BOOKS BY
PROF. WILLIAM ADAMS BROWN
Published bt Chaeles Sckibneb'b Sons

Modern Theology and the Preaching
of the Gospel. 12mo .... net Si. 25
The Christian Hope: A Study in the
Doctbine of Immobtality. 12mo net $ .75
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MODERN THEOLOGY
AND THE
PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL

MODERN THEOLOGY
AND THE
PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL

BT

WILLIAM ADAMS BROWN, D.D., Ph.D.,
EOOSEVELT PROFESSOR OP BYSTEMATIC THEOLOQT IN THE UNION
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY; AUTHOR OF THE "ESSENCE OF CHRIS
TIANITY," "CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN OUTLINE," ETC.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
MCMXIV

Copyright, 1914, by
CHAELES SCRIBNER'S- SONS

Published September, 1914

THE MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL
WHOSE INVITATION WAS THE
OCCASION OF THE PREPARATION OF THESE LECTURES AND
WHOSE SYMPATHETIC RESPONSE TO THEIR MESSAGE
IS MY EXCUSE FOR OFFERING THEM TO A WIDER PUBLIC
I DEDICATE
THIS ATTEMPT TO INTERPRET THE GOOD NEWS
OF OUR COMMON MASTER

PREFACE
In the fall of 1911 the writer was in
vited by the Congregationalists of Wash
ington to deliver a series of theological
lectures at their State Conference at
Seattle. The lectures which form the
first four and the last of the chapters
which follow were given in response to
this invitation. In 1913 they were re
peated, with the addition of a sixth lec
ture (the fifth of the present series), at
the Preachers' Institute of the Southern
Methodists at Georgetown, Texas. The
first, third, fourth, and fifth lectures were
also given at the Preachers' Institute at
Fayette, Missouri, in the same year.
A part of the first lecture has appeared
in the Southern Methodist Review for Jan
uary, 1912, under the title, "Modern
[vii]

PREFACE
Theology and the Preaching of the Gos
pel," and the entire series in the Biblical
World for 1913-14, the first lecture being
printed in December, 1913, and the last
in July, 1914.
The response to the lectures on the
part of those who heard their delivery
was so generous, and the requests for their
publication in book form have been so
many, that they are now given to the
public in the hope that they may carry
to a larger circle than could be reached
by the spoken voice the author's con
viction that the final test of every theol
ogy must be its preachableness, and his
hope that judged by this standard mod
ern theology may prove to have some
thing of value to offer to the ministers
of to-day.

[ viii ]

CONTENTS

I. The Contribution op Modern Theol
ogy to the Equipment of the
Preacher  1
II. The Bible, What It Is and How to
Use It  47
HI. The God op the Christian .... 87
IV. From What and to What Are We
Saved?  129
V. The Deity op Christ in the Light of
Modern Thought  175
VI. The Church, Its Present Opportunity
and Duty  225
Index  271

THE CONTRIBUTION OF MODERN
THEOLOGY TO THE EQUIPMENT
OF THE PREACHER
We are all familiar with the effect upon
our vision produced by a change of
position. The higher we rise the more
nearly we see things in their true per
spective. But when we descend into the
valley our angle of vision changes and
we lose our sense of proportion. The
objects that lie near bulk large and shut
out the distant view. When we stand by
the lake shore it seems only a little way
across. It is only when we look down on
its surface from above that we measure
its breadth truly.
The experience has its analogy in the
[l]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
inner life. Change of mental position is
apt to have as its first effect a distur
bance of mental values. The mind, too,
has its hilltops and its valleys, and when
we leave the former and descend into the
latter we lose our sense of spiritual pro
portion. This is true even when the change is
for the better. We may leave our van
tage ground of vision because we have
seen a higher peak that commands a
wider horizon. We descend to climb
again, but while we are in the valley the
distant view is gone.
In the Christian church we are pass
ing through a period of such spiritual
transition. There are many of our con
temporaries whose religious experience is
a valley experience. They have left the
heights where they once stood secure,
and are now living in the lowlands.
They are concerned with the little and
the near. The duties of the day and
[ 2]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
the hour, or it may be of the generation,
have shut out the broader vista of eter
nity. They have lost sight, for the mo
ment, of the great peaks that have been
the landmarks of religion in the past.
There are many reasons for this shift
ing of interest. The pressure of life is
one cause. The inventions and discov
eries of the last century have multiplied
the claims upon our attention to an ex
tent undreamed of by earlier generations.
There are so many things to be done and
to be learned that there are not hours
enough in the day to meet the crowding
demands, and the greater questions that
require leisure are necessarily postponed.
But underlying these more obvious
reasons there is a more fundamental
cause. Our angle of vision has shifted.
The great movement that we call mod
ern science has revolutionised our view
of the universe. It has taught us to
think of many things as stable that we
[3]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
had regarded as changing, and mobile
that we had supposed to be fixed. It
has given us a new astronomy, a new
chemistry, a new physics, a new history,
a new psychology, a new sociology. Be
liefs that have grown hoary with antiq
uity are challenged, habits that have
persisted from time immemorial are aban
doned, and we live in constant expecta
tion of some new discovery which shall
render the latest word of present-day
science obsolete.
It is inevitable that such an atmos
phere should react upon the spiritual
life. Where everything else is chang
ing we cannot expect religion to remain
unchanged. But what the change is
likely to be, and how far it is likely to
extend, to many is not yet clear. They
know only that they have no longer the
same unquestioning confidence in the
old. What the new will be like which is
to take its place, they do not yet know.
[ _ i

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
In religion, as on other sides of life, they
can see only the immediate present.
One of the marks of this spiritual fore
shortening is the decline of doctrinal
preaching. The ministers of an older
generation loved to dwell upon the great
themes of religion. They preached about
God and the soul, sin and salvation,
judgment and immortality, the deity of
Christ and his atonement. But to-day
these subjects are no longer the staples
of preaching. They are touched on only
incidentally; often they are passed over
altogether. The consciousness of a di
vine revelation to which one may hold
with confidence amid the fluctuations
of human opinion is less vivid to-day.
Even when the older doctrines are not
questioned they are no longer in the fore
ground. Men think of them as dogmas
which have come down to us from the
past with which we cannot dispense, at
least not yet. But for the present work
[5]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
of the church, for our dealing with men
and women, in the needs and sorrows
and temptations of their daily living,
the less we have to do with them the
better. What the minister needs above
all things is an acquaintance with the
actual facts of life. Let him then study
the sciences that deal with these facts:
economics, sociology, ethics, psychology,
pedagogy, if you will. But theology, we
are told, belongs to a past day and one
cannot any longer hope to interest people
in it.
Explicable as this attitude is, it is
none the less unfortunate, for it involves
the surrender of the historic ideal of
Protestantism. The Reformation was an
attempt to rescue the realities of religion
from the speculations of the theologians
and to open the way for the simplest be
liever into the very heart and citadel of
faith. Theology, as Luther and his suc
cessors conceived it, is the systematic
[6]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
exposition of the gospel. It is the science
that tries to express in simple and intelli
gible language the great convictions by
which the soul lives. So far from being
content simply to hand down what has
been received from the past, it is its func
tion to interpret the meaning of religion to
the present, to give an answer, and, so far
as it can, to justify its answer, to the
ultimate questions of the soul: the ques
tion as to the meaning and the purpose
of life, the question as to the nature of
God, and as to his relation to the soul of
man, the question as to the destiny of
the individual and of society, and the
way in which that destiny may best be
realised. These are the questions which
the mind of man has always been trying
to answer. If the theology of the past
seems uninteresting to us, that is because
we have been trying to live upon other
people's answers instead of trying to an
swer our own questions for ourselves.
[7]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
You will agree with me, then, I am
sure, that if this be the true definition
of theology it is something with which
the preacher cannot dispense without loss.
He is trying to win men from a life of
selfishness and sin to a life of consecra
tion and brotherhood, and he needs to
understand clearly just what he proposes
to do, and to express this in words that
cannot be misunderstood. We wish to
make men Christians. Well, what does
it mean to be a Christian? Who is Christ,
and why should we ask men to trust and
follow him? We are trying to persuade
men to believe in God. Who and what
is God, and why should men believe in
him? We warn men of a judgment to
come, but what is the nature of this
judgment? What are the principles on
which it rests, and what reason have we
for believing that there is another life
which follows this, which ought to be
taken into the account? Here surely are
[8]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
questions of the highest practical moment
for the daily life. Economics and poli
tics and education and psychology are
all very well, but, after all, they are con
cerned with means. What is the end
which these means are designed to pro
mote? What is the purpose of life?
That is the question which theology seeks
to answer. For a time it may be crowded
out by more engrossing interests, but we
are bound to come back to it in the end.
It is to this larger question that I
would recall our thought. I believe that
the present loss of interest in theology
is destined to be temporary. Indeed,
there are many signs that it is already
passing. Already we are beginning to
emerge from the thickets through which
we have been struggling to heights that
command a broader view. Slowly, but
none the less surely, we are beginning to
recover our vision of the eternal realities,
of which for a time we had lost sight,
[9]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
only to find them more majestic and sat
isfying than ever. It is well that we
should pause for a moment and measure
the gain and loss. I invite you therefore
to look with me at the old view from a
new view-point. What is the place of
our Christian religion in the new world?
What has science taught us about God
and man, Christ and the Bible, sin
and salvation? What contribution, in
a word, has modern theology to make
to the equipment of the preacher?
Now, I know that here I touch on deli
cate ground, for there are many people
to whom science and religion seem in
consistent ideas. Science is to them the
great destroyer. It is for ever challeng
ing the old, and its habit of persistent
questioning seems inconsistent with that
attitude of reverence and submission
which is the primary demand of religion.
In the name of science have not theolo
gians been attacking the most sacred
[ 10]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
traditions of the past? Have they not
torn the Bible to pieces? Have they not
overthrown the authority of the creeds?
Have they not rewritten the history of
the church, and, in place of the clear-
cut definite system in which we were
brought up as children, left us simply a
mass of confused and conflicting theories
between which we are helpless to choose?
But it needs only a moment's thought
to show that such a view is based upon
a complete misconception. What do we
mean by the scientific method? Science
is simply glorified common sense. It is
the application to the sphere of knowl
edge of principles which have been found
useful in other departments of life: such
principles, for example, as thoroughness,
system, open-mindedness, and faith. To
be scientific means that you are not con
tent to base your judgment upon part
of the facts, but that you insist upon
having them all before you or, at least,
[H]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
all that it is possible for you to gather.
It means, further, that you group the
facts in an orderly manner, putting like
with like, and noting the smallest dif
ference in form or structure. It means
that you approach each new question
with an open mind, ready to discard the
conclusions of the past if good reason
appear for so doing, or to modify them
in any particular in which the evidence
shall seem to require it. It means,
finally, that you have an undying faith
that this world is a reasonable world,
and that loving, persistent, patient de
votion to the cause of truth will be re
warded in the end by success. Surely
there is nothing in all this to be afraid
of. It is simply, I repeat, the consis
tent application on a large scale and over
a wide area of the principles which as
individuals we have all found practically
useful in the conduct of our daily living.
Take modern medicine. I suppose there
[ 12]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
is no department of human activity
where the changes introduced by scien
tific method have been more numerous
and more revolutionary. No one will be
found to-day to question that they are
changes for the better. But it did not
seem so to the men to whom they were
first suggested. We can imagine a doc
tor of the pre-scientific age addressing
the innovators of his own profession in
words like these: "Why ask me to ac
cept your new theories in medicine?
Has the body changed? Are the laws of
health different? Are not the diseases
from which we suffer the same which
afflicted men in the days when Jesus
healed the man sick of the palsy and
restored the lunatic to a sound mind?
Is the experience of mankind for two
thousand years to be discarded over
night to make room for your untried
panaceas?" We know very well the answer to this
[ 13]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
question. There has been no change in
the laws of health. The enemies which
attack the body are the same that they
have always been, and the principles on
which their defeat depends have not al
tered, but we have learned more about
these principles than we once knew. We
understand the mechanism of the body
better and so we are able to apply the
needed remedy more intelligently. We
have been studying the problem of dis
ease scientifically, and this enables us to
do to-day things which we could not
previously have done.
It is just so in religion. We have no
new gospel, but we have a new method
of approach to the gospel. The laws of
spiritual health have not changed, and
the enemies against which the soul of
man needs to be protected have not al
tered, but we have learned more about
spiritual law than we once knew, and so
are able to approach the problem of spir-
[ 14]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
itual healing more intelligently. And
here again the change for the better is
the result of the application of scientific
method to religion.
Now, the proof of the pudding is in
the eating. The justification of science
in any realm is the practical effects which
it produces, and these are of two kinds.
In the first place, it puts into our hands
new powers for use; and in the second
place, it gives us a new point of view.
I say, it puts new powers into our
hands for use. Illustrations meet us on
every hand. I have spoken of modern
medicine. It is science which has given
us the antiseptic treatment in surgery;
it is science which has given us our se
rums and our antitoxins; science has
wiped out smallpox; science has taught
us that tuberculosis is a curable disease,
and every year is making new inroads
into the realm of the old enemy, sickness.
It is so in every department of human
[ 15 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
experience. Science, I say, puts new
tools into our hands. It has given us
the steam-engine and the automobile,
and the telephone and the telegraph, and
now, at last, the aeroplane and the dir
igible. It has made it possible for us
to go from Maine to California in six
days, and from Vancouver to Yokohama
in a dozen.
Side by side with these new powers,
and scarcely less important, is the new
point of view which modern science has
introduced. It has taught us for one
thing to think of the world as a unity,
for it has shown us that wherever we go,
even if we go to Arcturus, or the North
Star, we are face to face everywhere and
always with the same unchanging laws.
It has taught us, further, to think of the
world as trustworthy, responding to our
appeal, so that when we do our part we
can be perfectly sure that the result will
follow. It has taught us, finally, that
[ 16]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
the world is meaningful, that through
all the changes of the centuries one great
purpose runs, one law of development
which science calls evolution, but faith
interprets as progress.
Now, what is true of science in gen
eral is true also of theological science./
Here, too, its contribution is twofold.
It has given us new tools which help us
in our dealings with specific problems,
and it has given us a new point of view.
Both of these constitute a distinct prac
tical contribution to the preacher's equip
ment, and enlarge his power of usefulness.
In the chapters that follow I hope to
take up in some detail the first of these
contributions and to illustrate by prac
tical examples how modern theology
helps us to meet specific difficulties and
to solve particular problems. But before
I do this, I want to speak of certain
general results which form the common
background from which we approach
[ 17]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
these detailed problems. I want to speak,
in other words, of the new point of view
which modern theology has given us.
It is important to do this because it
is so easy to lose sight of the broader
effects in the discussion of details. I
have spoken of the popular impression
of modern theology as destructive and
unsettling. I believe that this is largely
due to the fact that, in their interest in
the various problems of their science,
specialists in theology have not taken
the time to gather up and to express in
simple and intelligible language the great
results on which they are all agreed.
Theologians, to be sure, are not the
only persons of whom this is true. Every
profession has its specialists, interested in
their own peculiar problems and talking
a language of their own which no one
else can understand. But in the case of
theology the consequences of misunder
standing are more serious than in the
[ 18]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
case of medicine or of law, because of the
nature of the subject-matter with which
it deals. For theology has to do with
religion, and religion — so at least relig
ious people believe — is the supreme con
cern of the human soul. Moreover, re
ligion is the one bit of business which
cannot be done by proxy. Salvation,
however far-reaching may be its social
consequences, is in its beginnings a mat
ter of strictly individual concern. No
man can commune with God vicariously.
Each of us must do his own repenting,
his own praying, his own believing.
Such, at least, is our Protestant con
viction. Protestantism is democracy in
religion. It is born of faith in the in
herent relationship between the soul and
God, in the inalienable right of each in
dividual to approach God for himself,
in the adaptation of truth to conscience
and of conscience to truth, in the effi
cacy and sufficiency of the Christian gos-
[19 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
pel, for all that man needs for his salva
tion, faith, and life.
For Protestants, therefore, it is not a
light matter to introduce confusion into
the realm of religion. If the gospel is
obscured and its authority weakened,
harm is done to more than the mind.
The whole nature is affected, the springs
of action are tapped, the heart is robbed
of its accustomed outlet, and the result
is spiritual poverty, anxiety, and ulti
mate despair.
I believe that it is the fear of some
such result as this which accounts for
the wide-spread distrust of the new the
ology. Those who look askance at the
claims which have been made in its be
half are not necessarily narrow or un
reasonable. They are, many of them,
sincere and open-minded men, lovers of
light and of progress, ready to accept
whatever advances human knowledge and
promotes human welfare. But they are
I 20 ]

