^0^ 
 
 ,,,. ol ^\« ^^^'^^Himl ^,... 
 
 i\>;^i 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 '""%. 
 
 -\ 
 
 Shelf 
 
 BR 121 .C53 1899 
 
 Clarke, William Newton, 184 
 
 -1912. 
 What shall we think of 
 
WHAT SHALL WE THINK 
 OF CHRISTIANITY? 
 
WHAT SHALL WE THINK 
 OF CHRISTIANITY? 
 
 THE LEVERING LECTURES BEFORE THE 
 
 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 
 
 1899 
 
 By WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE, D.D. 
 
 Author of 
 '*AN OUTLINE OF CHKISTIAN THEOLOGY." 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 NEW YORK 1899 
 
CojyyrigJd, 1S99, 
 By Charles Sckibner's Sons. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Camukidge, U.S.A. 
 
2r?)ese noctures, 
 
 NOW PUBLISHED A8 TIIEY WERE DELIVERED, 
 
 ARE DEDICATED, IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE, 
 
 TO 
 
 MR. EUGENE LEVERING, 
 
 The Founder of the Course, 
 
 AND 
 
 TO THE DELIGHTFUL AUDIENCES THAT LISTENED 
 
 TO THEM. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 I. The Christian People 1 
 
 II. The Christian Doctrine .... 48 
 
 III. The Christian Power 98 
 
The sower went forth to sow his seed: 
 and as he sowed, some fell by the way side ; 
 and it tuas trodden under foot, and the birds 
 of the heaven devoured it. Afid other fell 
 on the rock; and as soon as it grew, it 
 withered away, because it had no moisture. 
 And other fell amidst the thorns ; and the 
 thorns grew with it, and choked it. And 
 other fell i?ito the good ground, and grezu^ 
 and brought forth fruit a htcndredfold. He 
 that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 
 
 So is the kingdom of God, as if a man 
 shotild cast seed upon the earth ; a?id should 
 sleep and rise flight and day, and the seed 
 should spring up and grow, he knozueth not 
 how. The earth beareth fruit of herself; 
 first the blade, then the ear, then the full 
 corn in the ear. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE THINK 
 OF CHEISTIANITY? 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 I AM heartily glad to speak, in this 
 presence, of the things that occupy my 
 thoughts and make my life, and to speak 
 with the utmost freedom. I shall be glad 
 if what I may say fulfils in some degree 
 the apologetic purpose of this lectureship, 
 by making some Christian realities in 
 which I believe more clear and more help- 
 ful to some who listen. I believe in the 
 greatness and worth of Jesus Christ, and 
 I have some sense of the preciousness of 
 his gifts to mankind : and I propose that 
 in these three lectures we look together at 
 three great contributions that he has made 
 
 to the moral wealth and welfare of hu- 
 1 
 
 / 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 manity. These contributions are the 
 Christian People, the Christian Doctrine, 
 and the Christian Power. 
 
 My reason for selecting these three gifts 
 of Christ for consideration is, that these 
 three go far toward making up that great 
 fact in history and life which we call 
 Christianity. When Jesus, the founder of 
 Christianity, left the world, what did he 
 leave beliind him that he did not find 
 here? What elements had he added to 
 the life of mankind, and brought in as his 
 contribution to the future? He left in 
 the world, at least in vigorous and prom- 
 ising beginnings, a people, a doctrine, and 
 a power : — a people, few but attentive 
 and receptive; a doctrine, growing into 
 fulness and vitality tlirough their experi- 
 ence ; and a power, already operative and 
 of boundless potency. These combined 
 bequests of his had at first no common 
 name. At first their unity could not be 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 clearly discerned. Nevertheless, he had 
 left a unity in the world, not a mere 
 sprinkling of detached results, and in due 
 time the unity asserted itself. After a 
 little his disciples were named, and proba- 
 bly nicknamed. Christians. The nick- 
 name stayed upon them, and came to be 
 their chosen name for whatsoever belonged 
 to them in relation to their Master. In 
 the name they gloried, for it denoted that 
 new something, unlike the possessions of 
 mankind, yet normal and suitable to man, 
 which Jesus had brought in. Their church 
 was soon the Christian church, and their 
 doctrine the Christian doctrine ; and the 
 unified result of Jesus' presence among 
 men came by and by to be known as 
 Christianity. Both the name and the fact 
 have continued until now. If we seek to 
 know what Christianity is, and of what 
 elements it is composed, how can we de- 
 scribe it better than by saying that it is 
 made up of these three elements, the peo- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 pie, the doctrine, and the power that Jesus 
 left in the world as his abiding gift to 
 man? If we find more than these, we 
 shall find it, I judge, mainly by unfolding 
 what these contain. In every age these 
 three constitute, or at least efficiently 
 represent, what we call Christianity. By 
 means of these the Christian name has 
 been kept alive among men, and the Chris- 
 tian influence has been exerted. 
 
 I wish to inquire how well these gifts 
 of Cln-ist, these elements of Christianity, 
 have done their work, and of how much 
 attention they are really worthy now, 
 after so long a time. They all stand for 
 the holy and beneficent name of Jesus, 
 and are supposed to convey to us, each in 
 its own manner, the gift and influence that 
 he brought. All ought to bear a decided 
 apologetic value. Such a value they are 
 universally expected to show. It is as- 
 sumed that tlie Christian people fairly 
 represent the human fruit that the Saviour 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 5 
 
 of men intended to produce, that the 
 Christian doctrine fairly expresses what 
 the Master meant to teach, and that the 
 Cliristian power is such as the Lord of 
 men is satisfied to be exerting. These 
 gifts of Christ are such that in the light of 
 them Christ himself can scarcely fail to be 
 judged. Of this we cannot complain, nor 
 can we imagine that he himself would 
 make objection. He who said of men, 
 " By their fruits ye shall know them,'* 
 will not refuse to submit to a fair use of 
 the test that he has proposed for others. 
 Christianity may reasonably be estimated 
 in view of these its constituent elements, 
 if only we can manage to do the judging 
 fairly. 
 
 Yet how various the judgments are! 
 and we cannot wonder. Some say that 
 the Cliristian enterprise is the one success- 
 ful thing in all the world : the people are 
 the salt of the earth, the doctrine is the 
 light of the world, and the power is God's 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 own power for salvation. Others say that 
 these fruits are no special credit to him 
 whose name they bear: long time and 
 little done, poor fruit and little of it, all 
 sorts of imperfections in the people, incon- 
 sistencies and irrationalities infesting the 
 doctrine, great unevenness in the operation 
 of the power. All the way between these 
 two extremes the judgments range. We 
 are living now in an atmosphere that is 
 rife with criticism: for there are many 
 who sincerely think that Christianity has 
 been tried in the balances and found want- 
 ing, and is justly condemned by its failure 
 to produce a people, a doctrine, or a power 
 proportioned in excellence to its claims. 
 
 In what I may have the honor to say in 
 this presence, I desire to show, if possible, 
 what is true about these three gifts of 
 Christ which constitute our Christianity. 
 I wish to look at them fairly, if I can. 
 I am not here to defend what bears the 
 name of Christian merely because it bears 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 that name, nor am I here to surrender 
 what is precious because it is not perfect. 
 I shall inquire what can reasonably be ex- 
 pected of these gifts in the world, and 
 how well they are fulfilling rational ex- 
 pectations. I shall note some of the con- 
 ditions attendant upon the rise, growth, 
 and continuance of these three elements 
 of Christianity, in order that we may 
 judge, with some fairness, how well they 
 have done their work and realized the 
 aims of Christ. Thus I shall try to as- 
 certain what we ought to think of Chris- 
 tianity. And perhaps we may discern 
 something of the winning and convincing 
 beauty of the Lord in these his gifts. 
 
 In the present hour we consider the 
 Christian People. 
 
 There is no mystery about the beginning 
 of the Christian people. Jesus left in the 
 world the little band of believers in him- 
 
8 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 self that had gathered around him in his 
 ministry. They were disciples learning 
 of him, and some of them were already 
 named apostles, messengers, or heralds. 
 We read of a hundred and twenty in Jeru- 
 salem, and above five hundred, perhaps in 
 Galilee. Very soon the hundreds became 
 thousands. Out from Palestine his name 
 went to the Roman world, and in Antioch, 
 Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome itself, mul- 
 titudes were added to the Christian com- 
 pany. By the time that Jesus, if he had 
 lived, would have attained to the age of 
 three-score years and ten, the Roman 
 empire was dotted over with Christian 
 churches, and a people devoted to his 
 Name was everywhere. 
 
 Who were they, and what ? What prin- 
 ciples were operative in the formation of 
 the Christian people ? How came it to be 
 what it was ? I shall be glad if I can set 
 forth and illustrate the simple and com- 
 monplace fact tliat the normal and neces- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 sary laws of life had their way here. 
 Christianity, placed in the world, experi- 
 enced the inevitable, and took the con- 
 sequences of existence. The Christian 
 people, first and later, was such as it 
 could he. 
 
 The Founder, as we know, drew his first 
 followers from among the Jews. Not from 
 the circle of the high religionists did they 
 come, but from that better circle which 
 was found among the common people. 
 Here were the Jewish homes, where relig- 
 ion was pure and sweet, and faith took 
 hold upon the God of the fathers, — where 
 response to a new and holy influence, 
 therefore, was most possible. Out of the 
 common class, the fishermen and the poor, 
 came the first to follow Jesus. Legalism 
 had not blinded the eyes of these to spirit- 
 ual beauty, and the simple saw the glory 
 of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Igno- 
 rant of many things they were, and in 
 religion itself they needed long and patient 
 
10 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 teaching, yet these were the men and 
 women to whom the Master could say^ 
 " Blessed are your eyes for they see, and 
 your ears for they hear." 
 
 When the Master had gone, these were 
 his heralds. Enlightened they were in 
 heart by the power of love and the insight 
 that comes from spiritual fellowship, glow- 
 ing and enthusiastic was their faith, and 
 yet they were themselves, and could pro- 
 claim only what had become real to them. 
 No one learns great things thoroughly in a 
 single lesson. It is vain to imagine that 
 the first disciples could know their Master 
 perfectly at once, for even the divine 
 Spirit cannot dispense with the element 
 of time in guiding human beings into 
 truth. The fact simply is that a new, 
 glorious, uplifting, character-making power 
 was taking hold of men. Forth from 
 Jesus came a mighty transforming influ- 
 ence. It took men as it found them, for 
 it could not do otherwise, and it wrought 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 1 1 
 
 upon tliem as they could be wrought upon, 
 for it could not do more. It was a heav- 
 enlj- gift amid earthly elements, a divine 
 power working upon human materials. 
 The first Christian people were the human 
 materials upon which this divine power 
 had done, and was doing, its initial work. 
 They were this, and nothing more. 
 
 We can trace the process. The Chris- 
 tian message met its inevitable fate in the 
 hearing that it received. The hearers 
 heard with their own ears, and understood 
 by means of their own preconceptions. 
 Every growing thing grows according to 
 the soil that it falls into, and the seed of 
 the word was no exception. In Jerusalem, 
 the message was taken into minds full of 
 inherited Jewish ideas. The better spirit 
 of the Jewish religion and the narrow con- 
 straints of Jewish thought conspired to 
 make a Jewish-Christian people, in whom 
 the large conceptions and spiritual as^Dira- 
 tions of Jesus could find but scanty wel- 
 
12 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 come. We know how near tlie new faith 
 came to being smothered to death in a 
 Christian Judaism, and how Paul was the 
 chosen vessel of Christ to carry his name 
 out from these limitations to the Gentiles, 
 the nations of the world. The first group 
 of the Christian ^Deople came near burying 
 the gospel alive under their old ideas of 
 narrow religion. 
 
 Paul and his companions did carry the 
 Name abroad, and the Name went abroad 
 with power. Through the Roman world 
 it went, everywhere finding its welcome. 
 Multitudes received it with joy, and found 
 fresh life in Christ. Who were these? 
 These too were the poor and untrained. 
 Many of them were slaves, and many 
 others were of low station and narrow life. 
 Christ made life a new and larger thing, 
 and they felt, as they well might feel, that 
 the best thing in the world had come to 
 them. Among the believers were some of 
 large intelligence and power. Some of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 1 3 
 
 them could receive the new gift not only 
 into good and honest hearts, but into lives 
 somewhat prepared to bring forth the 
 worthiest fruit. Yet where was the mind 
 wherein there were no conceptions that 
 could enter into union with the new faith 
 only to injure it and diminish its effective- 
 ness? If Jewish legalism, monotheistic 
 though narrow, required time to be out- 
 grown, how must it be with polytheism, 
 with the popular superstitions that hung 
 about immemorial beliefs, and with the 
 moral corruptions that had sprung from 
 the coarse worships of an earlier day? 
 How long would such influences as these 
 linger when a new moral force, still new 
 indeed, was entering to transform the life ? 
 Paul rebukes his converts in Corinth for 
 low standards of living, and low vices 
 inherited from a long antiquity, and this 
 is exactly what we might expect. Nothing 
 else was possible than that such evils 
 should abide to trouble the friends of 
 
14 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 ChrisUike goodness in the church. Errors 
 in thought also, misconceptions of the 
 gospel, sprang up from the remains of old 
 thinking. At what date such evils could 
 reasonably be expected to disappear, let 
 him tell who dares to think he knows. A 
 Christian people could not be made except 
 from people who were filled with material 
 of thought and character quite contrary to 
 the aim of Christianity. 
 
 Nevertheless the new faith made its 
 people. It was not defeated, it was hon- 
 orably successful. It was far from making 
 a people that fulfilled its ideal, but it made 
 a people worthy of its endeavor. In the 
 first age there was a distinctively Christian 
 life, lived by a distinctively Clmstian com- 
 pany of men and women. It was a very 
 simple life, lived by a very simple people, 
 but it was animated in great measure by 
 the holy and gracious mind of Clii'ist. 
 How often have we wished that the 
 glimpses into it that are possible to us 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 1 5 
 
 were not so very few! Why, we have 
 asked, has not more been preserved to us 
 of the phxin common life of the Christians 
 of the first and second centuries ? But it 
 is not surprising. They were not a liter- 
 ary folk. Their writers were few, and 
 that they were making history they had 
 no idea. Such glimpses as we do obtain 
 are extremely precious. It was a great 
 gift when we recovered the long-lost 
 " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," with 
 its simple and unconscious revelation of 
 the people and their ways. Just when 
 and where its scenes were enacted v/e may 
 not know, but it is certain that here we 
 have a genuine view of life as it was 
 among the early Christians. As we read 
 we see that the life was simple, it was 
 devout, it was brotherly, it was hopeful, 
 it was pure in aim and aspiration. It is 
 easy to paint the Roman life of the first 
 century in black, ignoring the brighter 
 and worthier elements in the common 
 
1 6 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 world of that time ; and yet, though we 
 paint ever so fairly, it is plain when we 
 view this simple picture of Christian living 
 that a new uplifting force has entered to 
 the great Roman world, and a little group 
 of humanity, if no more, has been intro- 
 duced to sweeter, purer, worthier life. 
 The limitations of the new people are 
 written into the record as clearly as their 
 virtues, and the common faults of human 
 nature crop out in the conditions that 
 call for counsel and reproof; yet here is 
 a genuine fruit of the presence of Jesus 
 in the world for which our human race 
 may well be thankful. 
 
 Still we turn from the picture, and from 
 all companion-pictures that we possess, 
 feeling that the Christians of the first and 
 second centuries, taken as a mass, were 
 not capable of propagating the Christian- 
 ity that the Founder meant for mankind. 
 They possessed it only in part, and how 
 could they pass on the traditions of a 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 1/ 
 
 better faith than they hekl ? The inevi- 
 table had happened; the new faith had 
 taken such people as it found, and they 
 had received it as they could. But a 
 second inevitable followed. The people 
 were changed by the new faith, but the new 
 faith was changed by the people. Chris- 
 tianity transformed the people toward its 
 likeness, and was in turn transformed by 
 them toward their likeness. Shakespeare, 
 complaining, in one of his Sonnets says, 
 
 " My nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, hke the dyer's hand." 
 
 In the same strain Christianity might 
 speak. It made a new people, better than 
 it found them ; but they in turn inevitably 
 made a new Christianity, with its strong 
 points illustrated and confirmed in their 
 experience, but with weakness brought in 
 from their defects. The power of the new 
 faith to produce a people worthy of its 
 aims was inevitably diminished, less or 
 2 
 
1 8 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 more, by tlie faults that it was compelled 
 to take into itself from the people through 
 whom it wrought. Intractableness of 
 material modified the force. 
 
