so clearly states in his comment on that verse: ‘‘The man who calls Jesus ‘Lord’ is orthodox; for he acknowl- edges His divinity: the man who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ is pious as well as orthodox, for he repeats the word with unction. And our Lord tells us here that neither or- thodoxy, nor piety, nor both together, count for so much as does the simple doing of what He tells us to do.’’ No one can get away from that clear truth without lapsing into spiritual disingenuousness. Perhaps the worst heresy of our day is the position taken by certain extreme dogmatists, who blandly tell ' us that the Sermon on the Mount and the other teachings ~ of Jesus are ‘‘not for this dispensation,’’ or obscure the plain teachings of the Master by turning them into theological allegories. A precious bit of such exegesis came to me recently from such a twisted soul, which declared that the parable of the Good Samaritan was not given to inspire us to kindness, still less to put the seal of approval on a kindly and loving heretic: that we rightly understand that story only when we see in the wounded traveler a type of sinful humanity, in the Good Samaritan the Savior, in the oil and wine the blood of the atonement and the grace of the Spirit, and so the whole parable turns out to be an allegory of the working of the dogmatist’s own scheme of salvation. Of course he conveniently omitted the direction, ‘‘Go and do thou likewise!’’ Such exegesis is evangelicalism gone crazy. All such theological fooling with the plain teachings of our Lord’s words and life the liberal throws aside for the rubbish that it is. And he is sure of this as of 60 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY little else, that the Son of God came and lived and taught, that men might find in His words and example the way to live, and in His dying grace and living fellow- ship the power to live in that way. One sometimes falls to wondering whether the violent opposition offered to the liberal Gospel may not spring in large part from the fact that that Gospel is so high and so hard. It is so much easier to ‘‘believe in Christ”’ as the traditional evangelist presents that opportunity, and then go away, singing, ‘‘Nothing either great or small remains for me to do,’’ than it is to believe on Christ as the liberal Christian defines that act, devoting one’s life from end to end, all through, to walking in the way of Jesus, keeping the commands of Jesus, living in the spirit of Jesus, defending and pushing forward the ideals of Jesus, standing with Jesus and following Him, come life, come death, with nothing to help but the silent grace of God in the heart. But, hard to seeming impossibility though it be, that is the real Gos- pel, in which alone the world can find its real and full salvation. Was Jesus a Christian? On that question liberals and fundamentalists divide. The fundamentalist says that Christ could not have been a Christian in any true sense, for Christianity did not begin until the day of the cross, and the Christian is essentially one who bhe- lieves in what Christ did on that day. But Phillips Brooks clearly asserts his faith that ‘‘Christ was Himself the first Christian, that in Him was first displayed the power of that grace by which all who believed in Him were afterwards to be helped ITS INWARD SPIRIT 61 and saved.’’ The liberal stands with Phillips Brooks. To him Christianity is the living of that high, holy, loving, self-sacrificing, personal, eternal life, which God set before us in Jesus, and Christ saves us in that He first lived that life perfectly himself, and by His life, death and present grace enables us, too, to cross its threshold and begin to live it. So the religion of the liberal Christian expresses itseif wholly in terms of the personal. Religion is a per- sonal experience of fellowship with God. Christianity is a personal experience of God as revealed in Christ. The facts of the life of Jesus form its indispensable back- ground. Without those facts it would be blind and halt and poor, or would cease to exist. But the essence of being a Christian lies not in the historical facts, nor in the acceptance of the facts as facts, but in proving in one’s own present experience that God is now what He was then in Jesus, and does now what He did then in Jesus: that God in Christ is here to save you and me and to save the world through His present, living erace. Christianity, to the liberal Christian, is the religion of personality, personal friendship with the Father through Christ, issuing in pure, loving personal relation- ships that broaden to take into their embrace the whole world of mankind. It is ‘‘eternal life, in the midst of time, by the strength and under the eyes of God,’’ as a great Christian thinker has phrased it. It is a holy, loving, trustful, daring, joyous life, made possible and actual through following the teachings and example of the Lord Jesus, under the inspiration of His personal 62 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY friendship, and through the ever-dying, ever-living grace of God which is in Him, and may be in us. Surely that is a Gospel. I dare assert that that is the everlasting Gospel. CHAPTER III CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES An attempt has now been made to show what liberal Christianity is. In so rich and varied a movement it has been, of course, impossible to do this justly and completely in so small a compass. Such a movement, spiritual, elastic, growing, cannot be shut in a definition or set in a formula. But its main outlines have been sketched. In the practical workings of his religious ex- perience the liberal Christian puts his trust in the free human intellect; welcomes truth from whatever source; rejoices in the scientific method ; adopts its clear results; and is ever ready to re-open questions and to re-examine evidence. He wants the Church kept a large, inclusive, comprehensive body. Internally he finds all his faith and hope realized in personality, pre-eminently in the supreme personality, Jesus Christ. And he cares supremely for present, vital spiritual experience. There is another way still of estimating liberal Chris- tianity, which will sharpen its outlines and make its meaning still more sure. That is, to compare it with other forms or phases of Christianity. There are many of these varieties extant, each quite certain of itself and of its own importance and authority, ranging from an- cient Oriental sects, Nestorian, Coptic, and others, to the most recent cults, Theosophy, Christian Science, and the like. Obviously we cannot here set liberal 63 64 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY Christianity over against each one of all these. Nor is there need that we should. Practically it comes into comparison especially with two, at the extremes from each other, the authoritarian and the humanitarian. These two types exist in sharpest contrast with each other. Liberal Christianity stands between them. It shares positions and possessions with both, but in spirit and truth it is one with neither of them. We shall know it better for seeing clearly how to differentiate between it and these two types of Christian faith and life which are so strong in our day. There are many grades or varieties of both, but I shall deal with each of them in its extreme form. First in point of dignity, in numbers, in age and power, stands the authoritarian type. Its adherents make up the overwhelming mass of the Church member- ship. That is something sobering, if not staggering, to realize. Even in this enlightened age, the vast multi- tude of those called by the name of ‘‘Christian’’ are still in the grip of ‘‘the religion of authority.’’ By ‘‘authoritarian’’ Christianity I mean that form, or rather those forms, of Christianity which hold that the essentials of the Christian religion are divinely fixed and constitute an unalterable system which is not sub- ject to the criticism of human reason, nor dependent for its power and authority on spiritual experience. Superior to all that the mind and soul of man ean per- ceive or discover, they are arbitrarily and directly im- posed by the will of God, and are to be disregarded, therefore, or set aside only on peril of eternal loss to the soul or the society that dares so deal with them. Authoritarian Christianity takes two main forms. We CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 65 may call them the institutional, and the dogmatie. They are alike in setting up a claim to possess absolute authority, to which implicit obedience must be given. They differ in their views as to the seat of authority, or the way by which its domination is to be exerted over men’s souls. We take first the institutional type. Fundamental here is the postulate that God has established in the Church an authoritative institution, which, through the sacraments, nourishes the spiritual life of man; and that out of this institutional and sacramental system there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. At any rate there is no assurance of the possession of a true and valid religion or of the impartation of divine grace outside the operation of this organized system. Two conceptions are combined here. One of them, the sacramental, is very ancient in origin indeed. Underly- ing it is the notion of spiritual substance, the view that makes spiritual life to be something that can be im- parted or transferred in a quasi-material form. This © conception goes back for its roots to the eating of of- ferings and the communion meal. There may be even dim and shadowy associations in it with the conviction, strong in primitive times, that by eating the heart of a brave foe his strength and courage would take up their abode in the eater. Strange is the way in which erude and brutal superstitions mingle with the highest and most mystical practices and faiths; and nowhere else is this more apparent than here in sacramentar- janism. Closely woven with the sacramental is the organiza- tional element in authoritarianism. If the sacraments 66 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY are really a means of imparting divine grace, their ad- ministration must be certified, assured, and safeguarded from falling into the hands of the unworthy. How can they be thus protected from abuse, save through an accredited priesthood? So arose and persists the elabo- rate organization of the Catholic Church, and the same insistence is found, in modified form, through all the sacramentarian branches of the Church—Roman, Greek, Anglican—on an ordered ministry, in unbroken line of succession from the apostles, either through a historic episcopate, or some other divinely ordered means. A Young Men’s Christian Association Secretary has told of the lengths to which he had to go in order to secure an administration of the sacrament which they would consider valid to some 10,000 Russians in an Austrian prison camp. He discovered that nothing would so comfort and satisfy their souls as to partake in a true administration of the sacrament. But in order to be validly administered according to their fixed ideas, the bread and wine must be consecrated by a regular priest of the Greek Church, and then must be brought to them by regularly ordained priests of that communion. No other hands must touch it. With great difficulty he arranged to have the sacramental elements consecrated duly by a priest in Russia, and brought by that priest to the border; there they were received by a priest of the Greek order living among the prisoners, and brought to the camp. When the sacrament was administered, the whole body of 10,000 men broke down and sobbed, so overcome were they with joy and mystical emotion. But had that chain been broken anywhere, CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 67 had any hand touched the sacred vessel save the hand of one of their own ordained priests, the efficacy of the rite would have been destroyed. Characteristic of this type of Christianity, indeed essential to it, is such emphasis on the outward, the organizational and the institutional. Such words as, ‘‘This is my body,’’ and ‘“‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church,’’ are taken by it in an absolutely literal sense. Authoritarian Christianity has built immense, lasting, powerful institutions on its assumption that God, in Christ, established a Church, with an unalterable line of priests and order of sacraments, whereby alone the erace of God can properly and surely come to the aid and comfort of the souls of men. This system has long held the field. Within two hun- dred years after Jesus lived and died and rose, we find this sacramentarian type of religion in full sway; this system testifying of grace coming from God to man through the right administration of the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and the water of baptism. Down through the ages it has come, exercising mighty power over the souls of men. Even Luther could not wholly break away from its seductive influence. ‘‘Hoe est corpus meum’’; he hurled those words at Zwingli as vigorously as any Roman cardinal could have proclaimed them. We note the growing spread of ‘*Catholic’’ doc- trine and practice in the Anglican and American Epis- copal churches. That the channels of the grace of God are the sacraments, and that a ministry deriving from the apostles is essential to their valid administration— such is the view held by vast multitudes, a view entitled to respect. 