__U_ CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
sensible men, wishing to look before they
leap. They know that a thing is not
necessarily good because it is new. In
their own souls they have put Christian
ity to the proof and have found it what
Paul found it, the power of God unto
salvation. They regard the gospel as
God's best gift to man, and are jealous
of any movement, no matter how plau
sibly commended, which robs it of its
life-giving power. They know that crit
icism is no substitute for testimony, the
ory no substitute for experience, specu
lation no substitute for revelation. They
are sure that the gospel which is to meet
the needs of humanity must be definite,
practical, authoritative; a message di
rect from the heart of God to the soul
of man. Such a message they miss in
the new theology, and for this reason
they hold aloof from it.
It is important, therefore, at the out
set that we get the right perspective.
[21]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
We need to distinguish the great results
on which scholars as a whole are agreed
from the points of detail in which they
differ. Let me sum up these results as
briefly as I can. I will mention four.
The first contribution of modern the
ology to the preacher's equipment is the
discovery that religion is one of the ulti
mate facts of life. It is not something
outside of man which he can take or leave
as he chooses. It is inwrought into his
nature, a part of the very structure of
his being, which he cannot maim or stifle
without at the same time injuring him
self. The second contribution of modern
theology is the insight that, while relig
ion is universal, not all religion is
equally valuable or equally satisfying.
Religions differ in kind, and difference in
kind means difference in worth.
In the third place, modern theology
makes it clear that if there is to be a
[ 22 ]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
universal religion at all, it must be Chris
tianity, and this for the simple reason
that no other religion meets so com
pletely and in so satisfying a way the
permanent religious needs of mankind.
The fourth and last contribution of
modern theology to practical religion —
and the most important of all — is its
renewed emphasis upon Christ as the
centre and norm of Christianity.
Let us take up these contributions one
by one and consider their significance.
In the first place, I say, modern science
teaches us that religion is one of the
ultimate facts of life. It is not some
thing outside of man which he can take
or leave as he chooses. It is inwrought
into his nature, a part of the very struc
ture of his being, which he cannot maim
or stifle without at the same time injur
ing himself.
This is, to be sure, no new discovery.
Theologians have long asserted that man
[ 23 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
was naturally religious. Tertullian went
even farther and declared the soul was
by nature Christian. But it is one thing
to assert, and another to realise. Mod
ern theology has furnished us with new
evidence of the old fact, and so given it
new freshness and vividness.
It has done this in various ways. The
study of history is one way. However
far we go back in time we find man look
ing up in adoration and worship to a
being beyond himself. The study of
comparative religion is another way.
For three generations we have been ob
serving the great civilisations of the East,
and we find that they are religious through
and through. Most effective and con
vincing (because nearest at hand) is the
way of psychology. We are learning
that the fundamental religious feelings
— reverence, aspiration, dependence, sub
mission, awe — are rooted in the nature
of man, that they are as much a part of
[ 24 ]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
ourselves as the craving for food and the
love of kind, that the desire for worship
is as natural and as irrepressible as the
desire for activity when one awakes in
the morning, or of rest when one returns
home at night — that it is not a question,
in short, whether or not one will be re
ligious, but only what kind of religion
one will have.
This being the case, we have a new
point of view for judging some contem
porary phenomena which without this
key would be perplexing. Take, for ex
ample, such a movement as modern so
cialism. Here is a creed which in the
person of many of its adherents dis
penses with what most of us have been
brought up to consider the essentials of
religion. It has no God; it leaves im
mortality an open question; yet it calls
forth the passionate loyalty of tens of
thousands of earnest men and women.
How will you account for this fact? It
[25]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
is the religious nature which, having lost
its old object, seeks a new outlet for its
fervour and, in devotion to humanity, ex
pends the store of consecration and of en
thusiasm which former generations gave
to God. Or take Christian Science —
that most singular of modern religions
— what more pathetic witness could be
found to the hunger of the soul for the
divine than the quick response with
which Mrs. Eddy's appeal has met, in
spite of what seem to many of us its
manifest contradictions and absurdities?
Take our social settlements, and our so
cieties of ethical culture. Take any one
of the countless movements which are
springing up outside the church, with
their programmes of social reform or of
spiritual culture. These are not causes
of discouragement, but of hope. They
are witnesses to the deathless ideal which
sleeps in every man. They are a chal
lenge to our effort, an incentive to our
[26]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
faith. If we have not been able to win
these men and women with our gospel,
it is not because they are not open to
it, but because we have not yet learned
how to preach it as we should.
For it is not enough to be religious.
The important thing is to be religious
in the right way. And this brings me
to the second contribution of modern
theology to the preacher's equipment,
namely, the discovery that while religion
is universal, not all religion is equally
valuable or equally satisfying. Religions
differ in kind, and difference in kind
means difference in worth.
This again is no new discovery. In
deed, I fear that it may seem the veriest
commonplace. For generations the as
sertion of the supreme value of his own
brand of religion, in comparison with all
others, has been the stock in trade of the
preacher. How many sermons we have
heard whose theme has been the con-
[27]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
trast between natural and revealed relig
ion, the religion of reason and the relig
ion of the Bible — the former, useful
indeed, but not sufficient, pointing the
way, but unable to reach the goal; the
latter alone, with its supernatural revela
tion and its infallible book, able to give
the certainty which man needs for salva
tion! But here again, it is one thing to assert
and another to realise. The difficulty
has been that when we have questioned
those who have offered us so ready a
solution of our quest for the best relig
ion, they have not always answered in
the same way. The Catholic has pointed
to Catholicism, and the Protestant to
Protestantism, and within Protestantism
each denomination has offered its own
particular kind of Christianity as the
truth of God, while outside we have seen
the Jew claiming divine authority for
Judaism, the Mohammedan for Moham-
[ 28 ]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
medanism, the Buddhist for Buddhism,
and so on all along the line. If we are
content to follow Mephistopheles's ad
vice to Faust, and accept unquestion-
ingly the teaching of our own denomina
tion or church, we shall feel no difficulty,
but if our minds are open and we wish
a reason for the faith that is in us, the
situation is, to say the least, perplexing.
Here modern theology has a distinct
contribution to make. It has been study
ing the religions of the world scientifi
cally, that is to say, in a systematic and
orderly way, and it finds that, like all
other objects of human knowledge when
studied in this way, they fall into groups
which differ from one another in interest
ing and instructive ways. There is, for
example, the mystic group, which is in
trospective and contemplative, seeking
salvation in immediate communion with
God and content to let this world go on
its way to destruction without let or
[ 29 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY .AND THE GOSPEL
hindrance. There is the ethical group,
with its keen social interest, concerned
for justice and mercy, with a divine
sanction for human conduct and a divine
judgment for human sin. There are the
nature religions, peopling the world with
gods, but not yet having learned to dif
ferentiate the divine from the hills and
the streams and the woods which are its
abiding-place. There are the religions of
authority with their insistence upon ab
solute and unqualified submission. And
there are the religions of freedom, the
Protestantisms of humanity, with their
confidence in the individual and their
recognition of the supremacy of con
science as the court of final appeal.
These types recur again and again in
the history of mankind. They not only
characterise single religions; they reap
pear within each of the greater religions
as the marks of smaller groups. They
combine one with another in singular and
[30]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
unexpected ways. Their action and re
action explain the constant changes in
the history of religion and give the study
of it its ceaseless fascination.
But science not only shows us the fact
of difference. It helps us to estimate
its significance. It shows us the conse
quences which follow from the adoption
of one or the other of these forms of
religion, and we find that they are of
momentous importance. If your relig
ion is of the mystic type, introspective
and self-centred, you will enter a mon
astery, or make your cell in the desert, or
perhaps climb on a pillar like Simeon
the Stylite, and the crying wrongs of the
weak and the oppressed will remain un
redressed. If your religion is one of pure
authority, whether you call your master
pope or caliph you will shut your eyes
to the plain teachings of reason and
blindly support your church in whatever
it asks you to do or think. If your relig-
[31]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
ion be a nature religion, you will mag
nify the physical and it may be will give
free rein to passions which a more en
lightened conscience will tell you should
be held constantly in check. If your re
ligion be ethical, you will adopt the Apos
tle James's definition as your own and
realise that in ministering to the orphan
and in succouring the widow you are do
ing the will of God.
Of all the pages of human history there
is none more tragic but at the same time
none more instructive than that which
tells the story of religion. As we read
it we are impressed with the incalculable
harm which may be done in the life either
of an individual or of a society by a
bad religion — a religion, that is to say,
which tries to suppress some essential
need of human nature or, on the other
hand, which panders to its infirmities or
superstitions. We realise with new force
the truth, which we have so often dis-
[32 ]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
missed as a mere platitude, that it is not
enough to be religious. One must be
religious in the right way, and we ask
ourselves what reason we have for be
lieving that the religion we profess is
really of this kind.
Here, too, modern theology has help
to give. It tells us not only of the ne
cessity of religion and of its differences;
it gives us a standard for judging be
tween them. It assures us that if there
is to be a universal religion at all it must
be Christianity, and this for the simple
reason that no other religion meets so
completely and in so satisfying a way
the permanent needs of humanity. Let
me illustrate, if I can, what I mean.
I have spoken of the different types
which are revealed by the study of com
parative religion. But when we exam
ine them more closely we find that for
our present purpose they may all be re
duced to two. The nature religions rep-
[33]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
resent a stage through which man passes
in his religious development, which is des
tined sooner or later to be outgrown, and
which, as a matter of fact, has been out
grown in principle in all the greater re
ligions. The religion of authority is the
expression of a permanent instinct pres
ent in every age as the necessary cor
rective of an exaggerated individualism.
It is the form in which the social ac
quisitions of the past are conserved
and handed down to future generations.
There remain two great types which in
every age have confronted one another
as rivals for the allegiance of the relig
ious man: the mystic type and the
ethical type — the religion which seeks
contact with God in the immediate ex
perience of the soul, and the rehgion
which finds in the service of humanity
the highest expression of worship. Each
has its roots deep in the subsoil of human
nature. Neither has been able to dis-
[34]

THIS CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
place the other. The rehgion which is
to win universal acceptance must make
place for both.
I say, it must make place for both, but
it must do it in a consistent and satisfy
ing way. It is not enough to place the
two side by side and let them live their
lives as best they can without inner un
derstanding or harmony. Such an out
ward juxtaposition of competing and in
consistent types has taken place again
and again in religious history and no one
rehgion has the monopoly of it. Every
great religion has its mystics and its
moralists, its recluses and its agitators.
But this of itself does not qualify it for
world supremacy.
What I have in mind is something
much more fundamental. I have in
mind an inner harmony, a type of relig
ion which satisfies the mystic's hunger
for God and the moralist's passion for
man in one and the same experience, a
[35]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL,
religion which is so conscious of the im
manence of God that it feels him as the
very life of the soul, and yet which knows
that the God whom it worships is a per
sonal God, the Father of many children,
the ruler of society as well as of the in
dividual, the mind that plans and the
will that decrees, as well as the spirit
that inbreathes. Only a religion which
conceives God in such a way can hope
for world supremacy.
Such a religion is Christianity. Here
at last we find the synthesis for which
the whole history of religion is striving,
the goal to which in every age it has
been unconsciously pointing. This in
sight, painfully won as the result of an in
finity of patient labour, is the third great
contribution of modern theology to the
preacher's equipment.
It is not easy to exaggerate its impor
tance. It gives us a vantage-ground in
our appeal to men of other faiths which
[36]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
could not be attained in any other way.
We do not come to them as if they were
destitute of religion, but as the interpreter
and completer of the rehgion they have.
Is the man we are seeking one of the
mystic type, forgetful, in his joy at the
realised presence of God, of the claim of
the neighbour who lies at his door? We
have our word for him. We do not ask
him to deny the reality of his experience,
or question the fact of the omnipresence
of the immanent God. We bring to him
a completer revelation of the nature of
the God he worships and bid him see his
character revealed in the face of Jesus
who went about doing good.
Is it a case, on the other hand, of some
zealous social reformer so intent on his
effort to secure more tolerable conditions
of living and a more just scale of remu
neration that he has no room in his
scheme of life for prayer? For him, too,
we have our message. We do not want
[37]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
him to value man less but more. We .
want to enlarge his estimate of the ca
pacity of humanity till it is broad enough
to include fellowship with the God of all
the earth. We point him to Jesus, the
great servant, as in the silence of the
mountain in solitary communion with
the Father he gains strength for the next
day's ministry.
I say, we point him to Jesus, and this
brings me to the last of the contributions
of modern science to practical religion of
which I shall have time to speak, namely,
its renewed emphasis upon Christ as the
centre and norm of Christianity.
I have spoken of the appeal of Chris
tianity to men of other faiths. It is
an appeal which was never more wide
spread and never more effective than in
our day. Already the new aids which
modern science has put into the hands
of our missionaries are beginning to pro
duce their appropriate results. But there
[38 1

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
is one obstacle which hampers their effi
ciency, and that is the divisions which
still exist among Christians themselves.
We speak of Christianity as if it were
something as to the nature of which
everybody was agreed. Yet as a matter
of fact there are almost as many different
kinds of Christianity as there are men.
All the great types which we have distin
guished in other religions reappear here.
By what right, then, do we differen
tiate Christianity from other religions?
Wherein does its superiority consist?
Here modern science gives us a per
fectly definite answer. The distinctive
thing about Christianity is Christ. He
is its new contribution to the cause of
religion. The differences of which we
have spoken are only the persistence on
new soil of the old types whose roots
lie deep in the past. They are not
Christianity. They are only the raw
material out of which Christianity is
[ 39 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
made. Christianity is the effect which
has been produced upon these old types
by the new spirit which Jesus has in
troduced. Christianity is Christ, so far
as he has yet become incarnate in hu
manity. Let me linger for a moment upon this
point, for it is of the highest importance.
No aspect of modern theology is more
significant than the renewed emphasis
which it has laid upon Jesus Christ. It
is not simply that it has told us more
about him, although that is true. It is
not simply that it has recovered from
the mists which had obscured him the
historic figure whose life and death and
resurrection the Gospels record. It is
not simply that it has distinguished the
Christ of the New Testament from later
theological speculation concerning him,
but that it has shown us more clearly
than we had ever realised before how
fundamental is the place which Christ
[40 ]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
holds in the rehgion to which he has
given bis name.
There are three different ways in which
Christ is central in Christianity. In the
first place, he is its founder. From him
came the impulse from which the new
rehgion sprang, and to this day his per
son marks the dividing line between all
that went before and all that has come
after. Nor is this division one of time only.
Jesus is not simply the founder; he is
the standard of the Christian religion.
He is the test by which we distinguish
what is truly Christian from what is so
only in name. Christianity is a histor
ical religion and, like everything his
torical, contains elements of very differ
ent antecedents and value. Much that
calls itself Christian can be paralleled in
other religions, is, in fact, derived from
them. But Christ is unique. There is
no second Jesus. [41]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
This does not mean that we are to
admit nothing into Christianity which
we cannot prove to have been histori
cally derived from Jesus. Christianity is
not simply the reproduction of Jesus'
teaching; it is something much grander
and more wonderful. It is the expres
sion of his life. All that is alive grows,
that is to say, it changes. It is always
taking up into itself new materials and
fashioning for itself new forms, but it
is change according to a plan. The
spirit within sets bounds to the life in its
outward reach, and directs it to a goal
as yet unseen. It is so in the Christian
religion. The spirit of Jesus is the or
ganising principle of Christianity, and
the justification of creed and doctrine
and institution alike must be found in
the extent to which they make his per
sonality more real to the imagination
of men and his ideals more completely
dominant in their lives.
[42 ]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
We have here just what we need, an
explanation and an incentive. We have
an explanation of the differences which
separate Christians. They are the sur
vival of the pre-Christian in Christianity.
We have a standard by means of which
we can adjust them. The gift which we
offer to the men of other religions is the
remedy by which we must purify our own.
And so the last word of the new the
ology is the first word of the old evangel
ism: Come to Jesus. Test your life by
him; make him Lord of your thought,
King of your purposes, Saviour and
Friend of your soul. Study the world
in which you live, this changeful, baffling
world, where so much is fascinating and
so much heart-breaking, and see him
slowly moulding it by his Spirit after the
pattern his Father has set. Dare to be
lieve that he will have his way in the end.
It is no new gospel, then, that the new
theology brings to us, only the old gos-
[43]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
pel set in a new light; and yet in a very
true sense it is a new gospel. It is new
in the freshness of its appeal, since it
comes to us by another channel and
seeks its evidence in unfamiliar quarters.
It is new in the breadth of its founda
tion, since it is based upon an induc
tion of all accessible facts and can face
the last word of modern discovery with
an even mind, sure that it will bring
nothing to be feared. It is new, as
every fresh experience of an old fact is
new to the man who has lived it over
again with that openness of mind, that
attention of the will, and that large faith
in the overshadowing presence of a God
of wisdom and of truth which is the
spirit of science at its best. The preacher
who has put this to the proof in his own
experience will no longer be afraid of the
new theology. On the contrary, he will
welcome it as an indispensable ally in the
supreme task to which his life is given,
[ 44 ]

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THEOLOGY
the preaching of the gospel of the living
Christ who is the spring of all progress
and the goal of all endeavour, the begin
ning and the ending, the first and the
last, the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever.

[ 45 ]

II
THE BIBLE, WHAT IT IS AND HOW
TO USE IT
There have been three great themes
which in every age have engaged the
attention of religious men. The first is
authority, the second is God, the third
is salvation. What is the source of relig
ious faith, or, in other words, what is the
seat of authority in religion? What is the
object of religious faith — the unseen Be
ing on whom we depend, to whom we
look up, and with whom we commune?
What is the effect of religious faith? How
does religion help us practically? What
difference does it make whether we are
religious or not? These are the three
perennial questions of religion. We shall
take them up in turn and ask ourselves
[47]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
what light modern theology has to shed
upon each.
And first, of the source of religious
faith, or the problem of authority in
religion. This brings us to the subject
of the present chapter: the Bible, what
it is and how to use it.
There are two reasons for beginning
with the Bible. The first is because it
is the point at which modern theology
began; the second is because it is in
connection with the Bible that we find
the most pressing and the most difficult
of our practical problems.
I propose to raise, and, so far as I can,
to answer, the following four questions:
First, why do we need a Bible at all?
Secondly, how did the old Bible meet
this need? Thirdly, what change has
modern theology made in our view of
the Bible? Fourthly, what practical ef
fect will this change have upon the
preacher's work? [48 ]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
Why, then, do we need a Bible? This
is our first question. I answer, for two
reasons. In the first place, we need it
as a source of religious inspiration and
guidance for the individual soul, and, in
the second place, we need it as a stand
ard for the church.
We need the Bible as a source of relig
ious inspiration and instruction for the
individual. It is one of the most famil
iar features of our religious life that,
like all life, it has to be constantly re
newed. If it is not fed from without, it
will starve. Now, the most natural way
to feed the religious life is to draw upon
the resources of some one else whose life
is rich. Prayer is the supreme example
of this renewal of life through contact
with a higher source of supply. I shall
have more to say of prayer by and by.
But one of the perplexing features of
this whole matter of religion lies just
here^-that, while prayer is open to every
[ 49 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
one of us, we are not always equally in
the mood for prayer. What are we to
do in such a case as this? There is one
very obvious thing that we can do, and
that is to come into contact with some
other man or woman who has the spirit
of prayer. This is the philosophy of
churchgoing. Men go to church in
order to renew and enrich their devo
tional nature by contact with others
whose nature is richer and fuller than
their own. The function of the preacher
as from Sunday to Sunday he stands in
the pulpit is to vitalise and to renew the
starved and parched lives in his con
gregation by sharing the more abundant
resources to which his own life has access.
But who is to feed the preacher? Here
is where the Bible comes in. The Bible
is the great repository of the spiritual
life of the past. Through the Bible we
meet the men who have been greatest in
religion — Moses and David and Isaiah
[50]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
and Jeremiah and St. Paul, and our
Lord himself. The Bible is the book of
the ideal, holding up before us the stand
ard of truth and duty when our own vi
sion grows dim. The Bible is the book
of warning, reminding us, when we are
tempted to forget it, of the inevitable
consequences of sin. The Bible is the
book of comfort, bringing into our lone
liness and isolation the consciousness of
a divine companionship and an unfail
ing love. The Bible is the book of hope,
gilding the cloud of our discouragement
with the golden lining of the ideal, paint
ing before us the outlines of the holy
city, the home of righteousness and
brotherhood and peace, which is some
day to come down from heaven to earth.
The Bible, then, I repeat, is the great
source of inspiration and of instruction
for the individual religious life. The
Bible is the book that preaches to the
preacher.
[51]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
But religion is not simply an individual
affair. It is a social matter as well, and
this brings me to the second great func
tion of the Bible, namely, its use as a
standard. When we look over Christen
dom we find that Christians are divided
into groups, differing one from another
in beliefs and practices and, what is
still more important, in habits of feeling.
These differences constitute one of the
great obstacles to the success of our
preaching. They are an obstacle at
home, multiplying churches where fewer
strong churches would be more effective.
But they are a far greater obstacle on
the foreign field, introducing confusion
and distrust where simplicity and direct
ness are all-important. What we need
here is some statement to which we can
all refer, some platform on which we can
all stand, and such a platform we have
in the Bible.
There are two ways in which the
[52]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
Bible is fitted to act as such a standard.
It is fitted outwardly because it is the
one book as to whose use all Christians
are agreed, and it is fitted inwardly by
the nature of its contents, for it is the
book which gives us the most direct, re
liable, and first-hand knowledge of Jesus
Christ, the founder, the standard, and
the renewer of the Christian religion.
The Bible, then, I repeat, if it is to
do what we require, must fulfil a double
function. It must be the source of relig
ious inspiration and guidance for the
individual, and it must be the common
standard of faith and practice for the
church. Now, this was just what his
toric theology has asserted of the Bible
from the beginning. The Bible, it tells
us, is, in the first place, the great means
of grace, and, in the second place, it is
the only infallible rule of faith and prac
tice. We shall ask in a moment how the
Bible was supposed to render this double
[53]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
service. But at the outset it is impor
tant for us to recognise that the need here
pointed out is a real need. We need
to-day just the kind of help in our indi
vidual and social life that our fathers
and mothers found in the Bible.
What kind of a book, then, was this old
Bible supposed to be? In the first place,
it was supposed to be an inerrant Bible,
and by that we mean that it was a Bible
which by a special activity of the divine
Spirit had been preserved in all its parts
from mistake. It was accurate in its
history, accurate in its science, accurate
in its chronology, accurate, it need not
be said, in its morals and its religion.
You could open it at any page and be
perfectly sure that the sentence which
you read came to you as a message
straight from God.
From this first characteristic a second
followed. It was a book that was all
on a level. I have said you could open it
[ 54 ]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
at any page and find a message straight
from God. That was just what the old
theologians did. They chose their proof-
texts indiscriminately from Genesis to
Revelation, confident that in a book
which had God for its author there could
be no inconsistency or contradiction.
As a matter of fact, however, there
proved to be practical difficulties in the
application of this method. When the
different passages were compared with
one another their teaching did not al
ways seem to agree. There were differ
ences as to statement of fact, such as
the two stories of the flood * or the two
accounts of the choice of Saul to be king.f
What was more serious, there were ap
parent differences in the moral and relig
ious standards applied. Now God was
represented as a jealous God, ruthless in
his opposition to evil, calling upon the
* Gen. 6 : 13-22; 7 : 6-24; Gen. 7 : 1-5.
1 1 Sam. 8 : 4-22; I Sam. 9 : 15-27; 10 : 1-9.
[55]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
Israelites to exterminate the Amalekites,
man, woman, and child,* smiting Uzzah
dead when he laid presumptuous hands
upon the ark,| punishing David's sin by
a pestilence that swept away seventy
thousand of his people; X and again he
was tender and compassionate, ready to
forgive the repentant sinner, however
great his guilt, and requiring forgiveness
of men even to seventy times seven. §
Now, so long as it was a matter of
the individual alone, this difficulty was
not an insuperable one. A man seeking
spiritual food could always find what he
needed in the Bible. When he met a
hard passage he could do what we all
do in such cases — pass it by and go on
to something that is simpler. But in
the case of the church at large the mat
ter was more perplexing. It was not
possible here to shirk the difficulties.
* I Sam. 15 : 3. f H Sam. 6 : 6, 7.
t H Sam. 24 : 15. § Matt. 18 : 22.
[56]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
One must look the apparent contradic
tions in the face and find some way of
reconciling them.
There were two possible ways which
might be taken. One of them was the
method of allegory. One might say that
the teaching of the Bible was not meant
to be interpreted literally. The Bible is
a spiritual book, veiling its meaning un
der parables, only to be understood in
the light of the teaching of the same
Spirit that inspired it. This was a
method very popular in the early church.
Origen, the great Alexandrian theologian,
used it, and multitudes have followed his
example. But the trouble with this method is
that it goes too far. If you cannot
trust the plain teaching of Scripture at
one point, how can you be sure that it
is to be trusted at any? If you spiritual
ise the accounts of God's anger may you
not equally explain away the accounts
[ 57 1