 Or, in other words, the Christian people, 
 with all its good and evil, with all its 
 strength and weakness, with all its glory 
 and shame, is the true resultant of the 
 force that has been working and the ma- 
 terial that it has wrought upon. This is 
 one, out of many, of the historical illus- 
 trations of the ]\iaster's parable of the four 
 kinds of soil. The good seed of the king- 
 dom was sown in the world, and prospered 
 in its growth according to the soil into 
 which it fell. In some places it took no 
 root at all, and in others it secured only 
 a temporary life. Where it did grow, it 
 sometimes had to grow in soil where there 
 were thorn-roots already in the ground, 
 and it must needs grow up among them. 
 If it is asked why an ideal Christian peo- 
 ple did not grow ujj, sufficient to vanquish 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 all doubts of the transforming power, the 
 answer is that the good seed did not 
 always fall into tlie clear soil, but often, 
 nay always, into places where there was 
 something to check and sometliing to mod- 
 ify its growth. The good seed is seed in 
 a thorn-field. But then, lest we be dis- 
 couraged, we may remember that it was in 
 order to redeem the field from the thorns 
 that the seed of Christ was sown, and that 
 in God's world good seed roots deeper, in 
 the long season, than the thorns. 
 
 This glance into the early period is 
 enough to illustrate the conditions that 
 insured to the rising Christian people 
 both strength and weakness, victory and 
 disappointment. Similar conditions have 
 always existed. There is no time for 
 detailed description of that which the 
 Christian seed has produced in the thorn- 
 field, but we will glance down the long 
 line of results in history, and see, so far as 
 
20 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 we may, what manner of peox)le it is that 
 Christ has brought into the world through 
 the Christian grace working amid obstruct- 
 insr influences. 
 
 The Christian people has a certain unity; 
 but in what does it consist ? There is no 
 one type of humanity, no one nationality 
 or race or class or training represented 
 here. The Christian i)eople is gathered 
 out of all nations and kindreds and peo- 
 ples and tongues, and yet it is marked 
 by one type of experience and character. 
 Only very broadly can this be asserted, I 
 know, but broadly it can be asserted. 
 There is a set of conceptions and experi- 
 ences by which the Christian character is 
 dominated, and where these are not, there 
 are no Christians. They did not all come 
 into the world with Christ, but they all 
 gather themselves about him into a char- 
 acter-giving unity. The seriousness of 
 life, the holiness and love of the one God, 
 the reality of sin, free salvation from sin 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOTLE 2 1 
 
 by the divine grace in Christ, human duty 
 learned from God in Christ, an inward 
 power for goodness, a deathless hope, — 
 these are the fundamental conceptions of 
 Christianity, and the Christian people are 
 those whose experience corresponds to 
 these conceptions. Or, more truly, Christ 
 presents these as realities, and the Chris- 
 tian people are those who experience these 
 realities. Such experiences create a type 
 of character. No other religion ever had 
 such experiences to offer, and therefore 
 none ever made a people like the Christian 
 people. Knowledge of God is common 
 enough, but not such knowledge of God : 
 knowledge of sin is common, but not of 
 such deliverance from sin : knowledge of 
 duty, but not such inspiration for duty : 
 hope, but not such hope. When there 
 comes to be a people formed, however im- 
 fectly, upon the experience of these reali- 
 ties, that people is the work of Christ. 
 Members of such a people, bearing such 
 
22 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 a character, have been known m all the 
 Christian ages. They have been imper- 
 fect, all, with every style and combination 
 of imperfections. Every side of the char- 
 acteristic experience has been lacking 
 somewhere, and somewhere exaggerated 
 or distorted. They have not understood 
 one another very well, and have often 
 failed to recocrnize one another. Never- 
 theless the common quality has marked 
 them, less or more, and they have been 
 brothers whether they knew it or not. 
 The people wdio know by experience about 
 sin and salvation, and learn their duty 
 from their Saviour God, and lift their 
 eyes to immortality in him, these do make 
 one family, a noble family, and God is 
 not ashamed of them, to be called their 
 God. 
 
 A character-making force working upon 
 various and imperfect men will, of course, 
 produce some best results. Some men are 
 best prepared beforehand for Christ's in- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 23 
 
 fliience, and in some tlie oppositions are 
 most effectively conquered. These are the 
 leaders, the best fruits. Every religion 
 has its saints, and Christianity has its long 
 calendar and its innumerable saints un- 
 named. The overtowerinof souls that 
 stand high above the rest, the ones in 
 whom Chi-istianity has done most, — a 
 noble company they form. If we could 
 clearly behold a group of the great Chris- 
 tians of the world, discerning their real 
 spiritual beauty, we should reverently bear 
 witness to the excellence of the heavenly 
 gift. In the group of greatest Christians 
 we should find men and women of deep 
 and serious heart ; persons not light- 
 minded, but to whom life is full of mean- 
 ing ; who know evil, both in themselves 
 and in the world, with a dreadful sense of 
 its reality ; who have discerned the infmite 
 grace that freely saves, and come to know 
 the eternal jroodness in the God who loves 
 forever ; who know the gladness of deliv- 
 
24 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 erance from evil, the brightness of hope 
 and the exhilaration of strong endeavor; 
 who have loved their fellows with a divine 
 affection and labored for their good ; who 
 know the eagerness of high aims, and have 
 used liigh powers for highest purposes ; 
 and from whom there has gone forth a 
 warm radiance of blessing as they have 
 walked among men. Children of faith, 
 they have endured as seeing him who is 
 invisible. Children of hope, they have 
 purified themselves, even as he is pure. 
 Children of love, they have gazed upon 
 God's glory and been changed into the 
 same image. Mark all their imperfec- 
 tions, not denying a single genuine one, 
 and yet we must bear testimony that 
 these great Christian souls that have been 
 among us are a worthy product of the 
 presence and work of Christ in the world. 
 AYithout them, how much poorer would 
 the history of our race have been ! What 
 would it be to di'op from the record the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 25 
 
 names, and from the human stock the 
 personalities, of Paul and John, of Origen 
 and Athanasius, of Ambrose and Augustine 
 and Monica, of Chrysostom and Gregory 
 the Great and Thomas Aquinas, of Tauler 
 and Thomas a Kempis, of Savonarola and 
 Dante and Michelangelo, of Francis of 
 Assisi and Xavier and Loyola, of Wyclif 
 and Huss, of Luther and Melanchthon, 
 of William the Silent and Cromwell and 
 Gustavus Adolphus, of Baxter and Bun- 
 yan, of Milton and George Fox, of Calvin 
 and John Knox, of the Wesleys and White- 
 field and Edwards, of Shaftesbury and 
 Gladstone and Leo Thirteenth, of Eliza- 
 beth Fry and Florence Nightingale, of 
 Livingstone, Channing, Moody, and Phil- 
 lips Brooks ? If besides these there have 
 stood forth leaders who misrepresented 
 the Christian quality, — which not one 
 even of these has perfectly expressed, — 
 what else can be expected when a holy 
 power is working through imperfect men, 
 
26 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 whose training has prepared them only in 
 part for their honorable mission ? 
 
 We must not think that the list of the 
 great adequately represents the Christian 
 people. We must remember the rank and 
 file if we wish to think justly of the whole. 
 Saints are of many kinds, not all equally 
 eminent in the sight of the world. The 
 lesser ones are precious, as well as the 
 greater. Two classes of saints have at- 
 tracted special admiration. The church 
 has often admired the saints of the cloister, 
 withdrawn from the world, given to medi- 
 tation and prayer, rebuking the evil of the 
 common life by retirement and reflection 
 upon better things. Eyes that have not 
 been attracted to these have been drawn 
 to the saints of the open field, strong 
 workmen or warriors of the Lord, doing 
 large work and known of all men. But 
 Christ, who gave some as apostles and 
 some as prophets, has also raised up saints 
 of the household, who are mediators of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 2/ 
 
 grace and strength to those whom they 
 love ; saints of the sick-chamber, who 
 suffer and are strong through the holy 
 faith ; saints of the market-place and the 
 workshop, who do the world's common 
 work in the spirit of fidelity and power; 
 citizen-saints, who bless the organized life 
 of man by wise counsel and unselfish liv- 
 ing; scholar-saints, who minister knowl- 
 edo'e to mankind ; and saints of the life of 
 charity, who bear the heart of Christ to 
 the needy. These all fall short of the 
 Lord's ideal, but yet we all know that in 
 them Christ has honorably accomplished 
 his purpose to make for himself a people 
 for his own possession, zealous of good 
 works, powerful for blessing. 
 
 Large perversions in the life and prac- 
 tice of the Christian people have of course 
 appeared : what would you look for ? We 
 will o'lance at a classical instance, and see 
 how naturally they came. For a while 
 Christianit}^ was the religion of the mar- 
 
28 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 tjTS. Pure, simple, and courageous in its 
 common life, it condemned the evil world 
 and insured for itself an honorable hatred. 
 Unswerving in loyalty to the only God, it 
 angered the Roman power again and again, 
 and secured the crown of martyrdom. 
 Martyrdom does not prove a cause to be 
 right, and yet it always carries a strong 
 suggestion to that effect. The church of 
 the martyrs was kept sweet by its trials 
 and perils, and the suffering church was a 
 singing church, joyful in its pains and 
 influential through its fortitude. There 
 is a fine charm about the humble and 
 hopeful church of the catacombs. But 
 the church came out of the catacombs, and 
 was soon placed at the head of the world's 
 affairs. When Constantino professed the 
 Christian name, the name instantly became 
 fashionable. Profession of Christianity 
 was now the way to promotion and advan- 
 tage : therefore the church-doors were 
 crowded with people rushing in. The 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 29 
 
 so-called Christian people of the middle 
 of the fourth century were most of them 
 not Christians at all, in any worthy sense : 
 they were nominal converts, scarcely 
 changed from the paganism of antiquity. 
 Yet they were the recognized Christian 
 people of the time, and it was inevitable 
 that they should set the key for the Chris- 
 tianity of the time that followed. It is 
 no wonder that the religious life ran low, 
 and the virtue of the gospel partly van- 
 ished away from those who bore the holy 
 name. Here was the inevitable again. 
 Victory came naturally, and deservedly, to 
 the fresh and vigorous faith, as against the 
 decaying paganism, but victory brought 
 corruption in its train, from the necessities 
 of the case. The holy power had been 
 thrown out into the field of the world, 
 and for the time, in certain respects, its 
 nature was subdued to what it wrought in, 
 like the dyer's hand. 
 
 Another perversion in the common life 
 
30 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 of the Christian people, — at least it seems 
 a perversion to us of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, with our irrepressible enterprise and 
 our readiness for risks and conflicts, — 
 came as naturally as this. There came a 
 time when a large part of the best of the 
 Christian people, the most high-minded 
 and the best adapted to useful living, were 
 moved to withdraw from the common life 
 of man. The monastic impulse came, and 
 would not be refused. The souls that 
 were most needed for the universal strife 
 left the field for the life of quietness, and 
 the best leaven for improvement of the 
 evil world was withdrawn into cloisters. 
 Multitudes of the men who would have 
 made the best fathers, and of the women 
 who would have made the best mothers, 
 declined to make contribution to the stock 
 of humanity. The quiet, meditative, non- 
 productive life, withdi'awn from the re- 
 sponsibilities to which mankind is born, 
 was held out as holier than the common 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 3 I 
 
 life, and the monastic ideal was set up for 
 universal admiration. Good results fol- 
 lowed, and also evil : great good and great 
 evil. The more largely human we grow, 
 the greater seems the pity that the move- 
 ment went so far. Yet how inevitably it 
 came about. Face to face stood the good 
 and the evil, the good of the gospel and 
 tlie evil of the world, the good of the 
 reforming power and the evil, ancient and 
 strong, that ought to be put away. The 
 Christian people had no long traditions of 
 holy warfare to inherit, and had not very 
 well learned the lesson of confidence in 
 the good for which they were set to con- 
 tend. To many of them the case seemed 
 hopeless : so great a world, how could its 
 evil be conquered ? Would it not corrupt 
 even those who tried to bless it? All that 
 they could do was to flee, and hide them- 
 selves, and seek the safety of their souls, 
 and pray to God for the victory which 
 they lacked courage to seek in strife. We 
 
32 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 cannot wonder at the feeling. We can 
 call the motive inferior to the best, as 
 surely it was, but we cannot be surprised 
 at the force of it, or affirm that it was 
 altogether an unworthy motive. It was 
 a pure motive, even if it was not the 
 loftiest. The , great secession from the 
 daily working force of Christianity was 
 one of the inevitable incidents in the 
 great warfare. 
 
 We cannot now illustrate the process 
 farther. But thus, through the successive 
 periods, the Christian people has gone on, 
 responding to surrounding influences as 
 well as to inward monitions, changing with 
 changing conditions, growing with the 
 common growth of mankind, influenced 
 by the world which it was influencing, and 
 yet maintaining a special quality and value 
 of its own. Very largely it was what it 
 had to be : it had the virtues of its inner 
 grace, and the faulto of its inheritance and 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 33 
 
 its surroundings. It could not have been 
 otherwise. 
 
 What is the outcome? This is the 
 question that concerns us now. Wliat 
 has the Lord of Christianity to show after 
 all this time ? How well does the present 
 Christian people commend the power that 
 came into the world with Christ? How 
 are Christians doing their work as a gift 
 of Christ to humanity ? All sorts of opin- 
 ions are held. Some say that Christian 
 people are demonstrably the salt of the 
 earth, without which very little that is 
 sweet or good would be found among 
 men: and others are sure that whatever 
 power they may once have had is now 
 departed. What shall we say? 
 
 The mixed quality of the present out- 
 come calls for no apology. Absolutely, 
 there could be nothing else. Those who 
 discuss the Christian people as if they 
 could expect to find in them an adequate 
 illustration of the ideal of Christ, simply 
 3 
 
34 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 do not know what they are talking about. 
 In the conditions that have surrounded 
 Christianity, such a thing is impossible. 
 So the present Christian people are not to 
 be defended as satisfactory, or condemned 
 as worthless. They are not to be counted 
 upon for perfection, or rejected for imper- 
 fection. A resultant necessarily partakes 
 in the nature and quality of all the forces 
 that have produced it. Good and evil, 
 strength and weakness, are certain to be 
 present here. Christianity is the life of 
 God in the soul of man, and its human 
 outcome must partake in the qualities 
 both of God and of man. 
 
 If we inquire about the Christian people 
 of the present day, they must be estimated 
 in view of an element that I have not yet 
 mentioned. I mean the great transition, 
 the tremendous revolution, of our time. 
 It is not as if the Christian people had 
 attained to a platform where they could be 
 exhibited. On the contrary, they are 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 35 
 
 passing through the severest transition, 
 perhaps, in all their history. 
 
 Into this transition more elements enter 
 than I can now name. Our part of the 
 human race is at last beginning to possess 
 a real self-consciousness. Information, in 
 inconceivably vast amount, is being thrown 
 upon the thought of the time, to be handled 
 and assimilated. Thought is passing over 
 from the old non-scientific methods to the 
 more nearly scientific movement that mod- 
 ern study has developed. Facts are scru- 
 tinized with new zeal, and truth is tested 
 in new ways. Inquiry knows no bounds. 
 Antiquity and prescription count for noth- 
 ing. We desire to know the very thing 
 that is, and our certainties are differently 
 grounded from those that our fathers held. 
 Vast social problems arise, in which we 
 are compelled to find out whether we are 
 living together as we ought, and what we 
 owe to one another. All fields of thought 
 are transformed, and all modes and signifi- 
 
36 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 cances of life are altered, in this great 
 time of change. Every period is a period 
 of transition, but there has never been one 
 like tliis. 
 
 Amid these great changes the Christian 
 people, as I conceive, have three things to 
 do. Three things are required of them by 
 the nature of the Christianity which they 
 represent, and in these they must not be 
 found wanting. The Christian people are 
 called to-day to hold their faith, to open 
 their minds, and to expand their hearts. 
 First, to hold their faith. They are called 
 to hold fast their sense of spiritual reality ; 
 not to be shaken from their confidence in 
 that living God whom they and their 
 fathers have known ; to cling to the real- 
 ity of religious life and the presence of 
 divine help ; to be religious in tenderness 
 of spirit and heavenliness of mind, when 
 the age is almost forgetting to be religious. 
 Next, to open their minds. They are 
 called to perceive that they are living in a 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 37 
 
 new age ; to believe in the validity of all 
 facts and be willing to go where facts may 
 lead; to accept reconstructions; to let 
 knowledge in, well assured that it will not 
 drive faith out ; to be as free with knowl- 
 edge as they are with faith. And while 
 these two works go on, the Christian peo- 
 ple are called also to expand their hearts, 
 so that they shall be loving men with 
 Christ's own love ; to rejoice with them 
 that rejoice and weep with them that weep 
 and plan for them that suffer ; to bear the 
 burdens of humanity with wise and help- 
 ful tenderness ; to forswear aristocratic ex- 
 clusiveness and minister to men as men, as 
 Jesus did. This great tln-eefold calling 
 is the present calling of the Christian 
 people. 
 
