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The Baptist position
by
Leighton Williams

"I give theft Baaks_ &
i fni the founding if -a- College ou fitfltJEo/ony?

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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

Hmity {Tracts, 1Ro, I.

The Baptist Position

Its Experimental Basis

BV

LEIGHTON WILLIAMS
Pastor of Amity Baptist Church

PRICE TEN CENTS

NEW YORK
E. Scott & Co., Printers and Publishers
134 West 23rd Street
1892

Hmits tracts, mo. I.

The Baptist Position
Its Experimental Basis
BT
LEIGHTON WILLIAMS * V*.
Pastor of Amity Baptist Church

"Break Thou the bread of life,
Dear Lord, to me,
As Thou didst break the loaves
Beside the sea;
Beyond the sacred page
I seek Thee, Lord,
My spirit pants for Thee,
0 Living Word,"

To know, at length,
That truth is simply moral light: and faith
But willingness to walk in light.

NEW YORK
E. Scott & Co., Printers and Publishers
134 West 23d Street
1892

A lover of Jesus, and of the truth, and a true inward Christian, and one
free from inordinate affections, can freely turn himself unto God, and lift
himself above himself in spirit, and rest in full enjoyment.— Imitation of
Christ, II. , i:6.
I think thou hast rightly interpreted the central thought of Quakerism.
Indeed, there is but one thing peculiar to the sect— their faith in the Divine
Immanence. This is their reason for being, — their excuse for maintaining
their separate organization. It seems to me that many of the Friends of our day
are virtually abandoning this vital doctrine, while, on the other hand, in the
best utterances of leading minds of other sects, I find the Quaker doctrine of
the Spirit, clearly and fully enunciated. I believe it will, in the end, be found
the stronghold of Christianity against the critical and agnostic spirit of our age.
No revelation of science, no destructive biblical criticism, can shake the faith
of those who listen for the voice of God in their own souls. — Extract from a letter
of John O, Whittier to Dr. George D. Boardman.
God working mightily in the human heart is the spring of all abiding
spiritual power; and it is only as men follow out the promptings of the inward
spiritual life that they do great things for God. — David Livingstone.

THE BAPTIST POSITION— ITS EXPERI
MENTAL BASIS.

I am of the Order of all the Saints, and all the Saints are of my Order.-
Mere Angelique, of Port Royal.
All thinking men are coming to be of one religion. — Professor Sanday.

PREFATORY NOTE.
The following papers were originally published as a series of articles in
the Chicago Standard, and were subsequently reproduced in the Canadian
Baptist. Some friends have suggested their republication in a more permanent
form in order to place them within reach of some who may not have met them
in their earlier publication.
The author gladly complies with this request in the hope of gaining wider
currency and securing more general acceptance for the great principle of the
fundamental unity of all religious truth on an unassailable scientific basis,
which it is the main contention of this essay to maintain.
As addressed primarily to Baptist readers, the applications of this principle
to denominational tenets are given prominence, but the reach of its application
is not narrower than Christianity itself, and the author trusts that readers of
other communions whom this pamphlet may chance to reach will find it written
in no bigoted or partisan spirit, but with a desire to follow truth wherever it
may lead, and to further the unity of all followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I.
INTRODUCTORY.
In a time of such general religious discussion as ours it becomes
us to consider the proper attitude of Baptists towards the religious
contentions of the day, in order to meet them in the best way and
take such fair advantage of them as we can for the extension of our
own views. It is my belief that these discussions are tending toward
our positions, yet we see that their practical effect is rather toward
the building up of some other denominations than ours, particularly
the Episcopalians. Why is this ? If this view be correct, it would
show that in us there is some failure adequately to present our own
views and rightly to estimate the popular movement of thought.

Now, in order to answer correctly the question thus suggested, a
further question must be asked and satisfactorily answered, namely,
what is the fundamental Baptist position ? After careful considera
tion I offer this proposition
Baptists build on a fundamentally different basis than other
denominations. 1. There are three possible bases for the Christian Church. The
first is the sacramental basis. For centuries this was the only
foundation generally recognized, and to-day the Koman Catholic,
Church still builds on it. According to this view the church is
the treasury of grace, which, through the sacraments duly admin-'
istered by properly ordained priests, becomes efficacious to the re-.
cipient who receives them in faith. The objection to this basis for
the Christian Church is its want of conformity to facts. The re
cipients of sacramental grace are not uniformily changed men, and
the churches building on this system have developed vast corrup
tions. The second basis on which the Christian Church has been built
is the creedal one. With the protest of the Eeformation against
the corruptions of the Roman Church and the recognition of the
Bible rather than of the church, as the standard of faith and
practice, came the construction of creeds setting forth systemati
cally the doctrines of Scripture as then apprehended. Acceptance
of these creeds was the standard of orthodoxy, and the great truth
of justification by faith, as popularly understood, came to mean an
acceptance of one or other of these creeds.
The churches which built on this creedal foundation have
never developed ' the corruptions of the Boman Church, but they
have shown a tendency to degenerate into a dead system of mere
intellectuality, and the charge which Roman Catholic writers have
brought against them of tending toward rationalism seems not to
be without some foundation.
There is a third possible foundation for the Christian Church,
namely, the experimental. In the last century, the revivals under
Wesley and Whitefield gave emphasis to the necessity of au actual
change of heart, and the evangelical religion, which in our day has
worked its way into both creedal and sacramental churches, is
largely the outcome of the movement which they initiated, while
the Methodist Church is the monument of their labors. But there
was inconsistency in insisting on the necessity of an experience of
change of heart, and yet retaining hereditary church-membership.
Baptists cannot claim to le the sole evangelical church, hut they can

claim to be the sole denomination which builds its entire system con
sistently upon this spiritual experience of the new lirth as its oasis.
Not a creed, let it le olseraed, lut an experience.
Perhaps this statement needs to be further enforced, because
one hears it not infrequently said that while Baptists have no
written creed they have an unwritten creed, or that tbe Bible is
their creed. I maintain that we have no creed, written or un
written, essential or non-essential, except so far as the experience
on which we build involves a creed as a matter of fact. The proof
of this statement is as follows :
When a candidate for baptism comes before one of our
churches he is required to relate his religious experience,
and that experience consists in those inward evidences which he is
conscious of and is able to state, and which go to prove that he has
received the new birth. The candidate may be a young child, too
immature to have any clearly apprehended creed, or a person too
illiterate or feeble in mind to clearly grasp a creed, but in either
case, if the experience related is sufficiently clear to furnish good
evidence of a change of heart, we do not hesitate to receive the per
son into our churches. The conditions of admissioii into a Chris
tian Church give evidence of the basis on which it builds. I there
fore rely on this fact as determining our basis to be experimental,
not creedal nor sacramental,
2. It is commonly stated that the difference between ourselves
and other bodies of Christians is found in the fact that we accept
the Scriptures, or as some say with President Wayland, the New
Testament, as our rule of faith and practice, while they add to it a
mass of tradition, the accretions of post-apostolic periods. Such a
statement makes the difference to be one mainly of material. I
would make it one also of the method of using the material. Per
haps an argument on this point would unduly swell the proportions
of this article. Suffice it to say, that the creed maker is necessarily
a legalist. He uses Scripture as a new law of which Christ is the
supreme lawgiver and the apostlic writers the authorized exponents.
The Baptist regards the New Testament rather as a mass of his
torical material setting forth the6 operations of the new force of
grace through Christ, and looks upon the apostolic writings as
authorative testimony concerning those operations because indited
by " holy men moved of the Holy Ghost," deeply experienced in
the working of this grace and writing under the inspiration thus
received. Here let me add, to forestall a possible objection, that I
believe there is no inspiration apart from experience.