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
of his love? Our Protestant fathers
rejected the method of allegory and
substituted the method of harmony.
They contended that every sentence in
the Scriptures must be interpreted at its
face value; that if we read in the ac
count of the flood at one time that the
animals went in two by two,* and again
that they went in seven by seven, f there
were two sets of animals that went in,
and so on all along the line. Now, I
am not interested here to follow out this
method or to criticise it. I want simply
to call attention to this one point that,
as an effort to meet the practical difficulty
for which it was designed, it was a failure,
and that for the very simple reason that
there was no standard provided to de
termine whose solution of the particular
difficulty in question was correct.
In theory, indeed, the old Protestant
view of the Bible was a very simple one.
* Gen. 6 : 19; 7 : 8, 9. f Gen. 7 : 2, 3.
[58]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
Every one went to it for himself and in
terpreted it under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit. The assumption was that
the men who went in the right spirit
would come to identical results. But, as
a matter of fact, they did not come to
identical results. They came to very
different results. Who was to decide be
tween them? Evidently there was need
of some second standard which could be
used as a guide in the interpretation of
the Bible, and such a standard was ac
tually found in the doctrine and tradi
tion of the church.
If everybody had been in the same
church this method would have worked
well enough, but as we all know this was
not the case. The Protestants themselves
were divided into their several denomi
nations. There were the Anglicans and
the Presbyterians and the Congregation-
alists and the Methodists, and these
again were divided into different schools
[59]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
and parties. There were the Calvinists
and the Arminians. There were the An-
tinomians and the Legalists, there were
the High Churchmen and the Low
Churchmen and the Broad Churchmen.
Each of these had their own tradition,
their own standard, their own creed by
which they measured the interpretation
of the Bible; and, while in theory they
all declared that the Bible was the su
preme standard and everybody must be
free to interpret it for himself under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit, in practice
they repudiated this principle. As an
actual means of bringing about agree
ment among Christians as to the essen
tials of faith and practice the older way
of using the Bible has not been success
ful. Here modern theology comes to our
aid, for it furnishes us with a point of
view which makes possible a scientific in
terpretation of the Bible, that is to say,
[60]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
an interpretation whose methods and re
sults shall commend themselves equally
to all men of impartial spirit. Let me
try, if I can, to state what this view is.
There are two points in which the
newer view of the Bible differs from the
old. In the first place, it lays greater
emphasis upon the human element in its
composition. The Bible, as we have come
to look at it to-day, is a composite book;
that is to say, it is a book which is
the product of many different authors,
writing over a long period of time and
making use of materials in part furnished
for them by the science and philosophy
of their time. It is a book, therefore,
which has to be interpreted by the stand
ards which we use in reading other lit
erature of the same kind. We have to
distinguish the different purposes which
influenced the authors and the different
literary forms which they used. We
have to ask ourselves what light is shed
[61]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
on the meaning of a particular passage
or book by the conditions of the time
or the practices which prevailed among
contemporary people at the same general
stage of culture. In short, we have to
use the same methods which have already
proved so successful in the interpretation
of the literature of other ancient peoples.
From this conclusion a second follows
— that not all parts of the Bible stand on
the same moral and spiritual level. The
Bible is not a single book but a library;
or rather, to be exact, two libraries. It
is a collection extending over many
centuries and telling the story of a pro
gressive revelation. Beginning on a com
paratively low level of culture and deal
ing with men of primitive and simple
ways of thought and feeling, we rise
little by httle to the greatest heights of
experience and insight which humanity
has yet attained. It is clear that in the
use of a book of this kind discrimination
[62]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
is necessary. We cannot pick out a text
anywhere from Genesis to Revelation
and apply it without reference to its
context. We must read the earlier in
the light of the later; the part in the
light of the whole. Isaiah means more
to us than Kings, Romans than Isaiah,
and the Gospels than all three. We are
Christians, and to us Christ is greater
than Isaiah, greater even than St. Paul.
Now, how does this help us practi
cally? At first sight it would seem as
though such a view were anything but
helpful. If the Bible is a composite
book, representing different grades of
moral and spiritual insight, making use
of elements derived from other sources
which, in turn, differ in value, what be
comes of its divine authority? How can
we still have confidence in its teaching?
How is it fitted to serve as the infallible
helper and guide that we need?
Let us remind ourselves again what we
[ 63 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
need in the Bible. We need two things:
in the first place, food for our own souls
and, secondly, a common standard of
faith and practice.
I say, we need food for our own souls.
But who are we, and what kind of food
do we need? Well, in the first place,
we are people of different degrees of spir
itual maturity, and, in the second place,
we are, or at least it is to be hoped we
are, people who are growing.
We are people who differ in spiritual
maturity, and that means that we need
different kinds of spiritual food. Some
of us are still children, literally, or if
not in years, at least in point of view.
What we need in our Bible is some in
teresting story that will bring home the
truth in picturesque form and point a
moral, simple enough for us to under
stand — such a story, for example, as that
of Joseph and his brethren, or of David
and Jonathan. Some of us are plain men
[64 ]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
and women bearing the burden and heat
of the day, too busy to have much time
and thought for speculation or hard ques
tions, and what we need is the assurance
that there is a good God who cares for
us and who gives us the supply that we
need day by day. Our standpoint is like
that of the simple folk for whom Luther
wrote his Smaller Catechism, when he
defined creation by saying: I believe
that God "has given and still preserves
to me body and soul, eyes, ears, and all
my limbs, my reason and all my senses;
and also clothing and shoes, food and
drink, house and home, wife and child,
land, cattle, and all my property." * And
we find our need best met by the Twenty-
third Psalm or the sixth chapter of Mat
thew. And some of us, it may be a very
few, are philosophers whose minds are
constantly occupied with the puzzles of
existence, who have formed the habit of
* Schaff, " Creeds of Christendom," IH, p. 78.
[65]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
inquiry and question and who want some
answer that presses back of the surface
of things to their ultimate meaning. Job
is the book that comes closest home to
us, or the story of Paul's struggle in the
seventh chapter of Romans.
But this is not all. Not only have we
different needs as individuals, but these
needs differ from time to time. We are
growing. Those of us who are children
will some day be men and women; those
of us who were content to take hfe at
its face value may at any time have an
experience which forces upon us the
ultimate questions of the soul, and the
Bible we need is a book which has pro
vision within its broad covers for all
these different kinds of needs. We need
a Bible that will do, not simply for one
age, or for one class, or for one race, but
for all mankind, the Japanese and the
Chinese and the Hindu and the South
American, as well as the German and the
[66]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
Englishman and the American. And we
need a Bible that will do for every cen
tury, not for the first simply or the sec
ond but for the twentieth as well, and,
what is quite as important for us now
to remember, not for the twentieth only
but for the first and the second and all
the centuries that he between.
The Bible that we have is a Bible of
just this kind, for it gives us the record
of a progressive revelation. And by that
I mean a revelation which unfolds itself
step by step in order to meet the vary
ing needs of the varying stages in a grow
ing and developing life. The Bible tells
the story of the way in which God has
been training mankind from infancy to
mature manhood and womanhood. It is
a book, therefore, in which you can find
something for man at every stage in his
moral and spiritual experience.
This does not mean, of course, that
there are no fixed standards, that what
[67]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
is true for one man may be false for an
other. I shall have something more to
say of this matter of standard in a
moment. But it means that there are
different aspects of truth and different
methods of approaching it. It means
that when I speak to children I must
talk the language of children. It means
that if I am talking to primitive men I
must use ideas that lie within the range
of their comprehension. Thus, if I find
the biblical writers using conceptions of
science and of history that our own age
has outgrown, I must remember that
they were speaking to men of their day
and that if they had talked our language
they could not possibly have been under
stood. I must ask myself what was the
particular truth which they designed to
teach at the time and see whether it be
not one of which I can make use in deal
ing with some of my own people whose
need is similar. [ 68 1

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
I am far from thinking that this use
of the Bible as a graded text-book,
adapted to men of different stages of
maturity, is a discovery of modern theol
ogy. All great preachers have used the
Bible in this way, and this has been a
chief source of their greatness, but what
I mean is this, that the older view of the
Bible rendered this use of it more diffi
cult and less intelligent than the new.
Practically, to be sure, the preacher used
the Bible as a graded book, but in theory
he conceived of it as designed from cover
to cover for pupils of the highest grade.
And the reason for this was that he
had not yet gained the historic point
of view.
This difficulty modern theology has
removed, for it has taught us the steps
through which our Bible came to be
and so showed us the uses which each
part was designed to serve, not only for
our day but for its own. In doing this
[69]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
it has not only helped us to a better
understanding of the Bible we know but
has recovered for spiritual use large sec
tions of the book which but for its help
would have fallen almost altogether into
the background.
There is that old story of the creation
which for so many years was the battle
ground on which the champions of relig
ion and science waged interminable war.
On the theory of inerrancy the story bris
tles with difficulties. It is, to say the
least, exceedingly difficult to reconcile it
with the modern view of the creation of
the world. But if we read it historically,
in the light of the parallel creation stories
of Babylonia and Assyria, we see for the
first time its true significance. The pic
ture of the world in the two accounts has
striking similarities, but the conception
of God is fundamentally different. In
the Babylonian story it is the strife of
two rival monsters which is responsible
[70]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
for the making of the world. But in the
Bible creation is due to an act of will.
It is the fiat of that free Spirit who formed
the world to be the scene of the redemp
tive purpose which was to culminate in
Jesus Christ. "And God said, Let there
be light, and there was light." * So read,
the first chapter of Genesis remains for
us to-day as truly revelation as ever it
was in the past.
Or take an illustration of an altogether
different kind. There is that great sec
tion of the Bible that hes between Isaiah
and Malachi. When I was a boy all
this part of the Bible was a sealed book
to me. It was prophecy, and that meant
that it was prediction. It was a part of
the Bible in which God had foretold what
was going to happen by and by in that
great crisis lying somewhere in the future
with which as a boy I as yet felt httle
concern. When I tried to read the proph-
* Gen. 1 : 3.
[71]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
ecies I could not understand what they
meant, and as I grew older and consulted
the commentaries I was not much better
off, for I found that each commentator
had his own scheme for the interpreta
tion of prophecy and that these schemes
differed one from another.
Now the scientific study of the Bible
has helped us to a new understanding of
these difficult passages, for it has shown
that they have an entirely different
meaning. They are not exclusively con
cerned with the future, as we had sup
posed. They have a present reference.
The prophets were men of their own day,
wrestling with specific evils, moral evils
many of them, social abuses, economic
wrongs, just the kind of questions that
you and I face to-day as we pick up our
newspapers and read of the last congres
sional investigation, or the last instance
of the shameless flaunting of wealth.
They were men, I say, who were facing
[ 72 ]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
a situation of this kind and who brought
to bear upon it the principles of ethical
religion, faith in the God who judges not
by the outward appearance but by the
heart, faith in the God who is not the
God of Israel only but the God of the
whole world, the God who loves so much
that he is not afraid to punish, the God
whose will, however it may seem for the
time to be thwarted, will in the end cer
tainly prevail.
Here is a whole mine of homiletical
material which has been opened to us
by the studies of such men as George
Adam Smith and others — just the kind of
message that we need to bring home to
an awakened conscience that is facing for
the first time in its full meaning the fact
of social wrong.
It is because Isaiah and Jeremiah are
books of this kind that they are, in the
highest and truest sense of the word,
prophecy. Just because they are con-
[73]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
cerned primarily with the needs of the
present, the sins and the sufferings and
the salvation of the men and women who
were living at the time, do they furnish
the most direct preparation for the Christ
who was to come, the great Servant who
went about doing good and who gave his
life a ransom for many.
Or suppose we take our illustration
from the New Testament instead of the
Old. How many of us there are who
would be obliged to confess, if we were
honest, that we had found the Epistles
hard reading. We had been brought up
— I know I was — to look upon such a
book as Romans as a text-book of theol
ogy, dealing with such doctrines as orig
inal sin and justification by faith, and we
were not particularly interested in doc-
trine — doctrine, as such, I mean: doctrine
in text-book form, divorced from life.
But modern theology is showing us
that the divorce is only in our own minds.
[74]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
Instead of being theological treatises,
Paul's letters are transcripts of his per
sonal experience, bits of autobiography
which give us an insight into the life
history of one of the greatest men who
ever lived. They tell us of his struggle
after righteousness and of his failure, of
his agony and despair, of the amazing
transformation which Christ wrought in
his life, of the revolution which it brought
about not only in his conduct but in his
way of thinking, of his consecration of
himself to the service of this new Master,
and of his effort through long years of
the most varied experience to interpret
the gospel of Christ to men of different
intellectual antecedents and social envi
ronment. They show us, in a word, a
man facing the same kind of questions
that confront us to-day; whose experi
ence, therefore, can be practically help
ful to us at the point where we most
need help. [75]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
So in various ways the scientific study
of the Bible is recovering for our use
parts of the Bible which for many people
had lost their meaning and making them
again what God designed them to be —
practical helps in the solution of our pres
ent difficulties and the answer to our
present questions.
But this, after all, is only half the
story. The Bible is necessary not sim
ply to feed the individual: it has a so
cial function as well. It is the common
standard by which the church is to test
its Christianity. How far is the Bible of
modern criticism effective here?
Let me recall again what is the na
ture of the test that we need. We need
a test that will actually work in practice,
a Bible that will really resolve the differ
ences between Christians and bring them
to a common mind. Now, the difficulty
with the old view of the Bible was that,
as a matter of fact, it did not do this. In-
[76]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
stead of uniting, it divided. Each man
brought to the book his own presupposi
tions and standards; each group picked
out from the multiphcity of material
which the book contained that which ap
pealed most to its own need and by this
judged the rest. What we need in a
standard which is actually to work is
some common principle which every one
recognises and which is equally appli
cable in every case. Such a principle
modern theology gives us in Christ.
Christ, it tells us, is the key to the Bible.
He is the common standard by which
all its teaching is to be unified. When
any question arises of interpretation,
when it is a matter of judging with
reference to the different grades of in
sight and of culture of which we have
been speaking, it is to him that we are
to come as the final test. It is the old
principle of Luther brought down to
date: "The real touchstone by which
[ 77 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
all books are to be judged" is "whether
they make much of Christ or not."*
Here again I am far from thinking
that this principle is a discovery of the
new theology. In every age Christ has
been central in Christian experience, and
earnest men have turned to him for
guidance in their perplexities and help
in their difficulties — in the Bible as else
where. What I mean is that the older
view of the Bible rendered this resort less
obvious and less certain. I have spoken
of Luther as using our principle, but this
is only partly true. When Luther spoke
of Christ he used the word in a general
sense for whatever in the Bible met his
need of salvation and forgiveness. He
did not discriminate between the Christ
of the Gospels and of the Epistles, or
even of Old Testament prophecy. In
deed, he could not, for he did not com-
* Kostlin, "The Theology of Luther," Eng. tr., vol.
H, p. 228.
[78]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
mand the historic method which alone
makes such discrimination possible.
When we use the term Christ to-day
we do so in a more exact sense. We
think of the Jesus of the Gospels, the
historic figure whose life and death and
resurrection the evangelists record and
to whose continued influence the Epistles
witness. And when we say that Christ
is our standard for interpreting the Bible
we mean that we must bring everything
which it contains to the test of his hfe,
teaching, and character.
This does not mean, of course, that
we attach no value to those parts of the
Bible which fall below Jesus' standard.
What we have already said of the earlier
stages of revelation should have made
this abundantly plain. Still less does it
mean that we are to admit nothing to
our Bible which goes beyond the ex
plicit teaching of Jesus. The high Chris-
tology of Paul and of John has its con-
[79]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
tribution to make to our theology, just
as truly as the parables of the Good
Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Reve
lation did not stop when Jesus died. He
explicitly declared that he had much to
say to his disciples which they were not
prepared to receive during his earthly hfe.
He promised his Spirit to guide them into
all truth, and in every age Christianity
has shown itself the religion of freedom
and of progress. But what is meant is
that Jesus is central in the whole process
of revelation. He is the test by which
progress must be measured. Is it a
question of what has gone before? We
must ask how far it has prepared the
way for him. Is it a question of what
comes after? We must ask how far it is
the legitimate unfolding of his principles.
I have spoken of the high Christology
of Paul and John. At the heart of this
Christology lies the conviction that in
Jesus Christ we have to do with more
[80]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
than man. In him we see the revela
tion in human form of the unseen God
who from the beginning has been seek
ing his erring children.
It is a conviction that has verified itself
through centuries of Christian experience.
But how shall we interpret to ourselves
its full meaning? There are two possi
ble ways that we may take. We may
say, since Jesus is God incarnate every
thing in his hfe that seems inconsistent
with our thought of God must be ex
plained away; or we may say, since
Jesus is God incarnate every sweet and
satisfying and adorable quality which he
illustrated we may be sure is found in
supreme measure in God. Can there be
any question which of these two prin
ciples should be controlhng in our inter
pretation of the Bible? Yet must we
not recognise that it is a principle which
has not always been given its full weight
in the theology of the past?
[81 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
To follow the applications of this prin
ciple would carry us too far, but I can
perhaps make my meaning clear by an
illustration. Suppose we compare the
Bible to a tract of country through
which the soul has to pass in its quest
of truth and life. It has food in abun
dance to nourish the soul in its quest,
and beauty to delight the spirit, but
there are also rough places to be trav
ersed and hills to be climbed.
What will the soul need i£ it is to
make the journey successfully? Clearly,
two things: light to see the way and a
path to point the direction.
The older theology provided for the
first of these needs in its doctrine of
the witness of the Spirit. The Holy
Spirit is the sun which lights up the dark
places of the Bible and reveals to the
soul their uses and their beauty. With
out the witness of the Spirit no one can
read the Bible understandingly or re
spond to its appeal.
[ 82 ]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
But the traveller needs more than
light. He needs direction. He wishes
to know not only what the country con
tains to supply his wants on the jour
ney but also which way to take to
reach his goal. In other words, he needs
a path. Now, a path is not a prison. It is a
way along which free men may walk
erect. The charm of a path is that it
opens vistas on every side and provides
opportunities for digression to the right
hand or to the left as some new object
of interest invites inspection. But the
wise traveller will never stray too far,
for he knows that if he does he may
¦lose his way and so finally miss his goal.
So Christ gives us our direction as we
journey through the Bible. He is the
path from which it is never safe to stray
far. All that the book contains is given
us freely for our use and our enjoyment.
He shows us how to use it aright and
how to enjoy it to the full.
[ 83]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
This is the true meaning of that old
doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture
which has been a stumbling-block to so
many. By the infallibility of Scripture
we do not mean simply that the book
which hes before us on the table con
tains no mistakes. That is an altogether
inadequate conception of the meaning of
this great phrase. We mean that in
this book, prepared by the Spirit of God
for his church, we have a guide which,
when read humbly, reverently, prayer
fully, and in the spirit of Christ, will
infallibly lead the individual and the
church into the knowledge of that truth
which they need to know. That is the
only kind of infallibility which can do
us any practical good. And that is the
kind of infallibility which we actually
have in our Bible.
May we not hope that, when the crit
ical movement in the midst of which
we stand shall have run its course and
[84]