 How are they fulfilling it? Not alto- 
 gether well, or altogether ill. It is the 
 inevitable again. We have to confess that 
 there is much division of labor here : some 
 hold their faith while others open their 
 
38 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 minds : some open their minds while others 
 expand their hearts. This is not strange, 
 for in a great mass of people it is only 
 natural that one part of the general duty 
 should be more worthily done by some 
 than by others. A certain distribution of 
 parts cannot fail to occur. Yet this is not 
 the ideal. It is to be desired that every 
 one of the Christian people should hold 
 his faith, open his mind, and expand his 
 heart. And toward the ideal there is 
 some progress. Far from perfectly, yet 
 more and more, it is coming to pass. The 
 Christian people respond but slowly to 
 demands upon them, — so slowly that it is 
 easy to be impatient with them, — and yet 
 they do respond. The mind does open, 
 and yet the faith is held, and meanwhile 
 the heart expands in love and helpfulness. 
 Imperfectly and slowly, yet really, the 
 Christian people are at least beginning to 
 rise to the demands of the present age. 
 It would be pleasant to praise the Chris- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 39 
 
 tian people here, to point out their better 
 works and tell how well they are do- 
 ing. But instead of this I shall do what 
 perhaps my auditors do not expect of me. 
 I believe that the danger that the Chris- 
 tian people may miss their calling is 
 greater than the need of praise for their 
 successes : and a few words in this strain 
 I must speak. I greatly fear that many 
 among them may fail to hold their faith. 
 I fear that many may fail to open their 
 minds. I fear that many may fail to ex- 
 pand their hearts. And my anxiety gives 
 me a message. 
 
 By failing to hold their faith I do not 
 mean failing to keep their opinions. By 
 faith I mean something more precious far : 
 I mean the living sense of unseen spiritual 
 realities, and firm trust in the living God. 
 What I fear is that many Christians may 
 not "see him who is invisible," and not 
 live in the presence of the Father who is in 
 secret. The danger is that they may be 
 
40 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 content with holding opinions and mistak- 
 insr them for faith, and be without that 
 undying sense of reality in God to which 
 alone the noble name of faith belongs. 
 They will then preach unreally, and talk 
 insincerely, and live feebly. They will be 
 Christians in name, but the secret of power 
 will be theirs no longer. And I fear no 
 less that many Christians may fail to open 
 their minds. I know the difficulty, only 
 too well. The very effort to hold their 
 faith may lead them to keep their minds 
 closed against knowledge that no honest 
 mind can permanently refuse. To open 
 the mind and hold the inner sense of 
 spiritual reality is not easy for all. There 
 are men enough who tell us that it cannot 
 be done, and will not long be attempted. 
 Unbelievers in Christianity declare the 
 impossibility from one side, and a large 
 class of Christians from the other. I am 
 afraid that too many of the Christian peo- 
 ple, mistaught from both sides, may come 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 4 1 
 
 to be convinced, and hold their minds un- 
 worthily closed. When I reflect upon the 
 profoundly conservative instincts of reli- 
 gious tradition, and the surprising and 
 revolutionary quality of much of the truth 
 that our time brings freshly forth to us, I 
 fear greatly that the impulse of resistance 
 may be too strong for hosts of minds that 
 ought to be opening themselves to present 
 truth in faith upon the present God, and the 
 victory may be where it ought not. And 
 yet again I fear that the Christian people 
 may fail to expand their hearts in helpful 
 and sympathetic loVe to the men around 
 them. I think I fear this most of all. I 
 know how strong is the temptation to 
 make love an abstract virtue, and consider 
 it sufficient to love God whom we have 
 not seen, while the brother whom we have 
 seen makes no appeal to us. I know how 
 powerful the aristocratic connections of 
 much of our religious life are becoming, 
 and how many churches are well content 
 
42 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 to dwell alone and plan for their own 
 benefit, while the poor are not welcome 
 among them. I know how easy is the 
 sway of selfishness, and how seductive. 
 The problems of society are difiicult, and 
 it is easy for Christians to evade responsi- 
 bility for them by pleading that they are 
 doing something better than attend to 
 them, by preaching the gospel of eternal 
 life. So on many sides I meet the danger 
 that the Christian people may not act after 
 the manner of Jesus in dealing with their 
 fellow-men, in this solemn day when the 
 problems of the life of man with man are 
 as urgent as they are obscure. And all 
 these fears I entertain by the side of my 
 thankfulness for all the living faith, and 
 all the frank open-mindedness, and all the 
 warm and helpful love, that I behold in 
 the Christian people and joyfully acknowl- 
 edge as the work of God in them. 
 
 I am not speaking here to a company of 
 the Christian people : I am addressing a 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 43 
 
 company of sincere and high-minded hu- 
 man beings, devoted to the work of educa- 
 tion. It is a company in which a Christian 
 man has honorable standing if he deserves 
 it, and a non-Christian man has the same 
 on the same terms. Not as Christians or 
 as non-Christians therefore do I address 
 my auditors. All the more freely for this 
 reason can I speak to them all ; and to my 
 present audience I have a message. The 
 Christian people are among us, and, with 
 all their faults, have proved themselves a 
 good gift of God to mankind. Our world 
 needs them now, and needs to have them 
 at their best and strongest. It never 
 needed them more, for they stand for that 
 high spiritual life and meaning which the 
 present vv^orld is in great danger of for- 
 getting. Yet here they stand, in this 
 trying transition-age, surrounded by subtle 
 dangers. To all who hear me in this hon- 
 orable company I appeal, and I say. Help 
 us Christian people of your own genera- 
 
44 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 tion to fuliil our calling. Whatever your 
 own beliefs may be, help us to be what we 
 ought. Help us to open our minds. Press 
 on with your work of enlarging the boun- 
 daries of knowledge. Make clear and in- 
 telligible and irresistible whatever you 
 discover, and urge it upon us with all 
 persistency. Keep your own tempers 
 sweet, in order that you may the better 
 commend to us what we need to receive 
 from you. Be candid with us, in order that 
 we ma}^ have confidence in you and learn 
 the better from you. Teach us the truth 
 of the time, and teach us so wisely and in 
 so fair a spirit that we cannot but receive 
 what you have to offer us. Thus help us 
 to open our minds. Help us also, I beg 
 not less earnestly, to hold our faith, — for 
 even this service does not lie beyond your 
 reach. Do not profess to know that our 
 faith amounts to nothing. Do not claim 
 to be sure that there is no place for faith. 
 Open your minds to that great spiritual 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 45 
 
 secret which philosophy discerns, and upon 
 the confines of whicli science itself is 
 treading, and of which religion is the 
 revelation. Forbear to scorn our sense of 
 a great, abiding, eternal, spiritual reality, 
 but rather encourage and help us to fill 
 with the thought of God that space which 
 cannot be left vacant without darkening 
 the universe. Help us also to limit faith 
 to the true field of faith. Batter down 
 things that we may try to set up as objects 
 of faith that are not properly such. Hold 
 us to clear speech and honest declaration. 
 Drive us back to our essentials and our 
 simplicities. Make us miserable when we 
 try to defend mere outposts as if they were 
 the citadel. Compel us to assert the few 
 eternal verities, and then join us in setting 
 them by the side of the other certainties 
 that you proclaim to us. And help us 
 also, I entreat, to expand our hearts in 
 sympathetic and helpful love. Reprove 
 us for our selfishness when you behold it, 
 
1/ 
 
 46 THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 
 
 dealino- with us in the faithfulness of sor- 
 rowful sincerity. Come also and be our 
 fellow-helpers in the field of love. All 
 that is human should care for all that is 
 human, and this field of humanity is as 
 truly yours as ours. Inspire us to emula- 
 tion of your humanitarian endeavors and 
 successes. Let us together be planning 
 for the larger good of our country and 
 our fellows everywhere. The vast social 
 problems ought to attract us all, whatever 
 we are, and to hold our best attention till 
 we have actually accomplished something 
 for the betterment of the common lot of 
 men. Work with us in the spirit of Jesus: 
 for what better spirit is there for any son 
 of humanity to make his own than his? 
 Thus help us to serve our kind. Whoever 
 is at the front in any good endeavor, let 
 us all encourage him : and together let us 
 hope that the Christian people may rise 
 to their true character, and fulfil the up- 
 ward movement of their history, and be 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE 4/ 
 
 worthy of their Lord, and do those greater 
 works of love and power which their 
 Master foretold for them in the days 
 when the world's work should be upon 
 their shoulders. 
 
n 
 
 THE CHEISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 The Christian Doctrine begins, of course, 
 with the teaching of the Founder. 
 
 Not without reason is Jesus known as 
 the Great Teacher. He was no orator, it 
 is true, nor was he a formal preacher, but 
 rather a quiet converser, a talker among 
 men. Yet he spoke with marvellous 
 power, and made his mark upon the in- 
 most life of his hearers. Never man spoke 
 like him, they said. They felt the author- 
 ity that moved in his words. Only frag- 
 ments of his utterance have been preserved 
 to us, but the brief discourses and conver- 
 sations that we read in the Gospels stand 
 unique in spiritual power among the ut- 
 terances of the world. They represent a 
 vast mass of teaching, lost to us in form 
 but preserved in its fruits : for out of his 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 49 
 
 spiritual wealth there poured, throughout 
 his ministry, an abundance of spoken truth 
 that remained to perpetuate his influence 
 and serve as the foundation of the Chris- 
 tian doctrine. The early church started 
 upon its way with its memory stored with 
 the rich and fruitful utterances of the 
 Master. 
 
 One might think that the Master's utter- 
 rances would forever stand alone, and 
 would constitute the entire sum of doc- 
 trine for Christianity. Who would ven- 
 ture to add, when he had spoken ? More 
 especially when the church had come, as 
 it soon did come, to adore him as divine, 
 how could the teaching of any others, 
 especially of his own disciples, be added 
 to what he had given ? Yet on the other 
 hand who could bo restrained from add- 
 ing ? Jesus had not merely brought into 
 the world a quantity of truth to leave it 
 there : he had opened a perpetual fount of 
 truth, which could not cease to flow. He 
 4 
 
50 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 had given the Christian people a new light 
 on all things. He had shown them how to 
 know the things that are. That process 
 of thinking, learning, and knowing, which 
 is endless for man because it is man's 
 glory, would thenceforth go on, for them, 
 in the light of the truth that he had taught 
 them. By an inevitable and most blessed 
 necessity, his friends would apply what he 
 had shown them to the interpretation of 
 all that they thought or knew. Paul did 
 this, and John. In their teaching they 
 did not merely repeat what Jesus had 
 said : they looked for themselves into the 
 mystery of God and of life, and for them- 
 selves they thought out truth in that sub- 
 lime region. This is what their Master 
 desired them to do, for he came among 
 them to make men of the first order, able 
 to think right and true thoughts about the 
 living God. He still desires the same. 
 We too shall i)lease him best if we humbly, 
 reverently, resolutely, hopefully, think for 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 5 I 
 
 ourselves, in that region of truth which 
 his mission opens before us. 
 
 Thus came into being the Christian doc- 
 trine ; and we see at once that it was 
 formed from two sources. First came the 
 great contribution of the one Lord himself, 
 the truth that his people had from him. 
 Tlien was added the contribution of Chris- 
 tian men who saw light in his light, and 
 had visions of the truth of God throuefh 
 his illumination. Christianity began its 
 course rich with the treasure of the Mas- 
 ter's utterances, and grew yet richer as it 
 went on, — strange yet glorious to say, — 
 through the diligent and inspired thought 
 of holy men, moved by the Holy Spirit, 
 devoted to the things of God. Both these 
 parts of the primeval doctrine were gath- 
 ered into the New Testament, which with 
 its immeasurable wealth of living truth is 
 the noble fruit of Christ's presence in the 
 world. 
 
 But do not fail to notice how the Chris- 
 
52 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 tian doctrine came into existence. Do not 
 imagine that it came by being formulated 
 some fine day by the decree of some great 
 council, or by the command or endorsement 
 of authorized men. The teaching of Jesus 
 did not grow into doctrine by being writ- 
 ten out and formulated, or by being dis- 
 cussed and officially interpreted. Not all 
 that his apostles said or wrote entered into 
 the substance of the Christian doctrine, 
 nor all that Jesus himself said, either. 
 Doctrine was no such formal, external 
 thing as to take up something merely be- 
 cause it had been said, even though it 
 were by the Lord himself. No, doctrine 
 grew as a vital thing, and grew in the soil 
 of life. The Christian doctrine sprang 
 up in the experience of Christian living. 
 It was the Christian truth as learned 
 by the Christian people ; and both ele- 
 ments, the truth and the experience, were 
 essential to the producing of it. Any 
 thought that did not take root in this vital 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 53 
 
 soil, and take root to stay and live, did not 
 come to form a part of the Christian doc- 
 trine. The process was simply a vital 
 process of assimilation. Jesus appeared 
 among men, and poured out spiritual 
 truth in great abundance. Ho poured 
 it out by what he said, by what he did, 
 and by what he was. Words, deeds, 
 and personality all preached : life, death, 
 and resurrection all uttered living and 
 powerful truth. This rich and various 
 utterance that Jesus made fell into the 
 hearing and the hearts of men and women 
 who became the Christian people. Into 
 the very being of these men and women 
 this truth entered, with transforming 
 power, and a new life sprang up in them. 
 By and by it came to pass that this truth 
 from Jesus had filtered through their 
 minds and hearts and life, and come forth 
 to expression on the other side. It is this 
 second expression, this reproduction, this 
 lived-over substance, of the truth that 
 
54 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Jesus brought, that constitutes the Chris- 
 tian doctrine. Nothing properly belongs to 
 the Christian doctrine that has not passed 
 through this process. Not until the Chris- 
 tian people have made the Christian truth 
 their own and given it form from their own 
 experience, does there come to be a Chris- 
 tian doctrine. The contribution of Jesus to 
 mankind became doctrine in his church by- 
 passing through the experience to which it 
 gave rise in men, and coming out in the 
 form which that experience gave to it. 
 
 Have I made plain how the Cliristian 
 doctrine came into existence ? Is it clear 
 that the truth that Jesus gave became 
 Christian doctrine through the medium of 
 the Christian people and their life ? Then 
 it is time to inquire what the contents of 
 this original Christian doctrine are. What 
 was the doctrine, or the experienced, real- 
 ized, and re-uttered truth, with which 
 Christianity began its course? 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 55 
 
 Here I know that I touch disputed 
 ground, possibly dangerous ground. There 
 are many opinions as to what the doctrinal 
 stock of the first Christianity was. We 
 are all tempted to count our own doctrines 
 in, and assume that our own form of 
 Christianity is the original. But I think 
 we can reach some reasonably satisfactory 
 answer to the question that has just been 
 asked. If we are careful to keep the ques- 
 tion in the form that has now been given 
 to it, I think it can be answered. This is 
 the form : — What truths do we find, that 
 came forth from Jesus, and filtered through 
 the life and experience of the early Chris- 
 tian people, into expression in Christian 
 doctrine ? Certainly there are five great 
 truths that stand thus related to Christ 
 and to the experience of his followers. 
 Perhaps there are more: we will judge 
 when we have looked at these. All of 
 these five truths we find uttered by the 
 Master, and uttered again in later time 
 
56 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 by the disciples as truths now known to 
 them in actual experience. 
 
 1. The relation between man and God 
 which Jesus presented as the right relation 
 has come to be experienced, and enters 
 into the doctrine. Jesus the Master said, 
 " When ye pray, say. Our Father who art 
 in heaven." Paul the disciple said, out of 
 the common experience, "We have not 
 received the spirit of bondage, again unto 
 fear, but we have received the spirit of 
 adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." 
 The truth, proclaimed by Jesus, that man 
 may enter into fdial and family relations 
 with the good and holy God, has now been 
 experienced by the Christian people, and 
 has come forth from their glad filial life at 
 home with God, into permanent expres- 
 sion. The Christian people have found 
 the secret of life, in finding themselves 
 sons to God. This experienced relation is 
 the fundamental element in the Christian 
 life, and in the Christian doctrine. No 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 57 
 
 one title represents the wliole idea, but at 
 the centre it is a doctrine of the Father- 
 hood of God. 
 
