Christian Re-Union 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. L. Mason Clarke, D.D., 
 
 MINISTER, FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
 
 BROOKLYN -NEW YORK 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE VISIT OF 
 
 Canon H. Hensley Henson, D.D., 
 
 OF WESTMINSTER, RECTOR OF ST. MARGARET'S, LONDON 
 TO BROOKLYN 
 
 AND HIS APPEARANCE IN THE PULPIT OF THE 
 
 FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
 
 ^ 
 
 MAY THE NINTH, 
 
 MCMIX
 
 sALr 
 Christian Re-Union'9o'^ 
 
 A SERiMON 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. L. Mason Clarke, D.D., 
 
 MINISTER, FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
 
 BROOKLYN -• NEW YORK 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE VISIT OF 
 
 Canon H. Hensley Henson, D.D., 
 
 OF WESTMINSTER, RECTOR OF ST. MARGARET'S, LONDON 
 TO BROOKLYN 
 
 AND HIS APPEARANCE IN THE PULPIT OF THE 
 
 FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
 
 ^ 
 
 MAY THE NINTH, 
 MCMIX
 
 CHRISTIAN RE-UNION 
 
 "And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three, and the great- 
 est of these is love." — I Corinthians xiii, 1 3. 
 
 Two very different considerations have seemed to 
 make this particular scripture the pre-eminently- 
 appropriate text for us this morning. 
 
 In the first place, we are to welcome to this pulpit 
 this afternoon, a distinguished clergyman of the 
 Church of England, who, to a peculiar degree, is the 
 apostle of "godly union and concord," — a prophet- 
 preacher who from time to time stands in the vener- 
 able Abbey of Westminster, clothed with the grace 
 of a noble fraternalism, pleading with the great 
 national Church of which he is a conspicuous leader, 
 for a recognition of true Christian discipleship and 
 for an honorable fellowship with all communions on 
 a basis of Christian character. Christian life and 
 Christian efficiency, apart from any long cherished 
 and stoutly maintained traditions of regularity of 
 organization. 
 
 As the rector of St. Margaret's also, Canon 
 Henson is the minister of that Church which for 
 three centuries has been the sanctuary within whose 
 walls the oldest free legislative assembly in the world 
 has been accustomed to gather, sometimes officially, 
 sometimes unofficially, to listen to the preaching of 
 
 3 
 
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 the Gospel. St. Margaret's is the Speaker's Church, 
 as it is often called, in which the members of Parlia- 
 ment have their traditional rights and privileges. It 
 was there the Solemn League and Covenant between 
 England and Scotland was accepted and subscribed 
 by the Parliament and the Westminster Assembly on 
 the memorable 25th of September, 1643. While we 
 are not concerned either to approve or to disapprove 
 all the specific courses which the signers of that 
 Covenant afterwards pursued, yet to-day we are the 
 direct heirs of that liberty which by the efforts and 
 sacrifices of these men, notwithstanding their failures 
 and mistakes, they secured, defended and handed on 
 to their children and to their children's children. 
 Fittingly the present rector of that historic Church 
 embodies the spirit of union. Fittingly too, most 
 fittingly, as Canon of Westminster, that shrine of 
 England's greatness, where the catholicity of intel- 
 lect, of heroism and of genius is commemorated in 
 the very heart of Empire, Dr. Henson also represents 
 the large and splendid catholicity of religion. He 
 thus perhaps to a peculiar degree represents the 
 liberty and the unity of the Christian faith. And 
 then as a leader of the new social movement in the 
 Anglican Church, he seeks to bring this large and 
 generous spirit of religion to the massed problems of 
 the toiling souls who are without the visible Church 
 of our common Lord and Saviour. 
 
 II 
 
 But I said that there is another consideration 
 which also leads us naturally to our text to-day. If 
 
 4
 
 it be a consideration that is suggested rather by the 
 contrast it affords more than by any similarities it 
 presents, it is none the less illumining and instructive. 
 
 Everywhere around us there is being celebrated the 
 four hundredth anniversary of the birth of John 
 Calvin, a man whose influence has been one of the 
 most powerful factors in developing the institutions 
 and ideals of England, Scotland and America. 
 