Reviewing my previous statement, I think myself justified in
the apparently sweeping assertion that we have " no creed essential
or non-essential, except so far as the experience on which we build
involves a creed as a matter of fact." Evidently the gospel narra
tives will evermore remain the basis of our religious experience,
and the epistles will remain the testimony of primal authority re
garding the working of grace. But divine grace, as an efficient
power in the world to-day, as at the beginning, determines its own
development. Scripture bears to it the relation of the seed to the
tree, not the relation of law, which, as above stated, is the basal
idea of creed. The connection is vital, not legal ; experimental,
not creedal. Again, our unity is one of experience, and not of creed. When
we receive new members into our churches we extend to them the
right hand of fellowship, and this act sets forth that the fellowship
or unity of Baptists is simply a fellowship in a common experience.
Extending the hand of fellowship is no idle or unmeaning cere
mony, but the expression of an existing unity.
Many persons carelessly assume that the great distinguish
ing feature of Baptists as a denomination is their view of the
ordinance of baptism, both as to mode and as to proper recipi
ents. But, I believe that it can be shown that our views of the
ordinance are only a corollary of the fundamental position as above
stated. 3. I think it can be shown that historically this is the correct
Baptist position. Early Baptists, both in England and on the
Continent, insisted on experimental religion. Yet, among them
there was at times considerable laxity as to the ordinance of bap
tism, and in time of persecution they sometimes allowed their
children to be sprinkled as an act of conformity to the State Church.
A recent writer in the Contemporary Review states that the
fundamental doctrines of the early Baptists were those of the inner
light and the Kingdom of God on earth. The evidence which he
adduces in support of these views is considerable, and the interest
of his statement for us at this time is the support which it gives to
the view now presented.
The view which I have now sought to justify logically and
historically may be tested also biblically and philosophically. The
New Testament sets forth the Gospel of Christ as announcing a new
life entering into the soul of the believer. The Apostle John de
clares, "That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you,
that ye may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is

with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." In this text the
new life is presented as experienced by the believer and that ex
perience makes a bond of fellowship between all who share it and
the God who imparts it, and the Saviour who brings it. President
Patton, of Princeton, said in his sermon delivered to the graduating
class in June, 1891, that if he were compelled to choose between
the formula, " Christianity is a dogma," and the formula, "Christi
anity is a life," while reluctant to make such a choice, he should
still choose the former. This declaration might raise the question
whether in his Bible the Saviour's great discourse in the tenth of
John reads, " 1 am come that they might have dogma, and that they
might have it more abundantly." Baptists certainly would make
the opposite choice and declare unhesitatingly, Christianity is a life.
Philosophically considered, Christianity can only justify itself as
it is supported by spiritual verities and psychological phenomena
which can be ascertained and verified, and this philosophical justi
fication can be furnished by the experimental basis and by that
alone. So much in proof of the statement that Baptists build on a
fundamentally different basis from other denominations.

II.
the experimental basis scientifically tested.
The principles stated in the last article need now to be elabo
rated by the help of the new scientific method.
I. I am inclined to believe that the wide movement now
taking place in religious thought is due to two main causes or in
fluences. The first of these is,' undoubtedly, the stirrings of the
spiritual life which is everywhere awakening into self -consciousness.
The frequent reference now made to the authority of Christian
consciousness is an evidence of this awakening. The appeal is
becoming less frequent to external authorities of Scripture, church,
or tradition, because the inward illumination is present more uni
versally than in past ages. In this fulfilment of Scripture prophecy
as Christians we heartily rejoice, and as Baptists see in it an indi
cation of our hereditary position in maintaining the experimental
basis of Christianity. We reason thus. Life, as it develops, t
awakens into self-consciousness. That self-consciousness becomes
the most reliable witness as to the nature of the life of which it is
itself the development. Within the limits of its own sphere its
authority is supreme. To be false to one's own conscience or con- ^

sciousness is to be guilty of an infidelity which is necessarily fatal
to the life processes, and hence in Scripture phrase, damnable.
Conscious themselves of spiritual life, and knowing by inward
experience that "that Life was the light of men," our early Baptist
forefathers, men to be wondered at for profundity in simplicity,
strength in weakness, foresight in humility, holding the widest
future of thought in the narrowest present of poverty, obscurity
and imprisonment, forged the irresistible weapons which, discarded
for a season, are again to be wielded with more than their former
success in these latter days against what has felicitously been
termed, "an obscurantist army arrayed against the light." The
authority of Christian consciousness is but a new name for that old
inheritance, liberty of conscience and liberty of prophesying. Yet
the liberty is worthless save to him who has a message, — the man
whose eyes are opened, and whose ears are unstopped ; who believes
in present inspiration because he has experienced it. The witness
for Christ is such an one, who speaks of his personal knowledge.
The authority of his testimony is evidently dependent on that of
his consciousness, and liberty of conscience and prophesying is the
opportunity demanded for the operations and manifestations of
that free spirit.
It is not my purpose to do more than re-state in these articles
the old Baptist positions, as I conceive them, in modern phraseology,
and point out their applications to the discussions of our time, and
some of the tendencies among ourselves to drop away from them.
One of these latter which must be noted at this point is an
exaltation of the letter of Scripture as against the Spirit in it, in
the individual believer and in the church. The two go together.
Alone the letter kills. Watered by the Spirit it is the seed of
eternal life. Infallibility no more belongs to the letter of Scripture
than to any other material symbol of the immaterial Spirit, which
alone is divine and infallible. Hence a false emphasis on its sup
posed verbal sanctity is an obstacle to the Spirit's present workings in
our day, and to the free investigation of its own essential character
as the vehicle of the Spirit. Instead of decrying the " higher criti
cism " as necessarily rationalistic and sacrilegious, our proper atti
tude should be one of open-mindedness, ready, as Lincoln once
said, to adopt "new views when shown to be true views." Yet it
will not be safe to neglect a deep and continual drinking in of the
Scriptures, " which are able to make us wise unto salvation."
Scripture and Spirit witness together and neither can safely be dis
posed with. The new and the old go together. The new light