 2. The significance of the coming and 
 work of Jesus himself has been learned by 
 experience, and enters into the doctrine. 
 The Master said, " Come unto me, all ye 
 that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will 
 give you rest." Tlie disciple, speaking 
 out of the common experience, said, 
 "Being justified by faith, we have peace 
 with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 through whom we have had our access by 
 faith into this grace wherein we stand." 
 To tlie early church, Christ is the way, 
 and the truth, and the life. He has laid 
 down his life for the sheep as the true and 
 faithful shepherd : he is the Saviour of 
 men, able to save them to the uttermost 
 who come unto God b}^ him. His place is 
 that of the restorer, tlie bringer of men 
 home to God, the one in whom we have 
 our spiritual life and welfare. This rela- 
 
58 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 tion between Christ and men is not a 
 theoretical one, but an actual : it is experi- 
 enced, it is known in the life. Through 
 the Christian experience has come forth 
 in vital power the doctrine of the Saviour- 
 hood of Jesus Cln-ist. 
 
 3. The Spirit whom Jesus promised has 
 been experienced as a present reality, and 
 this reality has entered into doctrine. 
 Jesus said, " I will send you another 
 Helper, that he may abide with 3^ou for- 
 ever, even the Spirit of truth." Paul 
 responds, out of the common experience, 
 "The Spirit himself bears witness with 
 our spirit, that we are children of God. 
 As many as are led by the Spirit of God, 
 they are God's sons." The gift of the 
 indwelling divine has become a real gift, 
 blessedly known in inward experience, and 
 proved by its fruits. There is an indwel- 
 ling divine which is the inspiration of 
 faith and hope and love to the Christian 
 people, and the fruit of the Spirit is found 
 
THE CHRISTIAN- DOCTRINE 59 
 
 in all the holy graces. The Christian 
 experience has created tlie doctrine of the 
 reality and the Friendhood of the Spirit. 
 
 4. The relation between man and man 
 which Jesus presented as the right one is 
 a relation of love : this relation has begun 
 to be realized, and enters into doctrine. 
 Jesus said, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart, and thou shalt love 
 thy neighbor as thyself." Paul answered, 
 " Now abideth faith, hope, love, these 
 three ; and the greatest of these is love " : 
 and John, " Let us love one another, for 
 God is love." Fellowship is the sweet 
 bond of a living unity among those who 
 have learned of Jesus, and helpfulness is 
 the Christian badge. Experience has made 
 a doctrine of tlie Supremacy of Love. 
 
 5. The high ethical demand of Jesus is 
 beginning to be fulfilled in the life of the 
 Christian people, because here is a power 
 that can f alhl it ; and the attainableness of 
 moral victory has entered into doctrine. 
 
60 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Jesus the Master said, commanding and 
 promising at once, " Ye shall be perfect, 
 even as your Father in heaven is perfect." 
 Paul the disciple replies, '' The law of the 
 Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has delivered 
 me from the law of sin and death." " The 
 fruit of the light is in all goodness and 
 righteousness and truth." In Christ good 
 men are made. He required goodness, 
 after the pattern and inspiration of the 
 eternal good, and he brings it to pass, 
 by the strong holy operation of the in- 
 dwelling Spirit. In the Christian holi- 
 ness, imperfect though it is, that goodness 
 which Christ required and promised is 
 actually emerging in the world. Promises 
 to " him that overcometh " will in due 
 time be claimed. What should enter into 
 doctrine if not this? Experience has 
 taught the church to hold with joy the 
 doctrine of the Transforming Power. 
 
 All this, I am sure, is true. Here are 
 five great realities that had come from 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 6 1 
 
 Christ into experience, and come from 
 experience to be assured possessions of 
 the Christian people. Five great realities : 
 the Fatherhood of God, the Saviourhood 
 of Jesus CMst, the Friendhood of the 
 Spirit, the Supremacy of Love, and the 
 Transforming Power. The assertion of 
 these realities forms the main stock of 
 doctrine in the early Christianity. I doubt 
 whether there were any other truths that 
 deserve to rank with these, though doubt- 
 less there are other truths implied in these. 
 If there is any other that ranks with these, 
 it is the sublime affirmation of immortality. 
 This was not exactly a truth made known 
 by Jesus, or a possession peculiar to his 
 followers. Yet it was one of their posses- 
 sions, gained as their own in fresh fulness 
 and power in their experience with him. 
 One element in that inspiring Christian 
 life which made existence new to so many 
 of the poor and unfortunate of this world 
 was the exhilaration that came with the 
 
62 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 sense of deathlessness. Men now expected 
 to live forever, continuing in Christ liim- 
 self, and with him, that life in which they 
 were now most blessed : and who can 
 wonder that the world was new ? But I 
 think the sense of immortality came rather 
 as a conclusion or corollary from the Chris- 
 tian doctrine than as a primary part of it ; 
 and I think that the Christian doctrine 
 itself, defined as that which came from 
 Christ by way of experience, and was held 
 and proclaimed as the characteristic truth 
 of Christianity, consisted chiefly in the 
 affirmation of these five great realities as 
 realities, namely, — the Fatherhood of 
 God and the filial life with him ; the 
 Saviourhood of Jesus Christ by whom we 
 have been brought home to God; the 
 Friendhood of the Spirit who dwells in 
 us ; the Supremacy of Love as the law 
 of life and duty; and the Transforming 
 Power of the divine grace, whereby God 
 is able to do exceeding abundantly above 
 
rilE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 6^ 
 
 all that we ask or think, in the production 
 of real goodness, according to the power 
 that is at work in us already. 
 
 Nov/ we turn to another part of our 
 subject. From this glorious body of doc- 
 trine, or of truth experienced, began the 
 long history of the Christian doctrine, con- 
 tinuing till now. About this I must say 
 two or three things, important to the 
 present purpose. 
 
 I need not show that the history of 
 Christian doctrine will be a history of 
 divine realities, handled by human thought. 
 Here again, the divine seed is cast forth 
 into the field of the world, to be received 
 as it may by the soil that awaits it and 
 the influences that are around. Human 
 thought deals with the divine realities as 
 it can. God's truth takes its chances of 
 being fairly or unfairly considered, wisely 
 or unwisely interpreted, rightly or wrongly 
 grouped. The result must be a mixed re- 
 
64 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 suit, noble but imperfect. Any one who 
 expects the Christian doctrine at any given 
 time to be wholly clear, consistent, and 
 harmonious with the mind of God, has 
 not considered the whole case. When 
 divine realities are handled by human 
 thought, we can predict a mixed result, 
 noble but imperfect, and imperfect in a 
 multitude of ways. 
 
 See how variation comes in. There is 
 an open door for it at once, and in it 
 comes. The open door for variation is 
 explanation. The great primary element 
 in the doctrine is not explanation, or 
 theory, but assertion, the assertion of the 
 reality. The church proclaims that God 
 is our Father, that Christ is our Saviour, 
 that the Spirit is the indwelling Friend, 
 that love is the law of life, that victory is 
 possible. The strength and vigor of the 
 doctrine lies in the confident holding and 
 affirmation of these realities. As long as 
 the Christian people are firmly holding 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 65 
 
 these things for true, so long is the doc- 
 trine a living and glowing thing, compe- 
 tent to win its way by inherent energy. 
 But it seems inevitable that efforts should 
 be made to explain these great realities, 
 to account for them to the judgment of 
 man, to tell just how and why they are 
 true. No one can say that this tendency 
 is wrong. The things of God are infi- 
 nitely worthy of the thought of man, and 
 it is a liigh human glory to gaze into them 
 and seek to understand. But who does 
 not see that variety of views will come 
 in, as soon as the effort to explain is 
 made ? Minds, tempers, training, degrees 
 of sympathy, opportunities to know, abili- 
 ties for understanding, power of expres- 
 sion, all differ, and variation in doctrine 
 is inevitable, when once the enterprise 
 of explanation has been launched. 
 
 All the more because of another ten- 
 dency, namely, the tendency to regard the 
 explanation that is reached as part and 
 5 
 
66 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 parcel of the doctrine itself, thenceforth 
 inseparable from it. By virtue of this 
 tendency, with which we are all familiar, 
 every inquirer as to the how and the 
 wherefore of the divine realities becomes 
 himself a contributor to the substance of 
 the doctrine. The legislature makes the 
 law, but the court interprets it ; and the 
 court's interpretation is accepted as part 
 and parcel of the law. So, given the di- 
 vine reality, fascinating in its mysterious- 
 nes3, and the explanation or theory of it 
 that is accepted becomes attached to the 
 reality as a part of it. The theory may 
 be good or bad, vv^ise or foolish, it makes 
 no difference. The holder of the theory 
 calls it the doctrine, always, and to him 
 the two are one. But when there are 
 many inquirers, all fascinated by the glory 
 of God in his truth, and all sincerely ex- 
 plaining its mysteries as best they may, 
 variation in doctrine needs not to be an- 
 nounced, for it will come, welcome or un- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 6/ 
 
 welcome, and will come to stay. If my 
 neiglibor and I, believing, for example, in 
 the transforming power and the victorious 
 holiness, investigate the mode and means 
 of the victory, and he reaches one concep- 
 tion and I another, then to each of us the 
 doctrine will consist of the great reality 
 plus his own explanation of it, and there 
 will be two doctrines of holiness, one his 
 and one mine. 
 
 I do not think for a moment that this 
 process can be avoided. This is a part of 
 that inevitable to which divine realities 
 submit themselves when they are handled 
 by hum.an thought. I am simply calling 
 attention to the inevitableness of variation 
 in Christian doctrine, and of the entrance 
 of inferior forms of doctrine by the side of 
 better forms. Judgments that are partial, 
 one-sided, temporary, provisional, are cer- 
 tain to be formed, and for the time to be 
 held tenaciously as the only true : but with 
 tlie lapse of time men will be called to 
 
68 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 abandon them, however reluctantly, in 
 favor of other views that are truer, even 
 though these in turn are still imperfect. 
 All this is inevitable, when divine realities 
 are handled by human thought. There was 
 no way to keep Christian doctrine from 
 variation, except to keep thought away 
 from it ; and that is not God's way with 
 his creatures. So we must not be scanda- 
 lized if we find the Christian doctrine 
 changing its forms, and seeming some- 
 times contradictory and inconsistent with 
 itself ; nor should we be too superior if 
 we watch this process from the point of 
 view of science. It is the common lot. 
 The Christian truth has fared as all other 
 truth has fared, when human thought dealt 
 with it. 
 
 If we wish to understand the Cliristian 
 doctrine, there is another aspect of its 
 history for us to consider. It is important 
 that wo notice through what inilucnces 
 
THE CIIRISriAN DOCTRINE 69 
 
 the doctrine of the early past has come 
 clown to the present. I have spoken of 
 the certainty of variation and conflicting 
 forms : a few words now about the influ- 
 ences throuo-h which the course of the 
 history of the Christian doctrine has run. 
 Three cfreat influences have touched the 
 doctrine, modifying it for good and for 
 evil. 
 
 The first was philosophy. It was Greek 
 philosophy that first laid its hand upon 
 the Christian doctrine. The philosopher 
 gained a standing among the exponents of 
 the faith and the interpreters of the doc- 
 trine, and kept his standing long. It 
 could not have been otherwise, and it is 
 vain to wish it might have been otherwise. 
 The period of philosophy was a normal 
 and worthy stage in the life of Chris- 
 tianity, and needful help was given by 
 philosophy at a time when nothing else 
 would do. But Dr. Edwin Hatch was 
 right when he called attention to the deep 
 
70 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 contrast between the Sermon on the IMount 
 and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on 
 the Mount is direct, simple, practical, 
 religious : the Nicene Creed is metaphys- 
 ical, abstract, inferential, non-ethical, 
 theological. One sprang from the mind 
 and heart of Jesus Christ, the other from 
 theological inquiry and controversy among 
 his followers. One was intended to set 
 forth the living truth concerning God and 
 man : the other, to guard the truth that 
 had been accepted, and shut out those who 
 could not join in reciting this statement of 
 it. The contrast is both sharp and deep, 
 and there are many other illustrations as 
 clear and keen as this. 
 
 The effect of philosophy upon the Chris- 
 tian doctrine, as this illustration shows, 
 was to elaborate it. That process of iden- 
 tifying the interpretation with the doc- 
 trine, of which we spoke, had now its 
 apotheosis. Metaphysical discussion took 
 hold upon implied points, and brought 
 
THE CHRISTIAN- DOCTRINE J\ 
 
 them to the surface, and set them at the 
 front. It called attention to implied con- 
 nections of thought, and insisted upon 
 filling out a consistent statement of the 
 underlying assumptions. In this way it 
 added to the points of doctrine. It mul- 
 tiplied largely the matters which it was 
 held, important to believe. We may 
 almost say that philosophy took a simple 
 faith, and left an elaborate system of 
 belief. It added to the bulk of doctrine, 
 but not to its vitality or working vigor. 
 Thus the doctrine passed through a period 
 of large elaboration in the schools of 
 thought : and the effect still remains upon 
 it. The simplest Christian of to-day in- 
 herits, in the teaching that he receives, 
 something from the Greek philosophy. 
 
 Next comes organization. After the 
 Roman empire had fallen, there rose the 
 new Roman empire, the imperial church. 
 The church as an institution now obtained 
 standing, not only as an exponent of the 
 
72 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 faith and an interpreter of the doctrine, 
 but by and by as the sole exponent and 
 interpreter. There was now a great gov- 
 ernmental system, in which the sacrament- 
 working element was the dominant force. 
 Sacramentahsm and governmentalism go 
 naturally together : and in the middle 
 ages all influences conspired to hold the 
 church in the rank and place of authority 
 in the field of doctrine. There was now 
 an organization that claimed the right to 
 guide the doctrine, and finally the right to 
 determine it, by authority from above. 
 
 The effect of organization upon the 
 Christian doctrine was to formalize it. 
 Inheriting much from the metaphysical 
 period that preceded, the church went on 
 to build the doctrine into a scholastic 
 S3^stem, philosophy and organization now 
 conspiring to introduce method and com- 
 pleteness as the type-giving idea. Out of 
 the sacramental system, too, grew a regu- 
 lar system of straightforward doctrine, set- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 73 
 
 ting forth the authority of the church and 
 the way of salvation tlirough the churchly 
 ministries. Tlie vast weight of organiza- 
 tion was a burden upon the doctrine of 
 Christianity, as well as upon the Christian 
 life : flexibility was discouraged, rigidity 
 was favored, by the existing conditions. 
 The system has grown, until the head of 
 the organization stands as the infallible 
 teacher, and the doctrine is solely as he 
 proclaims or sanctions it. Organization 
 has been the formalizer of doctrine. In 
 the love for system and the leaning on 
 authority, all our modern theology inherits 
 something from the great formalizing 
 organization of the middle ages. 
 
 Last of the three stands individualism. 
 In the modern age, from the sixteenth 
 century on, Christianity has had to do 
 with the intense individualism that has 
 given character to the west. The Refor- 
 mation of the sixteenth century was the 
 blossoming-out of individualism, the emerg- 
 
74 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 ing of personal freedom and responsibility 
 from beneath the churchly sway, the estab- 
 lishing of free and active thought as the 
 method and activity of the age. In our 
 part of the world, Christianity has been 
 under this influence now for four cen- 
 turies. 
 
 I am at a loss for a single word to de- 
 scribe the effect of the modern individual- 
 ism upon the Cliristian doctrine, and yet 
 the effect is plain enough. In the age of 
 individualism the interest in the bringing- 
 out of doctrine has certainly increased, 
 and the doctrine has grown sharp and 
 intense. The individualizing impulse is 
 full of life : it imparts freshness, courage, 
 vigor, hopefulness, to all intellectual en- 
 deavor. The impulse of the Reformation 
 has stimulated the investigation of Chris- 
 tian truth, and thrown abundant life into 
 the study of the doctrine. But it has also 
 led to division and variety, beyond all pre- 
 cedent. It has differentiated and diversi- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 75 
 
 fied doctrine, and scattered it, and broken 
 it into fragments. Why not ? When we 
 are all free to think, and all do think, 
 each one just as he is, with his own outfit 
 of powers and training, how can all think 
 alike ? If we interpret the Christian real- 
 ities each in his own way, we shall differ 
 in our results. And if, as the case has 
 been, our individualism takes form in a 
 host of organizations, each deeming itself 
 set for the defence of some view of the 
 doctrine, then all the more certainly will 
 the doctrine be diversified and scattered 
 into portions. Still more will this come 
 to pass when the age of individualism 
 inherits from the methods of pliilosophy 
 and the habits of a scholastic period. The 
 church of Rome is riglit when it tells 
 us that our Protestantism does not tend 
 to intellectual agreement. The more seri- 
 ous and interesting the matters that we 
 inquire about, the less likely are we to 
 reach identity in the result. The modern 
 
76 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 individualism lias added immensely to the 
 eneroy of thought upon the Christian doc- 
 trine, but not as yet has it brought unity 
 in conclusions: nor will it bring such 
 unity, except by the aid of more spiritual 
 influences. It has been a quickener of 
 doctrine, but a divider also. 
 