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
we are able more clearly to distinguish
its assured results from the shifting the
ories which are the inevitable accompa
niment of any forward step on the road
of human knowledge, the final result will
be to leave us all with a profounder reali
sation of the practical power and author
ity of the Bible; that as in the days of
Luther it proved itself the book of free
dom, leading men out from the yoke of
a church which had grown corrupt and
tyrannous into the liberty of the sons
of God, so to-day it will show itself the
book of unity, revealing to all of us who
call ourselves Christians that common
heritage of faith and hope and love which
has been given to us by God in trust for
all mankind?

[85]

Ill
THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
From the question as to source of faith
we pass to the question as to its object:
from the Bible to that which the Bible
contains. The answer can be given in a single
word. The object of faith is God. God
is the subject of the Bible from Genesis
to Revelation, and every question of prac
tical rehgion with which it deals has its
roots finally in the view which is taken
of him. It is no minor or unimportant
subject, therefore, which is to engage our
attention but one which brings us into
the very heart and inner shrine of relig
ion. The oldest and yet the newest,
the most profound but the most prac-
[87]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
tical, the most exhaustless yet the most
necessary of all the subjects to which
the mind of man can be directed or
with which the heart of man can be con
cerned is God.
The method which we shall follow in
the present discussion is the same which
has already proved helpful in our treat
ment of our former subject. We shall
ask, in the first place, why we need God
at all. In the second place, we shall ask
how the theologians of the past thought
of God as meeting this need. In the
third place, we shall ask what contribu
tion modern theology has to make to
our idea of God. And finally we shall
ask what effect we may expect this con
tribution to have upon the religious life.
Why, then, do we need God? We
have never seen him, we have never
heard him, we have never touched him.
There are wise men who have questioned
whether he exists at all or, if he exists,
[88]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
whether we can know anything definite
about him. Yet in every age men have
gone on believing in God, and the belief
has powerfully affected their conduct.
What is the explanation of this fact?
What need, I repeat, is satisfied by faith
in God?
I answer, we need God for two reasons :
In the first place, we need him in order
that we may have something to worship;
and, in the second place, we need him in
order that we may have some one to give
us help.
You will notice that I have put the
need of worship first. That is not the
order which is most familiar, at least
in our non-liturgical churches. Worship
holds a subordinate place in our scheme
of religion. We make place for it, to be
sure; we have our hymns and our prayer,
but in our estimate of values these hold
a subordinate place. We speak of them
often (even those of us who are minis-
[89]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
ters) as the preliminary exercises. Our
attention is concentrated upon the ser
mon as the central feature in the service.
We claim to be practical men, and we
commend religion because of what it can
do for us. It is the helpfulness of God
which gives him his chief value in our
eyes. But more careful reflection will con
vince us that this is a superficial view.
The greatest thing that God can do for
any of us is simply to be himself. More
than any specific thing which he can do
for us is that which he is to us. We need
God, I repeat, most of all in order that
we may have something to worship, and
by that I mean something to look up to,
something of which we can feel that it
is higher, more powerful, more resource
ful, more inspiring, more satisfying and
ennobling than we. To have a God is
to have an ideal and to know that, how
ever far I may fall below my own stand-
[ 90]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
ard or my neighbour may fall below his
or all men together may fall below theirs,
still somewhere and somehow the ideal
is realised and the supreme values that
make life worth living will be conserved.
This need of some one greater to look
up to and to adore is a universal need.
Wherever we look we find that it is
present. I have spoken of the witness of
modern science to the universality of re
ligion. It is just at this point that the
evidence of this universality is most con
vincing. The difference between man
and the animals is found in the fact that
man alone has ideals, and the religious
nature of man consists in the fact that
in his heart of hearts he is persuaded
that that which for him is ideal is also
in some true sense real.
But, though all men believe in God,
there is a great difference in the kind
of God in whom men believe. Some
men find power the most admirable thing.
[91]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
The ability to do as one pleases, to carry
one's purposes to execution in spite of
every opposition, to execute vengeance
upon one's enemies, to have one's own
will at any cost — this it is which seems
to many men most satisfying, and it is
this quality which calls forth their won
der, and their admiration in God.
And there are others to whom mys
tery seems the most divine thing. They
love to feel themselves in the presence
of some inscrutable being so far sur
passing man's capacity to comprehend
or understand that his boldest thought
turns back baffled from the quest, as
the rays of a lantern lose themselves in
the encircling fog. This sense of bound
lessness, of infinitude, of deeps unfath-
omed seems to many most wonderful
and adorable, and it is the fact that
God is such a being which commands
their worship.
And to still others righteousness ex-
[ 92]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
presses their highest thought of God.
God is the being in whom the moral
ideal after which we vainly strive here
on earth is perfectly realised. God is
justice personified, the mind that sees
all things iri their right relations, and
the will that decides unvaryingly accord
ing to what it sees.
And to still others, finally, it is un
selfishness which seems the most divine
thing in the world. God is love, the em
bodiment and the supreme expression of
that passion of self-devotion of which
we gain faint gleams in the love of the
mother for the child or the sacrifice of
the patriot for his country.
It is not enough, then, to speak of
God in the abstract. We must go on to
define the kind of God in whom we be
lieve. We are interested here in the
Christian conception of God, and we
wish to know what there is in this con
ception which calls forth our worship.
[ 93]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
But worship is only one side of relig
ion. We need God not only that we
may have some one to look up to but
that there may be some one to reach
down to' us as helper and friend. This,
too, is a need of universal range. Wher
ever we go we find men conscious of a
lack which man cannot supply. They
need guidance, for there are questions
which they cannot answer. They need
salvation, for there are evils from which
they cannot escape. Above all, they
need power, for their vitahty is con
stantly drained and must be constantly
renewed if they are to meet the respon
sibilities and bear the burdens that each
new day brings, and for this in every
age men have turned to that unseen
source of supply which we call God.
But here again this common need is
consistent with infinite variety of detail.
Faith in God has been found among men
in every stage of moral and spiritual ex-
[ 94 ]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
perience. The kings of Israel cried to
God for help against their enemies, for
victory in battle against the Canaanite
and the Assyrian. Hezekiah turned to
God for the healing of his sickness, and
in this he is typical of a great company
of men in every age down to the last con
vert to Christian Science. For others it
is forgiveness of sins that is the great
need, some assurance that the burden of
guilt from which they try in vain to es
cape will be lifted off and they be re
stored to self-respect and enabled to
begin a new hfe of freedom and peace.
Or, again, it may be power for service
that is desired, strength for the unceas
ing struggle to help men who do not
want to be helped, and faith to believe
that the struggle will in the end succeed.
How, then, have Christians thought
of God as meeting this double need, the
need of an object of worship, and the
need of a source of help? What was
. [95]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
there in God as Christ had revealed him
which satisfied men's need for a realised
ideal, and in what ways did the Supreme
reach down to make his power practi
cally helpful in daily hfe?
If we turn to the older devotional lit
erature we find that there were three
ways in which God was pictured as sat
isfying man's need of worship. In the
first place, he satisfied it through his
majesty. God was a sovereign holding
all things in the hollow of his hand, or
dering all things by the decree of his will.
In the second place, God was righteous.
Justice was of the very essence of his
being, so inwrought into his nature that
he could not do wrong if he would. Fi
nally, God was loving. Righteous as he
was, uncompromising in his opposition
to evil, terrible in his judgments upon
sin, he was yet gracious, tender, ready
to forgive those whom he had chosen for
himself. So in God all the deepest needs
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THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
of man's nature found their answer and
satisfaction. And man could be sure
that, whatever changes the years might
bring, the object of his adoration would
never prove less adorable.
And as God furnished man with a
satisfying object of worship, so also he
was an ever-present source of help.
There was no need felt by man for
which he had not made full provision.
He met the need of guidance. In the
Bible he had given a clear revelation of
his will and told man in plain words
what he was to believe and what he was
to do. He met the need of salvation.
Through the atonement he had made
full provision for the guilt of sin and
made possible free forgiveness to all who
would lay hold upon it by faith. And,
above and beyond all this, he was pres
ent in the world by his Spirit, minister
ing to the needs of his elect in count
less ways, calling into existence a new
[97]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
spiritual life in regeneration, interpreting
the Bible to them by the witness of his
Spirit, sanctifying them more and more
by the renewal of his grace, assuring
them of their calling as sons of God,
feeding their souls by the means of grace
which he had provided in Word and sac
raments, and so preparing them at last
for their final destiny as children of God
in the new life of his kingdom.
Here certainly were great blessings. A
religion which could do this for men is
not to be despised, and those of us who
have been brought up under the old the
ology and know men and women whose
lives have been nourished by the faith it
fostered will never be able to speak of
its teachings in any other language than
that of reverence and tenderness.
But there is another side to the pic
ture which honesty will not suffer us al
together to overlook. These great bless
ings were bought at a great price. It
[98]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
was the price of God's universal father
hood. Between God and man there was
a barrier of distance which rendered
impossible for men in general that free
access to the heavenly Father which is
characteristic of the life of children with
their parents.
This barrier was twofold. It was in
part intellectual and in part moral.
Man was separated from God by his
ignorance, and he was separated by his
sin. What God was like no man could
know except by supernatural revelation,
and this revelation, theoretically open to
all in the Bible, was, in fact, restricted
to those to whom God was pleased to
grant the witness of his Spirit. To those
to whom he had revealed himself through
this witness God was indeed a gracious
Father, loving and tender, but for the rest
of mankind he remained the unknown
God or, if known at all, known only as
the author of a law which man was help-
[99]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
less to obey and which, therefore, held
in store only nameless terrors. Even to
those who had received the divine reve
lation, the doctrines of the faith remained
mysteries into which the mind of man
could not penetrate. One must believe
that God was three in one, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, but how this could be
one could not hope to understand, nor
indeed did one need to do so.
But formidable as was the obstacle
for the mind, the barrier for the con
science was more insurmountable still.
Man was separated from God by his sin.
God was just, and justice was thought
of not as we think of it to-day — as
the means which the all-wise and all-
loving Father takes to accomphsh the
moral training of his children. Justice
was an independent principle inherent
in the divine nature — a principle which
not only expressed his opposition to sin
but also his separation from the sinner.
[ 100]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
Justice was that in God which bound
him to punish every least infraction of
his law with infinite doom — a doom
which no penitence of man could avert,
even were perfect penitence in his power.
Justice, therefore, so far from being a
bond which united man and God, was
a barrier keeping them for ever apart un
less some method could be found by
which God could pass over.
Such a method was, to be sure, pro
vided by God's grace. Through the
atonement of Jesus Christ a way was
found to blot out the guilt of sin and
to make possible the free forgiveness of
the sinner. But even here the gain was
won at a heavy cost. For, as a result
of the conception of justice to which I
have already referred, the conception of
love itself was perverted. It was no
longer an imperious necessity inwrought
into the very nature of God, defining
the attitude of the Father toward every
[ 101 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
one of his children; it was an expression
of the principle of sovereignty, the power
of arbitrary choice. God was one who
had mercy on whom he would have mercy,
but who hardened whom he would. As
the atonement of Christ was necessary
if forgiveness was to be possible, so the
divine decree decided for whom this pro
vision should avail. The rest remained
in the outer darkness, from which there
was no possibility of dehverance.
Now, I am well aware that what I
have been saying will seem to many an
exaggeration if not a travesty. I know
very well that many ministers who hold
what they call the old theology have
preached a far larger and more generous
gospel. I gladly recognise that the pres
ence of God in all human hfe, the jus
tice of God as an element through which
he trains his children, the love of God
as the expression of his inmost heart, the
deepest and the most profound of all
[ 102 ]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
the truths of Christianity — I gladly rec
ognise, I say, that these great convic
tions are the monopoly of no single age
or school of theologians. In every age
men who have studied their Bible and
been brought into contact through it
with the heart of Jesus Christ have laid
hold upon the central truths of the gos
pel and brought them home with power
to the lives of men. My point is simply
that it was more difficult to do this a
generation ago than it is to-day. There
were obstacles in the way of believing in
God's universal fatherhood which those
who have been trained in the methods
of modern science do not feel. The bar
rier of distance which separated God
from his human child has been removed
and so the way opened for that intimate
and satisfying conception of God which
is the supreme gift of Christianity to
mankind. By this I do not mean simply that
[ 103]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
modern theology has emphasised the di
vine immanence. That is true, but ir
relevant. We twentieth-century Chris
tians have no monopoly of the doctrine
of immanence. Calvin, too, believed that
God was everywhere present in his world,
and that nothing was independent of his
control; yet none the less God seemed
to Calvin infinitely remote from multi
tudes of his creatures. The nearness
which I have in mind is not of essence
but of character. It shows itself in feel
ing even more than in action. I mean
that there is nothing in God's nature
which separates him from any child of
man. I mean that God understands
man and sympathises with him and longs
to do him good. There is no individual
and there is no class of men for whom
God does not care and whom he does
not wish to draw into filial relations
with himself.
There are two ways in which the sci-
[104 ]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
entific habit has helped to bring God
near. It has brought him near to the
mind. There is a sense, indeed, in which
the result of modern science has been
to render us more than ever conscious
of our httleness and insignificance. As
we have come to realise the vastness of
the universe and the intricacy of its
mechanism, we have gained a new im
pression of the greatness and of the wis
dom of the being who is its cause. But
in another sense, the effect has been just
the reverse. Modern science has in
creased our faith in the intelligibility of
the universe and in the trustworthiness
of our own faculties as a guide to truth.
We have learned that when we approach
the world in the spirit of faith and rev
erence it yields to our advances, that
when we treat it as if it were a rational
world it lends itself to rational interpre
tation, and how shall we account for
this if not through the presence in and
[ 105 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
through nature of a rational cause, a
being, in a true sense, like ourselves?
The presence of this common spiritual
element, uniting God and man, makes
possible the incarnation. The incarna
tion is the self-revelation of God in man.
We believe that through Christ God has
shown us what he himself is like and
has given us an insight into his char
acter and purpose, which is an adequate
guide for the interpretation of his world.
And he could do this because of the inner
bond of which I have spoken, for if God
were a being wholly unlike mankind it
would not have been possible for him to
have revealed himself to man through
man. But, what is more important still, mod
ern theology has brought God near to
the heart. It has removed the element
of arbitrariness which has lingered so
long in our thought of him. God, as we
have come to believe in him to-day, is a
[ 106 ]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
consistent God. He acts according to
law; that is to say, he has a uniform
method rooted in principles as unchang
ing as himself. He is not a being who
has favourites or who makes exceptions.
He does not act according to one prin
ciple at one time and according to
another principle at another time. He
does not deal with some men in terms of
justice and with others in terms of love.
All that he does is directed to a single
end; namely, the estabhshment of the
kingdom of God, which is " righteousness
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." *
This does not mean that modern the
ology lays less emphasis upon the justice
of God than the theology of the past,
but only that it conceives it in a differ
ent way. Justice is that quality in God
which expresses his inherent love of right
eousness as it appears in his dealings
with individual men. It is manifest in
* Romans 14 : 17.
[ 107]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
his opposition to sin as long as sin con
tinues, but it is shown no less clearly
in his forgiveness of sin when true re
pentance makes forgiveness possible. It
makes use of punishment, indeed — a pun
ishment as inexorable as sin and as ter
rible — but punishment is never an end in
itself. It is the means which love uses
to accomplish its supreme end — the sal
vation of men and their union, one with
another and with God, in the righteous
life of the kingdom.
So, in many ways, modern theology
has helped to clarify and purify our con
ception of God. It retains all that is in
spiring and satisfying in the older view
while avoiding the difficulties to which
it was exposed. It offers us an object of
worship august and wonderful enough
to satisfy every demand of the emotional
nature. Is it a question of majesty?
What could be more majestic than God
as we apprehend him to-day? God is
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THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
the infinite Spirit who informs and in
habits the universe — life of its life, light
of its light, directing all things, accord
ing to the counsel of his will, to the far-
off divine event which he has planned
as the goal of all conscious life. Is it a
question of righteousness? God is right
eous and the exacter of righteousness in
others. He has set a standard to which
he requires that all men and all nations
shall conform, and that standard is the
character of Christ. But, above all, God
is loving — loving even as Christ is loving,
loving by the inner necessity of his na
ture, and willingly paying through all
eternity the cost that true love always
exacts of the lover. What can heart de
sire which such a God cannot supply?
Still we can sing with Watts:
"Our God, our help in ages past;
Our hope in years to come,
Our refuge from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home,"
[ 109]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
or with Bowring:
"When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride."
Now, it is clear that if we have such a
God as this he ought to mean more in
our lives than ever before. We ought to
be looking up to him more constantly,
counting upon him more certainly, turn
ing to him in every crisis of our lives for
the help that we need.
But is this really true? Is it a fact
that God means more in our hfe to-day
than he meant in the life of our fathers?
Do we turn to him more constantly for
help? Are we as conscious of his pres
ence as the outstanding factor in our
lives? I am afraid that if we were to give a
truthful answer to this question it would
have to be in the negative. One of the
noticeable features of our day is the de-
[ 110]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
cline of personal religion in the old sense
of the term, the loss of that sense of
personal intimacy between God and his
child which was so characteristic a fea
ture of the older religion. We talk a
great deal about God; we think about
him not a little; but we do not feel
him as real and as near as Luther did
or Wesley, not to speak of Isaiah or St.
Paul. Here is a situation which demands our
most serious consideration. Those who
base their teaching upon external author
ity may insist that they are right, how
ever much their doctrines may seem to
contradict experience; but a theology
which makes practice the test of truth
must stand or fall by its fruits in life.
Unless the new thought of God issues
in a richer experience of God it is self-
condemned. I have been trying as best I could to
discover the reason for the decline of
[ HI]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
personal religion. In part, no doubt, it
is a result of the increased pressure of
life. Activity is the characteristic note
of the modern world. Almost every day
a new society is formed to render some
new service or to meet some new need.
On every side we hear the complaint
that people are so busy they have no
time to stop and think. The quiet hours
that parents used to spend with their
children, the time sacredly reserved for
family worship or for the reading of the
Bible Sunday afternoon, is crowded out
by other duties which seem more pressing.
And it is not simply that we have
found so much to do, but we have found
so much that we are able to do. This
new social and philanthropic activity has
justified itself by its fruits. We have dis
covered that many of the evils which we
once thought irremediable are capable of
cure if only wC set our hands to the task.
And there is nothing which appeals to
[ H2]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
a normal man or woman like work that
is effective for an object that is worth
while. So the very success of our prac
tical efforts at helpfulness has, for the
time, turned our thoughts away from
those deeper needs which in every age
have driven men to God and kept alive
in human hearts the flame of personal
rehgion. But, after all, the real reason for the
decline of which I have been speaking
hes deeper. We cannot seriously give
ourselves to the task of trying to help
our fellow men without, sooner or later,
realising our limitations. For a time
we may be content to deal with the ills
that he on the surface, to better housing
conditions, to foster habits of saving, to
provide opportunities of healthful amuse
ment and the like, but presently we find
that these things go only a little way.
There are deeper needs which cannot
thus be met — needs of inward renewal,
[ 113]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
of the transformation of character, of de
liverance from selfishness and pettiness
and the tyranny of habit; the need of
inner contentment and peace, of a larger
outlook, of a more satisfying ambition.
And when we try to meet these deeper
needs we soon discover how limited our
resources are, and are driven back for
help to God, like all those who have
attempted the same tasks before us.
And this brings me to a second reason
for the decline of which I have spoken,
one far more fundamental and far-reach
ing. It is not simply that we have been
too busy to seek help from God, but
that we have not been sure that God
could give us the help we needed even
if we were to ask him.
For what is it that we need of God?
It is such help as a man would give his
fellow man — help direct, individual, per
sonal, differing from moment to moment,
from hour to hour, according to our dif-
[ H4]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
fering needs. That is the kind of help
for which our fathers turned to God and
which they were conscious of receiving
from him. If he was apart from the
world, transcendent, as we call it in our
theological speech, it was only that he
might be able the better to express his
individuality and to exercise his freedom.
I have spoken of the gulf that yawned
between God and his creature, but it
was a gulf which God could cross at any
moment if he would, and which, as a
matter of fact, he was constantly cross
ing. All that was necessary to do was
to cry to God in prayer and one could
be sure that the needed help would be
forthcoming. But with the world which modern sci
ence reveals it is different. God. is a
God of law; that is to say, he acts ev
erywhere and always in the same way.
How can we feel the sense of commu
nion with such a God that we do with
[115]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
our fellow men? Are we told that God
is near? That is just the trouble. He
is too near for us to realise his presence.
Are we told that he is always the same?
But it is not uniformity we want. Our
need is always changing and the helper
we need must meet these constant changes
with a change as constant.
It is a very real difficulty that I am
voicing. It lies back of the wide-spread
attack upon the new theology as deny
ing the supernatural and making no
place for miracles. What this attack
really means is the fear that if the new
view of God comes to prevail the old
sense of personal intimacy which char
acterised the religion of the past must
die out, that vague feehngs of awe and
worship will replace that communion of
will with will which is essential to the
continuance of vital religion.
Now, if this fear were justified, I for
one should feel that those who attacked
[ 116]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
modern theology as destructive were
quite in the right. We need not only
a God to worship from afar but a God
who can help us where we need to be
helped, in the changing trials and re
sponsibilities and dangers of our chang
ing lives. And the test by which every
theology — whether old or new — must
stand or fall is its abihty to provide for
the satisfaction of this need.
We face, then, this curious situation,
that while the conception of God as pre
sented in modern theology is winning
and attractive, just the kind of God we
should love to have as Father and Friend,
the conception of God's relation to the
world is such that we find it difficult to
draw the legitimate consequences of our
belief, in practical helpfulness. How is
this anomaly to be explained?
The root of the whole difficulty, I am
persuaded, hes in the ambiguity of the
term "law." Law means uniformity,
[117]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
but we forget that there are two kinds
of uniformity. There is uniformity of
action and uniformity of method, and it
makes all the difference in the world
which of the two we mean. Uniformity
of action is inconsistent with personal
ity. It is the uniformity of the machine
which always does the same thing be
cause it has no option. If God be a
God of law in this sense it would, indeed,
be useless to turn to him for help, for
he could not help us if he would. For
him, as for the world in which he dwells,
law would be a prison from which he
could not escape.
But we may use the word "law" in
quite a different sense. We may use it
to describe uniformity of method rather
than uniformity of action. So far from
being inconsistent with personahty, uni
formity of this kind is the highest ex
pression of personality. It is the mark
of a consistent character that it knows
[118]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
how to shape means to ends and can
be trusted under any conceivable set of
circumstances to do the thing that is'
right. The man who is under law in
this sense will be constantly varying his
action to meet the varying exigency,
but the change will always be deter
mined by principle and will lead, there
fore, to results on which you can always
count. It is just so with God. When we say
that he acts according to law we mean
that all that he does is determined by
a single consistent purpose. It is not
that his acts never vary but that his
aim never varies. He has but one ob
ject, and that is to establish the king
dom of God in the world which he has
made by bringing the men and women
who are its inhabitants into wilhng
conformity to the character of Jesus
Christ. How is this purpose to be brought
[119]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
about? In the very same way in which
Christians have always contended that
it must be brought about — by changing
whatever in the present order of things
and in the fives of living men and women
is inconsistent with this purpose; in
other words, by new beginnings or what
our fathers were accustomed to call mir
acles. A miracle is an exceptional event
wrought by God in the world for a moral
purpose. It is the evidence of the pres
ence in the world of a personal Spirit
directing its course to a spiritual end.
It is a great mistake to think that
modern theology has no place for mir
acle. Modern science has, indeed, ban
ished a certain conception of miracle,
the conception which regards it as a
purely arbitrary and isolated event with
out antecedents or consequences, a mar
vel or portent contradicting natural law
or, at least, wholly unrelated to it. But
in the sense in which we have just de-
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THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
fined it as a new beginning which evi
dences to man in a peculiar sense the
presence and the purpose of God, mod
ern science shows us more clearly than
ever before how indispensable it is for re
hgion. All progress takes place through
new beginnings. A new form appears
not wholly to be explained by its ante
cedents but prophetic of that which is
to come after. A great man appears and
sets a new standard for all succeeding
generations. A flash of insight illumines
the soul and through years to come we
walk by the light of the heavenly vision.
Saul is struck down before the gate of
Damascus and the persecutor is changed
into the apostle. Jesus is born in a tiny
province of the Roman Empire and we
date a new era in the history of man
kind. How shall we account for phenomena
like these? What is their significance
and meaning in the universe? This is a
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
question which science cannot answer.
It is concerned with causes, not with
values. It registers the appearance of
the new fact. It can determine the con
ditions under wliich it arose and de
scribe the consequences which followed
from it, but the why and wherefore is
hidden from its ken. Critical scholar
ship may tell us who wrote the books of
the Bible and when they wrote them.
It may explain the literary forms they
used and catalogue the materials upon
which they drew. But when it has done
all this it is as far as ever from explain
ing the influence which the Bible has
exerted upon the spiritual life of man.
How came it that in its pages men have
heard God speaking directly to their own
souls; how account for the persistence
of its influence over so many centuries
and among men of such widely different
races? Religion answers, it is because
God is really speaking to men in the
[ 122 ]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
book which he has prepared for this very
purpose. And this discovery of God in
events and experiences which to men
without the clew seem destitute of spir
itual significance lies at the heart of the
religious faith in miracle.
The difficulty in the older attitude
toward miracle was not that men found
God actively at work in the great crea
tive personalities and events which ac
companied the birth of the new religion,
but that they concentrated their atten
tion upon his presence there to the ex
clusion of his activity elsewhere. They
tried to draw a hard-and-fast line be
tween the miracles of the Bible and
God's methods of self-disclosure to men of
other races and other ages. They failed
to recognise, or, at all events, adequately
to emphasise, the fact that God is as
truly present, if in different degree and
for different purposes, in our present ex
perience as in the experience of the past;
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
that he is as able to-day as ever to make
new disclosures of his will and to give
new evidence of his power. What we
need to do is to realise afresh the con
tinuity of God's redemptive activity; not
to see less of him in the past but to ex
pect more from him in the present and
in the future.
Now, the most familiar example of
God's creative activity in the present is
prayer. Prayer is the way in which the
soul of man is renewed through contact
with God. Here again modern theology
has not altered the facts though it has
set them in a new light. Through its
revelation of the divine consistency it
has removed the element of arbitrariness
which often attached to the older con
ception of prayer. It assures us that
when we draw near to God in the spirit
of faith we may confidently expect re
sponse; that it is as true to-day as in
the days of Isaiah and of St. Paul that
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THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
through prayer we have access to the
source of all power and renew our lives
from day to day.
I have in mind a dear friend, now no
longer among the hving, about whose
memory many associations cluster. A
natural leader of men, far-sighted, wise
in counsel, exquisite in tact, untiring in
industry, he was, in the truest sense of
the term, a man of affairs. But I think
of him most of all as a man of prayer.
More than once during a season of anx
iety and strain I have seen him come
into the seminary chapel to lead the
morning's worship, and as he prayed I
have seen his face change before my
eyes and grow buoyant and radiant un
der the renewing influence which came
to him from communion with his God.
Cuthbert Hall is to many a Union Semi
nary student a personal embodiment of
that sonnet of Trench's which he loved to
quote:
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
"Lo, what a change within us one short hour
Spent in thy presence will prevail to make,
What heavy burdens from our bosom take.
What parched grounds revive, as with a
shower!
We kneel, and all around us seems to lower;
We rise, and all, the distant and the near,
Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and
clear.
We kneel, how weak: we rise, how full of
power!"
What we need, then, above all, we
who call ourselves Christians, is to learn
from Jesus how to pray. Jesus realised
as keenly as any of us moderns the duty
of service. All day long he went about
doing good. He was tireless in his min
istry to the needy in body and spirit,
feeding the hungry, healing the sick,
comforting the sorrowing, forgiving the
sinful, but he knew that he could give
only what he had received. And so
when night fell he left his disciples and
went up into the mountain or shut his
[ 126 ]

THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN
closet door that in secret he might com
mune with the Father who seeth in se
cret. It is what his disciples must do
if we are to recover again for our gener
ation the consciousness of God as the
central fact and the supreme good, the
unfailing source of strength and of wis
dom, of inspiration and of comfort, of
peace and of joy.

[ 127 ]

IV
FROM WHAT AND TO WHAT ARE
WE SAVED?
The subject which is next to engage
our attention differs from those which
we have been considering thus far in
that it deals with a need of which every
one has direct and first-hand evidence.
When we took up the Bible we began
by asking why we need a Bible, and it
was necessary to do this for there are
people who do not seem to think we do.
It is a fact — a lamentable fact — that for
a great many people to-day the Bible is
an all but unknown book. If they were
in trouble it would never occur to them
to go to it for help. If they were in
perplexity it would never occur to them
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
to go to it for guidance. They seldom
read it. If you were to quote a familiar
text they could not tell you from what
book it came. It is more than hkely
that they would not even know that it
came from the Bible at all. For all
practical purposes the Bible has com
pletely passed out of their lives.
It is so with the second great need of
which we spoke — the need of God. Here,
too, there are people who, so far as out
ward evidence is concerned, are unaware
of their need. They are not conscious
of God's presence in their fives. He is
not a factor with which they feel they
must reckon in the solution of their
problems. They never pray. They do
not go to church. They tell us that they
believe in the religion of kindness and
that Nature is a good enough church
for them.
If, then, we wish to commend our relig
ion to people of this kind we must begin
[ 130 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
by showing why it is important to read
the Bible and to beheve in God. We
must show that these fixed points in our
Christian faith and practice are not ar
bitrary but have found their place nec
essarily in answer to deep-seated human
needs, needs that require only to be
pointed out to be recognised.
But in the case of our present subject
no such preliminary explanation is nec
essary, for everybody who is old enough
to know anything knows what it means
to need salvation. Salvation means de
liverance, help. It is the promise of re
hef from the evil of which life is full, the
assurance of well-being and safety. To
ask from what and to what we are saved
is to ask from what evil we need to be
delivered and what consequences we may
expect to follow from the deliverance.
This is a question of universal human
interest. If you do not beheve it, read
the advertisement columns in the daily
[ 131 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
papers, or, better still, the magazines,
with their long list of remedies for the
countless ills to which flesh is heir. Lis
ten to the conversation of any group of
men and women who know one another
well enough to talk of the subjects that
interest them most, and you will find
that they are talking about the need of
salvation — either their own or somebody
else's. They do not call it by that name,
to be sure, but that is what they mean.
There is no one, I repeat, old enough
to know anything who has not faced, in
his own experience, the fact of evil and
learned what it means to need deliverance.
In every age, rehgion has made its most
direct and persuasive appeal through its
promise of help to people who were in
trouble — in other words, because it has
offered men salvation.
I have a friend, a man of singularly
fine and unselfish feeling, who tells me
that he thinks this matter of preach-
[ 132 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
ing salvation has been greatly overdone.
Rehgion, he declares, is constantly pre
sented as if it were a sort of medicine,
a patent remedy, warranted to heal sick
ness and to cure sin, or, if not that, as
a kind of fife-insurance policy guaran
teeing the insurer against the danger of
loss and safeguarding him against the
effects of his own misconduct and folly
and that of others. But such a concep
tion of rehgion, my friend holds, is alto
gether unworthy of its dignity. Relig
ion is not something for the sick merely
but for the well; not for the weak but for
the strong; not for the sinful but for
the righteous. Rehgion is the way by
which we enter into the highest hfe pos
sible and develop our capacities to the
utmost. Religion is something for men
at the height of their power and in the
zenith of their prosperity, not simply for
the hour of failure or the day of death.
Rehgion is joy rather than comfort, ful-
[ 133 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
ness of life rather than safety, service
rather than salvation.
I have much sympathy with this point
of view. In our desire to help men in
their troubles we often overlook the pos
itive aspects of our religion. We greatly
need the kind of preaching of which my
friend speaks — preaching that will em
phasise the virile and heroic aspects of
Christianity; preaching that will present
religion as a generous and satisfying life,
the one adequate outlet for the energies
that in most of us are but half used;
preaching that will sound the note of ad
venture and enthusiasm such as was
struck by James Chalmers, Robert Louis
Stevenson's friend, when he wrote:
We want men who think preaching and
living the Gospel to the heathen the grand
est work on earth. We want men who will
thoroughly enjoy all kinds of roughing it,
who will be glad when ease and comfort can
be had, but who will look upon all that comes
[ 134 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
as only the pepper and salt giving zest to
work and creating the appetite for more.*
But while this is true, and we cannot
emphasise it too strongly, it is not all the
truth. Whatever may be the case in the
bright future to which we look forward
by and by when the Spirit of Christ
shall be everywhere victorious and God's
will be done on earth as it is done in
heaven, here and now certainly men are
the victims of sickness and sorrow and
sin and death and failure in all its count
less and heart-breaking forms. However
much more there may be in religion than
the word salvation expresses, it remains
true that if we are to reach men at the
point of their present need here is where
we must begin.
But though we should all agree as to
the need of salvation, we should find it
less easy to agree as to the particular
evil from which men most need to be
* " Autobiography," p. 214.
[ 135 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
saved. For there are so many kinds of
evil. There are evils which attack us
from without and evils which have their
seat within. There are evils which af
fect us as individuals and there are so
cial evils. There are ills of the body
and ills of the mind. There is ignorance;
there is sorrow; there is sickness; there
are failure and misfortune; and there is
the great family of evils which have
their source in a perverted will. Clearly,
if we are to help people intelligently, we
must decide which need is greatest and
where salvation is to begin.
Here the preachers of a generation
ago had a great advantage, for they
knew just what they were trying to do.
With most of the evils of which we have
been speaking they were not concerned
— at least, not primarily. Their special
ministry was to the soul of man. It was
their aim to set men right with God.
The salvation they preached was from
[ 136 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
sin and the punishment which was its
inevitable consequence.
Study the career of any one of the older
revivalists and you cannot help being
impressed with the businesslike way in
which he set about his work. The first
thing that he attempted to do when he
came to a new place was to make his
hearers realise their absolute helplessness
apart from God. He began by preaching
the law. He warned men of the inevi
table consequences of theif sin, and only
when he saw that they had been brought
to a proper sense of the seriousness of
their condition was he ready to follow up
the first impression with the message of
forgiveness and peace.
.And not only did the preacher know
what he was trying to do, but the people
knew, too. We used to hear a great deal
when I was a boy about the way of sal
vation. It was a way that had been
trodden so many times that it was pos-
[ 137]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
sible for any one who wished to take it
to know just where he was going. Peo
ple might not choose to go, but they
knew where the way was, and they had
no doubt that if they followed it it would
take them where they wanted to go.
If we look more closely at the salva
tion which the old revivalists preached
we find that it had two characteristics.
In the first place, it was salvation from
punishment; in the second place, it was
salvation from a punishment which was
to be inflicted by and by.
This does not mean, of course, that
deliverance from punishment was the
whole of the preacher's message. He
knew as well as we that the evil of
evils is sin itself. Indeed, the worst pun
ishment which God could inflict upon a
man was simply to let him continue in
his sin. But to his thought punishment
was something independent of sin and
added to it, something from which a man
[ 138]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
needed to be dehvered for its own sake
even after he had turned from his sin.
It was not enough to repent in order to
be forgiven, even if you were able to do
so, which you were not. There was a
necessity in the nature of God which
required that past sin should be pun
ished, and it was because it provided a
way of escape from this punishment that
the preaching of the atonement brought
such relief to tortured spirits.
But it was not simply punishment
from which men needed to be delivered,
but future punishment. The great day
of reckoning to which the soul looked
forward was not in this life but in the
hfe to come. For a time, to be sure,
the wicked might flourish like the green
bay-tree, but in the end his doom was
sure. When death came he would be
brought to the bar of divine judgment
and face the great alternative of heaven
or hell. [ 139]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
Here, too, we must be on our guard
against exaggeration. Many descriptions
of the older preaching of future punish
ment fail to do justice to its spiritual
profundity. The older preachers real
ised as well as we that the true hell is
not without but within. It is separa
tion from the comfortable presence of
God here and hereafter. None the less,
it is true that in their thought of this
separation they had the future rather
than the present in mind. They were
thinking not so much of present deliv
erance from sin as of escape from those
torments of mind and body which awaited
the impenitent after death. The mes
sage of the preacher was that of Evan
gelist to Christian: "Flee from the wrath
to come."
Here, then, we have a perfectly definite
programme. The minister of an earlier
day, I repeat, knew just what he wanted
to do. If you had asked him for his
[ 140 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
answer to our present question: From
what and to what are we saved? his an
swer would have been instant and pre
cise: We are saved from hell and to
heaven. There are many people to-day who
no longer find this answer satisfying. A
change has come over their thought, but,
above all, over their feeling, of which
the thoughtful preacher is obliged to take
account. This change is due to two causes. It
is due partly to a change in our concep
tion of punishment and partly to a new
sense of the importance of the present
life. I have already had occasion to refer
in another connection to the change
which has taken place in our conception
of justice. We no longer think of it as
something which exacts punishment for
its own sake. We think of justice as a
mearis of bringing about right relations
[ HI ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
between man and his fellow man and
punishment as one among other instru
ments to be used for that purpose. Ac
cording to this view, punishment is not
something from which we need to be
saved. It is itself the means of our
salvation. Instead of being the vindi
cation of an abstract principle of right
it is a tool put into our hands for the dis
cipline and reformation of the offender.
We have found in our prisons and our
reformatories that when we treat men
fairly, kindly, and hopefully they re
spond to our treatment, and we see no
reason why, when we are persuaded that
their lives have been changed, they should
not be restored to society. We do not
believe that God is less good than man,
and so it is natural for us to think of
him, too, as making justice the instru
ment of his love.
But it is not simply that we have
a different conception of punishment.
[ 142 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
Our whole perspective has altered. The
other-worldly Christianity of another gen
eration has yielded to a view of religion
which is primarily concerned with the life
that now is. We wish a salvation for
to-day — a salvation which can deal with
the specific evils of whose presence we
are most conscious here and now: polit
ical evils like injustice, economic evils
like poverty, physical evils like disease.
It is not enough to believe that indi
viduals here and there may be delivered
from their present sinful environment.
We wish to be assured that the envi
ronment itself is to be transformed into
one that will favour and not hinder
freedom and progress.
Into the causes of this change I need
not enter here. In part it is due to a
clearer recognition of the unity of life.
We have learned for one thing that
there is no such thing as a purely iso
lated individual, that we are literally
[ 143 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
members one of another, so involved
with the men and women by our side,
in a hundred complex relationships, that
it is absolutely impossible for us to sep
arate our interests from theirs. We have
learned, too, how intimately and in how
many ways the spiritual graces we value
most highly are rooted in the homely soil
of economic opportunity. We see that
drunkenness and immorality are not sim
ply sins of individuals. They are symp
toms of an unsound social order, and so
we are shifting our point of attack. We
are trying not merely to save individual
drunkards and prostitutes, but to create
such social standards and habits as will
make their existence for ever impossible,
and in our devotion to this engrossing
task we have lost sight for the moment
of the more distant future for which the
present is a preparation.
I am not concerned here with passing
judgment upon the change but simply
[ 144 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
with registering the fact. We may admit
that there is a truth in the older view
of punishment which many of us have
dismissed too lightly. If punishment is
really to reform, it must be recognised
by the one who receives it as just. Take
away its inevitableness and you impair
its disciplinary value. The lawlessness
which is so serious a menace to our social
and political life is due in no small part
to the fact that so many men have lost
the sense of accountability to an author
ity which cannot be evaded.
We may admit, too, that any gospel
of salvation which confines itself to the
present merely and does not take into
account the longer future is bound, in
the long run, to prove unsatisfying. The
richer and fuller we make life here, the
more we put into it of spiritual meaning
and value, the less we shall be content
with the thought of its ultimate cessa
tion. But, however this may be, the
[ 145 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
fact remains that in both the respects
to which I have referred there has been
a change of emphasis with which we must
reckon. Even if we do not feel it our
selves others do. There are many people
for whom the old form of appeal has lost
its force, and if our preaching of salva
tion is to be effective we must have some
clear-cut message to take its place. What
shall that message be?
This brings us to the first of our two
questions: From what are we saved?
The older answer was: "We are saved
from punishment." In contrast to this,
it would seem natural to say that we
are saved from sin. If the older preach
ing was at fault in making too much of
the consequences, let us go back to the
cause. Sin, at least, is a present fact
whose existence every one recognises,
and no one will deny that we need to
be saved from it.
But the trouble with this answer is
[ 146 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
that it is too vague. No doubt, every
one will admit that we need to be saved
from sin in general, but our trouble
begins when we try to deal with sins in
detail. How can we tell whether any par
ticular act is a sin? Is there any prin
ciple which will determine this for us?
This is a question which comes home
with increasing force to every conscien
tious Christian. One of the most strik
ing facts in the social life of to-day is
the breaking down of standards. The
definite rules in which the older ethics
formulated the ideal of human conduct
can no longer count on an undivided
public opinion. This is not necessarily
/due to any lack of moral sensitiveness.
It is due in part to the growing com
plexity of modern life. New conditions
are constantly arising which could not
be foreseen; new factors entering the
field which must be taken into account.
I am not thinking simply of the changes
[ 147]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
which affect our individual standards,
such as the new economic conditions
which have modified our attitude to
ward Sunday observance, or the new
attitude toward intellectual inquiry which
has been the result of modern science. I
am thinking of a whole group of sins
which have grown out of the new social
and economic environment, for which
the older ethics made no explicit provi
sion — the sins of the corporation, for ex
ample, sins for which we can hold no
single individual exclusively responsible
because we all alike share the responsi
bility. We need some principle at once
definite and flexible which will unify our
thinking and act as a positive guide in
the new conditions which we face to
day. Such a principle modern theology gives
us in its teaching concerning the nor
mative significance of Jesus Christ. Sin,
it tells us, is any departure either on the
[ 148 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
part of the individual or of society from
the standard he has established. Sin is
unchristhkeness, and that is only another
way of saying that it is selfishness. Sin
is the preference from motives of self-
indulgence of any other end for the su
preme end which Christ has revealed,
namely, the kingdom of God.
Such a definition helps us in two ways.
In the first place, it gives us a general
principle, simple enough to be easily in
telligible, yet at the same time compre
hensive enough to take in all forms of
evil; and, in the second place, it helps us
to deal with specific evils by showing us
wherein their real evil consists.
Take, for example, that old vice of
intemperance, which has been the text
of so many sermons. What is the real
sin of drunkenness which makes it an
offence in the sight of God? There is a
sin against the individual, no doubt, in
the evil consequences in body and mind
[ 149 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
which come to the offender himself.
But there is a greater sin against society.
The worst evil of the drink habit con
sists in the consequences which follow
from it for others. It consists in the
temptation which it puts in the way of
those who have not the strength to re
sist. It consists in the decreased social
efficiency of the men who have formed
the habit, the fact that they are no
longer so effective as workers, so respon
sible in positions of trust, so lovable and
dependable as husbands and fathers; in
the fact, in short, that they are no longer
able worthily to fill their places in the
great family of God.
It is so with all the other sins which
are commonly catalogued as individual,
such as gambling or impurity. The evil
in each case includes not only the effect