9
breaks out of the old word, as said Robinson to the embarking
Pilgrim Fathers. From the old seed springs the new plant.
Merely storing away the old seed is of no avail, if we refuse to
admit the opportunity of growth. And while, on the other hand,
we are ready to admit that every word of God is a seed of spiritual
life, we yet carefully cherish the Scriptures as the chief treasury of
this seed and the clearest revelation of the Divine will, "whereunto
we do well to take heed." A man makes small progress in spiritual
knowledge who is not a close and reverent student of his Bible.
So much for that old friend under a new name, the authority
of Christian consciousness.
II. The second transforming agency now working in religious
thought is the new scientific method. This method of investi
gation, often termed the inductive or Baconian, has been the chief
agent in modern progress. It has transformed the old alchemy
from a fruitless pursuit of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of
life into the new chemistry, through which we are coming to know
and hence also to use the world as it is. It has turned astrology
into astronomy, and dropping fanciful theories and groundless
superstitions, is pushing out its grand conquests of knowledge into
the farthest confines of space.
But this method is still to show its power in theological dis
cussion. Hitherto, the old deductive method, basing itself first on
a supposed infallible church, and then in the overthrow of that
theory, on an infallible book, has held almost undisputed sway.
It has been prone to disregard the actual facts of sin and divine
grace in the interest of preconceived theories based on supposed
logical deductions from isolated texts of Scripture ; and even to
day men trained under its influence find it difficult to emancipate
themselves from its power. But it is to be gratefully remembered
that a formal theology has never been fastened on our free Baptist
churches. They have held to their experimental foundation, and
to those who have sought to foist upon them the elaborate systems
of the reformed communions they have given the answer of the
blind man cured, wise above others in his humility, " This one
thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see."
The scientific method demands facts, and the experimental
basis is one of the facts. A few of the most salient may be here
cited. 1. Conversion is but the first experience. The Saviour called
it the beginning of a new life in the soul ; but that new life has a
growth analogous to the growth and development of physical life.

10
This truth we are apt to forget, and while maintaining that our
Christian life must have a beginning in conscious experience of
the new birth, we do not equally realize the necessity for a con
tinual growth of conscious experience, but fall back on faith in a
creed or past experience as sufficient. If we have begun in experi
ence we must progress in experience. I know not if this is not the
truth which the apostle has in mind when he writes to the Gala
tians : " I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called
you into the grace of Christ into another gospel which is not
another." The gospel which had its beginning in conscious ex
perience will evidently have its only normal growth in conscious
experience. 2. It may be noted that Christian literature is most permanent
when it is most distinctly of this experimental character. The
books, which have had the most abiding influence in the history of
the Christian church have not been commentaries on Scripture or
theological systems, but rather those books which dealt with the
actual experience of Christian life. Among Augustine's writings,
his "Confessions" are to-day the best known, and " The Imitation
of Christ " is as generally read now as it ever has been after the
lapse of well-nigh four hundred years. Other examples of the same
class of writings will readily occur to the reader, as for example
Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," Baxter's "Saint's Rest," and Dod
dridge's " Rise and Progress of Religion in the Human Soul."
3. Another evidence of the worth of Christian experience is its
value in the presentation of the gospel through preaching. There
is in our time considerable discussion as to the relative value of
doctrinal and sensational sermons ; some contending for one, and
others for the other style, as the better of the two. There is an
element of truth in each view. Sermons should contain a clear
presentation of the great doctrines of Christianity, and yet, on the
other hand, doctrinal sermons are apt to be lifeless. The so-called
sensational preaching is a protest raised against dry theological dis
quisitions in the pulpit. These apparently opposite characteristics
are united in experimental preaching, as President Wayland used
to call it ; that is to say, a preaching which presents the experiences
of the Christian, in whose soul divine grace is operating. It is
thus seen that the Christian life manifests itself in the conscious
experience of those who receive it, and that this experience im
presses itself both on the pulpit utterances and on the written
literature of the church, and alone gives value to them. There is,
therefore, in every age a deposit, so to speak, out of the experience

11
of the Christian church whichbuilds up a mass of Christian literature.
4. When we come to consider the Bible itself, we find that it
partakes of the same character as the literature just described. The
Bible consists of a number of books of very various authorship both
as to time and circumstance, but concerning which certain general
statements may be made of universal truth. One of these is the
statement of the Apostle Peter, that "holy men of God spake as they
were moved by the Holy Ghost." The Scriptures may be considered
as the record of the experiences of holy men. And the impulsions,
so to speak, which they received from the Holy Spirit or, to use a
more common word, their inspiration, was not a mere intellectual
stimulus, but was a divine energy moving the affections and the
will quite as much as the intellect, so that the whole man was moved
by the Spirit of God. Under the influence of this inspiration these
holy men spake and wrote, and the writings or the utterances thus
given partook of that same experimental character. Prophecy may
thus le considered as the utterance of the soul in moments of deep
religious experience, and the whole Scriptures may be considered as
a continent of revelation building out of an ocean of religious ex
perience. St. Paul regards the oracles thus received by the Jewish
race as their peculiar blessing. We are very apt to insist strenu
ously on the Scriptures as coming from men of God, but we are apt
to forget that the Apostle Paul tells us that their object is, that
men of God in all future times may receive strength and instruction
and "be thoroughly furnished unto all good works," or in other
words, we insist on the spiritual inspiration of the human authors
of Scripture as if it were a peculiar thing, whereas the Apostle tells
us that the very reason for its being given was that the same
spiritual inspiration might be perfected in those who read it. " The
unlimited promises of the New Testament," said the late George
Bowen, of Bombay, " are not to be created as curiosities of litera
ture, but as the appropriate means designated by God for perpetu
ating in the church Elijahs, Daniels and Pauls."
5. Our Lord himself appealed to the religious consciousness of
those to whom he spoke and declared that that consciousness de
veloped under obedience to the will of God. " If any man wills to
do his will he shall know of the doctrine."
In the Saviour's utterances also and in other portions of Scrip
ture as well, we are admonished to discern the signs of the times
and warned of the danger of a failure to regard the works of God ;
manifestly on the assumption that we have the capacity to see those
signs and regard the works of God if we only have the will to do so.