 I have spoken long enough of the road 
 over which the Christian doctrine has 
 come down to us from its far beginnings. 
 Divine reality, thrown into the living ex- 
 perience of the Christian people, has been 
 to them the theme of thought. The actual 
 reality has been largely the same to them 
 all, but difference and variety in views of 
 it have followed, by an absolute necessity. 
 The doctrine has been elaborated by phil- 
 osophy, formalized by organization, and 
 quickened but diversified by individual- 
 ism, and at last, out of the long process, it 
 has come down to us, and stands before us 
 to be estimated as to its value. What is 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE y/ 
 
 its present wortli? How well and justly 
 does it represent those divine realities 
 with which it started ? Can we point to it 
 as helpful to the purpose of our apolo- 
 getics? Is it worthy to stand as a com- 
 mendation of Christianity? Is it a real 
 help in our presentation of our religion to 
 the world? Wherein does it need im- 
 provement? and can we do anything to 
 add to its quality and power? All these 
 questions we have a right to ask, and to 
 them we desire a true answer. 
 
 That Christian doctrine concerning 
 which we now make these inquiries is of 
 course the resultant from all the past. 
 We inherit from all our predecessors. On 
 every point of doctrinal belief, the popular 
 thought of to-day inherits more or less 
 from all past theories and interpretations. 
 Our present Christian doctrine contains 
 the old and ever new divine realities, and 
 it contains the many and various results 
 of the handling of them by human thought. 
 
78 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 All togetlier these elements, various and 
 incongruous, have come clown to us. It 
 could not be otherwise, and it is vain for 
 us to imagine that it has been otherwise. 
 We have not merely what our Master 
 taught, but what the mighty past has 
 given us. 
 
 This statement sounds to some, I doubt 
 not, as if I felt constrained chiefly to 
 acknowledge the faults of the process, and 
 to confess the defilements that have come 
 from the touch of man upon the divine 
 realities. But it is not so. I do not feel 
 constrained to set the faults in any such 
 rank. I see a wonder on the other side. 
 The first thing that I have to say about 
 the present Christian doctrine is that the 
 divine realities are still here. They have 
 come down to us. They live, and have 
 their power. The realities that composed 
 the Christian doctrine at the beginning 
 compose it now. All the explaining and 
 difference and variation, all the elaborating 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 79 
 
 by philosophy and formalizing by churchly 
 organization and scattering by modern 
 thought, has not destroyed them as the 
 treasure of the Christian people. Still do 
 these same divine realities hold their place 
 as the centre and substance of the Chris- 
 tian doctrine. 
 
 Do you say that I cannot prove it? It is 
 true that it is not a matter for demonstra- 
 tion, but it is a matter for affirmation that 
 cannot be successfully challenged. If I 
 were asked as an observer of my own time 
 what are the essential elements in the 
 Christian doctrine as it now exists, what 
 should I say? What ought I to say? 
 What would any well-informed man say ? 
 I should say that first of all it is held by 
 the Christian people that in Christ the 
 true and right relation between man and 
 God, the relation of children with their 
 father, is realized. I should say that the 
 Christians still claim to be living in son- 
 ship to God, according to the teaching of 
 
80 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Jesus, and that this experience is their 
 glor}^ I should even say that the fulness 
 of the meaning of God's fatherhood is now 
 dawning with unprecedented power upon 
 the Christian people. I should saj next, 
 that Christians hold unshakenly to the 
 Saviourhood of Jesus Clirist. He it is 
 that has brought them home to God and 
 introduced them to that filial life in which 
 they rest and are strong. In his wonderful 
 mission and life, culminating in his wonder- 
 ful death so rich in sacrifice, the Christian 
 people find the way of their salvation. I 
 should say further that the Christian 
 people experience and acknowledge the 
 Friendhood of the holy indwelling Spirit. 
 They still declare their experience and 
 belief of a present God, a God within 
 them, renewing, transforming, strengthen- 
 ing, fulfilling in actual life the saving pur- 
 pose of Jesus Christ. I should say that 
 the Christians hold, thoup'h all of them 
 imperfectly, to the supremacy of love as 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 8 1 
 
 the ruling and decisive element in all true 
 character. The experimental presence and 
 possession of a noble and self-forgetful 
 love is nothing unknown, or even rare, 
 among the Christian people, and the ideal 
 of excellence among them is the character 
 that is crowned by love in its purest and 
 sweetest forms. And I should affirm that 
 the Christian people hold that in Christ 
 there is a genuine transforming power, a 
 power of God unto salvation, able to pro- 
 duce a successful holiness. They believe 
 that through Christ it is possible for men 
 to be cleansed of their actual evil, not 
 merely in some theoretical and suppositi- 
 tious way, but really and forever, and 
 brought to actual and positive holiness in 
 the sight of God. And if the affirmation 
 of immortality be considered an essentia.1 
 part of the Christian doctrine, then I 
 should add that the present Christian peo- 
 ple hold to immortality as their human 
 birthright and their Christian inheritance, 
 6 
 
82 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 and live in the light of the immortal 
 hope. 
 
 Here are all the essential realities of the 
 primitive Christian doctrine ; and I affirm 
 that they are held as facts of life and ex- 
 perience now, and proclaimed as present 
 doctrine. After all the centuries they are 
 here, in vitality and power, holding the 
 place in the church that they held at first. 
 They constitute the doctrine, too, not of 
 some small part of the Christian people, 
 but of the mass. I have not recited the 
 creed of some sect, I have uttered the doc- 
 trine of Christendom. I have spoken the 
 ecumenical creed. 
 
 After what has been said, no one will 
 suppose that I am claiming for this primi- 
 tive and ecumenical doctrine a perfect, an 
 ideal, a satisfactory hold upon the Chris- 
 tian people. Most freely do I confess to 
 serious imperfections in the holding of this 
 noble sum of Christian doctrine. What 
 would you expect ? Have not the divine 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 83 
 
 realities come down, tlirouo-h acres of 
 human handling, to the hands of a genera- 
 tion as imperfect as any of its predeces- 
 sors ? Defects ? Certainly, they are here. 
 The most exacting parts of the doctrine 
 are held least satisfactorily, as they always 
 have been. The Christian people are still 
 too unwilling to let their doctrine have its 
 way with their lives, and exercise upon 
 them its searching and cleansing power. 
 They still have much to learn as to the 
 simplicity, the meaning, and the vitality 
 of what they believe. Nowhere, either, is 
 the whole equally well believed and illus- 
 trated ; for one side is seen and received 
 more clearly in one quarter and another 
 in another, even as it has always been. 
 Moreover, in the long course of transmis- 
 sion the doctrine has become far too vari- 
 ous and far too complicated. Around each 
 one of the great divine realities there has 
 gathered a mass of differing and conflict- 
 ing interpretations ; and still the practice 
 
84 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 persists of confounding these interpreta- 
 tions with the divine reality itself. Thus 
 the people's minds are burdened with a 
 superfluous mass of what they sincerely 
 believe to be Christian doctrine, but of 
 what belongs outside the central field and 
 ought to be separated from the essential 
 matter. There often appears to be deep 
 and irreconcilable conflict between those 
 who hold the reality in common ; yet the 
 conflict relates to the explanation of the 
 reality, not to the reality itself. There is 
 great need of learning to distinguish be- 
 tween the realities that the Christian doc- 
 trine affirms and the exjjlanations of them 
 in which the history of doctrine abounds. 
 All these things, and doubtless more, must 
 be acknowledged by way of defect in the 
 holding of the Christian doctrine by the 
 Christian people of to-day. Nevertheless, 
 when all the defects have been freely ad- 
 mitted, I still affirm that the great divine 
 realities that made up the Christian doc- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 85 
 
 trine in the beginning make up the Chris- 
 tian doctrine now. I declare that the 
 Christian people throughout the world are 
 believing in the Fatherhood of God, the 
 Saviourhood of Jesus Christ, the Friend- 
 hood of the Spirit, the supremacy of love, 
 and the reality of the transforming power 
 of the divine grace. They diverge widely 
 in their explanation of these facts, and in 
 the views that they associate with them ; 
 they differ widely in the forms of expe- 
 rience to which these facts give rise ; but 
 in the facts themselves they all believe, and 
 it is this belief that makes them Christians. 
 And this presence in the world of the 
 original body of Cln?istian doctrine, exist- 
 ing still not in theory alone but in experi- 
 ence as an inspiring and renewing force, 
 I hail with joy as a proof of the presence 
 of God in the history of mankind. 
 
 I am well aware that there are many 
 who make little account of the presence 
 
86 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of this body of central doctrine. From 
 two quarters I may be criticised for setting 
 it forth as so important a thing. An 
 objector, from without the Christian circle, 
 may say, " Ah, but this is not Christianity. 
 Historically, Christianity includes a thou- 
 sand varieties, so many and so mutually 
 contradictory that one cannot even deter- 
 mine what it claims to be. You may find 
 a few peculiarities in common, as you are 
 doing now, but that is of no consequence. 
 The historical Christian doctrine is a far 
 more complex and difficult thing than this, 
 and it is not a fact that the whole can be 
 gathered up into a few statements." And 
 some earnest soul within the Christian 
 circle may perhaps unwittingly join hands 
 with the objector from without, when he 
 hears so short a creed pronounced, and one 
 that does not contain some theories or 
 explanations that seem to him to be of the 
 first importance. "Of what avail," he 
 may say, "is the common acceptance of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 8/ 
 
 a few mere central facts, when almost all 
 who are said to accept them are wrong in 
 their understanding of them? Agreement 
 on facts that are variously understood is 
 only the shadow of agreement. The sub- 
 stance of asrreement lies in the understand- 
 ing of the facts, and unity in this is 
 wanting. So what is the use of proclaim- 
 ing as ecumenical doctrine a body of 
 realities that all interpret differently, and 
 the most misinterpret? " 
 
 But I think I have been right in my 
 statement of what the Christian doctrine 
 really is, namely, that it consists in divine 
 realities handled by human thought. This 
 ought to dispose of the first objection. If 
 this is true, the objector ought not to be 
 asking that we take all the variations of 
 doctrine into the common stock and insist 
 upon holding them all as a part of our 
 present Christianity. It is somewhat like 
 asking that the present science of physics 
 or chemistry should include all the theories 
 
88 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of past days, or that philosophy herself 
 should muster her dead along with her 
 living, and defend the views of her former 
 magnates as adequate to the present time. 
 Let us have sense. If we have the origi- 
 nal and abiding realities of the Christian 
 faith held to-day as Christian doctrine, we 
 have what all our fathers have had, in 
 every generation; and if we interpret 
 them variously among ourselves and differ 
 in our conception of them, we do what all 
 our fathers did, and what all oUr children 
 must do, as long as it is the nature of man 
 to know in part. Christianity consisted at 
 first in certain great abiding facts of 
 spiritual life and experience. It consists 
 now in the same. There have been a 
 thousand thoughts and theories about it, 
 that enter into the history of it but form 
 no permanent part of it, and we are by no 
 means bound to reckon them all in when 
 we wish to know what the Christian doc- 
 trine really is. And the same answer may 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 89 
 
 serve when we meet the objection that 
 comes from within the Christian circle. 
 It is not necessary for me to find my 
 theory of the manner of the Saviourhood 
 of Christ, for example, accepted in the 
 universal thought of Christendom, in order 
 for me to perceive, and to rejoice, that all 
 Christendom believes in the Saviourhood 
 of Christ. My theory of that great reality 
 is the best that I can form at present, but 
 it certainly is not faultless. If my theory 
 of the Saviourhood of Christ must be 
 accepted in order for men to be saved, 
 most Christians would be lost, for the 
 most have not accepted it. What is true 
 of my theory is true of j^ours, whatever it 
 may be. There is no one explanation of 
 that great reality upon which most of those 
 who have trusted in Christ for salvation 
 have aofreed. So p-reat a fact is sure to 
 have its many interpretations, differing as 
 minds differ ; and those who find eternal 
 life in the Saviourhood of Christ may well 
 
90 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 rejoice that those who understand it differ- 
 ently from them find eternal life in it too. 
 We are all pupils in the school of Christ, 
 handling divine realities in human thought 
 that is half-trained and half-sanctified at 
 the best, and our interpretations are like 
 those of our fathers, neither full nor final. 
 And so we are confirmed in thinking that 
 the great experimental realities of Chris- 
 tianity provide the genuine abiding ele- 
 ments in the Christian doctrine. Through 
 these comes the life in which Christianity 
 consisted at first and consists always. 
 And these central verities do certainly 
 form the heart of the universal Christian 
 doctrine as it is held to-day. They are 
 now experienced, and now proclaimed as 
 verities that Christ brought near and 
 experience has confirmed. 
 
 Of the now-existing Christian doctrine, 
 therefore, I am by no means ashamed. I 
 am not here to apologize for it. It is the 
 most precious of the products of tlic past. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 9 1 
 
 In the mission of Christ, God sent it forth 
 into the world, and the long movement of 
 history has borne it on to us. I wish that 
 it were better understood in its simplicity ; 
 I wish that preachers might learn to dis- 
 tinguish between it and what surrounds 
 it ; I wish that it were held by the Chris- 
 tian people with better conviction and 
 more faithful obedience to its supreme 
 demands. There are conceptions and pre- 
 sentations of it for which I might be con- 
 strained to apologize, if the occasion arose. 
 But of the Christian doctrine itself I am 
 not ashamed, and for it I have no apologies 
 to offer. It was a great gift of God at 
 fust, and it remains a great and worthy 
 gift of God to-day. If those who hold it 
 can but walk worthy of it, and commend 
 it to general confidence by their proclama- 
 tion of its truths, the whole world will 
 have reason to thank God for it as a pres- 
 ent gift of blessing. 
 
92 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 What can we do for the Christian doc- 
 trine, we may ask, to render it more effec- 
 tive in the present world? What can be 
 done for it must be done mainly through 
 the Christian people ; and the need of the 
 Christian people with reference to their 
 doctrine lies just where our present course 
 of thought is leading us. The exceeding 
 preciousness and the supreme value of this 
 central body of experimental truth, — this 
 is what the Christian people need to learn. 
 The permanent element in the doctrine 
 consists in the declaration of the great 
 experimental truths: the changing and 
 passing element consists in the various 
 interpretations of those truths, made from 
 time to time in human thought. We are 
 so devoted to the interpretations that we 
 often lose our sense of the vitality of the 
 facts. We need to be called back to the 
 realities, where the power dwells. I well 
 remember how like a cobweb-brushing 
 breeze a statement of the late Robert 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 93 
 
 William Dale many years ago swept 
 through my mind. It stood at the front 
 of a treatise of his upon the Atonement, 
 which I was beginning to read. " It is not 
 the doctrine of the death of Christ that 
 atones for human sin, but the death itself." 
 That power resides in a reality, and not in 
 any doctrine of a reality, — this, it would 
 seem, I might have known before, so sim- 
 ple is it, and so obviously true. We need 
 to see it concerning the whole body of 
 Christian doctrine. Theories and explana- 
 tions of the great realities we must form, 
 and hold, always hoping to correct and 
 enrich them as we go on. No one is 
 asking us to lay them down and leave 
 them, for that to most of us is impossible. 
 But it is in the good God our Father, not 
 in any doctrine of his Fatherhood, that we 
 have our filial life at home with him. It 
 is by our living Saviour Jesus Christ that 
 we are brought home to God, not through 
 some doctrine of him, or some doctrine of 
 
94 T^HE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the manner of his Saviourhood. It is the 
 indwelling Spirit himself that helps our 
 weakness, and we are strengthened by his 
 real touch, not by a doctrine of the Spirit, 
 or of his personality, or of his relations 
 in the Godhead. It is by love, and not 
 by a doctrine of love, that we are to prove 
 ourselves Christians. The experience of 
 the transforming power is what we want, 
 and without this ever so good a theory of 
 the transforming power is powerless. If 
 we attain to such a view of the Christian 
 doctrine as this, we can declare that the 
 great realities are quick and powerful now, 
 as confidently and strongly as could the 
 apostles themselves when the faith was 
 new. 
 