produced upon the man himself but the
social consequences which follow from it.
It is the fact that the self-indulgence
[ 150 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
which the habit fosters is bound to bear
fruit in cruelty, misery, and degradation.
But our principle has a much wider
application. It bears not only upon the
individual sins which formed the staple
of the older preaching but upon those
newer forms of social sin which have
grown out of the new conditions of our
modern industrial life. It gives us a
principle by which we can judge social
practice everywhere. Does it advance
or hinder the kingdom of God? Is it
an expression of brotherhood or its re
pudiation? Here is a wide field into
which our present plan will not allow
us to go in detail. It includes whatever
affects the social welfare and efficiency
of the people: the method of producing
wealth and of distributing it, the con
ditions of housing and of education, the
prevalence of social habits and stand
ards — all, in short, that is either uplift
ing or debasing in a community.
[ 151 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
Some years ago the country was stirred
by the accounts of a lynching in a
Northern State, where a wounded negro
under trial for his life was taken by force
from his bed in a hospital by a mob of
armed men, carried to a public place in
the neighbourhood, and burned to death
in the presence of a crowd of more than
four thousand people, none of whom
made any protest or attempt at rescue.
How shall we judge such an occurrence
from the Christian standpoint? What
is the sin which calls for national repen
tance? Not simply that the thing was
done but that conditions existed which
made it possible. The sin was not sim
ply the sin of the men who piled the
faggots or set the torch, not simply of
the men who looked on with approval
or at least acquiescence, but of the whole
community in which there had grown
up a spirit of brutality and lawlessness
which made possible such an outbreak.
[ 152]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
It was the sin of the churches which had
failed in their preaching of brotherhood;
it was the sin of the schools which had
failed in their teaching of responsibility;
it was the sin of the government which
had failed in its enforcement of order;
it was the sin of all of us whose omis
sions and commissions go to make up
that mysterious force which we call pub-
he opinion and which here, as so often
in the past, had proved itself impotent
for good. If we had been the men we
should have been the evil thing could
never have happened. The salvation we
need — the salvation which is to deliver
us from our real sin — cannot stop with
the surface evils which show themselves
openly in the body politic but must at
tack the unchristhkeness which is their
underlying cause.
We have answered the first half of
our question: From what are we saved?
We are to be saved from unchristlike-
[ 153 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
ness, which is selfishness. But our task
is incomplete until we have answered the
second part as well: To what are we
saved? Here again the answer is clear.
We are to be saved to Christlikeness,
which means saviourhood.
This idea of salvation to service is no
new idea. You will find it splendidly
expressed in Luther's great tract On
Christian Liberty. "A Christian man,"
says Luther, "is the most free lord of all
men and subject to none. A Christian
man is the most dutiful servant of all
and subject to every one." * He is free
since Christ has saved him; he is servant
since it is his part to be a Christ to
others. Yet, closely as the two aspects
of the Christian life are connected, they
are independent. Service, to Luther, is
something added to salvation, not a
part of salvation itself. Salvation is
complete when the saved man knows
* Wace's ed., 1883, p. 104.
[ 154 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
himself forgiven through Jesus Christ.
Service is the hfe that follows as a
consequence of this forgiveness. It is
the way the Christian takes of showing
his thankfulness for having been saved.
To understand the significance of this
distinction we must remember Luther's
situation. He was facing a church that
taught salvation by works, and he wished
to make it perfectly clear that salvation
was not something which a man could
earn by his own merits but must come
to him as a free gift. Salvation was the
renewal of fellowship with God that
came with the consciousness of forgive
ness. It was filial confidence, the up
ward look of the child to the father.
Salvation, in a word, was sonship.
This is the meaning of that old doc
trine of justification by faith which has
so often been misunderstood. Justifica
tion by faith is the theologian's way of
saying what Jesus meant when he talked
[ 155 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
about the childlike spirit; namely, that
in the last analysis salvation is of God
and must be received in humility and
trust. It was to safeguard this great
truth against the assaults of legalism in
every form that the Reformers and their
successors were so careful to distinguish
between justification and sanctification —
between salvation, which is forgiveness,
and its consequence, which is service.
But we see to-day that the connection
is even closer. Service is not something
added to salvation as its consequence;
it is a part of salvation itself. You can
not love God as Christ has revealed
him without beginning to love your fel
low man. For the very heart of Christ's
revelation is that God, who loves me,
loves my neighbour also. Sonship and
brotherhood are wrapped up together as
parts of one and the same experience.
The test of being saved oneself is that
one begins to save others.
[ 156 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
This insistence upon the indissoluble
connection between salvation and service
is the characteristic note of our modern
Christianity. It is not simply that we
have come to see that we cannot have
a salvation for the individual alone, but
that we should not be satisfied with
that kind of salvation even if we could
get it. We are beginning to reahse so
vividly the ties that unite us to the men
and women all about us who are strug
gling for a larger and a fuller life that
we cannot be content with any solution
of our own problem which does not bring
deliverance to them.
But when we ask ourselves what we
can do to help these brothers of ours we
find less clearness. We are saved to be
saviours. But what does it mean to be
a saviour? From what and to what are
we who have been saved to save others?
Clearly from the same evil from which
we have been saved ourselves. We are
[ 157 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
to save men from unchristhkeness, which
is selfishness., to Christlikeness, which
means saviourhood.
When we bring our modern Christian
ity to this test the result is less satisfac
tory. There is an immense amount of
activity among Christians. From morn
ing tiU night, and often far into the
night, we are at work with our clubs
and our societies and our committee
meetings. There is no one of all the
long list of ills at which we glanced a
moment ago which is not being some
where and somehow attacked. But the
results do not seem commensurate with
the effort. The forces of the enemy
multiply faster than we can shoot them
down. The weeds grow faster than we
can pull them up. And the reason is
not far to seek. We are dealing with
consequences rather than with causes,
with symptoms rather than with the
disease. In our own way we are repeat-
[ 158 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
ing the mistake of the older preachers,
who tried to save men from punishment
rather than from sin. All these evils of
which we have been speaking are the
effects of one fundamental and deep-
seated evil — the radical selfishness of
the human heart. We shall never have
men really saved till we have saved
them from this. How are we to do it?
Well, how were we. saved ourselves?
What was it that delivered us from the
bondage of our own self-love and intro
duced us to the life of service? This is a
very searching question, for it pierces to
the very roots of our being and forces
us to ask ourselves anew how far we
are saved ourselves — saved, I mean, in
the full Christian sense of that great
word. It is a question which each must
answer for himself, in the solitude of
his own soul. But I am sure of one
thing — that so far as we can truthfully
answer it in the affirmative we shall con-
t 159 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
fess that what saved us was some one's
love. There is only one way to produce
love, and that is by loving. "We love,"
says the apostle, "because he first loved
us." *
This doctrine of salvation by love is
the characteristic feature of the Chris
tian religion. Ever since we were chil
dren we have been told that God is love:
"God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten Son that whosoever
believeth on him should not perish, but
have eternal life."f We have heard the
words so often that they have almost
ceased to convey any meaning to us.
To appreciate what such a phrase as
salvation by love really means when ap
plied to God we have to make a dis
tinct effort of the imagination.
What does it mean to love in the sense in
which Jesus used the term? It means to
respect another's individuality. It means
* John 4 : 19. t John 3 : 16.
[ 160 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
to make the interests of another your
own interests, his fortune your fortune,
his welfare your welfare. It means to de
sire earnestly his highest good. It means
to carry him on your heart hour by hour,
day by day, year by year.
That was what gave Jesus his great
power over men. He was the great
lover. He was always thinking about
other people's welfare. He went about
doing good. He healed the sick, he fed
the hungry, he comforted the sad, he for
gave the sinful, he taught the ignorant.
But these, after all, were only symp
toms of something deeper. Jesus cared
for men. He believed in their capac
ity for infinite development. He carried
them on his heart as the shepherd car
ries his sheep.
Now, the Bible tells us that this is
what God is always doing. He is doing
a thousand things for us, supplying our
physical needs through the bounties of
[ 161 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
Nature, ministering to our sense of beauty
by sunrise and evening star, guiding our
consciences by the warnings of his Spirit,
rousing us to new activity by the call of
duty or the spur of danger — in countless
ways, by his overshadowing providence,
making life the wonderful and fascinating
thing it is; but, above and beyond all
this, he cares for us. He carries us on
his heart as the good father carries his
children. He is the great Shepherd of
our souls.
And that is what he wants us to do
for one another. It is a good thing to
feed the hungry and to clothe the naked
and visit the prisoner — nay, it is a nec
essary thing. Jesus has told us that
they are his representatives and that
when we minister to them we are min
istering to him. But without love, what
is our ministering worth? "Though I
bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and
though I give my body to be burned, and
[ 162]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
have not love, it profiteth me nothing." *
There is a worse evil than thirst from
which men need dehverance — a worse evil
than cold, a worse evil than imprisonment,
a worse evil than nakedness, and that is
selfishness, and the only thing that can
save from this is love.
Near one of our great cities there is
a reformatory for girls. It was the out
growth of the efforts of a good woman
who believed that the indiscriminate as
sociation of first offenders with hardened
criminals was responsible for the destruc
tion of many lives which might be saved
to usefulness and self-respect. From the
first the reformatory has been singu
larly fortunate in its management. It
has been free from the curse of politics.
It has secured the most highly trained
women for its positions of responsibility,
and its record of lives saved and char
acters transformed is a most encourag-
* I Cor. 13 : 3.
[ 163 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
ing witness to what can be accomplished
by the resources of modern science and
modern philanthropy.
To this reformatory there came one
day a girl with whom the superintendent
and teachers could do nothing. Hand
some, strong, intelligent, she was utterly
reckless and self-willed, and much of the
time it was necessary to keep her under
physical restraint to prevent her from
doing injury to herself and others. Her
story, as it was subsequently learned,
was the familiar story of early misman
agement resulting in the exaggeration
of the evils it was designed to cure.
"Kate," her parents used to say, "if
you do this we'll kill you." "But I very-
soon found," she said, "that they did
not kill me, and I determined that the
way to have my own way was to have it,
and I did." Against this ingrained self-
will all the resources of the institution
were tried in vain. Kindness and stern-
[ 164 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
ness, gentleness and force were equally
ineffective, and all who had to do with
Kate were in despair.
One night a message came to the su
perintendent from the matron in charge
of the cottage where Kate was living to
come over at once, as the girl was re
bellious and her outcries were keeping
all the other inmates awake. When the
superintendent came she found Kate in
handcuffs, sitting on the floor, since she
had torn everything in the room to
pieces. Like a wild animal she tossed
from side to side, screaming in such a
way that rest was impossible for any
one within range of her voice. The
superintendent entered the room, sat
down beside her on the floor, and tried
to coax or reason her into a better frame
of mind. At last, exhausted in body and
worn out in spirit, she lost her self-
control and, before she realised what
she was doing, burst into tears. In-
[ 165 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
stantly Kate stopped screaming and for
some time sat regarding her companion
in silence. At last she spoke. "Miss
Smith," she asked, "are you crying?"
"Yes, Kate," the superintendent an
swered. "Why are you crying?" Kate
continued. "I am crying because of
you, to think that after all my effort I
am unable to do anything for your
good." Again there was silence. Then
Kate said abruptly: "Miss Smith, that
is the first time in my life that any one
ever shed a tear for me. This breaks
my heart; I cannot stand it. You can
take the handcuffs off. You won't have
any more trouble with me."
The superintendent took her at her
word. The handcuffs were removed and
the miracle was wrought. Not instantly
or without many a struggle and some
failures, yet certainly the wild beast was
tamed, the devil cast out, and Kate,
once the despair of the institution, be-
[ 166]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
came the mamstay of superintendent and
matron in dealing with the new cases
that baffled them. "Leave her to me,"
she would say. "I know how she feels;
I can deal with her." And she did.
The saved had become a saviour, and a
saviour she remains to this day.
It is the old story of redemptive love.
You can hear its like in any rescue mis
sion. But the interesting thing about
the story and the reason I have told it
here is that it did not happen at a rescue
mission but at a State reformatory, which
is the latest word in scientific philan
thropy. When everything had been tried
that science could suggest, the old doctor,
Love, was called in and wrought the
cure. This does not mean that modern
methods are useless; that we have noth
ing to learn from the new philanthropy
as to how to help men and women in
their need. You will surely not so far
[ 167]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
misunderstand me. Love cannot work
in a vacuum. Like every other work
man, it needs tools, and the better the
tools the better it can work. The in
spiring thing about the whole scientific
movement is that it has so mightily
enlarged our capacity for service by
showing us how many more things we
can do than we had supposed to help
people in their need. But, after all, all
these things are tools. Mighty as the
instruments of love, in and of them
selves they are impotent. It is as true
to-day as when Christ lived and died
that the only sure way to save is to
love. Now, love is the most costly thing in
the world. It cost Christ Calvary, and
every one who shares Christ's spirit and
gives himself to his work will find that
he, too, will have to pay the price. "If
any man would come after me," said
Jesus, "let him deny himself and take up
[ 168 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
his cross and follow me."* It is a law
of hfe that we can have only what we
pay for, and the things that are most
valuable cost most.
That is the meaning of the doctrine
of the atonement — that great truth which
lies at the heart of the Christian religion.
It is the expression of the fact that the
law of cost is valid for God as well as
for man. God, too, can have only what
he pays for; and for him, too, the things
which he values most highly cost most.
God could not save without loving, and
he could not love without suffering.
Even before Christ came Isaiah had
grasped this great secret when he wrote
of God: "In all their afflictions he was
afflicted; in his love and in his pity he
redeemed them; and he bare them and
carried them all the days of old."f God
is the great sufferer because he is the
great lover. Atonement is not some-
* Mark 9 : 34. f Isaiah 63 : 9.
[ 169 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
thing which happens outside of God to
make forgiveness possible. Atonement is
something which happens in God. It was
what it cost God to bear the world's sin,
your sin and mine.
Religion is fellowship with God, and
fellowship means unity in thought, in
purpose, and in feeling. To be a Chris
tian means to make God's point of view
one's own — to feel toward men as he
feels toward them; to desire for them
what he desires for them; to care for
them so much that one is willing to
suffer for them — nay, to love them so
much that one cannot help suffering for
them when one sees them fail of their
highest good.
This does not mean that we are to go
through life heavy-hearted, as though the
burden of the world's salvation rested
upon our shoulders, as though God's re
demption needed some supplement that
our suffering must supply. It does not
[ 170]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
mean that we shall always be looking on
the dark side of life, that we are to be
blind to the joy and beauty of which
the world is full. It does not require
us to shut our eyes to the fact that God's
method is one of progress and that the
standard by which we judge the begin
ners in the moral life is very different
from that which we apply to those who
are further advanced. But it does mean
that the standard which we apply must
be that of Christ. It means that we
shall grieve over the things that grieved
him and rejoice over that which gave
him joy. It means that that mind shall
be in us which was also in Christ Jesus,
of whom we read that, "being in the
form of God, he counted it not a prize to
be on an equality with God, but emptied
himself, taking the form of a servant,
being made in the likeness of men,
and, being found in fashion as a man,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient
[171]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
even unto death, yea, the death of the
cross. *
Have we the mind of Christ? Is our
attitude toward life and its problems his
attitude? Does he determine our esti
mate of values? Do we measure suc
cess by the standard by which he mea
sures it — our own success, the success
of our children, of our churches, of the
community in which we live, of society
as a whole? Is love our final test of
salvation? Above all, have we the heart of Christ?
Does he set the tone of our feeling? Do
we grieve as he grieved over loveless
lives? Do we find our greatest happiness
in the winning of new recruits to that
great purpose of love to which he gave
his life? Can we say with truth, as he
said, that "it is more blessed to give
than to receive "?f If so — and only so
— are we ready for the work to which
* Phil. 2 : 7, 8. t Acts 20: 35.
[ 172 ]