68 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY Grant the premises, the conclusions follow readily enough. One rises from the reading of Cardinal Gibbons’ Faith of Our Fathers, not knowing at which to mar- vel more, the insecurity of the sandy foundation, or the marvelous size and lasting splendor of the structure built upon it. The strength of the book is simply in its appeal to the human desire for assurance, for au- thority. It is based altogether on @ prior reasoning. ‘Would God have left the soul of man to chance? Must He not have provided absolute assurance on so grave a matter as the salvation of the soul? Where can one hope to find such assurance save in the Church He Him- self established through Christ?’’ All the stumbling- blocks are lightly dismissed, or left unmentioned—the transmission of Peter’s primacy, the establishment of Rome as center and seat of authority, the power and right of the pope—all these are ignored and attention concentrated on the question, ‘‘Would God have left such weighty matters undecided?’’ Read- ing that apologetic for the Roman religion, and realiz- ing that it has had a sale of nearly 2,000,000 copies, and that it expresses the heart-conviction of a vast mass of loyal, devoted Christians, one wonders when, if ever, the soul of man will be free. He dramatizes this great throng hurrying along, blindly leaping obstacles, shut- ting their eyes, stifling their doubts, under the press of the fear: ‘‘You are lost without authority,’’ and the plea, ‘‘If authority, why not the best, oldest, and most thoroughgoing?’’ There was no more open-minded, in- telligent Catholic in America than Cardinal Gibbons. But his whole argument for authority as exemplified in the Catholic Church is puerile. It amounts to this;— CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 69 Christ speaks of the Church, not of Churches; there- fore there must be but one Church, one institution, with one supreme pontiff. Christ speaks of a kingdom; but always a kingdom has one King. He speaks of a body; but a body has one head. He speaks of His reli- gion under the analogy of a marriage; but a true mar- riage gives a man but one wife. The perfect harmony evident in the visible universe must have a similar har- mony as its counterpart in the spiritual world. On the basis of these analogies, and of these only, he proceeds to his conclusion, ‘‘Hence it is clear that Jesus Christ intended that His Church should have one common doc- trine which all Christians are bound to believe, and one uniform government to which all should be loyally at- tached.’’ ‘‘No church can claim to be the true one, whose doctrines differ from those of the Apostles, or whose ministers are unable to trace, by an unbroken chain, their authority to an apostolic source.”’ Here, then, is one clearly recognized, well-defined form of Christianity that has persisted through long cen- turies, exercising tremendous power over masses of men, appealing successfully not only to the ignorant, but to many mystical, devout, highminded, noble men and women. Liberal Christianity offers the sharpest contrast to this form of authoritarian religion. It says, ‘‘ First prove that these stupendous claims of yours are well- based. We will not take the word of interested parties, of those committed to the system, but must have the word of unprejudiced scholars.’’ From them it learns how slender, how mythical, are the grounds for apostolic precedent and sanction. Read in the best light obtain- 70 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY able, the New Testament clearly disavows the whole complicated scheme of sacramentarianism and _ institu- tionalism. From his study of the Greco-Roman world of the first century, the liberal is persuaded that Catholic Christianity has far more vital connection on the one hand with Judaism and its system of priesthood and sacrifice, and on the other hand with Hellenic and Oriental mystery-cults, than it has with the Christianity of the New Testament.» He finds little foundation for such sacramentarian religion in Paul, and none at all in the Gospels. He sees in Jesus and His religion the eul- mination of the prophetic movement, which always strove to set the religion of the spirit above the religion of out- ward rites and institutions. He is very sure that Har- nack is right in his estimate and judgment of Catholic Christianity : ‘‘What modification has the gospel undergone, and how much of it is left? Well—this is not a mat- ter that needs many words—the whole outward and visible institution of a church claiming divine dignity has no foundation whatever in the gospel. It is a case not of distortion, but of total perversion. The Gos- pel says, ‘Christ’s kingdom is not of this world,’ but the church has set up an earthly kingdom; Christ demands that his ministers shall not rule, but serve, but here the priests govern the world; Christ leads his disciples away from political and ceremonious religion and places every man face to face with God—God and the soul, the soul and its God; but here, on the con- trary, man is bound to an earthly institution with chains that cannot be broken, and he must obey; it is only when he obeys that he approaches God. There CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 71 was a time when Roman Christians shed their blood because they refused to do worship to Cesar, and re- jected religion of the political kind; today they do not, indeed actually pray to an earthly ruler, but they have subjected their souls to the despotic orders of the Roman papal King.’’’* Although the liberal thus openly challenges and op- poses Catholicism, he is not guilty of the overweening intellectual and spiritual arrogance that would treat dis- respectfully such a tremendous system, with its long his- tory of power and splendor, its unquestionable lordship over the souls and lives of multitudes of devout people, and its indubitable capacity to satisfy the holy longings of many people after God. Criticize it, as liberal Chris- tians may and must, to fail in respect for it would be to expose themselves to the charge of light-mindedness. Rather would they join in the kindly and generous judg- ment of Dr. Edwin Hatch, who, after clearly demonstrat- ing that Catholicism springs from the mystery cults of the early Christian centuries, rather than from the New Testament, goes on to say: ‘‘The tendency to an elaborate ceremonial which had produced the magnificence of these mysteries and cults, and which had combined with the love of a purer faith and the tendency toward fellowship, was based upon a tendency of human nature which was not erushed by Christianity. It rose to a new life, and, though it lives only by a survival, it lives that new life still. In the splendid ceremonial of Eastern and Western worship, in the blaze of lights, in the 1Harnack, What is Christianity, pp. 262, 268. 12 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY separation of the central point of the rite from com- mon view, in the procession of torchbearers chanting their sacred hymns—there is the survival, and in some cases the galvanized survival, of what I cannot find it in my heart to call a pagan ceremonial; because though it was the expression of a less enlightened faith yet it was offered to God from a heart that was not less earnest in its search for God and in its effort after holiness than our own.’’* But authoritarian religion assumes another form also. Protestantism did not get rid of external authority at the Reformation. There remained, as a powerful and largely controlling factor in the great Protestant bodies, what we may call dogmatic authoritarianism. In the place of an infallible Church, Protestant theology set an infallible Bible. Rightly understood it was a wholesome and necessary exchange. Obviously, if there is to be any real unity in the church, any protec- tion against anarchy, there must be some accepted stan- dard to which all ‘‘private interpretations,’’ varying ideals, and judgments of men may be brought for regu- lation; and it is wise and necessary to accept, as such standard, to which all is to be brought for ultimate judgment, the ‘‘Word of God, contained in the Scrip- tures of the Old and New Testament.’’ Indeed, the Catholic appeals to the Bible as the ultimate authority, of which the Church is only the infallible and necessary interpreter. But very soon appeared a tendency to make of the Bible something more than a trustworthy guide for individual faith and conduct, and an accepted 2Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888, p. 309. CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 73 standard for common thought and life and worship. It was set in the place of the living Church, and all that had been claimed for the Church was now urged in be- half of the Bible. It began to be urged that it possessed an authority which was to be implicitly obeyed on all subjects on which it touched, even incidentally. This was the theory, but in practice the theologians and ereed-makers laid down the sense in which the Bible should be taken, formulated its doctrines, and then claimed that the authority of the Bible extended to the doctrinal system thus derived by them from the Bible. Such a method and procedure the Bible nowhere dreams of sanctioning. So, while the reformers insisted in theory on the Bible as supreme authority, a significant fact about the Reformation was the number of elaborate ereeds which appeared; Confessio Gallica, Confessio Belgica; Canons of Dort; Thirty-nine Articles; West- minster Confession; Augsburg Confession; Heidelberg Catechism, and, lying back of them all, Calvin’s Insti- tutes of the Christian Religion. The reformers went far and saw far for their day. We should honor them for daring so much and doing so well, rather than blame them for not reaching perfection. But we ought to be able to see clearly, what they did not, that their daring faith in the Bible as the ‘‘only’’ standard would be first lowered and finally vitiated by the growing insistence on rigid doc- trinal standards as the authoritative interpretations of the Bible. Authoritarian Protestantism is guilty of a fundamental inconsistency. The Roman Church has al- ways contended, with telling force, that an infallible book would be practically useless, or even dangerous, Pe reer a oe 74 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY without an infallible Church to interpret it. And the contention is just, to this extent at least, that there is no proper halting place between confidence in the Bible it- self, just as it is, freely studied, coupled with cheerful acceptance of the equal rights of many varying interpre- tations, and the Roman doctrine