 I count upon two helps toward a better 
 conception of the Christian doctrine. I 
 expect valuable help from the clear and 
 straightforward thinking that is character- 
 istic of the best intellectual work of our 
 time. It is necessary that the Christian 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 95 
 
 people learn to distinguish things that 
 differ, and thus get their doctrine clear of 
 complication with what does not belong to 
 it. In this they need to learn from such 
 intellectual work as is done in this uni- 
 versity, and wherever men set themselves 
 to the task of clear thinldng and discern- 
 ment of things as they are. Help us, I 
 say to-day as I said yesterday. Go on 
 with clear thinking. Establish the right 
 way of mental work as the only way that 
 shall be welcome anywhere. Illustrate 
 sound, strong thinking for us, until it shall 
 be a matter of course that we must make 
 it our own. Make it impossible for us to 
 live thinking confusedly and incorrectly. 
 Every advance in good intellectual practice 
 helps Christian doctrine toward the day of 
 disentanglement and independence. It 
 leads on toward the time when the Chris- 
 tian realities shall be distinguished in all 
 minds from theories concerning them, and 
 the power of the divine reality can go forth 
 
g6 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 in its simplicity to influence minds pre- 
 pared to receive it. 
 
 The other help that I count upon can 
 come only from within the Christian peo- 
 ple. There is nothing but religious life 
 that can most powerfully strengthen the 
 cause of religion in the world. It is life 
 that begets life. Only the genuine experi- 
 ence of the divine grace and life, — such 
 experience as the first Christians had, and 
 all the best of their successors, — only this 
 can bring the help that is most needful. 
 But I see it coming. Already, in our own 
 time, we find a fresh insistence upon gen- 
 uineness and reality in religion. Words 
 are powerless by themselves, preaching 
 that rings hollow is unwelcome, phrases 
 empty of life do not convince, churches 
 are blamed for professions that do not rule 
 the life. The demand for genuineness 
 thus far appears largely in negative form, 
 clearing away the ungenuine ; and to many 
 it seems dangerous and destructive. But 
 
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 97 
 
 it will not continue to be negative. It is 
 a hopeful beginning for a deeper experi- 
 ence • of the great realities of the Chris- 
 tian faith. A generation that insists upon \y 
 tearing down the false will not be content 
 until the true has been built up in its 
 place. The experience of God, of Christ, 
 of the Spirit, of love, and of victory is 
 coming in. It will take new forms, but it 
 will be the old reality, and the Christian 
 doctrine will stand forth strong and clear, 
 — clear in the light of simplicity, and 
 strong in the strength of God. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 If we have a people and a doctrine, what 
 more do we want to make up our Chris- 
 tianity? A set of ideas satisfactory and 
 inspiring, and a multitude of people de- 
 voted to them, — is not this enough ? 
 Many suppose, or assume, that this will 
 account for it all. When we have seen 
 these two elements, and acknowledged 
 them, have we not seen all that there 
 is of it? But we have something more. 
 Our discernment of the real nature of 
 Christianity is not complete till we have 
 apprehended and in some degree under- 
 stood the Christian Power. 
 
 The Christian power is not a late-coming 
 element. We see it from the first. We 
 perceive it at work in the very production 
 of the Christian people and the Christian 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 99 
 
 doctrine. There was an initial power, that 
 brought forth these two great facts in the 
 world, and this power we can trace with- 
 out difficulty. It began, as we know, in 
 the Master, Jesus himself, and the quali- 
 ties by which he made his impression. He 
 drew to himself the first disciples, by the 
 joint influence of his marvellous person- 
 ality and the high, helpful, and inspiring 
 truth that he offered them. Virtue went 
 forth from him, upon such as could receive 
 it. His " Follow me " was powerful, and 
 his instruction was enlightening, uplifting, 
 transforming. His time for work was 
 very short, and only beginnings were pos- 
 sible in his brief lifetime, and yet he left 
 behind him in the world a group of human 
 beings spiritually changed by the touch of 
 his personality, and instructed in the first 
 principles of his truth. Thus Jesus be- 
 came the creator of the Christian peox)le, 
 by the power that was in him. It was a 
 personal power, awakening, reproving, con- 
 
lOO THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 soling, spiritualizing, opening heaven over 
 the earth for men. 
 
 After liLS departure, there came upon 
 his friends a mighty visitation of spiritual 
 energy. It was not associated merely with 
 their remembrances of his life and words 
 among them, but rather with the divine 
 surprise that his resurrection brought upon 
 them. Now they looked up to him as 
 exalted to the right hand of God in 
 glory ; and along with this thought of the 
 glory that had been given to him there 
 came upon them an immense and over- 
 whelming influence, an inspiration of the 
 divine Spirit, and an energy of faith beyond 
 all precedent. The evidence of it is not 
 found alone in the narrative of the occur- 
 rences of the Day of Pentecost, in the 
 Acts of the Apostles. Some think that 
 narrative is not historical. But if that 
 narrative were not there, the story of the 
 early Christianity as a whole would still 
 conclusively imply some such experience 
 
THE CIJRISTrAN POWER loi 
 
 as is there described, — an enlargement of 
 spiritual vision, a quickening of confidence, 
 a visitation of power. The history cannot 
 be accounted for without the descent of 
 the Holy Spirit upon the church. Some- 
 how there came in those days an amazing 
 outburst of enthusiastic certainty, a rush 
 of vigor, a transforming conviction of the 
 great realities, by which neophytes became 
 heralds and expounders of the faith, and 
 a scattered little flock became a strong 
 people. Out of this visitation of power 
 came, in due time, the missionary impulse, 
 and the new faith went out to the wide 
 Roman world. Thus it was that the 
 power made the people. 
 
 It was through the same experience of 
 power that the Christian doctrine was 
 born. The doctrine, we may remember, 
 was not merely the truth, but the truth 
 as the church knew it by experience. It 
 consisted in the Christian conceptions after 
 they had passed through the medium of 
 
I02 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 the Christian life, and had thus become 
 vital possessions of the Christian people. 
 Nothing but the immense vitality of the 
 experience could have brought the doctrine 
 forth as a living thing. We greatly mis- 
 judge if we think the adoption of the 
 Christian doctrine was the cool adoption 
 of a set of opinions : it was the glowing 
 realization of a world of spiritual verities. 
 Herein was manifested a tremendous power, 
 and Christianity was already signalized in 
 the world as a living force of great 
 energy. 
 
 The power has continued until now, 
 and we have to note that it has wrought 
 in the same manner as the other elements 
 of Christianity that we have considered. 
 It was cast forth into the human world, 
 and its operation was affected by its field 
 and modified by what it had to work upon. 
 It has wrought steadily on, age after age, 
 and yet for its results it has been com- 
 pelled to bide its time and gain by gradual 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 103 
 
 increments. James Hinton, who had. 
 ideas of his own about Natiu^e as an ex- 
 pression of God, — ideas fine in esthetic 
 quality, searching in moral power, and 
 most valuable, as he conceived, for practi- 
 cal life, and at the same time thoroughly 
 revolutionary, — once estimated the time 
 that would have to be allowed for the intro- 
 duction of such ideas to full effective appli- 
 cation. He put the period at two hundred 
 years, with judgment that it would be 
 longer rather than shorter. First, the idea 
 must be seen in enthusiastic vision by 
 some one, and enunciated for the world 
 to hear. It must get abroad among men, 
 and be somewhat widely considered. It 
 must come to be deemed important. Then 
 it must be ignored, recognized, restated, 
 ridiculed, refuted, denied, doubted, ad- 
 mitted, discussed, affirmed, believed, ac- 
 cepted, taught to adults, taught to children, 
 wrought into literature, put into practice, 
 taught to another generation of children, 
 
104 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 kept in practice, tested by its fruits, al- 
 lowed to modify other ideas, embodied in 
 institutions; and in the course of some 
 generations it will sink in among the cer- 
 tainties that are assumed and acted upon 
 without question and without thought. 
 For this process two hundred years is a 
 short period. This is a fair illustration 
 of the kind of world in which Christianity 
 was cast abroad as seed upon the field. 
 We are often asked, almost triumphantly, 
 why Christianity has not accomplished 
 more in so very long a time. But there is 
 no such thing as long time or short time, 
 absolutely. Everything is relative, and 
 time is long or short according to what has 
 to be accomplished in it. Time that is long 
 for one purpose is short for another. Time 
 that is long for a national career may be 
 short for the lifetime of an idea. No 
 dce])ly significant periods in human his- 
 tory are short: all great movements are 
 long movements. I have a friend, a geolo- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 105 
 
 gist, who affirms that every minister ought 
 to take a course in historical geology, in 
 order to learn something about the length 
 of processes, and thus at once enlarge and 
 slow down his expectations of divine oper- 
 ation among men. Certainly a just per- 
 spective in history will tend to cure us of 
 much of our hurry, and silence many of 
 our cavils. Cliristianity undertook a moral 
 transformation in an evil world. It must 
 be judged in the light of slow processes 
 and long periods. 
 
 Thinking in this strain, we shall not 
 wonder or be scandalized at the great 
 reaction that we are often asked to notice, 
 at the end of the first age of power, when 
 the apostles had departed. That such a 
 reaction and decline of energy occurred is 
 certain. Yet it was not so much a re- 
 action of Christianity, as it was a reaction 
 of human nature after its first leap of 
 new life. Human kind never puts forth 
 exceptional energy without paying for it 
 
I06 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 in reaction, and the vigor of the first 
 Christian period was followed by com- 
 parative lifelessness in the second. Nor 
 can we wonder that when Christianity 
 grew up in the larger world, after its 
 transplantation, its power seemed ham- 
 pered and repressed by its surroundings 
 and materials. All this was of the inevi- 
 table. Nor, on the other hand, do we 
 wonder when we see again and again the 
 breaking-forth of genuine and effective 
 power in unexpected quarters. This was 
 the reassertion of the native quality. The 
 history of the Christian power is simply the 
 long illustration of these two opposites. 
 
 The history of the Christian power opens 
 a field too vast to be entered now. I can- 
 not even enumerate at all the works of 
 usefulness and help in which that power 
 has been manifested. Only the briefest 
 statement can now be made, a statement 
 of the simple fact that through its history 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 10/ 
 
 Christianity has shown itself possessed of 
 true vitality and vast energy ; that though 
 it has been resisted, and its force has been 
 diminished, so that it had its days of com- 
 parative weakness, it has nevertheless 
 proved itself to be animated by a genuine 
 and most vital power. This is a common- 
 place, and as a commonplace I shall let it 
 stand. It ought to be unquestioned. I 
 do not believe, let it be said in passing, in 
 claiming for Christianity all the good that 
 has been done within its field. Extrava- 
 gant claims defeat themselves. It is not 
 true that to Christianity alone we should 
 attribute all the progress of that part of 
 the world which it has influenced. Let us 
 be fair to other forces in society, and to 
 the general movement of God in history. 
 Yet Christianity has been a potent factor 
 in the great improvement. To its influ- 
 ence we can fairly and justly trace large 
 gains in the general good. It has sweet- 
 ened the universal life, in a thousand 
 
I08 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 ways. It has been influential in the miti- 
 gating of cruelties, the abolishing of bar- 
 barities, the delivering of the enslaved, 
 the lifting-up of the downtrodden, and the 
 long movement toward giving to all their 
 rights. In spite of its own special entan- 
 glements and embarrassments, and the fre- 
 quent discrediting of its influence and 
 value through the faults of its friends, it has 
 done its good work, and abundantly vindi- 
 cated itself as a living and beneficent force. 
 There are some who are ready to tell us 
 that the power that we associate with the 
 name of Christ is mainly in the past. 
 They admit that he has been great, but 
 claim that other lords now hold sway, and 
 he is passing into forgetfulness. There 
 were different days once, in what we call 
 the ages of faith, when men were simpler 
 and more easily satisfied. Then Christ 
 was influential, and was sufficient to the 
 world that then was. But now we demand 
 more evidence for what we are to receive. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TOWER 109 
 
 and accept nothing with the ancient readi- 
 ness ; and under the new requirements 
 Christ fails to be vindicated, and his power 
 is gone. But these judges of events are 
 strangely astray in their perceptions. The 
 truth is that in what we call the ages of 
 faith the largeness of the power of Christ 
 was scarcely even suspected, still less put 
 to the test of life. It is only now that the 
 searching and glorious meaning of his 
 spiritual power is beginning to be per- 
 ceived. It is deep injustice to the present 
 age to declare that it is no longer looking 
 to Jesus with reverence and sense of de- 
 pendence. Our age is not leaving Christ 
 out of sight and memory. Its method of 
 recognizing his power differs from that of 
 other days, and much that has been asso- 
 ciated with him may now have lost the 
 reverence that once was given to it. But 
 if we ask to whom or to what the world 
 is looking to-day, in its deepest and most 
 earnest heart, for spiritual light and coun- 
 
no THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 sel, there is but one ans\yer. It is looking 
 to Jesus. To the powerful simplicity of 
 his truth and the efficient strength of his 
 leadership the world is even now turning 
 as its best hope. There is weakness and 
 fault enough in this, I know, and there is 
 too much forgetfulness of his precepts and 
 his spirit. The worldly impulse is always 
 with us, ready to sweep men and nations 
 off into disloyal selfishness and pride. 
 Nevertheless it is recognized as it never 
 was before, that whether we are willing to 
 act upon it or not, the spirit of Jesus is 
 the only spirit that can work peace and 
 righteousness among men and nations, and 
 that in him, if we would let him have his 
 way, there is actual power to right our 
 wrongs and heal our woes. His personal- 
 ity stands out impressive and revered, and 
 there is to-day a devotion to the real 
 Christ, in work and service, such as no 
 other age has known. The power still 
 lives. Sometimes with an enthusiastic joy. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER III 
 
 and sometimes with a pathetic confidence, 
 our own time turns to him who is the 
 voice of God among us, uttering with 
 authority the word of power and hope. 
 
 One transparent and triumphant evi- 
 dence of the strength and persistence of 
 the Christian power is ever before us. It 
 resides in this, that in all the ages the 
 Christian people and the Christian doc- 
 trine have been kept in the world, and 
 kept possessed in good degree of their 
 characteristic vitality. That the Christian 
 people are still here, and in spite of all 
 imperfections are still bearing essentially 
 the Christian character, we know quite 
 well. It is equally true that the doctrine 
 of to-day is essentially the doctrine of the 
 beginning, and that it still persists in its 
 original character, as spiritual reality ex- 
 perienced. It has come down to us not 
 merely as a set of ideas, but as a set of 
 ideas wrought into life and in life persist- 
 ing ; and the realities experienced and the 
 
1 1 2 THE CHRIS TIA AT PO WER 
 
 life persisting are the same as at the first. 
 I said tliat some power originally produced 
 the Christian people and the Christian 
 doctrine, and gave the doctrine to the 
 people as a 'factor in their life. Now I 
 add that some power, in spite of all diffi- 
 culties and failures, has kept them in the 
 world till now. The good seed was cast 
 into a thorn-field, and yet there is a har- 
 vest, after many da3^s. In human affairs 
 there has been much to dissipate the 
 Christian energy, to depress its operation 
 and to injure its fruits. It has met indif- 
 ference and opposition without, and mis- 
 conception, unfaithfulness, lukewarmness, 
 sometimes treachery, within, and yet the 
 power has kept its product in existence, 
 and has not lost its hold upon mankind. 
 Differences in the age and imperfections 
 in the product often conceal the fact, but 
 the fact is that we have here and now, and 
 throughout the Christian world, essentially 
 the same realities in human experience 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER II3 
 
 that appeared among the friends of Jesus 
 immediately after his departure. Tliere 
 has been a power sufficient to preserve 
 them until now. 
 
 This is all that I must take time to say 
 upon the history of the Christian power. 
 Such facts of course bring their question. 
 What is the most probable source of the 
 Christian power? Why was it, we are 
 led to ask, that the Christian people 
 sprang up, and came out into history with 
 the Cliristian truth fused into doctrine 
 in their experience ? What has caused 
 the wide usefulness of Christianity in the 
 world? Why has it so deeply satisfied 
 the needs of man ? Why has it so often 
 been able to overcome scepticism and 
 establish faith ? What has kept the peo- 
 ple and the doctrine in the world till now ? 
 and wherein lies the present strength of 
 Christianity? Whence, in a word, comes 
 the Christian power ? 
 8 
 
114 ^^^-^ CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 When I answer this question as I think 
 it should be answered, what will you 
 accuse me of ? If you accuse me of beg- 
 ging the question, I shall deny the validity 
 of the charge. If you accuse me of mak- 
 ing it all too simple, at that I shall not be 
 troubled. I have long since learned that 
 the true is the simple, and that we human 
 beings have wasted centuries, all told, in 
 devising needlessly complicated explana- 
 tions of things. If my explanation is 
 simple, simple let it be ; and if you intend 
 to object to it, object on some better 
 ground than that. 
 