12

III.
SOME THEOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF OUR POSITION.

We now pass to consider our opportunity as a denomination in
the present aspect of religious discussion. The question with
which we started was : What shall be the attitude of Baptists
toward the religious contentions of the day, in order to meet them
in the best way and take such fair advantage of them as we can for
the extension of our own views ? To that question we now return.
We have considered the preliminary question, viz : What is the
fundamental Baptist position ? We have seen that we build on the
individual experience of the grace of God in the human heart, and
the fellowship of all who have shared in that experience.
I. It now remains to consider the bearing of these opinions
on the great questions of the day.
1. In considering the religious aspects of our times we are
met at once with two great general streams of tendency. The first
is the disposition to believe in the reign of unvarying, universal law,
the scientific belief in the uniformity of nature, and an acqui
escence in the scientific demand for facts. The scientific method
of induction from facts proved by experience is superseding the old
deductive method in the thought of our times. Religious leaders
in those branches of the Christian Church which are built upon the
sacramental or creedal basis are necessarily placed in a position
antagonistic to this tendency of thought. There is necessarily a
conflict between science and religion when religion is thus pre
sented. Science cannot tolerate unsupported assertions, based not
on evidence, but solely on supposed infallible authority, whether of
church or book. She recognizes no authority but that Divine Will,
which she terms Nature, manifested in the phenomena which are
the subject of her investigations. But when we come to inquire
what is the relation of Baptist views to this scientific method we
see at once that there can be no quarrel between those views, when
properly presented, and the scientific method of investigation. The
experimental basis on which we build is itself a scientific platform.
The experimental Christian proceeds in his knowledge of spiritual
truth along the same lines pursued by the scientific investigator in

13
his study of the material universe, and the unprejudiced scientist is
on the road to faith. The main difference between them is the
•difference between their fields of investigation, the latter dealing
with physical phenomena, while the former is concerned with
metaphysical and spiritual manifestations. This consideration
alone would be sufficient to show the great vantage-ground which
Baptists have in our time for the diffusion of their views ; but this
advantage is lost when we fall back on the arbitrary postulates of
a creedal theology, as we are too apt to do.
2. A second observation which should now be made is that
the religious movement of the day is toward experimental Chris
tianity. What is true in the world is still more evident in the
nominal church. This is a consequence of the relation between
the scientific method and our views already noted, and of an
awakened Christian consciousness. With minds already educated
in the scientific method of investigation, cit is inevitable that the
tendency should be toward that form of religious belief which
harmonizes most closely with the scientific principles already
accepted. Experimental Christianity alone does this, and therefore
it is not surprising to find that in every church there is a growing
demand, even on the part of the unconverted as well as the re
generate, for the evidence of a real change of heart shown in the
outward life, and that under all the rebellion against dogmatism
and ritualism, there is real yearning after vital religion manifest in
our age. It is not within the limits permitted us in these articles to
trace this movement in the various denominations, but it is now
sufficiently manifest to be generally known to all, that in the last
twenty years or more there has been a gradual drawing together
of Christian denominations, and that that movement toward union
is in the direction of experimental or vital religion. Let us take a
few examples only.
3. One of the great discussions of the day is the possibility
of the union of Christian churches. Now it is evident that no such
union is possible either on the basis of a ritual or of a creed, but it
is just as evident that there is an actual movement toward union
-on the experimental basis This is not to say that eventually all
Christians will become Baptists in name, but it is to say that
eventually all Christians coming to build on the basis of spiritual
verities must come into a substantial agreement on the basis of
what those facts are found to be, that is on the experimental basis,
.as we have called it.

14
I am not unmindful that some among us look for union on the
basis of the Bible, recognized as sole and sovereign authority ; but
brethren who still hold this opinion, can have given, I fear, some
what insufficient attention to the biblical criticism, which is so
resolutely pressing a novel and deeper question, viz.: What is the
Bible ? Till that is settled, we shall have, every man his own
Bible, to a considerable degree. And if the vainly attempted de
murrer to the validity of biblical criticism could by some strange
fatuity of man be for a time successful, it would still prove un
availing in establishing the Bible as a satisfactory basis of union
in the future as in the past. The history of biblical exegesis proves-
that, even with practical agreement as to what constitutes the sub
stance of Scripture, defective apprehension of its meaning and
varying interpretation still leave us without that certainty and in
fallibility which the mind of man naturally and justly demands as
the basis of his most serious and vital conclusions. A high degree-
of probability is all that is, or can be, offered at this point by the
most ardent advocates for a sole biblical basis of Christianity — the-
apologists for the popular but misleading dictum of Chillingworth,
"the Bibje, the Bible only, the religion of Protestants."
It is, therefore, by no means strange that there is general
apathy regarding the possibility of the union of all Christians, in
view of the apparent hopelessness of all efforts in that direction.
Yet such union is promised, nay, even commanded, in Scripture,
and the yearnings of the regenerate heart attest its necessity. It
will ultimately be realized, but only along the line indicated by the
Apostle Paul, viz.: through vital union in Christ, a union of spirit,.
yet permitting full liberty of opinion and action consistent with the-
maintenance of union.
4. A question of almost equal importance in our time is the
question of authority in religious matters. In the famous inaugural
address of Dr. Chas. A. Briggs, delivered in January, 1891, he held
that there were three sources of authority, the Church, the Bible,
and the Reason. In this position Baptists will be ready to agree-
substantially, but would vary the statement in terms. The Spirit
of God must be the ultimate source of authority in religion and the
channel of that authority must be the human intellect which is-
made the medium of his revelation. This revelation has come, as-
we are told in the epistle to the Hebrews, in various ways and
varying portions. The Bible is a record of these oracles ; the Bible
is to that extent an authority in religious matters. The Spirit con
tinues to work through human minds, and thus the Christian

15
consciousness is an authority, and as he still gives to each individual
only a measure of truth, that which is lacking in one is supplied by
that which is revealed to another, and thus the church or body of
believers is also an authority in religion.
Baptists have always stood for the truth of these positions ;
they have been loyal to Scripture as an authority ; they have also
contended for the liberty of conscience in religious matters, and
they have been reverent of the views held by the body of believers,
or what we are often accustomed to call usage. As between these
three channels through which the Spirit works, we have regarded
the Scriptures as the most certain, and it is therefore quite common
to speak of Scripture as our supreme rule of faith and practice.
This, however, needs to be accepted with a word of caution. Scrip
ture taken in its literal meaning might seem to justify slavery and
polygamy, which of course we reject and abhor. It is evidently
necessary, therefore, to have some better principle of interpretation.
We must remember the caution of the Apostle Paul : "The letter
killeth, but the Spirit giveth life." Take an illustration : It would
be impossible to measure the length of a table with a gallon jug,
because the standard of measurement must be of the same order as
the thing measured. In the same manner it is impossible to mea
sure a life by a book. Therefore in a literal sense the Bible cannot
be the standard of faith and practice, because faith and practice
are elements of religious life, and only a life can measure a life.
The only perfect external standard of a Christian life is evidently
the life of Christ himself. Is, then, the Bible not a standard at
all ? Certainly it is, just so far as it is a portrait of Christ, and
no further. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
The life of Christ revealed to us in Scripture ly the Spirit, in
terpreted ly the Spirit, and wrought in us ly the same Spirit, is
the ultimate standard of faith and practice j or we might say the
life of Christ is everywhere self-determining, not moulded by an
external form, but itself moulding its external forms. To sum
marize, then, the Baptist view of this question is that Christ as
the Incarnate Truth is the ultimate authority to man in all matters
of religion, that he reveals himself in all these ways; in Scripture,
in the individual mind, and in the general consciousness of the
church, and that as revealed in these three ways there is still per
fect harmony.*
*The view here presented is maintained with much clearness and force by
Prof. A. B. Bruce in the concluding chapter of his latest work, Apologetics,
which has come to my notice since writing the above.