FROM WHAT ARE WE SAVED?
he has called us as preachers of his sal
vation. "I thank thee, Lord, for strength of arm
To earn my bread,
And that beyond my need is meat
For friend unfed.
I thank thee much for bread to live.
I thank thee more for bread to give.
"I thank thee, Lord, for snug thatched roof
In cold and storm,
And that beyond my need is room
For friend forlorn,
I thank thee much for place to rest,
But more for shelter for my guest.
"I thank thee, Lord, for lavish love
On me bestowed,
Enough to share with loveless folk
To ease their load.
Thy love to me I ill could spare,
Yet dearer is the love I share."*
* Davis, " The Better Prayer."

[ 173 ]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST IN THE
LIGHT OF MODERN THOUGHT
In the preceding chapters we have con
sidered the Christian answer to the three
great questions of rehgion: the question
as to the source of faith, or the seat of
authority in rehgion; the question as to
the object of faith, or the nature of God
and our relation to him; and the ques
tion as to the effect of faith, or the kind
of help that we can expect from God in
the practical needs of our daily lives.
We have asked ourselves what modern
theology has to tell us about the Bible,
about God, and about salvation. In
this study Christ has been our constant
companion. We have been looking at
[175]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
the great realities of religion, as it were,
through his eyes. We have been trying
to see them as he sees them and to think
of them as he would have us think of
them, and in doing this we have been
studying Christ himself.
But we have been doing so by indi
rection, as one might study the sun by
observing the effects which it produces
upon the growing grain, or the light that
shines to us out of the eyes of a friend.
It is time to make our study more in
tensive and to ask ourselves who and
what is this Christ who has been our
companion and what place he is likely
to hold in the religion of the future.
We know the place that he has held
in the faith of the past. Christ has been
the very centre and heart of the Chris
tian religion. No term that language can
coin has been too exalted to express the
reverence and devotion with which his
disciples have regarded him. To them
[ 176 ]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST
he has been not merely man, even the
best and purest of men, but God him
self incarnate for our salvation.
The doctrine which expresses this faith
is the deity of Christ. This is the test
by which men's Christianity has com
monly been judged in the past. What
do you think of Christ? Is he your
master, your example, your ideal? That
is well, but it is not enough. Can you
say with Thomas: "My Lord and my
God"? * If not, you have no right to a
place in the ranks of his disciples.
Is this an attitude which we can still
hold to-day? Shall we take over into
the new world the old faith in the deity
of Christ or is it something that we
must leave behind?
At first sight, indeed, it might seem as
if it were difficult to take it over. When
we contemplate Christ as he is presented
to us in the older theology there is
*John 20:28.
[ 177]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
something about him that seems remote
and unfamiliar. He is in our world, yet
not of it. Through our human life of
sorrow and limitation and sin he moves
as a figure from another planet. He
wears the face of a man. He speaks to
us from human lips. He eats and sleeps
and wakes and labours as we do. He
weeps when Lazarus dies; he cries out
in the garden: "If it be possible, let this
cup pass away from me."* But we feel
instinctively that these experiences are
not like ours. Humanity is only a mask
which he wears, a garment that he has
put on to cloak the immanent deity.
But the divine Christ, who hides behind
the human Jesus and to whom alone
our worship is due, shares none of these
experiences. He does not suffer or pray;
he knows no limitations of knowledge
or power. Through all the changes of
the changing humanity he remains un
changed. The Christ of the old theology
* Matt. 26 : 39.
[ 178 ]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST
is not a human individual hke you and
me; he is the God-man, one person
with two natures, one divine and one
human, each distinct and separate from
the other.
The Jesus who is pictured for us by
modern theology is a different figure.
He is a human individual, child of his
race and of his time, only to be under
stood in the light of his environment and
of the antecedents, physical and spir
itual, from which he came. It is not
that modern theology makes any less of
Christ. On the contrary, we saw that
one of its effects has been to emphasise
even more strongly than before his cen
tral place in Christianity. But it looks
at him from a different angle, and this
difference may be expressed by saying
that, whereas the older theology was con
tent to affirm the humanity of Jesus in
general terms, modern theology tries to
realise in detail the human individuality
of Jesus. [ 179 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
This change is not simply due to the
fact that we know more about Jesus
than earlier generations knew. That is
true, but of itself it would not account
for the difference. It is the result of a
far-reaching change in our conception of
reality. The older theologians thought
of reality in abstract terms. Human na
ture was more real to them than any
particular man. When they wished to
conceive of God as entering into human
ity they thought of him as assuming
human nature as a whole. To picture
him as incarnate in a single individual
passed their imagination. Even as it
was, the contrast between Creator and
creature was so great that it could never
be wholly transcended. In the person
of Christ, as elsewhere in the universe,
the finite and the infinite might touch
but they could not blend. Between God
and man there stretched a gulf which
even incarnation could not span.
[ iso ]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST
But the world in which we modern
men live is the world of the individual
and the concrete. We know human na
ture only as it meets us in particular
men. If God is really to enter human
ity we must be able to find him in fives
like ours, lives that are limited and con
ditioned, inwardly as well as outwardly,
and that appropriate the spiritual reali
ties that transcend time, in forms that
are determined by some particular en
vironment. It is not because we would
make less of Jesus that we magnify his
likeness to ourselves. It is because we
feel our need of him so much.
At the heart of the critical research of
the last two generations, then, we find
not simply an intellectual but a re
ligious motive. Modern theology has
been studying the setting of the life of
Jesus in detail in order that it might
restore his personality to our imagina
tion. [181]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
Some years ago I stood on the summit
of the hill that rises behind Nazareth.
In front rose Mount Tabor, cutting the
view into two unequal parts. Behind
the hills to the northeast, nestling in its
sheltered basin, lay the Sea of Galilee.
On the more distant horizon rose the
snowy peak of Hermon. To the south
opened the fertile plain that stretches
without interruption to Jenin, and be
hind it the hills amid which lies Samaria,
and still farther the table-land of Judea,
where David built his city on the heights
which he had won with the sword. Back
of me was Mount Carmel, with its mem
ories of Elijah, and the Mediterranean,
where Solomon had sailed his ships. At
my feet lay Nazareth, amid its encirchng
hills, and Mary's Well, where the boy
Jesus must often have gone with his
mother as she went to fetch the water
for her household tasks.
In a well-known passage in his "Histori-
[ 182 ]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST
cal Geography of the Holy Land,"* George
Adam Smith has used this scene as a
framework to make real to us the inner
life of Jesus. One by one he pictures the
sights that he must have witnessed, as he
lived his boy's life from day to day — the
caravans wending their slow way from the
desert as you can still see them doing
to-day; the Roman legions on their way
to take ship for home; the pilgrims going
up to Jerusalem for the Passover. As
you follow the description you forget the
flight of time, and it seems as if you were
back again in the first century and min
gling with the crowds who gathered about
the new teacher whose words had so per
suasive and winning a charm.
What George Adam Smith does for
the boyhood of Jesus, modern theology
tries to do for the life of Jesus as a whole.
It puts it in its setting as part of a larger
environment. We know to-day as we
* Pages 433-435.
[ 183 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
have never known before the world in
which Jesus lived. We can picture to
ourselves the habits and customs of the
time, the life of synagogue and temple,
the books Jesus must have read, the
men and women he must have known,
the topics of thought with which he
must have been familiar, the conflicting
ideals between which he was obliged to
choose. Nor is it only the outward environ
ment that we are able to reproduce, but
the inner conditions under which Jesus'
life was lived. We understand better
than we once did what it means to be
a man. Psychology has been studying
the inner life and formulating its laws
— the law of growth, for example, under
which the mind, like the body, appropri
ates to its use that upon which it feeds;
the law of limitation by which we are
shut up to choice between alternatives,
paying for each new increase of knowl-
[ 184]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST
edge by some new restriction of atten
tion and deliberate forgetfulness. We
know that personality is a social crea
tion, that we think in forms inherited
from our ancestors and defined for us
by our time, and that we put the trea
sures of divine truth in the earthen ves
sel of a limiting environment.
All this reacts upon our view of Jesus.
We see him subject to this law, shar
ing our limitations of knowledge and of
power, growing day by day into larger
insight, entering into the lives of others
by sympathy, made partaker of our in
firmities, learning obedience by the things
which he suffered.
And as a result of this new realisation
there has come to us as never before a
consciousness of Christ's brotherhood. I
suppose there has never been a time in
human history when so many men real
ised, as realise to-day, that Jesus Christ
is their brother, bone of their bone and
[ 185 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
flesh of their flesh, very man with all
that that implies, and for this we may
well thank God.
It would be strange, indeed, if this new
emphasis on that which Christ shares
with us should not lead some to ques
tion whether there is any difference be
tween him and other men. Unitarianism
is only the most conspicuous example
of a tendency which is wide-spread — the
tendency to think of Christ in terms of
humanity pure and simple and to re
gard the historic Christian faith in his
deity as a superstition, beautiful if you
will, helpful — even indispensable in its
day — which we have outgrown.
And yet there is something in each
one of us that rebels at so negative a
conclusion. When we reahse how deeply
this faith in the divine Christ has rooted
itself in the Christian experience; when
we recall how early it began and how
long it has persisted; when we try to
[ 186 ]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST
measure the devotion and the loyalty it
has called forth in generations of Chris
tian believers, from Paul and John in
New Testament times down to critical
German theologians like Schleiermacher
and Ritschl, we feel that it must stand
for some truth of vital practical impor
tance which we can ill afford to let go.
Here modern theology comes to our
aid, and this in three ways. In the first
place, it shows us what Christ's deity
has meant to those who have held it in
the past. In the second place, it re
minds us that the motives which led
them to this faith are still operative
with us. In the third place, it makes
clear the kind of evidence by which the
validity of this faith must be tested for
the future.
First, of what the doctrine has meant
in the past. I have spoken of the con
trast between the older conception of
Christ's deity and that which we hold
[187]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
to-day. But it is easy to exaggerate
this contrast. The deity of Christ has
never been simply an intellectual behef.
It is more than a dogma received on au
thority. It is the confession of faith in
a reality with which men have believed
themselves to have contact at first hand.
They have explained that reality in
different ways, but the differences have
been differences of interpretation and
not of experience. Side by side with the
changing opinions about Christ, certain
permanent convictions persist which ex
press his practical effect upon human
lives, and these practical convictions the
doctrine of his deity sums up.
This distinction between the perma
nent reality which is the object of our
faith and our own changing definition
of it is familiar enough, and yet it is
one which we are constantly tempted to
overlook. We confuse our thoughts of
things with the things themselves. And
[ 188 ]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST
the more important the things are, the
more they mean for our practical hfe,
the easier it is to do this. We need
constantly to be reminded that theology
exists for the sake of religion; that our
definitions are designed to make the ob
jects of our faith more real, never to
serve as a substitute for them.
The masters of theology have always
understood this. They have been inter
ested in theology because they were in
terested in religion; they were first of
all Christians, then theologians, and they
were able to think helpfully about re
ligion because they had first experienced
the realities of which they talked.
The difficulty began with their suc
cessors who no longer shared this intense
personal experience, and who tried to
live on the experience of the past. These
men took over the old definitions and
presented them to the new generation
as if they were the realities they were
[ 189]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
meant to describe. They branded any
departure from the old language as her
esy, and so promoted that confusion of
religion and theology which has done so
much harm.
Take that old debate between the
Arminians and the Calvinists that has
continued through so many centuries
without either being able to convince
the other. What is the root of the
trouble? It is the confusion of reality
and theory. We have to do with two
great facts, each rooted in experience,
both essential to a vital piety — the free
dom of man and the sovereignty of God.
But the theologians have begun to spec
ulate about these facts and have identi
fied their speculations with the "realities
they were meant to explain. They have
said: No one can believe in freedom who
does not hold my theory of the will.
No one can hold divine sovereignty who
questions my doctrine of the decree.
[ 190]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST
And the result has been division where
there should have been union; suspicion
where there should have been sympathy.
The difficulty is aggravated by the
fact that we use definitions for differ
ent purposes. The interest of the sci
entist is not the same as that of the
man of affairs. Science defines by a proc
ess of elimination. It tries to analyse
the particular object it studies into its
simplest elements and to express these
in a logical formula so condensed that
it will not need to be revised. But the
definitions of practical life need constant
revision, for they are descriptions of reali
ties that must be experienced in order to
be understood, and experience is always
changing. How shall I define water? Let me
ask the chemist and he will tell me
that water is H20 — and by that he
means that whenever I put together
two parts of hydrogen gas and one of
[ 191]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
oxygen I get water. And that is true.
But suppose I were trying to describe
water to a man who had never seen it;
what good would such a definition be?
What is water? Water is something
we drink when we are thirsty. It is
something we wash with when we need
cleansing. It is something that irrigates
our fields and that feeds our flowers.
It is something that will carry us from
Saint Paul to the Gulf and from New
York to Liverpool. It is Niagara Falls
and the Yosemite. It is the stream
that ripples under the alders. It is the
deep pool where we caught our first
trout. We must make a similar distinction
in our interpretation of Christ. How
shall I define Jesus Christ? That de
pends upon your purpose in asking the
question. Are you a theologian with a
specialist's technical interest, wishing to
know the elements which enter into the
[ 192 ]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST
making of our thought of Christ and the
proportions in which they are com
pounded? Then I will answer you in
the terms of the Chalcedonian creed.
Jesus Christ is very man and very God —
two natures in one person, each com
plete and perfect. You cannot express
what he means for your life in any less
comprehensive terms. He is not partly
man and partly God. He is not some
times man and sometimes God. He is
both God and man everywhere and al
ways. He is God in man reconciling
the world unto himself.
But suppose the man who asks the
question is one whom I am tryirig to
win to Christian discipleship. What good
will it do to quote him the Chalcedonian
creed? I do not give the thirsty man
the chemist's formula, but a drink of
water. So I do not bring the thirsty
spirit a formula about Christ, but Christ.
But I must know what Christ can do
[ 193 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
for human needs if I am to present him
intelligently. I do not offer the thirsty
man a bath. So, in presenting Christ
as God's answer to man's need, I study
the particular need that requires help
and show how Christ meets it. And the
intelligent and systematic description of
the way in which the divine Christ an
swers human need all along the line is
my theology.
What is Jesus Christ? He is the
friend who has revealed to me as no
one else has ever done my own better
nature. He is the helper from whom I
have drawn comfort in sorrow and
inspiration for duty. He is the leader
whom I have promised to follow to the
death and in whose service I have found
perfect freedom. He is the window
through which I have looked into the
face of God. This, too, is a definition
and in its way as scientific as the other.
Only it is a definition that will never be
[ 194 ]