 My answer is that the most reasonable 
 account of the power of Christianity is that 
 Christianity is true. This is the most natu- 
 ral explanation that can be given of that 
 strong, effective, victorious power which 
 certainly appeared in the first days of our 
 faith, which has been fighting its enemies 
 ever since, and which still remains upon 
 the field. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER II5 
 
 This answer is certainly very short. To 
 one who does not at once accept it, it 
 sounds like begging the question. That 
 is just because it is so short and compact, 
 and the meaning of it has not been brought 
 out. I should be most unwilling to leave 
 it thus curt and unexpanded, for there is 
 need of unfolding its meaning if it is to 
 be received as a true answer. We may 
 not all mean the same thing when we say 
 that Christianity is true. I presume there 
 are many who have used the expression, 
 some accepting it and some rejecting, 
 who have never distinctly asked them- 
 selves what they meant by it. In many 
 minds, both of believers and of unbelievers 
 concerning Christianity, there is no clear 
 idea of what it is for Christianity to be 
 true. There are so many definitions of 
 Christianity implied in the thoughts of 
 different persons, the central realities 
 are surrounded by so great a variety of 
 explanations and additions, and the short 
 
Il6 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 word " true " may mean so many things, 
 that it is no wonder if ambiguity hangs 
 over the main idea, and we may differ 
 widely without knowing it, as to what we 
 mean by saying that Christianity is true. I 
 am anxious that the right meaning of this 
 central assertion may be clearly perceived. 
 If we understand it, we can judge whether 
 I am right in assigning the truth of Chris- 
 tianity as the best explanation of its power. 
 What is it, then, for Christianity to be 
 true ? When any one afhrms that Chris- 
 tianity is true, he means, or ought to 
 mean, that Christianity is made up of 
 realities ; that what it represents as real is 
 real ; that, in the realm of the soul, things 
 are as it declares that they are ; that its 
 affirmations accord with fact, and its ex- 
 periences are experiences of reality. It is 
 meant that Christianity sets forth the 
 great spiritual realities as they are, and 
 nothing but the test of genuine experiment 
 is needed to prove it. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 11/ 
 
 Notice, I beg, where it is that I thus 
 place the centre of Christianity, and where 
 I take my stand for the purpose of defini- 
 tion. I place the centre of Christianity 
 not in its statements, but in its realities 
 and experiences. I do not identify the 
 truth of Christianity with the statements 
 of its advocates, or any of them, concern- 
 ing it, or with the explanations that they 
 have offered of its facts, or with the decla- 
 rations of its creeds, whether special or 
 ecumenical. In all these matters there 
 may be wide and irreconcilable differences. 
 I place the centre of Christianity in its 
 realities and experiences, and there I take 
 my stand for the purpose of definition. 
 For Christianity to be true is for its real- 
 ities to be realities, experienceable, and 
 experienced. If Christianity is true, it 
 sets forth things that are, in the realm of 
 the soul. It testifies according to truth, 
 concerning the eternal realities. 
 
 But this statement in turn needs to be 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 filled out, for only in the filling-out of it 
 can the proof of it be found. Suppose 
 that Christianity is true: then what is 
 true ? What is the truth, or what are the 
 realities, involved ? This, after all is our 
 question. We have not told what we 
 mean by saying that Christianity is true, 
 until we have unfolded our statement 
 here, and set before ourselves what it is 
 that is true, or real, in Christianity. 
 
 I shall answer the question by reaffirm- 
 ing the elements that compose the Chris- 
 tian doctrine in the experience of the 
 Christian people: and the reaffirmation 
 will not be a waste of words. If Chris- 
 tianity is true, then these great elements 
 entered into it by right, and belong in all 
 right experience of men, because they rep- 
 resent the eternal reality. I hold that 
 Christianity is true : that is, I believe that 
 the great elements that make up the 
 Christian doctrine, by means of the Chris- 
 tian experience, accord with the eternal 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER II9 
 
 reality, and rightly represent it. Listen 
 now to the statement of what it is for 
 Christianity to be true. 
 
 If Christianity is true, God is the su- 
 premely good Being that Jesus declared 
 him to be. He really is at heart a Father 
 to us men, and our right and normal rela- 
 tion to him is that of children living at 
 home with the eternal goodness. When 
 we live as we ought, we shall find our- 
 selves living as true sons, in loyal family 
 fellowship with the best being that the 
 heart of man can conceive. These are the 
 facts, if Christianity is true: this is the 
 kind of God that there is, and there is no 
 other. This is the true and real meaning 
 of existence for us men. The world is 
 the world of such a God, holy and gracious, 
 sin-hating and fatherly. Into the world 
 of such a God, and into life with such a 
 meaning, we are all born, if Christianity is 
 true. It is the duty and the privilege of 
 every one of us to be living at home with 
 
120 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 the absolutely good and holy God, in filial 
 fellowship : and the better we become ac- 
 quainted with our God, if Christianity is 
 true, the more thoroughly shall we know 
 him as the perfect and glorious One, in 
 whom all our being finds full rest and 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Again, if Christianity is true, Jesus 
 Christ is really the gift of God to us men 
 for our spiritual salvation. He really is 
 for us the way and the truth and the life. 
 He finds us astray in moral evil and brings 
 us home. We were forfeiting in a sinful 
 life our privilege of filial life with the 
 eternal goodness. He came to us to save 
 us out of our sin; and he does bring us 
 out of our sin, into eternal life with God. 
 He really does stand to us as Saviour. In 
 what he has done for us in his life and 
 death there is a genuine reality, rich in 
 blessing for us and for all men. If Chris- 
 tianity is true, Jesus Christ is God's way 
 to us, and our way to God. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 121 
 
 Again, if Christianity is true, God is not 
 wholly outside of us, addressing us from 
 beyond ourselves. We have not told the 
 whole when we have said that in Christ 
 he comes to us and seeks us for our good. 
 It is true also that the living God really 
 dwells in our souls. He is a God within. 
 He convinces us of evil by actual inward 
 influence. He really renews our hearts, 
 working character such as he desires to 
 see in us. He truly communes with us in 
 the secret place of the heart. He teaches 
 truth to the soul of man, by real inward 
 suggestion. If Christianity is true, God 
 comes as near to us as we are to ourselves, 
 and we possess him as an actual indwel- 
 ling companion. 
 
 Again, if Christianity is true, the only 
 right inspiration of life and guide of con- 
 duct in all relations is what Jesus said it 
 was, — namely, love. The life of sonship 
 toward God is thereby a life of brother- 
 hood toward men. When we live accord- 
 
122 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 ing to love toward our fellows, we do the 
 tiling that ought to be, and make of life 
 what life ought to be. When unselfish- 
 ness and the highest helpful affection form 
 our law of living, then we have struck a 
 chord in the eternal harmony, — and all 
 that is dissonant with love is discord to 
 the eternal harmony. This is the spiritual 
 and practical reality, in this world and in 
 any other world that there may be. This 
 is the thing that is. Here is the clue to 
 the significance of our life, here is the key- 
 note of our duty, here is the true method 
 for all our doings. If Christianity is true, 
 God is love, and all men ought to be love, 
 and existence is successful onl}^ so far as 
 existence means love. 
 
 And again, if Christianity is true, there 
 is for all of us, corresponding to these 
 spiritual realities, a genuine transforming 
 energy. We are not talking of theories, 
 or supposing cases : we are not discussing 
 far olf the good that is to be approved 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 23 
 
 and desired but cannot be attained. Here 
 is a genuine might for action. Here dwells 
 the power of God for salvation. The sav- 
 ing agency of Christ is real, and the in- 
 dwelling Spirit actually does his work. 
 Transformation is an actual experience, a 
 result attained. Character does become 
 changed when these forces have their way. 
 Sin can be conquered, holiness is possible. 
 High virtue is within our reach, and effec- 
 tive power to do good in the needy world 
 can be had. We can be brought to live at 
 home with God in holy and happy fellow- 
 ship, and to live in helpful love among 
 men. All this has been done, and can be 
 done again. 
 
 If Christianity is true, I say once more, 
 these are the facts in our case, and in the 
 case of all men : this is the thing that is ; 
 this is what existence means : when we put 
 reality to the test of sincere experiment, 
 this is what we shall find the genuine and 
 eternal reality to be. For Christianity to 
 
124 ^-^^ CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 be true is for these things to be so, and 
 to be verifiable, and verified, in experi- 
 ence. Let our individual understanding of 
 these realities be adequate or inadequate, 
 that makes no difference with the facts. 
 Though we had no understanding of them 
 at all, nay, though we were totally igno- 
 rant of them, these are the facts : this is 
 the kind of world we have been born 
 into : this is what our existence signifies. 
 Though we should disagree widely in our 
 interpretation of these realities, and should 
 even grow so blind in heart as to forget 
 our brotherhood and count one another 
 aliens because of our disagreement, still 
 these are the realities, and these are the 
 realities forever. God is the holy Being 
 with whom we ought to live as children, 
 Christ is the Saviour who seeks to bring 
 us thither, the Holy Spirit is the indwell- 
 ing Friend, love is the law of life, and 
 the holy victory may be ours. 
 
 Now what I am affirming is, that the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 25 
 
 best explanation of the power of Chris- 
 tianity among men is that Christianity 
 is true: that Christianity sets forth the 
 things of the soul as they are. The power 
 is best accounted for by supposing that 
 the true representation of the meaning 
 of the soul's life is here given, so that 
 to experience what Christianity proposes 
 is to experience the thing that is, and thus 
 to find eternal foundations. If this were 
 so, then power would follow, even the 
 power that attends upon reality when it 
 is put to the test. If this were so, then 
 the power of the living God himself would 
 go fortli in Christianity, to make it effec- 
 tive. That this is so, I thoroughly believe. 
 The Christian experience is experience of 
 the eternal reality. This is why Chris- 
 tianity, presented in its spiritual sim- 
 plicity, has always appealed successfully 
 to the best that is in man : it is adapted to 
 man's soul and life, and man to it. Indeed, 
 all intelligent being is adapted to Chris- 
 
126 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 tianity and Christianity to it, because 
 Christianity sets forth the realities that 
 give to all intelligent being its significance. 
 Tertullian told in the early centuries of 
 " the human soul which is naturally Chris- 
 tian;" by which he meant that between 
 the constitution and destiny of the human 
 soul and the religion that we have in 
 Christ there is a natural affinity and a 
 mutual adaptation. He was right. In 
 Christianity the soul breathes the native 
 air of the world for which it was born, and 
 meets the announcement and experience of 
 the truth for which it was made. Conse- 
 quently it is the lower elements in the 
 soul's life that draw it away from Christ, 
 while the worthiest elements are respon- 
 sive to his touch. Sound judgment may 
 often bring strong objection against cer- 
 tain interpretations of the great realities, 
 which may have been offered as if they 
 were identical with them, but when we 
 come to the realities themselves, behold, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 12/ 
 
 they are good, and the noblest in the soul 
 affirms it. Christ calls for the best and 
 worthiest that man is capable of, and 
 every one that is of the truth hears his 
 voice. This power in Christianity to win 
 the response of the best in man is good 
 evidence that the voice is indeed the voice 
 of truth. 
 
 I have claimed that the truth of Chris- 
 tianity is the best explanation of the age- 
 long power of Christianity. Yet in any 
 adequate account of that power as actually 
 at work there is one other thing to be 
 mentioned. I must speak a word about 
 its manner of laying hold upon men. 
 Even truth is not always powerful. Even 
 truth assented to, and truth beUeved, may 
 sometimes fail of power. There was an 
 element abundantly present in the life of 
 the first Christian days, and present more 
 or less at every stage of the long Christian 
 movement, that must be counted in before 
 
128 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 we have placed in sight the entire material 
 out of which power was made. We must 
 take account of the mighty element of 
 feeling. It is when realities are felt to be 
 realities that they become powerful in the 
 life of mankind. 
 
 Here we have to acknowledge a strange 
 and almost incurable error. We very well 
 know that in the moral and religious realm 
 the impulse of feeling is needed if truth is 
 to go forth to victory, and yet we are con- 
 stantly overlooking it. AVe are constantly 
 assuming that truth is to be influential 
 upon men chiefly through the intellect. 
 To the intellect, we think, truth makes its 
 appeal. Truth can be stated. It belongs 
 to the mind, it is to be handled in thought, 
 it is to be estimated by the judgment. 
 Truth can be accepted as truth, — that is, 
 as correct, valid, and worthy to be held, — • 
 and what more is there to be done ? It 
 can doubtless be completed or enriched by 
 further additions or modifications, brought 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 29 
 
 in by the samo process of the intellect 
 continued : the statement of it can be 
 made more satisfactory, and the uses of 
 it more plain, but we do not habitually 
 look to other processes than these as 
 equally important. Anything that cannot 
 be clearly stated, we sometimes allow 
 ourselves to say, cannot be true, and 
 certainly cannot be expected to exert 
 power upon men. With this general idea 
 about truth we make our statements as 
 accurate as we can. We draw up our 
 creeds and confessions, and are satisfied 
 with our expression of truth, and declare 
 that this, now clearly stated, is what we 
 hold ; and then we assume that the truth 
 in the case has been adequately treated, 
 and expect it to be powerful. In fact, we 
 have often made up our creeds somewhat 
 as a geologist makes up his description of 
 the geological column, or a chemist his 
 statement of the result of his analysis. 
 We set forth the thing that we suppose to 
 9 
 
130 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 be correct, and are content, under the 
 impression that truth is now ready for 
 the wars. 
 
 And then very often we are disappointed. 
 Truth thus equipped does not seem after 
 all to be prepared for victorious battle. 
 Statements do not win the day. The 
 fact is that in the moral and religious 
 realm thought, be it ever so clear, is only 
 the preparation for power, not the very 
 means of power itself. Power comes with 
 feeling. Truth becomes effective by being 
 felt to be truth. Stated in accurate forms 
 it has a very neat appearance, and is con- 
 venient for reference and consultation, 
 but there is no inward necessity that we 
 should do anything about it. Not until 
 some one feels that something is true does 
 that something go out with effective 
 power into the world. Unfelt knowledge 
 is scarcely more fruitful than ignorance. 
 Unfelt truth lies unused. In order to be- 
 come effective, truth must be perceived as 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TOWER I3I 
 
 trutli in the sensitive part of the interior 
 life, whence the compelling influence upon 
 the springs of action proceeds. If the out- 
 come of the life of Jesus had been ever so 
 clear and true a set of propositions, writ- 
 ten out to be preserved, and there had 
 been nothing more, we might never have 
 heard of Christianity. There would have 
 been no Christianity, but only a teaching. 
 When the truth that Jesus imparted to 
 his friends came to be felt as truth, and 
 influential in the realm of the affections, 
 then it came to have power, and only 
 then. 
 
 But the truth that Jesus had given 
 them did come to be felt as truth. This 
 is exactly the thing that did happen. The 
 reality took possession of the men, the 
 Spirit showed it to them, and then the 
 Christian power was born. We have in 
 the New Testament the vivid portrayal of 
 this very thing. I wish I might set before 
 you the New Testament picture of the 
 
1 3 2 THE CHRIS TIAN PO WER 
 
 early Christian feeling. If I attempt it, 
 you will not think that I am claiming 
 that those first Cliristians did full justice 
 to the realities of which I speak. I am 
 not claiming that, for of course I know 
 the imperfectness of it all, since it was all 
 human. Yet I am not drawing a false 
 picture, for the sense of these realities was 
 genuine, and to represent it is to show the 
 very thing that set Christianity in motion 
 as a living force. 
 