16
One of the results of substituting the written for the Living
Word is the slight attention which^Our Lord's own utterances re
ceive from the mass of Christians. It is as though the words of
the King were less regarded than those of his Prime Minister, when
we pass by the discourses of the Gospels for the letters of Paul and
John. Yet Christ's words are more heard in the world to-day than
ever before.
II. Let us next inquire what should be our attitude toward
other communions, and what, if any, modification of our current
apologetics would increase their effectiveness ?
1. Our first observation is that the sacramental and creedal
bases, while unsatisfactory, are not wholly false. Undoubtedly to
those destitute of spiritual discernment, the^sacraments have been
in past ages — and still may be to such — means of grace. Our own
insistence on their correct administration is not merely from obedi
ence, but because we recognize their teaching value, and those see
ing, as we think, less clearly, call it a saving value.
So, again, the creedal basis is a forward step from this rudi
mentary, blind reception of the ordinances as saving, toward their
clearer recognition as possessing this symbolic or teaching quality,
and an effort to intellectually define and systematize the saving
truth contained in them. This progress we rejoice in and yet claim
that not truth, but life, saves, and that the Way leads through the
Truth to the Life.
This statement may seem too brief to some, to others too trivial.
I make it as preparatory to the following criticism on our present
attitude toward other Christian bodies. We have taken a position
of antagonism toward sacramental churches which was both unwise
and unjustifiable as too severely censuring the blind because they
could not see ; and on the other hand we have been too ready to
assume a substantial agreement between ourselves and creedal sys
tems, which did not exist. To put the matter concretely, I venture
to affirm that we stand nearer to the Episcopalian body than we
do to the Presbyterian, despite the wide differences of ritual and
worship. Yet our theologians have become quite prone to adopt
the body of Presbyterian divinity as our own, greatly, as it seems to
me, to our detriment, because the effect is to shift our position from
its true experimental basis to a creedal foundation, and from life to
dogma. 2. The Presbyterian system is one of extreme externality and
rigid legality ; ours of internality and inward grace. The Presby
terian builds nearer Rome than he often imagines. He is a faithful

17
follower of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose writings the present Pope
desires to popularize. With the Angelic Doctor, he holds the
separation of the kingdoms of nature and grace, and a God out
side of and remote from the world, communicating with it through
a piacular system. To him Augustine, Anselm, and Calvin, are
the authoritative exponents of a Divine Sovereignity to be main
tained at all hazards. It is a system of law, magnificent and vast ;
but still a cage of spiritual imprisonment, testifying of Moses rather
than of Christ. In that theology there is much that is excellent
and enduring, but Baptists never willingly called that cage their
home, or looked upon that vast system of theology as any better
than a Saul's armor. Yet it has been forced on us till we stagger
under it. It does not strengthen or protect us. We cannot stand
forth in our own dignity and independence, for we are trying to
be Presbyterians with some minor difference. These may seem
novel sentiments, but I raise the question and leave others to con
sider and judge. Turn to the indices of our theological treatises,
and note the relative frequency of citation from Baptist or Presby
terian sources, and then determine whether, if the main contention
of these articles is correct as to our experimental basis, there has
not been a practical shifting from it to a creedal foundation.
And where a cliurch, once spiritual, loses its vital energy and
light, and falls back on creedal orthodoxy; pride, pharisaism,
hypocrisy and traditionalism ensue. Such a church becomes
lethargic and worldly, and loses its hold on the masses. The sheep
will ever follow the Master's voice, but that voice ceases to be heard
where the Spirit is no longer sought constantly, expectantly and
importunately, and has gradually withdrawn His gracious influ
ences. A dead church thus comes to mistake separation from the
masses for separation from the world ; and hence excuses itself for
its barrenness as but the natural result of its orthodoxy, as did the
Pharisees of old. Now I prefer to such spiritual bondage and dead-
ness the sacramental idea, because the latter after all carries with it
the basal fact of life, and has consequently the possibilities of
growth and expansion.*
I cannot further enlarge on this point, but content myself with

*We do well to remember in our conflict with error, that a prevalent
worldliness is, in'God's eyes, as great a practical heresy as is the tenet of justi
fication by works. And a worldly orthodoxy in Protestantism will never avail
to subdue a devout superstition in Romanism, because it is not in the nature
of Beelzebub to cast out Beelzebub, as our Saviour has told us.— W. B.
WiUiams, The Conservative Principle, p. 65.

18
the statement that it appears to me that theology is to be yet re
constructed on a consistent experimental foundation, and is now as
a matter of fact undergoing such reconstruction. What I regret
is, that Baptists are not all ready to admit this. It seems to me
that we have forgotten our own spiritual ancestry. We do not
spring from the churches of Calvin, but from those little free com
munions of spiritual believers in the Middle Ages whose history i&
yet to be written, and whose views, discredited for centuries and
well-nigh forgotten even by us who call ourselves their children,
have yet in them the promise of the future and the power of the
millennium. With our pre-millennial brethren I look for an era when heaven
shall be realized upon earth, but I look for it not by a cataclysm
apart from human effort or will, but through the universal dis
semination of a gospel, once all but lost to the world ; the glad
acceptance of its joyful, life-bringing truths ; and the consequent
out-pouring of the Spirit of God in a plenitude and power such
that " the feeblest shall be as David, and the house of David as
God." May God speed the time. This theological misfit has led to
misconceptions of our distinctive principles. We do not stand
primarily, for close communion, nor for immersion as the only mode
of baptism, nor for fidelity to the word of God, as is now at times
carelessly stated, but for a regenerate church. The other differences
are minor and accidental, corollaries of our fundamental position,
A false apologetic has damaged us both at home and abroad. To
other bodies we seem to be narrow and bigoted sticklers for forms,
and for our own people the inspiration of the free Spirit and the
quickening and expanding life in Christ has been greatly obscured,
if not entirely lost to view.
To sum up, then, my contention is that our present antagon
istic attitude toward sacramental churches should be exchanged for
one which is more conciliatory, but which still maintains the ex
perimental basis as the only satisfactory and permanent one ; and
secondly, that the false peace and careless acquiescence in a system
of theology built on the creedal basis which now exists, is an alli
ance disastrous to us and should be repudiated. When this is done,
we can range ourselves boldly on the lines indicated in the earlier part
of this article, and become the leaders in the forward movement
for which the church is, in the providence of God, now evidently
preparing.