 There are few names in modern history which 
 arouse, on the one hand, such ardent admiration, and, 
 on the other hand, such intense detestation as the 
 name of Calvin. Few men have been more revered 
 and few more hated. Yet, in order either to admire 
 or to hate a man intelligently, it is eminently proper 
 that we should try to appreciate him. 
 
 At least there seems to be little doubt that in no 
 small measure we owe our modern liberties to the 
 work and influence of this mighty man. Certain it is, 
 at any rate, that for two hundred years or more, if 
 anywhere in Europe there was a community which 
 was abhorred by tyranny, if in England, Scotland, 
 France or Holland there were people who were the 
 special objects of despotic wrath and indignation, 
 those people were Calvinists. We are familiar too 
 with various eulogies which have been pronounced 
 upon this leader of that second and darker period of 
 the Reformation era, — pronounced by men who could 
 have had no sympathy with the theology with which 
 the name of Calvin has been properly identified. Mr. 
 Bancroft, the historian of America, himself a Unita- 
 rian, calls him " the guide of Republics." Mr. Froude 
 who held no brief for any particular brand of theology,
 
 praises him as the inspirer of modern freedom. 
 Motley, Hume and Buckle are all in much the same 
 strain. Besides, as the great Church of which we 
 here form a humble part, together with others closely 
 allied to us by ties of historical development, traces 
 its form of doctrine and worship to the personality 
 and teachings of this man, it can hardly be considered 
 out of place if in this fourth centennial year of 
 Calvin's birth we recall certain truths which, it seems 
 to me, need to be remembered. 
 
 For example, if our Communion has ever stood 
 for anything in history on behalf of education, — and 
 I am confident you will agree that it has, — it owes 
 this fact in large measure to the impulse of this pre- 
 eminent intellect of the Reformation Age. Or, if as 
 Americans we are interested in the origins of our own 
 nation we shall need to take account of the influence 
 of Calvin in the formation of this government. 
 
 Ill 
 
 But at the outset we are confronted with this inter- 
 esting fact, that all of this man's influence upon 
 political institutions and civil liberty, upon demo- 
 cratic ideals and republican government, is, as one of 
 his biographers tells us, a by-product, not an intended 
 and clearly designed result of Calvin's teaching. He 
 himself was no democrat. " I am far from denying " 
 he says, " that the form of government which greatly 
 surpasses the others is aristocracy." It is however 
 worth observing that when he taught and lodged in 
 the heart of his teaching that " subjection to rulers is 
 always to be a subjection in the Lord^'' he unde-
 
 signedly sowed the seed of freedom of conscience and 
 planted unknowingly the tree of republican liberty in 
 the soil of the modern world. It is therefore an 
 interesting fact that the most abiding result of this 
 forceful and masterful character is a result unintended 
 and unforeseen. The thing he intended is passing 
 away. He thus affords a significant illustration of a 
 man who builds better than he knows. He is an 
 instance of one whose first and controlling purpose 
 has been broken up into a multitude of unlooked-for 
 influences which still bless the world, though the chief 
 purpose of the man has had its day and ceased to be. 
 The theology of Calvin in its original form, as a 
 system of belief has practically passed away and no 
 longer obtains any general acceptance as a consider- 
 able force and power among us, while the influence 
 of Calvin is one of the most wholesome and invigor- 
 ating factors of our modern life. 
 
 IV 
 
 If it is popularly imagined that the Presbyterian 
 Church is Calvinistic in its doctrine to-day, such an 
 opinion can be entertained only by those who do not 
 appreciate the difference between original Calvinism 
 and the present faith of the Church. Surely it is 
 only in a very modified sense that the belief of this 
 denomination which perhaps especially counts Calvin 
 as a spiritual and intellectual ancestor, can be called 
 Calvinistic now. The revised summary of doctrine 
 accepted and adopted by our Church a few years ago 
 is not Calvinism but instead, it contains elements 
 which Calvin would not have endorsed and it omits
 
 elements which he insisted were essential to his 
 " System." 
 