 The first Christian reality to enter into 
 the world of feeling appears to have been 
 the Saviourhood of Jesus. It now came 
 to pass that his disciples grasped the mean- 
 ing of what they had seen and heard, and 
 it came home to them with moving power. 
 In the realm of feeling it now was real to 
 them that for their sake he had lived and 
 died and risen again, and was now tri- 
 umphant in God's glory. They felt that 
 they had a Saviour from their sin and loss, 
 who filled them with new life which was 
 
THE CHRISTIAN- POWER 1 33 
 
 life eternal. Christ had brought them 
 home to God. To God? and what was 
 God to them now, in this new day of feel- 
 ing? God was not to them an article of 
 faith in creed, but a reality in their own 
 life. God was a reality that redeemed 
 them from sin and fear and low living, and 
 from mortality itself ; and the power of 
 this reality was actually upon them, to 
 make all things new. They felt them- 
 selves at home with God, forgiven, ac- 
 cepted, made his children, domiciled with 
 him in the home of the spirit. Nay, more 
 and closer, God was not merely with them, 
 he was in them. Their belief in the Holy 
 Spirit was simply their sense of the in- 
 wardness of this divine gift, their feeling 
 of God within. It was their consciouness 
 that God had come nearer than to be 
 among them, but had passed the door of 
 their being and was inhabiting them as a 
 temple or a home. And now they felt, yes, 
 felt, that love was the atmosphere of their 
 
134 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 being. The love of God and Christ had 
 been poured out around them and within, 
 and love constituted their very life. So 
 love, in the fine forms of fellowship, kind- 
 ness, mutual helpfulness, and missionary 
 zeal, became a life and power among the 
 Christians: they actually loved one an- 
 other, and felt the flame of love within 
 themselves. And in the same manner the 
 remaining element, the reality of a success- 
 ful Christian holiness and victory, became 
 a vital thing. Men now felt that great 
 things were possible : they not merely 
 thought it and affirmed it as a matter of 
 belief, as we are always ready to do, but 
 felt it, as we sometimes do not. Hence 
 naturally sprang courage and high en- 
 deavor, and splendid success. Religion 
 passed into virtue, because the possibility 
 of high success was felt, and livingly be- 
 lieved in. Reality got possession of feel- 
 ing, and then the day of power had come. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER I35 
 
 In form, I have now been speaking of the 
 first clays and the springing-up of power, 
 but in fact, I have described what has 
 given power to Christianity in all times. 
 Where do you find your powerful men, 
 — your Augustine, Luther, John Wes- 
 ley? Where are your reformers, puritans, 
 leaders? They are men of feeling, in 
 whom realities live. They need not be 
 emotional men, in the popular sense of 
 that word, but they are men of feeling in 
 the nobler sense, men to whom the Chris- 
 tian realities are living things, felt in their 
 greatness and importance. When have 
 been the ages of power? When, but when 
 the sense of God and Christ came in, and 
 thought Avas warmed to vigor, and faith 
 became a passion? Who are the weaker 
 men, and when have come the times of 
 feebleness? The weaker men, for the ag- 
 gressive purposes of God, are the men 
 who, whatever they may think, do not 
 feel: and the feebler periods are those in 
 
136 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 which the pulses have run low and the 
 great realities found but dull response in 
 the affections and emotions of the Chris- 
 tian people. Power goes with feeling. 
 
 All this is just as simple as I said it 
 was. The power of Christianity resides 
 in the twofold fact that Christianity is 
 true, and is felt as true. There is reality, 
 and there is sense of reality, — and then 
 there is power. The reality that we have 
 in Christ is worthy to be profoundly felt, 
 and the sense of such reality as this ought 
 to be sufficient to move the world. When 
 it was anything like adequate, it has moved 
 the world. 
 
 It may seem to some one that I am 
 building too much on feeling, or the sense 
 of something being true. Feeling, it may 
 be objected, is no test of truth. We may 
 feel, most intensely, something unreal: 
 wherefore the sense of reality in the Chris- 
 tian testimony must not be taken as valid 
 proof of that testimony. To this I should 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 3/ 
 
 say that certainly feeling often takes hold 
 on error, and becomes the stimulant of 
 folly. Feeling is no proof of truth. But 
 I would add that neither is feeling any 
 evidence that truth is absent, and the pres- 
 ence of it does not establish a probability 
 that truth is not there. Is not feeling the 
 normal accompaniment of truth ? Reality 
 and the sense of reality ought to be insep- 
 arable companions. It is the perfection of 
 relation between man and truth that man 
 shall feel the thing that is, and be dull to 
 the thing that is not. If there is reality 
 present, and reality that concerns the soul, 
 it is the normal and worthy thing for the 
 sensitive soul, perceiving its presence, to 
 feel with the keenest intensity the serious- 
 ness, the preciousness, the glory, of that 
 which is so real. Certain it is that eternal 
 and necessary realities, that touch upon 
 the life and destin}^ of the soul, are worthy 
 to stir the deepest feeling, according to 
 their character. Hence, in spite of all 
 
138 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 objection from the fallibility of feeling, I 
 look upon the Cbristian power as a noble 
 confirmation of the truth of Christianity. 
 The combination of facts is this. Procla- 
 mation is made of certain alleged realities. 
 They are realities in the eternal order of 
 things, pertaining to the character of eter- 
 nal Being and the relation of man to the 
 eternal love and holiness. The proclama- 
 tion reaches the hearts of certain men, and 
 in a sincere experience the men are pos- 
 sessed by the warm and living certainty 
 that the proclamation brings them truth. 
 They cast themselves upon the alleged 
 realities, and find them solid, and feel 
 them true. Now there springs up in them 
 a life rich and sweet with holy graces. 
 Their destiny is provided for, their duty 
 grows real to them, their life at home with 
 God transforms their character. The foun- 
 dations of being now stand clear and strong 
 for them. Warm and urgent love springs 
 up strong in their hearts, and they become 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 139 
 
 heralds of life and grace to other souls. 
 The world grows sweeter and purer by 
 reason of their presence. Hindrances to 
 their higher life and their holy efficiency 
 are on every side, and nothing about them 
 attains to the ideal of perfection, and yet 
 they continue age after age in the world, 
 and the realities are proclaimed after two 
 thousand years essentially as they were at 
 first, and the same kind of power goes 
 forth into the world from the people of 
 the faith. What does all this mean? It 
 means that truth is here. Each part of 
 this great process tends to validate all the 
 rest. The one great thing that is rendered 
 daily more certain to us is that the alleged 
 realities from which the process took its 
 start are realities indeed. The structure 
 honors the foundation. The power of 
 Christianity, related as it is to the high 
 character of Christianity, to its fitness to 
 serve as key to the meaning of existence, 
 and to its ability to bless all whom it 
 
I40 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 touclies, is a living evidence that the whole 
 is true, and the foundation of Christianity 
 is laid in the verities of God. 
 
 A word now from the practical side, 
 about the power of Christianity as some- 
 thing that we all have to do with. Some 
 of us are preaching Christianity, and glory 
 in our work. Some, without preaching it, 
 are trying to live it, and to commend it as 
 they may. Some of us are listening to it 
 from the outside, perhaps with conviction 
 that it is true, perhaps without it. In one 
 question we are all interested, each in his 
 own way: I mean the question where the 
 power of Christianity at present may rea- 
 sonably be expected to reside and be dis- 
 covered. What is a fair statement as to 
 the seat of power in Christianity to-day? 
 What shall we who wish to commend 
 Christianity rely upon ? and what shall we 
 who listen to Christianity attune our hearts 
 to respond to ? 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER I4I 
 
 Perhaps for this moment it may help us 
 to divide power into its two parts, — value 
 and efficiency. The value of Christianity, 
 upon which we must rely for power with 
 men, resides in its truth, in the sense in 
 which its truth has now been represented. 
 The fact that in the central affirmations of 
 Christianity the central realities of exist- 
 ence are affirmed, — this is the value of 
 Christianity, and this is the seat of power. 
 If this were not so, Christianity would be 
 simply one of the vain imaginings of men ; 
 for it does profess to set forth the eternal 
 verity. The eternal verity it does set 
 forth. Christianity describes you as you 
 are, in view of the true and abiding tests: 
 it tells you what you need, offers you what 
 you must have, exhibits life as it is, leads 
 you to your right and normal place in 
 God, sliows you the right A\'ay to live your 
 daily life, gives you the true conception of 
 the world you live in, inspires you with 
 the motive that is right forever, and gives 
 
142 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 you actual possession of the good concern- 
 ing which the nations of mankind have 
 now theorized and now agonized since 
 human life began. This is the value of 
 Christianity, and this is the truth to set 
 forth, in various parts and forms, for the 
 convincing and winning of men. The 
 value of Christianity lies in its bringing 
 the message of truth, and telling the 
 things that are, — and, beyond this, in its 
 having the power to conform us to things 
 as they are, and bring us to our true home 
 in God. And when the message has been 
 uttered, and has sunk down into our hearts 
 so that we can perceive of what sort it 
 really is, we find this infinitely great, con- 
 soling and uplifting word at the centre of 
 it, that the real is the good : the eternally 
 real is the eternally good: eternal being is 
 holy and gracious: our best is the finite 
 counterpart of the infinite goodness: and 
 hope rather than fear, confidence rather 
 than doubt, is the keynote of existence. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 43 
 
 This is the appeal to make. It can be 
 made in a thousand forms, but this is the 
 tone that should sound through all of 
 them. This also is the appeal to listen 
 for, and to listen to. When Christianity- 
 is presented to you in this tone and spirit, 
 there is something there that no one can 
 afford to miss. Let other appeals pass by 
 you if you must, but never fail to have an 
 ear for this great appeal of value. 
 
 If we ask where v/e are to look for effi- 
 ciency in the present Christianity, — that 
 is to say, what is to make it now effective 
 in drawing men to its side and maintaining 
 its active force, — we must say nothing 
 that would obscure the efficiency of its 
 value. Here first we must look for power, 
 to the clear and enthusiastic presentation 
 of the glorious view of the value of Chris- 
 tianity at which I have just hinted. It is 
 by virtue of its truth that Christianity 
 must win its way, and nothing must be 
 said that will propose any substitute for 
 
144 ^-^^-^ CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 this, or lend to reliance upon any other 
 means of power as equal to this. Yet we 
 cannot overlook the fact that the efficiency 
 of truth among men depends in great 
 measure upon the strength and vividness 
 of the sense of truth in those who hold it 
 forth. That the Christian people may 
 have a rich and constraining sense of the 
 truth that they are offering to the world, 
 this is the next thing needful for the efQ- 
 ciency of our religion. I have read a 
 criticism upon the converts that a visitor 
 found in some of the mission-fields in Asia, 
 to the effect that although they showed 
 the signs of sincerity in their new faith, 
 they did not have the appearance of men 
 who were enthusiastically full of the feel- 
 ing that they had in their new faith the 
 best thing in the world and the best thing 
 that the heart of man could imagine. The 
 criticism was altogether a friendly one. I 
 do not know how just it was, but from 
 what I know of Christians in America I 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 145 
 
 am prepared to believe tliat it was not un- 
 fair to new-born Christians in the East. 
 It is our defect that we hick so much the 
 sense of having the best thing in the 
 workl, and the best thing in any world, in 
 our Christian faith. We say that we have 
 it, and hold it as our theory, but we do 
 not feel it with a constraining gladness 
 and an enthusiastic zeal. The coming of 
 such a sense of our heavenly gift is need- 
 ful if we are to have the power that ^ve 
 desire. 
 
 We often say that our time is not favor- 
 able to enthusiasm in spiritual things; and 
 it is largely true. We are in a day of 
 scientific thought, and of critical activity. 
 It is a great period of transition, in which 
 all that can be removed is being shaken, 
 that the things that cannot be shaken may 
 remain. Amid so many questions as are 
 abroad in our time, how, it is asked, can 
 we maintain an enthusiastic confidence? 
 Who knows what we shall next be invited 
 10 
 
146 THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 to surrender, or at least to modify ? How 
 shall we keep our sense of the reality of 
 the things that our religion tells us of? 
 and how shall we dare invite intelligent 
 men in such a time to cast in their lot 
 with our religion? Must we not keep 
 along as well as we can till a period of 
 firmer confidence dawns upon us, hoping 
 by and by to be able to commend our faith 
 more strongly? And would it not be as 
 well for our friends who have not received 
 Christianity to wait until that better day, 
 before accepting it as true and vital for 
 themselves ? 
 
 To this I answer, that I am profoundly 
 convinced that our generation needs just 
 such a conception of Christianity as I have 
 endeavored to present in these three ad- 
 dresses, and such an experience as I have 
 declared to be of the substance of our reli- 
 J gion. We want to see the simplicity of 
 
 our religion, and to hold as essential to it 
 only what really is essential. We often 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TOWER 1 47 
 
 overburden ourselves for the Christian 
 purpose. We undertake to hold too much. 
 We bind our theories and interpretations 
 in as a part of the substance of Christian- 
 ity. If a few of us alone could do this, 
 the way might look easier, at least to us, 
 but the trouble is that others who dissent 
 from us do the same, and Christianity be- 
 comes weighted with a variety of con- 
 flicting theories as to the meaning of its 
 experimental facts. If we go back to the 
 beginnings, we find a declaration of eternal 
 realities, such as each soul of man needs 
 to know, and can rest in, and find eternal 
 life by knowing. For my own part, I am 
 content with calling my fellow-men to 
 accept and live by these realities. This 
 I can do, and this I do, with the utmost 
 confidence. I believe that the God and 
 Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is the liv- 
 ing God, the only God that there is, and 
 that led by Jesus Christ we may all come 
 home to him where w^e belong, and live our 
 
148 ■ THE CHRISTIAN POWER 
 
 normal life by being Christians. To the 
 life of love in God I believe that the Holy 
 Spirit of iDower is leading us. This I be- 
 lieve to be the right way for high and low, 
 for ignorant and learned. This I would 
 as soon declare in a great university as in 
 the lowliest country meeting-house. This 
 message I do not have to defend as I 
 should be obliged to defend an elaborate 
 scheme of thought. I will discuss the 
 scheme of thought that is involved in the 
 message, when and where it is necessary, 
 but the Christianity that I preach I preach 
 because it is true to the eternal realities, 
 and is fit to be received at once by any 
 soul that desires to live in accordance with 
 the things that are. I am not claiming for 
 myself a power that corresponds to this 
 secret of power that I believe in. But I 
 am anxious that the Christian people should 
 learn that their Christian doctrine consists 
 in the truth that they possess in the com- 
 mon Christian experience, and know that 
 
THE CHRISTIAN POWER 1 49 
 
 its power dwells in its realitj^, and in their 
 sense of its reality. To what should we 
 look for power if not to this, that the 
 Christian people know what they possess, 
 and offer it for what it is, an experimental 
 possession of the eternal verities? The 
 way of simplicity and confidence is the 
 way of power. 
 
 I am thankful for the opportunity to 
 speak these words in this presence. May 
 the power of the Christian truth rest upon 
 us all. 
 
AN OUTLINE 
 
 of 
 
 Christian Theology. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE, D.D. 
 
 Professor of Theology at Colgate 
 University, Hamilton, New York. 
 
 Crown 8vo . . . $2.50 net. 
 
 THIS is the simplest, clearest, most radical, and most 
 spiritual theological treatise we have ever seen. 
 It is, indeed, in these four characteristics rather a 
 treatise on religion than on theology. It is vital, not 
 scholastic ; a minister to largeness of life, through clear- 
 ness of thought. ... To ministers holding in whole or 
 in part the new philosophy, we recommend this vol- 
 ume, as showing them how to use that philosophy to 
 conserve, nourish, and strengthen the old faith.— 77/^ 
 Outlook. 
 
 We have read it with great interest. Its author, 
 though so modest as not to prefix the word " Professor" 
 to his name, at once commands our respect. He is a 
 clear thinker, a fine scholar, a scientific and philosophi- 
 cal theolotjian. The work is able, it is stimulating, it is 
 
AN OUTLINE OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 fresh, and reveals him in touch with the latest thought 
 of the day. It is in many respects an epoch-making 
 book. . . . We commend this book to any who desire 
 to get the clearest statement of the new theology that 
 can be found in English. — Presbyterian and Reformed 
 Reviezv. 
 
 Professor Marcus Dods writes : — 
 
 " Has it ever happened to any of our readers to take 
 up a work on systematic theology, with the familiar 
 divisions, ' God/ * Man,' ' Sin,' Christ,' ' The Holy Spirit,' 
 ' The Church,' ' The Last Things,' and open it with a 
 sigh of weariness and dread, and find himself fascinated 
 and enthralled, and compelled to read on to the last 
 word? Let any one who craves a new experience of 
 this kind, procure Dr. Clarke's ' Outline.' We guarantee 
 that he will learn more, with greater pleasure, than he 
 is likely to learn in any other systematic theology." 
 
 We have received from America many useful con- 
 tributions to theological literature, but few that sur- 
 pass this either as theology or as literature. — British 
 Wecidy. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 Publishers, 
 
 153-157 Fifth Avenue . . NEW YORK. 
 
Date Due