19

In the next, the concluding article of this series, our social re
lation to the world will be considered, and the social aspects of our
position.

IV.

SOME PHILOSOPHICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS — OBJECTIONS AN
SWERED — CONCLUSIONS.
In the necessarily brief compass of those articles, it is possible
to do little more than state many of the points suggested. To this
limitation I submit cheerfully, however, with the feeling that I am
traversing ground already familiar to most of the Standard's
readers, and that most of my statements may be expected to justify
themselves to their minds. And, again, the main lines of truth are
broad and clear, and to those let us endeavor to keep. "The way
faring man, though a fool, need not err therein." Points that are
dubious and debatable are usually not essential, and we may pass
by on the other side, leaving others to deal with them at leisure.
I. We have looked on the essence of the gospel as a new life
in Christ, of which Christian experience is the outworking, and the
Christian consciousness is the witness. It is now to be remarked
that while this is a new life it yet grows out of the old, and indeed
may be regarded as the old rightly developed.
So Christ says, " He that keepeth his life shall lose it,
and he that loseth his life shall keep it." Here our Lord
makes no distinction between natural and spiritual life. Many
other instances might be cited. There is no conflict between nature
and grace, but only between perverted nature and grace. Hence
all views which declare a schism between nature and grace, and
halve man's life into secular and religious, tend to distorted con
ceptions of our relations to God and to our fellow-men. God requires
nothing of us but to live " according to nature," using that phrase
in its true sense as equivalent to the declaration of Micah, " to do
justly, love mercy and walk humbly with thy God." He is not de
lighted with religious observances for their own sake, whether they
bo Romish ritual or Baptist usage. He does desire to see us love
and serve our fellows, as Leigh Hunt beautifully teaches us by the
mouth of Abou Ben Adhem. Yet the false conception noticed
above tends to envelop us in a false and visionary world of religious
unrealities, where we occupy ourselves in day-dreams instead of

20
throwing ourselves resolutely into the ceaseless conflict between
right and wrong which forms the long drama of human history,
and in which it is our privilege and our duty like David " to serve
our generation" before, like him, we "fall on sleep."
II. Again I would suggest the need of a careful study on the
part of ministers, of psychology. What would we think of a phy
sician who had never studied tbe body to which it is his profession
to minister, and what should be the shame of those who, called to
minister to minds diseased, have never made that mind the subject
of their patient investigation, and while the medieval chirurgeon
and the savage medicine-man have given place to the skilful sur
geon and physician through the patient investigation of things as
they are, and the discarding of foolish theories as to what they
might be supposed to be, bring to the treatment of moral disease
only the traditions of the class-room and the musty relics of a time
and a system which persecuted our fathers, and against which they
made a sturdy protest even unto blood. I venture the following
assertion : A right theology must presuppose and rest upon a right
anthropology ; not that I am forgetful that man's idea of God
necessarily dominates all his thought, but simply because as the
instrument of his knowledge, man must know the nature of his
own mind, just as the astronomer must understand the telescope
with which his observations are taken. And again, psychology
needs to be investigated from the Christian standpoint. As at
present treated of, it has serious defects. Its physiological basis is
neglected ; the laws of mental development, health and decline are
ignored ; too little attention is given to the will and the affections,
and too exclusive regard is had to the intellect; and as at present
taught it knows nothing of the possibility of that change of
character to which experience bears witness and which we call
conversion. The study again is dominated completely by indi
vidualistic notions. Paul declares " we aie members one of
another," and experience teaches the truth of his words, but it is a
truth only imperfectly realized. Science is coming to talk of a
social organism, but the truth thus dawning on science finds little
recognition in theology save in its doctrine of original sin, while
our individualistic views and narrow hearts furnish little room for
the reception of the correlative of that doctrine in the restitution
of all things.
III. These considerations lead directly to the social relations
of the gospel. We have seen how the workings of divine grace
manifest themselves in the conscious experience of the Christian.

21
The inspiration is not separable from the experience. The con
verse will be equally true, Divine grace will shape the experience ;
or in other words, if a Christian's spiritual life grows through the
educative influence of God's providential dealings with him in his
temporal affairs, so also will the divine grace within the Christian
react upon and shape his attitude in temporal affairs ; or to turn
the thought again into biblical phraseology, the faith will show
itself in works, and without works it is dead. We are, therefore,
to look for the exertion of a very positive and aggressive influence by
the Christian upon the world about him. It never was the divine
plan that he should withdraw himself from the world about him,
and every attempt to effect such withdrawal from the old separation
of outward life in monasticism to the newer separation of thought
and feeling in some current ideals of religious opinion, are doomed
to a disastrous result.
Two popular features of our day lead in this undesirable di
rection. The first is an excessive zeal in mere proselytism. We
have seen that our fundamental position is the experience of the new
birth. This new birth as the beginning of conscious spiritual life,
following, however, often a period of unconscious life, which we
are too prone to ignore — is normally followed by an open profession
of faith in Christ, and thus the outward act becomes the sign of
the inward change. Our attention is too easily engrossed with this
visible sign, and our energy becomes concentrated on securing the
tangible result of preaching which has become the badge of suc
cessful ministry. This false estimate of things reacts on our theo
logical views. We cease to value and insist on a radical change of
character, exhibiting itself in a practical righteousness of faith, and
accept for others, and too often for ourselves, a mere factitious
righteousness of faith, shown simply by the one outward act of
baptism. The outcome of such views pushed to their legitimate
conclusions is but a repetition of Romanist errors. Yet many loudly
and resolutely contend that it is the minister's sole duty to seek
conversions; meaning, we may fear, in some cases at least, little
more than the hollow profession above described.
This hasty assumption of conversion as the sole object of re
ligion in this world leads to another fallacious opinion now widely
current, viz. : that it never was the Divine purpose to save the
world, but simply to gather out of it certain saved ones. This view
to my mind is a practical denial of the Lord's own teaching re
garding the kingdom ; an abandonment of the position which the
Baptists have consistently held regarding the kingdom ; and a mere