 His teaching of the sovereignty of God has been 
 gradually modified into the doctrine of the Father- 
 hood of God, which is a very different thing. This 
 is now the organizing principle of our present the- 
 ology. That infinite Will which in Calvinism fore- 
 ordained evil as well as good, because it pleased and 
 had the power so to do, has become quite another 
 conception in modern faith, where it now is seen to be 
 good will^ the name of which is not Power but Love. 
 Every one of the distinctive teachings of Calvin has 
 been so worn away under the influence of what Paul 
 calls in our text the "greatest," that the change has 
 been more like a revolution than an evolution. His 
 view of human nature as totally depraved is nowhere 
 taught and cherished as an article of modern Christian 
 Faith, or if it does still lurk in any quarter as a 
 theoretical belief, it is not the faith that governs 
 men's actions and procedure in the proclamation of 
 the Gospel. Instead, the message is preached as to 
 men who, though they may be wandering children 
 of their heavenly Father, are yet children who may 
 turn again to their Father's house. No paralysis of 
 predestination withers the present appeal to the human 
 will. Still further, Calvin's doctrine of the hard 
 decrees of Calvin's God has passed away by reason of 
 the truer conception of the revelation of the real God 
 in the person of the real Jesus. So it is that each of 
 the "five points" of Calvinism has been changed or 
 left behind. Every feature of his theology which was 
 essential to his rigorous " svstem " has been so modi-
 
 fied until the faith of our Church to-day, in common 
 with the faith of Christendom, bears slight resem- 
 blance to the original Calvinism of four centuries 
 ago. The witty paraphrase of a familiar stanza is 
 not untrue to fact, — 
 
 "We are not divided, 
 All one body we, 
 Wesley's God is sovereign. 
 And Calvin's man is free." 
 
 V 
 
 Now the explanation of such significant changes 
 is not difficult. 
 
 It would be strange indeed if in four hundred 
 years the knowledge of Christian truth had not 
 increased under the promised tutelage of the Spirit of 
 God, if the theology of men had not advanced even 
 as the world has gone forward in all other depart- 
 ments of thought and life. It would be a sad result 
 of four more centuries of Christian experience if the 
 Church thought and felt and believed to-day as it did 
 in Calvin's time. With the enlarged view of the 
 world, with the new enthusiasm for humanity, with 
 the altered conception of history, of nature, and of 
 the human soul, it would be terribly strange if we 
 had no better thoughts of God. And this entire 
 result which is so evident to us the instant we state 
 to ourselves what Calvinism really was, is due to the 
 gradually increasing pressure upon the conscience 
 and heart of men of the comparatively new-found 
 truth that God is Love. What one of our Presby- 
 terian theologians has written is true, namely, that 
 the God of Calvinism is Power. The God of modern 
 
 9
 
 Christian Faith is Love. Calvin never had the con- 
 ception of a Jesus-like God. 
 
 It is usually thought also that Calvinism is abso- 
 lutely logical as a system. It certainly is emphati- 
 cally logical in parts. However it is not all logic and 
 it dispenses with logic at times. But even were it 
 tight-riveted in every place, it would be none the less 
 impossible as a statement of religious faith to-day. 
 Love can never be interpreted by logical processes 
 alone. Power may be stated in the terms of a syl- 
 logism but love never can be thus stated. President 
 Patton once said in this very city that he would not 
 say that a person can not be a Christian without 
 being a Calvinist, but he would say that a person can 
 not be a logical Christian without being a Calvinist. 
 But the very point is that there is a great deal more 
 in human nature than intellect and logic. Love is 
 often illogical and it is always, I think, unlogical. 
 That is, it does not confine itself to the grooves of 
 reasoning. You can not express or explain your 
 emotions by a major and minor premiss and con- 
 clusion. The parable of the Prodigal Son is the 
 despair of logic, but it is also the joy and glory 
 of love ! 
 