of one infallible inter- pretation offered by an authoritative Church. The truth is that the reformers did not dare trust themselves to the faith in the Bible which they began by so splendidly affirming. They still clung to the necessity of a regula- tive authority ; but they located it in the writings of in- dividual doctors of theology, or in creeds formed by different special groups and parties in the Church. There is this to be said in justification of Protestant- ism, that the best of its creeds heartily disclaim their own final authority, offering themselves simply as particular statements of belief. They affirm the super- ior right of the Bible to serve as a regulative authority. Paradoxical as it may be, the statement is true that he who loyally subscribes to the Westminster Confession of Faith, for example, and then honestly finds the teaching of the Bible to be different from the teaching of that creed, can be truly loyal to the creed only by denying it and holding to what he finds in the Bible; for the fundamental position of the creed is that the Bible alone is authoritative. But this is a position at once too daring and too subtle to be taken and acted upon wholeheartedly by all Protestants. And, therefore, we have today a large and strong section of Protestantism as completely au- thoritarian in spirit as is the Roman Church itself. Pro- fessing to take the Bible as the sufficient and sole au- A Ce AT RR EN BEN CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 79 thority, it proceeds to define the Bible teaching in au- thoritative terms, and to sum up the teaching of the Bible in a set of doctrines which one questions at his peril, and must accept implicitly or be denied the fel- lowship of the Church. This dogmatic authoritarianism is a strange phe- nomenon, and leads to strange developments. If au- thority resides not only in the Bible, but in some par- ticular doctrinal construction of Biblical teaching, some particular ereedal arrangement of Biblical truth, any- thing like unity in the Church today becomes a futile dream. Indeed, the way is open to a rampant sectarian- ism, the logical issue of which would be a separate denomination for every man who is minded to insist on his own ereed as Gospel truth. There is a story of a Scotchman, proud of his name, who said, ‘‘ Wherever you find a McLeod you will find a Presbyterian Church ;’’ to which some one instantly made the retort, ‘‘ Yes, and wherever you find two McLeods, you will find two Pres- byterian Churches.’’ That story loses the grace of humor, and becomes a grim tragedy, if the logic of Protestant authoritarianism be followed to the end. A Professor in one of our American theological schools, in a published article, says, ‘‘Is the Westminster Con- fession a purely denominational affair? It is not—to those who believe it to be true. Those who believe it to be true will never be satisfied until it has been ac- cepted by the whole world, and will never consent to be limited in the propagation of it by any Church or union of Churches whatsoever.’’ The judgment of one of our wisest Church leaders is none too severe when, commenting on the statement just 76 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY quoted, he says: ‘‘ While this condition prevails, to talk of church union is a mere waste of words; to attempt to reconcile Christianity and modern culture is a futile task’’ (Richards, Christian Ways of Salvation, page 220). These two types of authoritarianism are closer to- gether in spirit, and in essential nature, than either of them will admit. The Protestant authoritarian will vehemently deny that anything in him is akin to the Romanist; and the Roman Catholic will look with con- tempt on the Protestant who rejects the authority of the Mother Church, and then attempts to enforce the doc- trinal positions of a sect. But at heart their position is the same. The liberal Christian detects the same fallacy in both, refuses to wear the yoke of either, because he denies the validity of that external authority which one and the other claims with solemnity and attempts to enforce with vigor. Of the one, as of the other, the liberal Christian ‘‘asks the title deeds,’’ and marvels at the weak and evasive answer given him. As weak as is the basis, in his judgment, for the extravagant Roman claims of power bestowed on Peter and transmitted to popes; of a Church thus kept from error through all the ages and therefore entitled to implicit obedience from all the faithful; just as weak, in the judgment of the liberal Christian, is the claim of Protestant authoritar- ians that the Bible freely interpreted in the light thrown on it by unfettered investigation and criticism, is in- sufficient, and therefore must be supplemented by cer- tain ereeds, enforced upon the consciences of Christians as authoritative. Gladly does the liberal accept the great creeds of the Church as noble attempts to give ex- CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 77 pression to spiritual experience, and to register progress in Christian thought and feeling up to the time of their promulgation. But with absolute positiveness he affirms that to make any such creeds or any system of doctrine divinely authoritative, is to do violence to the very spirit and genius of Protestantism, and to belittle the Bible and its true authority. He subscribes to a creed, when he does so at all, only in the way of general con- sent, and as a necessary means of visible unity. He sees also, with a clearness that brooks no denial, that any united testimony of Protestantism on the basis of dog- matic authoritarianism is hopeless. Who shall decide which doctrines are essential, which are Scriptural and therefore authoritative? Is each denomination or group of Christians to have the prerogative of the veto? That way lies chaos. Yet what other solution is there to sug- gest? No, Protestantism must abandon this whole policy of enforced dogmatic authority. The whole claim to an external and infallible authority rests upon an unwarranted assumption. It cannot stand the test of right reason, of historical investigation, of eritical study of sources. Dogmatic authoritarianism relies on sheer credulity and blind affirmation, as truly, if not as obviously, as does the sacramental and institu- tional authoritarianism of the Roman Church. This is so palpably true that it is hard to see how any thorough- going authoritarian can keep himself from being carried over into Rome. He cannot, save by an arbitrary exer- cise of choice. In the very remarkable and convincing series of lec- tures to which reference has already been made—a piece of scholarship which put the whole religious world in 78 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY debt to its author “—Dr. Hatch concludes his study of the influence of Greek thought and custom on the early development of Christianity, with the clear statement that ‘‘a large part of what are sometimes called Chris- tian doctrines, and many usages which have prevailed and continue to prevail in the Christian Church, are in reality Greek theories and Greek usages, changed in form and color by the influence of primitive Christianity, but in essence Greek still.’’ He then expresses his con- viction that two theories are possible in dealing with this fact of the composite origin and development of what we know as Christianity. On the one hand, it may be urged that these additions to the Christianity of Jesus and of the New Testament are non-essential additions, and that Christianity may throw off these Hellenic (and he might have added Hebraic) accretions, and be ‘‘none the loser,’’ but rather stand out again before the world in ‘‘the uncoloured majesty of the Gospels.’’ On the other hand, it may be urged that ‘‘the tree of life, which was planted by the hand of God Himself in the soil of human society, was intended from the first to grow by assimilating to itself whatever elements it found there. It is possible to hold that it is the duty of each succeed- ing age at once to accept the developments of the past, and to do its part in bringing on the developments of the future.’’ He then makes the calm assertion, ‘‘ Between these two main views it does not seem possible to find a logical basis for a third. The one or the other must be ac- cepted, with the consequences which it involves.’’ In these wise, daring words, he has indicated the abid- * Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888. CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES rh ing difference which may well mark a true Catholicism, and a true Protestantism, a religion which always goes back for its authority to the undoubted sources of its faith in the New Testament, and one that with equal frankness accepts the later elements incorporated in the process of the historical evolution of doctrine and usage. Such a Catholicism would be a progressive Catholicism ; and such a Protestantism would be a historically based Protestantism. They would be mutually helpful, com- plementary to each other; and there would be every reason to look for ultimate mutual respect, and a large measure of co-operation. But when the learned author says that ‘‘ between these two main views it does not seem possible to find a logical basis for a third,’’ his judgment overlooks the outstand- ing fact that a third position is held by the great major- ity of professing Christians—for men are not logical. Most of them are quite satisfied to get along without a ‘logical basis’’ for their religion. Great masses of Christians are content to base their religion on a blind affirmation, which a true Protestant is reluctant to eall ‘‘faith.’’ In the case of the Catholic authoritarian, the affirmation required to be accepted is that all that the Church has taught, and teaches now, and shall teach through coming ages, lay implicitly in the original ‘‘de- posit of faith,’’ given by the Head of the Church to His authorized representatives as the sole custodians of the erace of God. The similar affirmation insisted upon by the Protestant authoritarian is that certain doctrines, selected as essential by decrees of ecclesiastical bodies, or by the insistency of certain theologians, are to be taken as essential to true Christianity. In either form, 80 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY and in the ease of any such authoritarianism in the Church, no proof, no warrant, no ground of acceptance goes with it; nothing save an arbitrary demand for the assent of the human will in blind submission to an un- founded claim. Of course it is within the power of the will of the in- dividual to divest itself of judgment and submit to irrational claims; and any ecclesiastical body has the power, and the legal right, to require some such form of submission, of blind affirmation, as a condition of good standing, if such a course does not run counter to its constitution. But whether a soul calling itself Chris- tian has the right to make such a surrender of reason and conscience, whether a body ealling itself Christian has the right to make such a demand, is another and a very serious question. One clear mark of the liberal Christian is that he denies this right. At the other extreme from the authoritarian in all his varieties, we find that group of religious persons and institutions which we call humanitarian. Names are, at best, ‘‘kittle cattle,’’ elusive and hard to control. The word ‘‘humanitarian’’ is used here to designate those who in large part, or on the whole, give up the idea of divine authority and divine grace; who think of religion, and of Christianity in particular, as a system of ethical principles and practical ideals, as a matter of working out one’s character, controlling one’s conduct, living one’s life, by the forces within one’s own nature, and in obedience to the physical and spiritual laws that rule in the universe. In the startlingly strong CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 81 expression of Horace Bushnell, the humanitarian thinks of religion as the achievement of personal character, with a little help from ‘‘that very excellent person, Jesus.’’ The humanitarian is deeply concerned over the social, civic, political, and international bearings and outwork- ings of religion. But God for him is wholly entangled in the process; a God of humanity, yes, often a God who is Just the ideal or sum of humanity. The humanitarian acknowledges no seat of authority save that which resides in the individual soul, or perhaps in the social group. The Bible is to him as other books, and Jesus as other grea* souls, prophets and leaders. God to him is pretty nearly synonymous with ‘‘nature.’’ The only way God can work with man, or help toward individual or social progress or salvation is through man’s discovery of the laws of nature, and co-operation with them. The humanitarian has a large confidence in what he means by the words ‘‘progress’’ and ‘‘evolu- tion,’’ as connoting natural forces making for better- ment, forces we can use. Religion becomes merged in ethics; it is right and lawful living. A distinguished representative of this extreme position once said to me: **It is a sufficient religion for me to know that the uni- verse is rational, and I must not play the fool in it.’’ Of course there are many varieties and gradations in this ‘‘humanitarian’’ type of Christianity. I have presented its extreme form. It veers by imperceptible degrees from the position of the one who finds his reli- gion in searching the Gospel and trying to follow the teachings and example of Jesus, to the position of the 82 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY agnostic or thoroughly naturalistic soul, whose religion is nothing more than a vague purpose and honest effort to keep clean and do right. We all know a considerable number of people, for the most part earnest, honest folk, who belong to this general group which we eall ‘‘humanitarian.’’ As we said of the authoritarian, even the extreme Catholic, so do we say of the humanitarian, even the extreme agnos- tic, that generous recognition and hearty respect for the genuine character of his faith and practice is his due from us who hold the Christian faith. Indeed it should not be hard to see that one who, while lacking any real trust in a Personal God and in divine grace, neverthe- less does keep his life true and clean in the dim light in which he moves, is entitled to peculiar respect, how- ever much we may pity him for what he lacks. For he does lack the very heart of religion, which is ‘‘the life of God in the soul of man.’’ It is a terrible situation to be alone in the world, without a friendly God and Father. ‘There appeared recently a bit of verse which expresses this loneliness of the agnostic soul: “Now that the gods are gone, And the kings, the gods’ shadows are gone, Man is alone in the world, Thrust out with the stars, and alone. And his eye takes in beauty and grief, And the centuries coming or fiown; He is lord of all things and thoughts, —And a fool, and alone.” Opponents and eritics of liberal Christianity are apt to class the liberal with the humanitarian. The charge is common that the liberal, for all his use of CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 83 well-known phrases and terms, at heart trusts not in God, but in himself, and in impersonal ‘‘nature’’; that the religion which he holds is in essence nothing more than ethies. There is, to be sure, extensive variation of view within the group known as liberal. That word, no less than the term ‘‘humanitarian,’’ covers a wide range. And liberalism when it grows slack does undoubtedly tend by imperceptible grades to fall away into bare-faced naturalism, just as authoritarianism glides over into sheer superstition. But the stand taken by the repre- sentative liberal Christian is far removed from the posi- tion which I have described under the name ‘‘human- iparian. ~ Liberal Christianity, in fact, stands between the au- thoritarian type and the humanitarian. It shares some- what in the qualities and experiences of both. Other characteristic, and even fundamental, positions of each it rejects just as decisively. The liberal Christian is heartily one with the human- itarian in his conviction that conduct is of weighty, even of primary importance, and that emphasis upon the ethical side of life is inseparable from any true concep- tion of religion. He is one with him in seeing in life a great arena for the exercise of the human will, of free- dom of choice, and personal courage. He agrees with him in putting strong emphasis on social duties, and on the necessity of interweaving religion through the com- mon and co-operative life. He shares his assurance that this world as we have it is the expression and outwork- ing of a power that makes for righteousness; and that he who conforms with the laws of nature and of the 84 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY soul will be apt to find the world a safe and good place in which to live. But the true liberal Christian cannot share in the humanitarian’s attitude of self-trust, nor in his cheer- ful assurance that, unaided, man can attain to that rich, high development of character that is worthy to be ealled ‘‘salvation.’’? Nor can the liberal endorse the hope that men can build by their own efforts the King- dom of Heaven on earth; or that the calm, irresistible force known as ‘‘progress’’ or ‘‘evolution,’’ working by methods well nigh or quite mechanical, can ever reduce all chaos finally to order and bring good to all. In a word, the points at which the liberal breaks with the humanitarian can all be determined by reference to the guiding principle brought out in the previous ehapter: that the liberal Christian puts all his faith and all his interest in personality. So far from looking upon himself and other men as the only personal forces or realities in the world, he sees the outworking of the will of the Father in all life. Life can never be to him, therefore, an unaided struggle, as it so readily becomes to the extreme humanitarian. He admires the dogged courage with which the humanitarian keeps up his faith in himself; but in place of such whistling to keep up courage, the liberal Christian sings hymns to God, know- ing that he is heard, and that help comes from the silent and secret places of the Most High. His confidence is in God, not in himself; in God, not in impersonal processes of nature; in God, Who works through nature, and lives in the soul of man, and is ever ready to respond to faith. He believes that back of our life, and of ‘ CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 85 the entire life of the universe, is that God of whom the ancient writer of the Chronicles of Israel wrote so nobly, when he declared, ‘‘The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the earth, to show himself strong on behalf of him whose heart is perfect toward Him.’’ The very essence of the liberal’s religion is personal trust in the personal God and Father of our spirits, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The liberal Christian also parts company with the humanitarian in that he has an unreserved and thorough- going acceptance of the practical and spiritual authority of the Bible and of Christ. Here he approaches nearer to the authoritarian, and shares with him the joy of confidence in a standard and a Lord worthy of full trust, worthy even of being entrusted with the eternal destinies of the soul. It is not too much to claim that the liberal Christian has a sense of the authority of the Bible, and of the lord- ship of Christ, as strong and as practically valid as that professed by the authoritarian. But, as has been sug- gested earlier in this discussion, and as anyone who looks at the matter can readily see for himself, the liberal Christian is content to ground his faith in the authority of the Bible and of Christ on a practical and spiritual basis. Why does he take the Bible as his guide? Be- eause it is given him by a Church divinely constituted, and vested with authority? No; for he knows that there is no such Church. Because the Bible is declared by the ereeds to be infallible, and to possess divine au- thority? No; for the truth is the reverse—the creeds derive all their force from the Word of God, and from 86 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY the spiritual experience of believers, and cannot in any possible way guarantee that which guarantees them. Why then does he accept the Bible as authoritative? Simply and solely because of what it is, and of what it does; because, to use Coleridge’s classic phrase, ‘‘it finds us.’’ The liberal Christian knows no other proof. The authoritarian uneasily asks, ‘‘But what of those to whom it does not appeal, those whom it does not ‘find’? How do you prove or enforce, in their case, the authority of the Scriptures?’’ The liberal Chris- tian answers readily and cheerfully: ‘‘I do not. Ifa man declares that he does not find God and divine au- thority in the Bible, I know no way to make him admit that it is there. ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear, and he that hath eyes to see, let him see.” What gain can there be in thundering at him in tones of self- assertive authority? If he will not consent of himself to bow in the presence of God, can the voice of any human authority bend his back?’’ The liberal Christian finds comfort and light in this matter of the authority of the Bible in two places; in the best creeds of the Reformation period, and in music. It gives him keen satisfaction to discover that the great creeds of early Protestantism rest their majestic affirma- tions of the authority of the Word of God ultimately on the sole fact of the spiritual appeal of the Bible itself. The Westminster Confession of Faith, which stands out amid the Reformation symbols for rugged strength, as well as for persistence as a living power, takes that posi- tion, with a definiteness remarkable in a document from tnat early period. In terms unequivocal and decisive, it states : CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 87 *“We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire per- fection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assur- ance of the infallible truth and divine authority there- of is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bear- ing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.’’ It lays down the principle that obscure parts of the Seriptures are to be interpreted by those parts of the Seriptures whose meaning is plain and clear and not by an authoritative church, pope, or council, nor by an authoritative creed ; and while it entrusts the Bible to the common sense of simple folk, it sanctions also and de- mands the best and fullest study of it in the original lan- guages, in a way which amply justifies the statement that the modern critical historical research movement bears the stamp of its approval. And it declares, in the last section of its noble chapter on the Scriptures, that ‘‘The Supreme Judge, by whom all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opin- ions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Seriptures’’—not the Bible as a lawbook, or a set 88 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY of inerrant statements, but the Bible as a vehicle and expression of the living Spirit of the Living God. To the liberal Christian, music offers one of the clear- est analogies to religion in the matter of authority, as in many other details. No authority in all the world is more certain, more absolute, more universally accepted in its own domain, or more securely based, than the au- thority of the great masters of music and of their master- pieces. No sovereigns of any other realm ever reigned with authority more unquestioned and unquestionable than that of Bach or Beethoven. Yet on what does their authority rest? Has any court ever sat on the subject and rendered a decision? Has any council of musicians ever met and solemnly declared their works to be the seat of authority in music? The authority resides in the music itself, in the appeal, instant, irresistible, per- manent, that it makes to every normal musical nature. It ‘‘finds’’ the music lover. That is the sole and suffi- cient proof of its authority. Though millions of men should agree together to condemn and reject it, no true musical soul would waver in his conviction that they had all really condemned not the music but themselves. Exactly such by nature is the authority of the Bible, and the nature of its proof. All sorts of external evi- dences and aids to belief are offered. There is only one proof that holds—the response of the human heart to the appeal of the Word of God, and its demonstrated power to guide men, individually and in groups, to holy, loving, godly living. It is what we need, and it does what we need to have done. To the doubter, the liberal Christian says, ‘‘Try it and see!’’ He offers no other proof, because he knows there is no other. CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 89 In his attitude to Christ also, the liberal Christian stands between the attitude of the authoritarian and that of the humanitarian. He shares in the humanitar- ian’s regard for Christ as the prince of teachers, and his insistence that the words of the Master are precepts meant for our actual guidance. But when the human- itarian says, with Nicodemus, ‘‘Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God,’’ the liberal Chris- tian waits with eager joy for the answer he knows will come, ** Verily I say unto you, Ye must be born again.”’ Something more is needed than acceptance of teaching, however luminous and beautiful; more than self-effort, however painstaking and heroic. The soul must be re- newed, God must come in, Christ must dwell in the heart by faith. For the liberal Christian does not share in the serene self-confidence characteristic of the extreme humanitarian. He knows himself to be weak, sinful, erring. He is sure that his only way of salvation is through humble trust in the grace of God, revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and communicated to us by the Holy Spirit. Therefore he prays and trusts, and seeks in Christ not only a teacher from the past to revere, but a dear presence now. It is the personality of Christ that means most, yea, all, to him. ‘‘ What Christ was, God always is; what Christ did, God always does.’’ That is his ultimate faith, the secret of his character, his life, his religion. Yet he will not join the authoritarian in his accept- ance of all that the creeds may have said about Christ. Rather should we say that, however much of it he may accept, he will never be led by the authoritarian into the serious error of reckoning one’s intellectual construction 90 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY of Christ the primary consideration, or into the fatal error of putting dogma in the place of importance that rightly belongs to life, to spiritual experience. ‘‘I have a life in Christ to live,’’ expresses the one decisive convic- tion of the liberal Christian. Christ is a fact in this life we are living; a fact of history out of the past; yes, thank God! But, thank God even more, a history-mak- ing fact now, so that ‘‘the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me,’’ who loves me still, and by taking up His abode with me in the Spirit, gives Himself for and to me now, today. It is in that present, vital, spiritual experience of Christ’s abiding presence with him that the liberal Christian finds the deepest reality of his religion, and the strongest assurance of its truth and authority. Here is something that anyone ean test for himself, a repeatable and verifiable exper- lence, as truly such as any process the scientist puts to the test in his laboratory. He who will make a bona fide experiment of trust in God as revealed in Jesus will find joy and peace, cleansing and vigor, a life that is life indeed. And while the humanitarian may call these convictions and experiences imaginary, mystical aber- glaube, and to the authoritarian they may seem danger- ously vague and unfounded and uncertain, the liberal Christian knows no fear, for his faith rests where that of the great Apostle reposed securely: ‘‘ Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal; the Lord knoweth them that are His, and, let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from all iniquity.’’ In an experience of personal fellowship with God, realized primarily and evidenced all the way along in 4 CONTRAST WITH OTHER TYPES 91 pure and loving life according to Christ, is the real essence of religion. Here the liberal Christian finds his authority; here he finds his freedom; for here he finds God, and his life is hid here with Christ—hid as the roots are hidden in the soil, in order that they may bring forth in the light of day visible fruits of righteousness, peace, love, joy, and self-control, CHAPTER IV LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY AND THE NEW TESTAMENT ONE of the most important and significant facts about liberal Christianity is often slighted or wholly ignored. It is missed completely by many of the critics of modern developments in Christian theology and religion. It is the fact that one of the chief roots or sources of liberal Christianity is the religion of the New Testament. Critics of liberalism in religion give large place to the allegation that liberal Christians make light of the Bible, and are in reality seeking to get away from its high ethical stand- ards and doctrinal statements, while, for safety’s sake, professing allegiance to those statements and standards. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is fidelity to the New Testament which has led liberal Christians into many of their most characteristic positions. An ecclesiastical world, placidly secure in its accepted ideas and creeds, never doubting that in them was the very truth of God as revealed in the Scriptures, was sud- denly and rudely shaken by the storms of new knowledge and keen criticism which broke and beat upon their ark in the latter half of the nineteenth century. We cannot wonder that it seemed to many as if all things were being shaken, and that they murmured the old words, ‘‘If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?’’ But, by the mercy of God, and under the loving guidance of His Spirit of all truth, there came to their assistance at the same time the popular exten- 92 THE NEW TESTAMENT 93 sion of critical and historical knowledge of the Scrip- tures. Men began to study the New Testament afresh and thus to know it as it never had been known and studied before. Clearer and clearer has grown the con- viction that what has really suffered in the storm has been, not Christianity, not the New Testament, but cer- tain theological constructions of the New Testament truth which were partial and temporary in yalue and character. Men have come to a new appraisal of the Lord Jesus and His great follower, Paul, and of the words which they spoke or wrote. And true liberal Christianity, in very much of that in which it differs from the accepted orthodoxy of past years, has changed not through going away from the New Testament, but through going further into that precious volume; not through ignoring its teachings, but through mastering them more fully and clearer of misunderstandings. The liberal Christian has come to see that much which has passed for essential Christianity is but faintly indicated Ge in the New Testament, if at all, coming rather from ex- tracanonical sources. The comparatively new and vitally important study of Hellenic cults and mystery religions and their influence upon the development of Christian doctrine and practice, has made us aware that much which has been uncritically taken as part and parcel of original Christianity was wrought into the fabric of the ereeds and customs of the early Church in the course © of that curious and marvelous development of the first | few centuries which issued in Catholie Christianity; ; and that a large part of these developments was taken over by Protestantism at the time of the Reformation. We are just fully wakening to the fact that what we 94 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY call Christianity is a complex and varicolored movement. It has gathered to itself much that is strange during its course through the ages. The Mississippi River flows on its way clear and bright toward the gulf, until the enor- mous muddy flood of the Missouri pours into it; and from that point on, while it still bears the name of Mississippi, it bears the aspect of the turgid torrent that has swept into it and changed its course and char- acter. Even so the rich, earthy, sluggish flood of the religions of the Orient came pouring into the crystal-' clear current of primitive Christianity; and the re- sultant river, while it goes on bearing the name Chris- tianity, has caught and retained much of the aspect and character of the inflowing streams. We know today the facts about the Gospels and the other New Testament literature, as men have not known them in any period of past time since apostolic days. We see Jesus as no others in that same long interval have been privileged to see Him. We read in Paul’s words what none of these others has been able to find in them. And it is from this new knowledge, this new apprecia- tion of the meaning of the New Testament, that liberal Christianity has come to take shape. The claim is not too extreme that liberal Christianity is nearer to the true religion of Jesus and Paul than any other main movement in the Church today, very much nearer than either of the two extreme positions—the authoritarian and the humanitarian—with which we contrasted it in previous chapters. That may seem an overbold claim. But I believe it may be substantiated; that any honest student, who will trust implicitly to the plain verdict of facts, and to THE NEW TESTAMENT 95 the guidance of the Spirit of God, will come to see the truth of it. To attempt to show, in complete and full fashion, that liberal Christianity is in agreement with the faith of the New Testament would be a task quite beyond the capacity of the present writer. There are books which render this service as I could not hope to do, notably the lectures delivered at Auburn Seminary by Professor _Richards and published under the title of Christian Ways of Salvation; and, from an earlier time, but of value quite independent of time, Harnack’s What Is Christianity? Very valuable also is Deissmann’s The Religion of Jesus and the Faith of Paul. All I can hope to do within my space limits here and the limitations of my own non-professional equipment in scholarship, is to indicate a few of the outstanding ways in which liberal Christianity fits closely into the ideals and teachings of the New Testament. I raise no critical questions about the sources. Let us take the New Testament as it stands, without attempting precise differentiations between the Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth Gospel, or between the religion of Jesus and the theology of Paul. Taking the New Testament thus in the large, as we have it, and taking liberal Christianity in the large, as we know it, let us see how they compare and whether, on the main points, they agree. Of course the question here is not whether we can make liberal Christianity square with this or that iso- lated text, or with some series of specially selected pas- sages. It is a favorite habit of those who cling inflexibly to the truth and authority of the older orthodoxy to select a few sayings and call them the essence of the 96 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY Gospel and of New Testament Christianity, and then to judge all the rest of the New Testament and all theolog- ical and religious teaching by those sayings. We mean to deal with the real drift of the New Testament as a whole, with the main current of its teaching. In such a brief study two controlling considerations may well be observed. The first is that the most impor- tant issue is between liberal Christianity and the ex- treme conservative theology. It is from this group that the attacks upon the liberal mainly come. Yet it is with this same group that the liberal Christian finds his closest affinities in spirit and aim. One of the most decisive questions to be determined is whether liberal Christianity can justify itself as being at least as near to the New Testament position as is the established or- thodoxy in its extreme form. The second consideration is that that which gives tone to any religion, that which is the heart and essence of any form of theology, is its conception of salvation and of the way in which it is secured. Any religious move- ment that claims to be Christian must be judged su- premely by its position with regard to how men are saved, and what salvation is. We shall do the best that can be done in so brief a time, and so small a compass, if we contrast the way of salvation held by the extreme conservative wing of the Church with the way of salvation as the liberal Christian sees it. The established authoritarian view of salvation is that its meaning and content are chiefly eschatological, and that the way and means to its attainment are through faith in the substitutionary atonement of Christ. THE NEW TESTAMENT if, To be more precise, salvation is to be defined and un- derstood as meaning chiefly the attainment of life beyond death. It is mainly concerned with something which is to come to pass in the future. It is not without signifi- cance that so frequently extreme conservatism in theol- ogy is closely associated with fervent faith in the second coming of Christ. When the word ‘‘salvation’’ is used, instinctively the mind of the conservative, the spirit of the premillennarian, turns to the thought of death, the second coming, judgment, heaven. It is in these circles of thought and feeling that that curious petition lingers longest, ‘‘Save us at last.’’ There are of course many individuals who hold tena- ciously to conservative views in theology who would deny, perhaps with some heat, that their conception of salvation is eschatological. They would assert that to them salvation means something present and not de- ferred. But when asked what that something is, they find it hard, if not impossible, to specify. It is ‘‘salva- tion from sin,’’ they say, yet they hesitate to profess that the Christian is sinless in face of clear facts to the contrary. It is freedom from guilt, peace of mind, they say. And in that they are at one with the liberal Christian. But in that case they are noting certain effects, rather than exhibiting the very nature of salva- tion. They object strongly to the statement that ‘‘sal- vation is character.’? So does the liberal Christian. But they find it very hard to point out any real con- nection between their conception of salvation and the sacrifice of Christ, without its being, in the last analysis, eschatological in its meaning. With regard to the means, or the way of salvation, 98 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY they hold firmly to a somewhat elaborate scheme of doctrine as indicating the process of Christian salva- tion. The essentials of this process are: first, that all men were involved in Adam’s original sin, or fall, and remain so to this day; not merely by sharing with him in a common human inheritance, but by being specifically involved in the guilt of that first sin, through a ‘‘cove- nant’’ made with Adam in which he acted ‘‘not only for himself, but for his posterity.’’ Second: that, as a result of this fall, all men are out of touch with God, and are under His ‘‘wrath and curse,’’ which will issue in eternal torment for them unless they be delivered from this deadly peril of the ‘‘wrath to come.’’ Third: that, for restoration to divine favor and to assurance of eternal life, the wrath of God must be placated, and the justice of God vindicated; and that through the death of Christ as a sacrifice a way was found ‘‘to satisfy divine justice,’’ a transaction in which He took the guilt of the sinner upon Himself, and suffered in the sinner’s stead. Fourth: that in this sacrifice, as the guilt of the sinner is imputed to Christ so the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the sinner, in order that he may be ac- counted righteous in the sight of God. In due course, actual righteousness and sanctification follow. What, on the other hand, is the liberal conception of the meaning and way of salvation? That is not so easy to make clear; in part because liberal Christianity ranges freely and dislikes fences and corrals; in part also because it deals with vital processes, which are always THE NEW TESTAMENT 99 harder to grasp and define than intellectual formulas, or facts of history. The liberal Christian agrees with the traditionalist in the acceptance of certain aspects of the ‘‘doctrines of grace.’’ He is as earnestly sure as any upholder of the doctrine of original sin, that all men are bound in one bundle of life, that our nature is in large part the inherited product of the past; that the roots of our sin- fulness go back to the beginning of human life. He is sure that sin cannot lead to anything but curse and misery in the universe of the Righteous and Holy God, and that the one real problem in life is how to get rid of sin, in the individual and in social life. He knows that God hates sin, and that no one ean be in fellow- ship with God who is on good terms with sin. : He is also convinced, as fervently so as any conserva- tive can be, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and that ‘‘there is none other name in which we can be saved.’’? He ascribes to Christ the name and office of the ‘‘One Mediator.’’ But he frankly avows that forensic, governmental, and strictly substi- tutionary theories of how Christ brings about salvation mean little or nothing to him; they seem inadequate, unworthy, and artificial, in a world which is at heart a matter of personal relationships. These older theories seem necessarily to represent God as Judge, Sovereign, or some other sort of public official. And, to one who feels that God is the Father, that life is essentially per- sonal, and that the world is God’s home, representations of God as Judge or Sovereign are as incongruous, as un- satisfying and distasteful, in thinking of salvation, as it would be to bring into a home and make operative in ae 100 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY its ongoing the ordered ritual and mechanical procedure of a law court or a monarch’s presence-chamber. It is not that the liberal Christian has a cheap or » easy-going sense of sin. But the root evil and essence * “of sin, as he sees it, is not a law broken, a judge of- fended, a monarch or magistrate angered. It is rather a personal relationship broken, a heart wounded, a dis- astrous failure in personal duty and privilege. Is that taking a lighter view of sin? He only can say so who counts his public relations more important than his real, inner dealings with his own household and friends. To the liberal Christian, therefore, much of the fabric of the substitutionary theology, its elaborate talk of *‘eovenants,’’ of offended justice, of accounts kept, af satisfaction to be rendered, of imputation whereby suilt and righteousness are ‘‘reckoned’’ to others than to those to whom they naturally belong, of transmitted cuilt from Adam’s first sin, much of this is felt and seen to be, not untrue so much as unreal, dealing with shad- ows rather than with the substance. The less elaborate and the more simple the approach can be made between a good father and a bad child, the more hope there is of success in the re-establishment of right relations. It may be necessary for the father to be severe, or even to seem merciless. His must be the long-sighted love that can exert to the full that sternness that brings ‘‘the ' far-off interest of tears.’? Certainly the father must suffer with and for the sinful child, and must make known to the child how deeply he suffers. There must be no compromise, however, as to the necessity of being right, and no limit can be set to what the father will do to help his child back to right personal relations THE NEW TESTAMENT 101 again. But to the liberal Christian, a student of social life, it seems very clear that the failures of the existing machinery of legal and governmental procedure of our human contriving, are altogether due to the mixture of the impersonal and the low grade personal in their make-up and administration. Indeed, of late the intro- duction of juvenile courts, courts of domestie rela- tions, and the like, shows a desire on the part of our officials to correct this situation. In the face of this new tendency in criminal practice, to retain in our thought of the relations between God and man the atmo- sphere of the old-time court room seems unworthy and reactionary—lowering to the real dignity and glory of God. The religion of the liberal Christian is, as we have said, wholly based on personality at its highest and per- sonal relationships at their best. To him, therefore, salvation is that life of fellowship with God for which man was made; a never-ending, ever- deepening’ friendship with the eternal Father; it is experiencing the joy of being holy and loving; not merely the effort to be good and loving: not that at all. The liberal Christian is as sure as his conservative brother that salvation is by faith, not by works; that true righteousness is never self-righteousness. To be saved is to enter into the joy of unconscious, instinctive rightness of living, with deep inward harmony of spirit, and in true fellowship with God and with man. As to the way of salvation, the means and method by which it comes, the liberal Christian is sure that it comes by the direct action of the spirit of God within and upon the soul of man. Only God can bring us out of sin 102 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY into holiness, out of selfishness into merey and loving kindness, out of disharmony into peace, out of death into life. And the liberal Christian believes that in Jesus Christ we have at once and in one person the supreme ap- proach of God to man, and the supreme approach of man to God. In Him we see the perfect realization of the human life that is one with God in absolute personal fellowship; in Him also we see God in all His love, goodness, inflexible righteousness, and tender sympathy. In His life we see what God is; in His death we see how far the love of God will go in its saving reach: in His life after death we see at once the evidence that he is one with the living God, and the earnestness of the promise that God ‘‘will not leave us in the dust.’’ It is ‘‘in Christ,’’ ‘‘through Christ,’’ that we can find salvation, the liberal Christian believes. For, when he says ‘‘salvation,’’ his thoughts are not exclusively, or even chiefly, on the life to come, although his vision takes that in, too. Of life beyond death he can give no assurance, save to those who are ‘‘in Christ’’; he is sure that to them eternal life is God’s gift. But he cannot accept the monstrous notion that life beyond the crave is for those only who consciously ‘‘aecept Christ”’ or believe a certain creed. The millions who have never heard of the Gospel, and the many who have heard its message in so poor and twisted a fashion that they have rejected what, really known, they would love—all these sons of men he is content to trust to the eternal good- ness; for, to his mind God would not be worthy of man’s trust if He would not do the best that can be done for every one of His children. He agrees with Paul that THE NEW TESTAMENT 103 God ‘‘will have all men to be saved.’’ But the liberal Christian means, when he says that salvation comes ‘*through Christ’’ or is found ‘‘in Christ,’’ that the full- ness of life in fellowship with God, for which man was made, comes surely and radiantly, now and forever, only through Jesus Christ. He is the ‘‘One Mediator,’’ in the sense that He is the one in whom God and man meet and find each other. The liberal Christian, let it be frankly said, neither assigns nor grants to the death of Christ any such exclusive place as is given to it in the system of the dogmatic authoritarian. He makes much of it, as the climax and summing up of the life of Christ; as the sharpest, clearest revelation of God in his relation to sin and the sinner; an overwhelmingly ap- pealing demonstration of how far the love of God will go, and how far the love of man should go, in suffering with and for the sinful. Indeed, the liberal Christian is not barred from the use of most, if not all, of the imagery with which the atoning death on Calvary has been set forth, provided he is free to use it as poetry, not as mathematics; as inspired song, not as cold logic. Nevertheless, this is true above all, and all through: the liberal Christian does not think of, and cannot use, or rely on, the death of Christ apart from Christ’s life, His teaching of the way and the truth, His resur- rection, His present living grace, and the eternal ex- perience of the Living God among men. Calvary is to him not simply a hill standing by itself, where some- thing was done once, apart from human life as a whole, on which our salvation depends. It is true that what was done there was done once for all; there has been, there will be, there can be, no other Calvary. But the 104 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY glory of Calvary is that on that hill and on that day came to perfect, climacteric expression that which the living God is always doing; always showing love that conquers death and sin, grace that dies to save. Just as Jesus Christ is a definite, historic character, and yet derives His unique power and glory from the fact that what He was, God always is, and that now and ever men find God in Him; so the death of Christ is a defi- nite, historic event, which yet derives its unique power and glory from the fact that what He did, God is always doing, and that now and ever men find their sins taken away by His love and grace, which will stop at no limits where the eternal good of man is involved. Inadequate as is this statement of the liberal view of the meaning and means of salvation—a personal con- fession rather than an authoritative declaration—I be- lieve it represents fairly well what most evangelical liberal Christians hold to be true about the salvation which is in Christ for us men. This is the faith which is preached from liberal evangelical pulpits. Here, then, are the two views—the authoritarian and the liberal Christian. Our question is, now, which of these is nearer to the real teaching and spirit of the New Testament? Let the scope of the question be clearly seen and noted. It does not ask which of the two fits the creeds better. It is simply and solely a question of closer degree of conformity to the actual teaching of Jesus and Paul, and of the New Testament as a whole. What are the facts? One is embarrassed here by the wealth of material, and the sheer impossibility of setting it forth in any satisfactory manner. In preparation for this particular THE NEW TESTAMENT 105 chapter, I spent many hours in reading the entire New Testament, and noting carefully every definite state- ment made in it with regard to the meaning and way of salvation. It was a work of grace, an amazing and uplifting spiritual experience. I beg all of my readers to do something similar. There is nothing more needed just now than that very many earnest Christians who love the Lord Jesus and genuinely desire to know His way of life and to forward His Kingdom, should go to the New Testament for themselves with open minds and see what its books say with regard to salvation, what it is, and how it comes. It would take a long course of lectures, or a large volume, to do full justice to the teaching of the New Testament as to salvation. All I can hope to do is to present certain decisive conclusions to which this study has brought me. And I most earnestly beg all who read these words to adopt the method so successfully used in Berea, searching the Scriptures carefully to see whether these things are so. The New Testament itself, the word of the everlasting Gospel, must give the final ‘decision. What do we find? Let us take the Gospels first; and for the purposes of this particular study, we need make no separation be- tween the three Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth Gos- pel. As a matter of fact, added weight attaches to what we find in John if we look on it as a late book, which contains not only facts in the life of Christ, but theological reflections on that life and its meaning. We find, first of all, not a hint of Adam’s fall in the four Gospels, not a reference to it of any sort; not a 106 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY suggestion of any scheme of ‘‘covenants,’’—‘‘ covenant of works,’’ ‘‘covenant of grace.’’ Of the whole doctrine of man’s fall in Adam, and the transmission of original euilt therefrom, which bulks so large in dogmatic theol- ogy of the authoritarian type, not even a suggestion is discoverable in all the four Gospels. The only approach I find in the four Gospels to this doctrine of transmitted guilt from Adam’s fall is in the opening of the ninth chapter of John. There the disci- ples, seeing the blind man, ask whether his condition is due to the sin of his parents. Jesus declares that that does not enter into the case, and turns their attention from speculations about the past to the needs of the present. So far as I can discover there is but this one approach in the thought of the Gospels to the doctrine of Adam’s fall and the transmission of original sin, and it is a very faint one, which, on the whole, counts against rather than for giving it a place of any importance in Christian doctrine. We will anticipate somewhat and state here that no- where else in the entire New Testament do we find any reference to Adam’s fall, save in two passages in Paul’s epistles. In one of these a parallelism is drawn which is far from congruous with the Adamic theory of original sin; for it declares that ‘‘as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.’’ If this parallel be taken literally, then it must mean all men in the one case as well as in the other. That interpretation lands us in Universalism. As a matter of fact, when the statement is interpreted in its proper bearing, it does not lie open to the charge of sustaining Universalism. Anyone familiar with Paul’s THE NEW TESTAMENT 107 thought and language knows that he uses the phrases ‘‘in Adam”’ and ‘‘in Christ’’ to designate states of spir- itual experience. The verse thus means that all who are ‘‘in Adam,’’ that is, in the natural, fleshly state of the soul, are dead; and that all who are ‘‘in Christ’’ are alive. But it is clear, if we take this view, that Paul views the being ‘‘in Adam”’ not as participation in the ‘‘guilt of his first transgression,’’ but as the char- acteristic spiritual experience of the unredeemed soul. There is no hint whatsoever here of any intention to assert or imply that all men were potentially present when Adam sinned, or that they share the guilt of that first sin. The other of the two passages is the fifth chapter of Romans. While it makes more of the figure of Adam, the simple fact is that no such thought as the imputation of sin or guilt enters into its language, taken at its face value. The thought, instead, is that all men share in sin, aS universally as they share in the human nature that sins; that the sin they do is their own as much as is the bit of human nature with which they do it. Here also it is clearly stated that the gift of life is as universal as the heritage of death. As ‘‘the many’’ die, so ‘‘the many’”’ are made righteous. Even if we should grant that this classic passage means all that the covenant theology has taken it to mean, it would surely be questionable procedure to make so immense and weighty a dogma depend thus on a single passage. Add what is unquestionably true, that Paul was fond of poetic imagery for its illustrative value— delightfully expressed by a great modern scholar in the statement that had Paul been speaking to men of a 108 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY later day, his message would have been addressed not so much to theologians as to musicians, not to Anselm, but to John Sebastian Bach—and then revert to the fact that the passage in question is very far actually from supporting clearly the traditional interpretation, for it lends itself readily to alternative explanations, and this will seem a slender and frail peg on which to hang so large and heavy a doctrine as that of original sin and the fall in Adam. If that dogma were as cen- trally important as theologians of the older school have averred, would it not, like ‘‘the Kingdom of God,’’ appear and reappear on page after page of the Gospels? Not a suggestion, or a shadowed hint of it is found in them. And would not Paul have given it fuller recog- nition? Theologians may defend the dogma of the fall of all men in Adam, and their consequent share in the euilt of original sin, as a creation of their own, on the basis of logic and argument. It cannot be maintained that it is an essential or important doctrine of New Testament teaching. A similar statement can be made, well nigh as deci- sively, with regard to the absence from the four Gospels of the forensic doctrine of substitutionary atonement and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Those who hold these doctrines to be essential or important elements of Christian truth may be successfully challenged to ad- duce any support for them from these four books. Abun- dant testimony is forthcoming in the four Gospels to the fact that Christ came into the world to save sinners; there is ample support for the assertion that His death is a powerful factor in that work of salvation; but no em- phatie or unmistakable testimony in confirmation of any THE NEW TESTAMENT 109 forensic or governmental theory of justification, or of any strictly substitutionary view of the atonement. How amazing, therefore, is this insistence that something should be regarded as in a very special sense ‘‘the Gos- pel,’’ which is nowhere emphasized or strongly stated in any one of the four Gospels! Indeed, there is just one passage in all the Gospea material which can be quoted with even a shade of war- rant in support of the extreme form in which the ‘‘doc- trines of grace’’ are conceived by dogmatic authori. tarianism; particularly the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. It is the saying of Jesus, reported in Mat- thew xx. 28 and Mark x. 45 that, ‘‘the Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many.’’ Unquestionably, the word ‘‘ransom,’’ taken in its original and native sense, refers to a payment whereby one is set free from slavery, or captivity, or some evil condition. It is also a fact to which full weight should be given that our Lord here uses the preposition gyct, the root idea of which is ‘‘instead of,’’ or ‘‘in place of,’’ rather than Saéo, which means ‘‘on behalf of.’’ This saying might, therefore, be brought forward as an exception to the general rule that the theological ideas of substitution or imputation are not found in the Gospels. But fair-mindedness goes on to take into the account also certain other facts. Greek scholars tell us that good form requires the use of dyct with Aitoov; and that its use, therefore, in putting Jesus’ words into Greek will not serve to determine the expression orig- inally used by Him in Aramaic. It must also be ad- mitted that the saying contains no hint as to the person +9 whom, or the way in which, the ransom is to be paid. 110 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY The substitutionary theory of atonement is only one way and not certainly the best way in which these two questions may be answered. But the most decisive fact of all is that in this same connection our Lord acts as His own interpreter, by referring to His coming death as significant for two reasons: first, as setting forth the spirit in which He came, lived, and ministered; and second, as constituting an example to His followers. It is quite impossible to evade or escape the implications of the fact—more im- pressive in its simple directness than any amount of subtle theologizing—that our Lord introduces this state- ment with which we are dealing, of the meaning of His death, with the words ‘‘even as,’’ or as quoted by Mark, ‘*For the Son of Man also.’’ If that means anything it means, ‘‘you too must be as I am, and do as I do; my death must show your spirit.’’ This is exactly what Christ’s greatest human interpreter does when he explains that his telling of Christ’s ‘‘equality with God’’ and His ‘‘death on the cross’’ has been done for the purpose of emphasizing the practical counsel, ‘‘Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’’ Even in this one cardinal text relied on by dogmatic authori- tarians, the death of our Lord is set forward by Him- self as an example to His followers rather than as a substitutionary sacrifice for sin, in which they can have no share, and which cannot be imitated in their own lives. One saying out of all the wealth of the four Gospels! And that saying far from clear in its teaching of a substitutionary theory of the atoning death; appearing to some of us rather to present that death as an ex- ample, a manifestation for our emulation of the spirit THE NEW TESTAMENT 111 of sacrifice for others which saves and purifies and works redemption. Again we say, a slender peg on which to hang so weighty and precise a doctrine. I cannot refrain from emphasizing once more the _fact that in the fourth Gospel, latest and most theolog- ical of New Testament books, there is no hint or trace of the substitutionary theory of the atonement, or of what older theology used to call ‘‘the scheme of re- demption,’’ in which the death of Christ in the sinner’s stead had central place. What tremendous decisiveness dwells in the fact that the Prologue to that Gospel, writ- ten long after the Lord’s death and resurrection, giving the most majestic forthsetting in the whole New Testa- ment of the glory of the divine Christ and Lord, leading up to the great declaration that through His coming into human history light and salvation and sonship came to man—that in all this there is no hint that the death of Christ in our stead is a cardinal fact in Christian doc- trine. Here is a ‘‘Cur Deus Homo?’’ beside which An- selm’s has no authority at all; and that which Anselm decides to be the essential element in the answer does not even emerge in John’s discussion of the meaning of Christ’s incarnation. That is a fact worthy of serious attention. In the fourth Gospel, as in the Synoptists—perhaps even more than in them—much is made of the death of Christ. Our salvation is shown to be intimately con- nected with that death. But always that death is held aloft as the supreme manifestation of the habitual spirit of Christ, as the necessary climax of His life and work, or as the power that shall attract men, and unify all the ‘‘children of God,’’ as the fullest revelation of the love 112 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY of God that will not be denied, the grace of God that knows no limit, or as the supreme and perfect example for men to adore and follow. It would be a joy and a satisfaction to go through the Gospels and show how clear is this fact. I must leave each of my readers to do that for himself. I can only point out certain great and decisive discoveries that emerge as we honestly seek to learn the teaching of the Gospels. Always, when the Master uses the word ‘‘save,’’ or ‘‘salvation,’’ he means fullness of life. He does not always discriminate between spiritual and physical life. Indeed in many cases He uses the word to denote the new and radiant health of body that came to sick men and women through contact with Him. ‘‘Thy faith hath saved thee’’ was said most frequently, if not exclusively, to those recipients of an added fullness of life who were thereby freed of bodily or mental ills. And always the means of that salvation is contact with the personality | of Christ Himself. It is so clear in the Gospels that one wonders how anyone can fail to see it, that to Christ Himself ‘‘salvation’’ did not mean acquittal in a court- room, forensic justification, or release from guilt or penalty through the intervention of a substitute. Sal- vation plainly meant to Him fresh access of vital force, a new vigor, zest, and joy of living, and to Him the means of salvation was always personal contact with His own radiant, life-giving personality. Always He was busy, turning men’s thoughts and hearts to the God who was lke Him, revealed in Him, known and made known by Him. He is the ‘‘bread’’ by which men live, the ‘‘grace that comes down from heaven and gives life.’’ Always it is this impartation of added THE NEW TESTAMENT 113 fullness to life that stands out as the chief meaning of salvation in the narratives of the first three Gospels, the doctrines of the fourth, and in the whole life and teaching of Jesus ‘‘as He is offered to us in the Gospel.’’ Beginning at the Sermon on the Mount and on through all that Jesus did and taught while in bodily presence on earth, He clearly shows that to His view the ‘‘saved’’ man, the happy, blessed, God- approved child of the Father and of the Father’s home, is the one who has found, and finds every day in growing measure, a true spiritual experience, a spirit characterized by humility, sincerity, unselfishness, aspiration after righteousness, kindness, inward purity, love of peace and steadfast loyalty, the one who dares stand for God and truth, who enters into the joy and elory of self-devotion, whose righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisee because it is inward and loving, whose ideal is to be perfect as God is perfect, who yet knows that the beginning of that perfection is for a man to turn and become as a little child. Poor in spirit and yet dauntless; seeking first the Kingdom of God; finding the whole Bible condensed in the Golden Rule, and the two great commandments; loving, keeping, doing the will of the Master, and walking in His way and truth; eager to be kind and ready to forgive—so does the Gospel picture the ‘‘saved’’ man. One who goes with open mind to the Synoptic Gospels, rises from their study forced to the irresistible conclusion that to Christ the ‘‘saved’’ man was the Christlike, the one who had ‘‘entered into life’’ and found the secret of joy, vigor, and peace in a spirit and life like that of his Savior, yes, like that of God Himself. This life of love and faith, 114 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY of fearlessness and joy, of daily fellowship with God— wholesomely ethical as well as wholesomely mystical— this is salvation as Jesus saw it. Its very center and essence is personal fellowship with God, and with Christ who reveals Him. Salvation came to Zaecheus when Christ entered his life as well as his home. Mary chose the good part when she chose to sit at the feet of Jesus in humble, loving fellowship. And all may find ‘‘rest’’ and ‘‘life’? by coming to Him, just coming, without the surmounting of theological fences, or the accepting of doctrinal or other requirements. ‘‘Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise east out.’’ Every time Christ speaks of hell, or of eternal danger and loss, the connection shows the fatal lack to be, not one of doctrinal soundness, nor of isolation from ‘‘the true Church,’’ but the lack of this living and loving grace. In one instance He draws a picture of the judg- - ment which is more impressive and convincing than Michelangelo’s painting, or Spohr’s oratorio, or all that the creeds and theologies have said abont the Last Judg- ment; and the test, the only test, on which the issues of eternity are made to hang, is simple love, shown in kindness and service, unconscious love, the revelation of a right heart. He tells of one man in hell; and all we are told of him is that he failed to be kind, to show the spirit of Christ. Indeed the word of Paul might be the motto of the story of Dives, ‘‘If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His.’’ Such is salvation according to the Jesus of the Gos- pels. Bearing this in mind, and remembering also that while our Lord spoke of ‘‘salvation’’ some dozen times only, he spoke more than one hundred times of the THE NEW TESTAMENT 115 ‘Kingdom of God,’’ 7.¢e., of redemption as a great com- mon enterprise for the world, in which we are to share with Him, we can confidently and gladly claim that liberal Christianity in its view of what salvation is comes very near to the spirit and view of the Master Himself. What of the means whereby salvation is obtained, the ‘‘way’’ by which one enters into life? Is there discover- able in all the four Gospels, any statement that no one is saved, nor can anyone enter into the new and eternal life, except through some process or scheme, the out- working of a supernatural drama? Are we anywhere told that the way to salvation is through believing in the death of Christ as a satisfaction for sin and a substitute for the penalty the sinner had to pay, or that one can become right with God only through the imputation to him of Christ’s righteousness? I am not now attempting to pass upon the question of the truth of these doctrines, though, it must be admitted, the question of their vital importance is clearly involved here. I am raising, how- ever, a simple question of fact: Does our Lord, in the Gospels, clearly teach the ‘‘way’’ of salvation held to be essential by authoritarians? The plain answer is that He does not. He does not even hint at it. On the other hand, His teaching is simple, clear, de- cisive, as to the ‘‘way’’ of salvation. It is through coming to God, and especially through coming to God as revealed in Christ. It is through obedience, following, doing the will, loving God, having the grace of God in the heart, With no hint of preliminaries, of theological conditions to be met, or of any conditions at all, we are to ask, seek, and knock, until our persistence is rewarded with the establishment of the closer personal contact 116 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY with God that brings in its train the added fullness of life ealled salvation. ‘‘Come unto me,’’ ‘‘follow me,’’ ‘‘believe in God,’’ that is all. Jesus left one prayer for His followers to use. In it He tells us to ask for- giveness of sins simply and directly. Forgiveness is for those who forgive, eternal life is for those who obey, follow, love, and serve. Those are in that personal re- lationship which 7s salvation, who do the will of God: ‘‘for whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother and sister and mother.’’ One inherits eternal life by loving God and one’s neighbor; and the Lord even chooses a heretic in doctrine to exemplify the all- inclusive love that gives entrance into eternal life. His richest, deepest teaching of what it means to be saved, that parable of the Lost Son in which the human heart left to itself has always found the heart of the Gospel, shows salvation as coming just through the son’s turning again to his Father. That parable decisively condemns the self-righteous idea of salvation by one’s own good- ness, in the hateful character of the elder son; but it shows the sinner finding salvation, not through any sae- rifice, or the outworking of any forensic or substitu- tionary scheme, but just through penitence and faith on the one hand, and forgiving love on the other. There is an animal slain in that story; but it is to provide, not a sacrifice, but a feast of joy. Equally clear as in the Synoptists is the position of the fourth Gospel that the ‘‘ way’’ of salvation is through the grace of God coming to man, as man comes to God. At the very outset the ‘‘Lamb of God’’ is presented as about to ‘‘take away the sin of the world’’ through His death: yet the death is looked on, as later in the book, THE NEW TESTAMENT 117 as @ necessary preliminary to the ‘‘baptism with the spirit.’’ It is the grace of God that brings salvation, giving men a new birth, making them see the Kingdom; God so loved the world that He gave His Son, that men, believing on Him, might have eternal life. It is in this personal relationship with God through Christ that salva- tion is found.