22
self-righteous apology for indifference to the social inequalities and
injustice of the conditions amid which they find themselves. It
was manifestly not the attitude of the Old Testament prophets to
ward the evils of their day ; and while our Lord confessedly
adopted a new method of realizing the kingdom from theirs, there
is no justification for the opinion that He was more tolerant than
they of injustice, oppression and covetousness.
Appreciating the difference between the social ideal of Chris
tianity and the political and social regime in which they found
themselves, our Baptist forefathers adopted an attitude of de
termined protest against things as they were, and set themselves to
realize a state of things as they ought to be. If in their m'ethods
they erred and met inevitable defeat, we are not justified in
abandoning their protest against the kingdom of darkness, or in
losing faith in the kingdom which is to come, or in expecting that
that kingdom is to come in some way apart from human effort to
realize it.
A living faith will justify itself in a higher righteousness than
that of the world about it, and that righteousness will be constantly
leavening society and bringing nigh the kingdom of God on earth.
Whether we recognize this social aspect of the Gospel or not, it
exists and will work out its predestined effects, but when we con
sciously recognize this as a part of Christ's programme for His
church, the church for the kingdom, and the kingdom for the
world, the march of events towards that great consummation will
proceed with incredible swiftness, and the mass of mankind will see
a beauty and desirability in our Gospel which they now fail to
discern. How can they do otherwise ? Take, for example, the
events of this summer. Strikes are in progress in many parts of
our country, affecting thousands of workmen and occupying the
thoughts of tens and hundreds of thousands more.* At the same
time in many parts of the same country, conventions of Christians
are in session, occupying themselves with religious exercises and
discussing the coming of Christ's kingdom at some future day, yet
exhibiting no concern for the turmoil and distress, amounting
almost to warfare, in which so many of their countrymen are in
volved, and maintaining an attitude of passivity which would be
impossible for them if even a cow-barn of theirs were on fire. Truly,
*The above was written during the summer of 1892, when the great Home
stead strike in Pennsylvania was attracting wide attention, and similar distur
bances had recently occurred in Tennesee, Idaho and Wyoming, and were just
beginning at Buffalo, in this State.

23
it is a deplorable exhibition of selfish indifference. It is the para
ble of the man who fell among thieves and the priest and the Levite
who passed by on the other side, enacted on a tremendous scale,
with a half a continent for a stage, and the world for an audience.
And. where is the good Samaritan ? Too often we find him only
after a long search, and with more difficulty than Diogenes in his
¦quest of the honest man, in the person of some discarded priest of
the Roman church, or some sceptical but benevolent toiler — a new
nineteenth century Samaritan, who has gone down into the high
ways and byways of the world to seek and to save that which was
lost. Alas, while we are alive to the needs of the heathen abroad,
how indifferent are we still to the heathen at home. It is no
sufficient excuse to say, "We seek their spiritual salvation." We
must seek also their temporal well-being. Nor is it enough to deal
out our charitable gifts to those involved in poverty and distress.
We need to maintain our Lord's protest against oppression and
covetousness, and stem the tide of selfishness that makes paupers
and criminals. IV. A few words need to be said in closing these articles to
meet objections which may have been suggested by their perusal.
I have sought to declare a plain, broad and consistent platform for
Baptists, on a purely experimental foundation of divine grace con
sciously working in the regenerate heart. In so doing, I do not
disparage the value of testimony in producing repentance and faith
as a preparation for this experience of a divine grace. Nor do I
derogate from the authority of the written word of Scripture as the
highest testimony concerning the workings of grace and the treasury
of saving truth. But I still firmly declare that for the individual
believer experience is a more sure foundation than testimony.
" Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard Him
ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ."
Personal acquaintance with Christ is the soul's deepest need
and highest privilege, and its supremacy must be asserted. It is
the foundation of that certainty which lies behind the triumphant
words of the Apostle Paul, " I know whom I have believed ;" and
forms the basis of his doctrine of the indwelling Christ, and the
new creature in Christ.
Again, in contending for this doctrine, I have no fear of the
charge of mysticism. There is a false mysticism which occupies
itself in a curious spirit with things not revealed, as e.g., in the
regions of angelology and eschatology, and makes a cabala of the
prophetic books of Scripture. This I repudiate and condemn.

24
But there is a true mysticism as well, an inward knowledge which
the world does not possess, to which our consciousness bears witness
and that of the world does not, concerning spiritual things ; and to
which, unhappily, even some Christians " are blind, and cannot
see afar off, and have forgotten that they were purged from their
old sins." To this self-recognition (bitiyvw6i6),viQ desire to see all
come. It was certainly the basis of the medisval confessors, whose
spiritual children we boast ourselves to be.
V. Some of the practical conclusions of our thinking remain
to/be stated.
1. All men of recognized light and power in the religious world,.
of whatever school of thought, have been conscious of an inward
witness, and from that source have derived the inspiration which
others have recognized in their words. This is true of Spurgeon
no less than of Socrates.
2. The Scripture is to be correctly interpreted only by the aid
of this inward teaching of the Spirit, and in the light of the experi
ence of God's people in all the ages.
3. A false, self-righteous Pharisaism priding itself on the
orthodoxy of its traditions, and its vaunted fidelity to Scripture, is
even more to be dreaded than Sadduceeism, because of its more
subtle and deadly influence on religious life. It is always to be
detected by three signs : Its undue exaltation of the written as
against the spoken word ; its preaching of a fictitious righteousness,.
and its insistence on its own election to the exclusive favor of God.
There is a true election taught in Scripture, and witnessed by ex
perience, of which Jacob is the type ; but there is also a false elec
tion of which Esau is the type, but by no means the sole example.
A reaction toward Judaism is inevitable in an unspiritual and
worldly church, and may manifest itself in either one of two ways \.
as a ritualistic movement, like that of the Oxford Tractarians ; or,
in legalistic notions such as are becoming current among us. Against.
either form of the same vicious tendency, we need to reassert the.
glorious teachings of the Epistle to the Galatians.
4. The true elect are the very salt of the earth and lights in the-
world. " Let your light so shine before men that they may see
your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." The
world is our judge. Not our own opinion of our holiness, but the
world's opinion, is important.
5. We boast of fidelity to our fundamental denominational
principles. Let us not merely boast of them, but apply them.
They are weapons for warfare, not merely ornamental decorations-