 And thus, like a stately iceberg that comes from 
 an Arctic glacier, glistening and solid-like in its com- 
 pacted structure, which, when it meets the warmer 
 seas begins to fade and melt and finally dissolves 
 away, yet in its passing contributes elements of vigor 
 to the ocean in which it disappears and to the air 
 above, so I think of the theology of Calvin, symmet- 
 rical in its outlines, tremendous in its original energy, 
 
 10
 
 a mighty moving power in the older days of tyranny, 
 yet as it comes to the latitudes of a humaner age it 
 melts and fades, passing as a " system " away in the 
 presence of the great ocean of divine love, but also 
 in passing, it contributes vigor and health to a multi- 
 tude of intellectual and spiritual interests that still 
 abide. Let no one think therefore that because as a 
 system of theology Calvinism passes away it has not 
 done great work for God and for man. The tonic of 
 its power is in the thought and life of men yet. It 
 has gripped the intellect of as sturdy a race of 
 thinkers as the later world has known. It has been 
 the persistent foe of ignorance and the constant friend 
 of learning. It has also laid its emphasis upon in- 
 dividual character, and it was only an abuse of its 
 message which made it the instrument of an immoral 
 fatalism. Moreover, it has stamped upon men's minds 
 afresh the conviction that there is a divine plan for 
 every life and thus it has given a supreme value to 
 the lowliest soul. These are but few of the results 
 of the Calvinistic interpretation of the Gospel which 
 have gone as lasting elements into the faith of 
 Christendom to-day. It is well indeed to realize 
 these things and to pay our modest tribute to so 
 significant an influence. I can but think also that 
 it is worth while to see our present theological align- 
 ment in reference to such an influence, to know what 
 we are in Christian thought and where we are, and to 
 know why we are what and where we are. 
 
 VI* 
 
 But there is more to be said than this. In this 
 beautiful poem on Christian love, this thirteenth 
 
 11
 
 chapter of First Corinthians, St, Paul reveals him- 
 self as the great theologian. The old Latin phrase, 
 whoever said it first, '''' pectus facit theologuni " — " the 
 heart makes the theologian " certainly fits the apostle 
 who wrote this immortal song. Yet, no one ever laid 
 more stress upon " faith " than did Paul, and he had 
 a clear idea of what he meant by " the faith." His 
 was the only trained and disciplined intellect among 
 the earliest followers of the Great Teacher. " Be not 
 children in understanding " he writes to these same 
 Corinthians, " in understanding be men." Also " I 
 will pray and sing in the spirit, but I will pray and 
 sing with the understanding also." But how he 
 penetrates, as with the eye of an experienced prophet, 
 the real secret and genius of religion. " If I have all 
 faith — but have not love, I am nothing." " If I have 
 all knowledge — and have not love, I am nothing." 
 " Knowledge passeth away." " Prophecies shall be 
 done away." " Love never faileth." And what is 
 the result ? Why, the result is that the nearer we 
 come to this which is the real heart of all theology 
 we come closer to the two great principles of all Truth, 
 Liberty and Unity. There can never be any realized 
 unity without freedom, and freedom can not come to 
 its fullness without realizing unity. The very thing 
 which theology has so often been afraid of and which 
 it has so frequently tried to stifle is thus the very con- 
 dition of the unity which by other means it has 
 endeavored vainly to secure. The man who seeks to 
 enforce his belief upon another man, by threats or 
 penalties of whatever kind, is insulting the truth he 
 tries to advance. All that truth asks of us is that we 
 
 12
 
 set it free. Only when it is free will its unity 
 appear. 
 
 The same holds good of the Church. To-day the 
 Church of Christ is divided into a multitude of 
 sections. Yet we are all coming closer together 
 under the influence of this "greatest thing in the 
 world." The Church seems to be crying out to its 
 leaders and saying " Make me free. If these petty 
 bonds which enslave me and keep my life imprisoned 
 were but severed, then because free I should realize 
 my oneness." Is it not the fact that the things 
 which divide the Church are the things which en- 
 slave the Church ? Is it not also the fact that the 
 things which unite us all, underneath our dividing 
 lines, are the great elemental unities in which alone 
 our liberties as Christians are lodged ? We therefore 
 claim our right to be ourselves and yet to hold visible 
 fellowship with all who serve and love the Imperial 
 Christ,— the LORD, to whom both St. Paul and 
 the apocalyptic writer refer in that carefully chosen 
 word which in the Greek always meant the Emperor. 
 (First Corinthians II : 20 and The Revelation 1:10.) 
 