25
Two books have recently been written on subjects which should be
most thoroughly understood by Baptists, yet neither is the work of
a Baptist. I allude to Prof. Brace's book, The Kingdom of God,
and the volume of Prof. Stearns on the Evidence of Christian Ex
perience. The want of productiveness among us on doctrinal
themes is the evidence that our hereditary principles are not suffi
ciently in use among us to be handled skilfully. We manage them
awkwardly, like a boy toying with his grandfather's matchlock, or
a young father holding his first baby.
6. The whole judicial theory of the Atonement is foreign to
our Baptist mode of thought, which bases itself, in the free grace
of God, accepted in faith and working out in conscious experience,
as depicted in our Lord's own parable of the Prodigal Son.
Judicial and forensic conceptions, while having in them an
element of truth, are not the natural modes of expression for those
who have a clear experience of the workings of divine grace as a
vital force in their own lives. They read like historical narratives
by writers having small personal acquaintance with the events of
which they write, or like early, or crude scientific theories, such as
that of the impact of light rays, based on assumption rather than
investigation. Theology needs re-writing on the basis of personal
experience, as the Apostle John writes his first epistle, " That
which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." In truth, we
have no right to put forth anything else, lest we incur the curse on
the prophet who declares a message which the Lord has not given
him, or the witness who testifies to that of which he has no per
sonal knowledge. Yet while discarding or revising inadequate
theological conceptions, let it be constantly borne in mind, that
nothing is better settled on the uniform testimony of Christian
experience than that low views of the person or work of Christ are
most disastrous to the life and fruitfulness of the Church or the
individual Christian.
7. The relations of Church and State need to be re-studied.
As organizations, we contend they must remain distinct and sepa
rate, yet the Church exists not for itself, but to bring in the King
dom ; and it is the State, and not the Church, which is to become
the Kingdom. The mistake of early Anabaptists was not in their
attitude of antagonism to an order of things inconsistent with that
Kingdom, nor in their hope and effort to bring in the Kingdom ;
but in their violent and fanatical methods of hastening' its coming.
The modern apathy regarding the Kingdom is equally to be con
demned, as is also a school of prophetical interpretation which re-

26
gards its coming as so entirely supernatural that we have nothing
to do but to wait for the Lord to set it up without our efforts, as
Ryland unwisely contended against Carey in regard to foreign mis
sions. 8. Our Lord's teaching revolves around two great foci, which
may be found to be only two-fold aspects of one central idea, viz.,
the Kingdom of God on earth, and eternal life. This eternal life,
manifested through personal experience in the regeneratd heart ; and
through testimony and fellowship crystallizing human society into a
true Kingdom of God on earth, should be the theme of our preach
ing and the goal of our hopes.
9: The mere intellectual apprehension of the Gospel, or its
eloquent presentation from the pulpit, will avail little, unless these
are the conscious testimony of a new life in Christ expressing itself,
not only in word, but in power.
10. For this testimony of the life, the cordial acceptance of the
cross of self-sacrifice is necessary. A man cannot serve his own
interest and Christ's at the same time. This is a truth which Pro
testantism is apt to forget. "The Cross of Calvary will not profit
thee, except it be set up in thine own heart also," is a German say
ing. " Christ hath many lovers of his crown, and but few of his
cross," says the Imitation. In these days, when a prevalent worldli-
ness is invading so widely the Church, and affecting even the
ministry itself, we need to preach and practice the Cross of Christ
as a sanctifying as well as a justifying agency. That man only is
strong who is able to say with the Apostle, speaking out of a per
sonal experience, " God forbid that I should glory save in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ, ly which the world is crucified unto me,
and I unto the world."
11. A chasm yawns between consciousness and the causes of
the phenomena apparent in consciousness. This chasm faith alone
can bridge for the scientist, the philosopher, or the theologian in
their several spheres of activity ; but such a faith is justified by
works in the resultant experiences through the faith, thus tested.
Lack of faith is most fatal at this point, as severing the soul from
God and the spiritual realm, on one hand ; and from the material
universe on the other. The idealism, now becoming current again,
seems to me an unhealthy symptom of a wild speculation and
rationalistic pride, which rely rather on logical acumen than on
sober collation of the data furnished in consciousness. When will
the philosopher and theologian learn to imitate the humility of the
cautious scientist, who holds his theories in rigid subordination to

27
the ascertained results of investigation and experiment, and who
does not regard himself as called upon to offer an explanation,
logical, harmonious, and self-consistent, of all things in heaven and
earth, but whose truth-loving spirit will still less permit him to be
guilty of the folly and the wrong of disregarding a single pheno
menon, or of discarding the observations and experiences of others,
because they are not yet authenticated by his own, or will not square
with his theories, or appear to him illogical ?
Let a wise humility constantly remind us of our own right atti
tude. We are witnesses, not judges; and our sphere of knowledge
is limited strictly by experience, or such intuitions and inferences
as will again endure the test of experience.
The general proposition toward which the argument presented
in these articles seems to me to lead is this, that instead of regard
ing ourselves as Baptists as the most conservative body in Christen
dom, whose special mission it is to stand for a faith once delivered
to the saints, in the sense of a fixed and ascertained deposit of
truth, as many of our present leaders contend, we ought to le the
most advanced and progressive wing of the great universal Church.
From the swaddling bands of liturgy and ritual we long ago fought
ourselves free. We ought to be equally free from the bondage of a
law which neither we nor our fathers could bear. Let creedal
churches contend for legalistic opinions, supposed to be eternal and
unalterable. We stand as the witnesses for a free grace, a vital
principle which, while divine, and therefore in all ages, and under
every dispensation, the same in essence, yet just as necessarily is
manifested in continual changes of outward form and manifestation,
as is the principle of physical life. No growth, no life, is true of
both natural and spiritual life. To attempt to confine and system
atize the free workings of God's free Spirit is as foolish, and far
more cruel and deadly, than the Chinese custom of binding women's
feet in babies' shoes, To those who stand in the way of light and
progress we say, however laudable their motive, " Woe unto you,
lawyers ! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge (when you
have denied the Spirit's light and power) ; ye entered not in your
selves, and those that were entering in ye hindered."
God help us on to wider conquests by larger faith in His glorious
promises, and deeper drafts on his gracious, free and illimitable
resources. I close with two quotations from my father's note-books, which
appeared in the Colloquium two years since :
"It is a high distinction to be, in the best sense of that term,

28
a Conservative, guarding from corruption and destruction what of
good we have inherited. It is a higher strain of virtue to be a
Recuperative, restoring what through negligence we or our fathers
have lost of holiness, freedom and peace. The one but keeps
what he has. The other recovers what has been long forfeited, and
builds. The one saves from amputation the diseased limb. The
other brings back its pristine soundness and health. The one
guards the paternal acres. The other lifts the ancestral mortgages.
The one, like Rizpah, watches the dead, and frays the raven, the
vulture, the wolf from their ghastly repast, but cannot arrest the
course of corruption and decay. The other, like the prophet in
the valley of vision, calls to the winds of heaven, prophesies over
the bleached bones, and the skeletons are clothed with flesh, in
formed with life, and rise up a great army of living men."
" We need the oar as well as the anchor ; enterprise for the
future as well as reverence for the past."

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