 We will then hold no truth however " historic " 
 it may be in such a way as to disfellowship any one 
 who loves the Lord of all truth. We will refuse to 
 be so exalted by our particular doctrine or Church or- 
 ganization as to exclude from our fraternalism any 
 one who loves the Lover of us all. Nothing but this 
 " greatest " can ever melt away the " least " things 
 which men have made into reasons for dividing the 
 Holy Catholic Church. The unerring mark of such 
 a Church is not any figment of fancied regularity of 
 
 13
 
 organization, not any " system " of theology which it 
 defends against all comers, not any external use or 
 sign, but simply Christian character, Christian service, 
 Christian love. Not the unity of uniformity as the 
 older days attempted with such baleful results and as 
 it lingers still here and there among men, but the 
 unity of variety, — as St. Paul himself might have ex- 
 pressed it, the unity of a spiritual universe, where 
 each part has a glory of its own as the several stars 
 differ in their glory, but where all together they utter 
 forth the manifold grace in harmonious fellowship ! 
 
 VII 
 
 It is a significant fact that not one of the divisions 
 in the Church of Christ had its origin in a plain and 
 evident word of Jesus or teaching of the New Testa- 
 ment. You can not find the " historic episcopate " 
 until the second century. You read nothing of the 
 Papacy in the Scriptures, and if St. Peter wrote the 
 first epistle that now bears his name, he presents in 
 the fifth chapter a strange protest against it. You 
 can not find Presbyterianism, either as an order of 
 polity or as a Calvinistic confession, in any exclusive 
 possession of divine right, in this sacred record. Not 
 one of the different forms of Church organization 
 extant has any verifiable claim to supremacy on the 
 authority of the New Testament. But what does 
 have such authority? Why, Christian love and 
 fellowship are the notes of the unquestioned message 
 of Jesus and His apostles. The simple things (and 
 yet how hard they are ?), the great, splendid elemen- 
 tals of character, these are the constant factors of the 
 
 14
 
 Gospel. This is what men are feeling increasingly 
 to-day. This is bringing the Church closer together, 
 part with part, portion with portion, and nothing, 
 whether ancient prejudice or new born bigotrv^ or 
 mistaken convictions, nothing, whether decrees of 
 Councils or resolutions of Assemblies, can forever 
 prevent the federation in a true and " godly union 
 and concord," of the several communions that worship 
 the Father of us all. We are learning to love each 
 other more and to respect the opinions of those who 
 in unessentials are removed from us. We are no 
 longer tr^-ing the impossible task of creating a 
 " system " of theology which is to hold all the truth 
 of salvation in its rigid mould. We have given up 
 the unholy business of pronouncing anathemas upon 
 men of character whose faith is not ours and to whom 
 our faith is meaningless. We are beginning to dis- 
 cover how great love is ! We are also learning how 
 various is the truth of God and how big and vast is 
 the human soul ! 
 
 I take this opportunity of quoting from a deliver- 
 ance made by the eminent Canon who will preach 
 from this historic pulpit this afternoon. He stood 
 before the University of Cambridge and said, "the 
 time has come for Churchmen to remove the barriers 
 for which they can no longer plead political utility 
 and which have behind them no sanctions in the best 
 conscience and worthiest reason of our times." 
 
 Everywhere Christians are already united in the 
 fellowship of sacred science. Scholarship knows no 
 such dividing lines as men have drawn in the name 
 of religion. Devotion brings together men of all 
 
 15
 
 sorts of creeds and we all pi ay and praise in the 
 language of Romanist, Anglican, I^utheran, Unitarian 
 and Calvinist, Methodist and Quaker. Already 
 when you reach to the real heart of the matter 
 we are one in the victory of liberty, the victory of 
 Christian love ! The two must go together towards 
 the realization of the fuller visible unity of the 
 Church. Liberty precedes the unity in the evolution 
 of the Kingdom. Unity is the consummate expression 
 of Christian liberty. 
 
 When in days to come the Church of Christ shall 
 achieve by the abundance of her love the union to 
 which she is called, then she will be able to convince 
 the world, as the Saviour promised, but as now she 
 can not do, that " Thou hast sent Me." Then she 
 will fling her new love over the now divided ranks of 
 human struggle and toil and suffering and will draw 
 together by no other force than love, the separated 
 and alienated hosts that now believed or deny outside 
 her sacred fellowship. The appeal of love is the only 
 universal appeal and every one that loveth is born of 
 the universal God. Amen and Ameu ! 
 
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