THE DEITY OF CHRIST
finished. For it is a definition to which
each new generation is adding as it
brings its own experience and lays it as
a tribute at the feet of Christ.
Let us apply these principles more in
detail to the particular aspect of Christ's
many-sided personality with which we
are here concerned. What does it mean
to believe in the deity of Jesus Christ?
For the theologian it means that what
ever your idea of God may be, that idea
in its completeness must enter into your
explanation of Jesus Christ. But for the
Christian believer it means that you have
had certain personal experiences with
Christ which irresistibly suggest to your
mind the thought of God. It means
that Christ has done for you what you
are sure that only God can do.
But what does God do for us? What
does it mean to believe in him, not as a
doctrine of the mind but as a reality
personally experienced? It means three
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
things. It means, in the first place, that
we trust him for the supply of all our needs
— the need of forgiveness, the need of gui
dance, the need of comfort, the need of in
spiration. It means, in the second place,
that we submit our wills to him without
reserve as to an authority who has the
right to command. It means, finally,
that we look up to him in reverence as
the being in whom all our ideals are re
alised and all our aspirations fulfilled.
Trust, loyalty, reverence — these are the
three notes of religion everywhere and
always and these are the three char
acteristic marks of faith in God.
To beheve in the deity of Jesus Christ,
then, must mean that in some unmis
takable way Christ fulfils these three
functions in human life: that we are
conscious of dependence on him for the
supply of our deepest needs; that we
own his right to command; that he is
our supreme standard of excellence. And
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
this is what we find to be the case as a
matter of fact.
What does it mean to believe in the
deity of Jesus Christ? It means, in the
first place, to obey him. It means to
make him master of one's own personal
hfe, to judge questions of right and
wrong by the standard he has revealed,
to measure progress, whether of the in
dividual or of society, according to the
extent to which each approaches his
ideals and reproduces his character.
Again, to believe in the deity of Jesus
Christ means to trust him. It means to
put your life and destiny in his keep
ing, confident that both will be safe. It
means to find in him assurance that your
sins have been forgiven and ground for
hope that they will finally be overcome.
It means to see in him the revelation
in human form of that unseen power
on whom we all depend, who is guiding
the world in ways we cannot understand
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
to the far-off end he has decreed. It
means, to be sure, that however for the
time he may seem to fail, yet in the
end he will have his way.
Above all, to beheve in the deity of
Jesus Christ means to worship him — not
simply to obey him, but to yield him a
wilhng obedience; not merely to trust
him, but to rejoice in your trust. It
means to see in Jesus Christ the most
wonderful and adorable thing in the
whole world; to accept his law of love
as the divine law; to look up into his
face as he hangs on the cross and to
have kindled within you a passion for
sacrifice that will send you out in self-
forgetful service to your brothers and
sisters who are in need.
These great experiences of trust, of
loyalty, and of reverence find concise
expression in the doctrine of Christ's
deity. It is the formulation for thought
of a reality verifiable in experience — the
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
experience, namely, of the transforming
influence of Christ in human life. To
say that I believe in the deity of Jesus
Christ means, if the confession be genu
ine, that I find in him my Master, my
Saviour, and my realised ideal.
This practical attitude toward Christ
is consistent with a great diversity of
theological opinions. There are many
questions about him which it leaves
unanswered. How shall I conceive the
relation between the human Jesus and
the unseen God who is manifest in him?
How shall I understand the presence in
time of the eternal that transcends time?
These are questions on which men's
minds have been at work for centuries
and on which they are still far from
agreement. It would be interesting, if
there were time, to consider the differ
ent answers which have been given and
to estimate their value. It would be
instructive to point out why the theolo-
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
gians of the ancient church, trained in
the Platonic philosophy, found it most
natural to define the relation between
humanity and divinity in Christ in the
abstract formula of a union of natures;
whereas, we of the modern world, with
our more vital metaphysics, express the
same truth most readily in terms that are
concrete and ethical. But we are con
cerned here not with the speculations on
which men differ but with the experiences
on which they agree. We wish to know
the meaning of Christ's deity for per
sonal religion, and this can be summed
up in these three words: power, author
ity, character.
Thus far we have been concerned with
interpretation. What I have just given
is not a modern invention — a new the
ory of Christ's deity to be added to oth
ers which have gone before. It is the
summary of certain personal experiences
which have been called forth in men by
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
contact with Jesus Christ. Whether we
look at the first century, or the fifth, or
the sixteenth, or our own, we find that
as men have come to know Christ they
have begun to trust him, and this trust
has borne fruit in loyalty and in rev
erence; and these experiences of trust,
of loyalty, and of reverence have voiced
themselves in the historic faith in his
deity. The first contribution of modern the
ology, then, to our understanding of
Christ's deity is a reminder of what this
faith has meant to those who have held
it in the past. But our interest is not
primarily historical. Jesus Christ be
longs not simply to the past but to the
present. He is a factor in our modern
world and we have to decide as to our
own personal attitude toward him. Here,
too, modern theology has a contribution
to make. It shows us that the motives
which led the first Christians to their
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
faith in his deity are still operative with
us. When we inquire as to the motive which
first led men to beheve in the deity of
Jesus Christ we shall find that it was
their sense of having found in him a satis
fying revelation. And by this I mean a
revelation that should be at once definite
and permanent, able to meet the present
need of guidance and assurance, and at
the same time to hold its own through the
changes of the passing generations.
This need of a definite revelation re
curs again and again in human experi
ence. However exalted may have been
men's thought of God, however much
they may have emphasised the contrast
between him and themselves, they have
never been satisfied with a religion that
left him permanently at a distance.
They have wanted God to enter into
their own personal experience and evi
dence his presence there in ways that
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
were unmistakable. The history of relig
ion is the story of man's search for God
and of the ways in which they have
believed that God has answered their
quest. Sometimes in strange natural
phenomena — the earthquake, the light
ning, the fire, the pestilence; sometimes
through the word of prophet, or lawgiver,
or seer, and again in the silence of his
own spirit, man has heard God speaking
to his soul and been satisfied.
This need for a self-revealing God is
not simply intellectual. It springs from
man's consciousness of his own limita
tions and failures. It is not merely that
he is curious to know what God is like.
He wishes to know what is God's dispo
sition toward him as a helper in the per
sonal problems of which his life is full. He
needs comfort in his sorrows, forgiveness
for his sins, guidance in his perplexities,
an answer to his unanswered ques
tions. Above all, he needs enfranchise-
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
ment, the personal renewal in which the
bondage of habit is broken and the spirit
made free for the larger life of service.
And the greater his practical need, the
more numerous and the more distress
ing the disabihties under which he la
bours, the more hopeless his situation,
measured in terms of human strength
and wisdom alone, the more acute his
longing for some clear word from God
on which he can rely. To appreciate
Paul's answer to the Phihppian jailor,
you must first understand the question
that prompted it: "What must I do to
be saved?" *
If we analyse the ways in which men
have thought of God as answering this
need for definite self-revelation we find
that they fall into two groups. They
have thought of God as speaking to
them from without, in signs and wonders
that evidence his power; and they have
'Acts 16 :30.
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
thought of him as speaking to them
within, through some redemptive experi
ence that reveals his love. The contrast
runs through the whole history of relig
ion. It meets us in the New Testament,
in the demand of the Pharisees for a
sign, and Jesus' refusal to give any sign
but preaching like that of Jonah, at which
the men of Nineveh repented.* It per
sists down to our own day in the con
trast between the apologetic which rests
its case upon miracle and that which
finds its convincing proof in the evidence
of Christian experience. It goes back
at last to the conception of God, whether
we make power or character determina
tive for our thought of deity.
One need not undervalue God's power
to feel that the second method of ap
proach is more truly Christian. Al
mighty though he be, the Father whom
Jesus revealed cannot be described in
?Matt. 12 : 41; cf. Matt. 16 : 1-4; Luke 11 : 29, 30.
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
terms of power alone. He is wisdom
and righteousness and love, and, if he
is to enter human life at all, can do so
completely only in terms of the perfect
character. The revelation that is ade
quately to express him must present him
as the just judge, knowing the heart
of man and understanding the motives
by which it is swayed; as the loving
father sympathising with his child in his
sorrows and temptations and beheving
in his ultimate home-coming in spite of
waywardness and sin; as the good shep
herd giving his life for the sheep. Could
we find a man who realised this ideal of
character, a man so pure as to convict
us of sin, so understanding as to reveal
to us our own better nature, so self-sacri
ficing as to give his life that others might
live, we should have the conditions under
which, and under which alone, God could
adequately reveal himself to man.
Such a man the disciples found in
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
Jesus. In him they saw one who ex
pressed in human form their highest ideal
of God, a man so pure that when they
touched him they were conscious as
never before of their sin, yet at the same
time so full of faith as to inspire in them
the hope that they, too, might some day
become like him. In Jesus they found
the complete answer to all their needs,
understanding, sympathy, forgiveness, in
spiration, power. He was to them God's
clear and final word to man.
We, too, share their need of some clear
word from God. And for us, too, Jesus
provides the answer to this need. Less
introspective than our fathers, more con
cerned with the problems of social than
of individual sin, we find in Jesus our
leader in the struggle for social right
eousness, the prophet of spiritual democ
racy, the preacher and founder of the
kingdom of God. But for us, too, as
for earlier generations, his personality re-
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
tains its perennial freshness. For us, as
for them, he is Saviour as well as leader,
the one in whom we find the answer to
our individual as well as our social need.
If we are to define God in terms of a
single character it is to Jesus that we
must turn.
This appeal is independent of the fluc
tuations of critical opinion. However
the critics may reconstruct the story that
lies back of the Gospels, they cannot
alter the picture the Gospels present.
Here, in the pages of the evangelists, we
meet a figure so individual and distinc
tive that after all the lapse of centuries
he still speaks to us with a spiritual au
thority as direct and compelhng as that
which won him his first disciples by the
lake shore. For us, as for them, he ex
presses in terms of a human life our
highest thought of God.
But we may be asked: Why confine
God's revelation to a single individual?
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
Why should not God express himself
through many men? Why may not hu
manity as a whole be his progressive
self -manifestation ?
It might be sufficient to say that hu
manity as a whole is not such as to sug
gest to most men the thought of God.
Men as we know them to-day are sinful
and unlovely, still under the dominion
of the selfishness and passions from which
Christ came to set them free. Even the
best of men are imperfect, differing not
only in their ideals but in the extent to
which they have reahsed them. It is
just because we meet such diversity of
behef and of character that our need for
a definite and authoritative revelation is
so great.
But such an answer does not quite
meet the point of the question. Those
who ask it are not thinking of man as
he is but as he is to be when God shall
have completed his redemptive work.
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
And they wish to know how that con
summation can most speedily be reached.
Why should God deal with us indirectly
by pointing us to a figure in the past?
Why should he not impart himself di
rectly to each individual? When all are
his children, why separate one from the
rest as "the Son" ?
It is the spirit of democracy which
voices itself in the question. One of
the notes of our day is a new conscious
ness of the worth and of the possibilities
of the individual. Men are no longer
willing to take things on authority. It
is not enough for them to know that it
has been so in the past. They wish to
test things for themselves and live their
own lives in the freedom of independent
personalities. If they are to have a gov
ernment, it must be one of their own
choosing. If they are to have a God, it
must be one whom they have tried for
themselves and found satisfying.
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
And there is much that is splendid in
this spirit. It is responsible for many
reforms in church and state. It is our
hope of progress in the future. Without
independent personalities, conscious of
their own worth and wilhng to take the
risks of liberty, you cannot have either a
free state or a free church.
But, after all, this is only one side of
democracy. The democratic spirit is a
spirit of freedom but it is a brotherly
spirit as well. And brotherhood requires
self-discipline. It means the willingness
to learn as well as to teach, to serve as
well as to rule. Democracy is not the
dissolution of society into the individual
, units that compose it. That would be
anarchy. Democracy is the extension to
humanity as a whole of those ideals of
beauty and goodness and truth which
have hitherto been the prerogative of
the select few.
There is a peril here against which
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
we need to be on our guard. I have
spoken more than once of the disinte
grating tendencies that are abroad, the
loss of efficiency which comes with the
breaking down of standards. The ten
dency is natural, inevitable, perhaps, but
none the less dangerous. If we are to
realise the ideal of brotherhood there
must be some counteracting influence,
some common test, to which we can all
refer, some principle of integration strong
enough to resist the divisive tendencies
of individualism.
All the more, then, if we share the
democratic ideal do we need Jesus. We
need him to define for us the kind of
life which we desire all men to share.
We need him to reveal to us the kind
of God with whom each one of us may
have direct personal communion if we
will. We need him to inspire us to com
mon service and to form a bond of union
between men who but for him would be
separated from one another.
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
It is a great mistake to think of the
doctrine of Christ's deity as designed to
separate him from other men. That has
never been its purpose. It was designed
to bring him near to men, to show us
what blessings in his person God designs
to impart to us all. If men pictured
Christ in abstract terms, one person with
two natures, it was because they thought
of God and man in abstract ways, not
because they designed to keep them apart.
To the mind, indeed, incarnation might
involve a contradiction, but to the heart
it was the expression of the fundamental
experience of all religion, God's presence
with men in redemptive and triumphant
love. "Jesus Christ . . . became what
we are," wrote Irenseus, "that he might
make us what he is." *
This is the meaning of that old truth
of the Messiahship of Jesus which holds
so large a place in the New Testament.
It is the assertion of the continuity of
* " Adv. Haer.," bk. V, preface.
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
the divine revelation. To call Jesus
Messiah is to assign to him a place in
the larger drama of history. He is not
an isolated figure who comes to us out of
the clouds without relation to the past
or to the future. He is the centre of a
progressive revelation which began with
the dawn of human history and will
not be complete till all mankind own his
sway and conform to his ideals. He is
the expression in individual form and
under particular historic conditions of
what God purposes for humanity every
where and always.
We, too, share the need of an inter
pretation of history. Looked at from
the surface, our life is like the sea, which
is always in motion. Creed follows creed,
and leader replaces leader in ceaseless
succession. Yet underneath the great
tides of faith and hope and love sweep
their resistless way to their appointed
goal. Whither are they moving? Who
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
will interpret for us the trend of the
ages? In contrast to the ideals of race
and nation and school, who will embody
for us the ideal of humanity as such?
Who if not Jesus, who knew what was
in man and who for that reason speaks
always to that which is eternal in man?
There have been critics who have
found fault with Jesus because of his
aloofness from the special tasks of call
ing or class. What interest, they have
asked, did he ever show in science or
art or politics? What great book did
he write? What picture did he paint?
What discovery did he make? What
lasting reform is labelled with his name?
Is there, then, no task for humanity
more important than writing books, or
painting pictures, or enacting laws? Is
there no common ground on which art
ist and scientist and statesman can meet
and find themselves at one? If not, all
our talk of brotherhood is empty words.
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
But if there is such a common ground, if
to be man is more than to follow any of
the special callings which engage the en
ergy and divide the interest of individual
men, then we need some one to incar
nate this common human ideal and to
remind us when we are tempted to for
get them of those universal aspirations
which belong to man as man. This unify
ing function Jesus fulfils in supreme de
gree. Just because of his aloofness from
that which is local and divisive he is
fitted to be the representative of human
ity as a whole.
We are dealing not with theory but
with experience. I have spoken of Jesus
as a Jew of the first century, and it is
true that he is this. But he is far more
than this. He is the central figure of
human history, numbering among his
disciples men of every age and of every
land, the common meeting-ground of
civilisations and of races. Here is a
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
fact which needs explanation. And what
better explanation can be found than
that which was given centuries ago by
Paul, that God was in him reconciling
the world unto himself?
We have considered the meaning of
Christ's deity for the past. We have
seen that the motives which led the first
disciples to their faith are still operative
with us. It remains to ask briefly what
is the kind of evidence by which its va
lidity must finally be tested.
At no point is the contrast between
the older and the newer method in the
ology more apparent. The older apolo
gists attempted a proof of Christ's deity
which should have the force of a mathe
matical demonstration . They approached
the problem as a problem of logic in
which the important thing was to put
your argument in such a form that the
conclusion followed irresistibly from the
premises. God is a being who possesses
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
certain known qualities. Jesus Christ
possesses these qualities; therefore Christ
is God. In some such fashion the apolo
gist constructed his syllogism. When the
syllogism was complete his work was done.
Henceforth the responsibility rested on
those who refused to act upon the conclu
sion which he had established.
But we see to-day that the matter is
not so simple. The proof of Christ's
deity can never be independent of the
personal religious experience, because in
the nature of the case the argument in
volves the appeal to a continuing experi
ence. For what is it that we wish to
prove? Not simply that centuries ago
God was incarnate in Christ (that might
conceivably be established by purely his
torical arguments), but that Christ, in
what we know of him to-day, represents
what God is everywhere and always,
and therefore remains for ever the revela
tion of God. This is a far more impor-
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
tant and more difficult matter. To do
this we must be able to show that the
Spirit of Christ is still the world-conquer
ing spirit. This involves an appeal to
present experience as well as to the experi
ence of the past. To believe in Christ's
deity means, as we have seen, to trust
his power, to own his authority, and to
reverence his character. But I cannot
do this in any true sense until I have
tested Christ in my own life and found
him trustworthy, righteous, and ador
able. There is no argument which can
take the place of experiment. The most
that one man can do for another is to
tell him of his own experience and point
him to Christ, that he may test the mat
ter for himself.
This does not mean that we have not
sufficient evidence for our faith. If what
I have said is true of the transforming
power of Christ in human life we have
evidence of the highest value, amply suf-
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
ficient to justify our confidence and form
the basis of our appeal. But it means
that the appeal must be made. My ex
perience cannot take the place of my
neighbour's. If he is really to share my
faith in the divine Christ he must put
Christ to the proof in his own life.
This is the uniform assumption of the
writers of the New Testament. To prove
Christ's deity as Paul and John beheved
in it, it was not enough to establish the
fact that for a few short years God had
made his home in a human life. From
the very beginning he had planned to
make men like Christ, and the life that
was led in Palestine was only an episode
in a continuing ministry. Before the in
carnation, the Word had been lighting
every man that came into the world.*
And after the resurrection the living
Christ continued to draw all men to
himself by his Spirit.
* John 1 : 9.
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
The same large conception of Christ's
work lives on in the later theology. It
lies at the heart of the doctrine of the
Trinity. God is not simply the Father,
infinite and eternal, ever contrasted with
his creatures in majesty and power. He
is not simply the Son who lived and suf
fered and died, the Word made flesh,
incarnate in Jesus for our salvation. He
is the Spirit who ever lives and works in
the hearts of men, witnessing to them of
Christ, their Saviour, and transforming
them as they will receive him into like
ness to himself.
What kind of proof, then, must it be
which shall convince all men of the deity
of Jesus Christ? Clearly it can only be
an all-embracing Christian experience.
When Christ has really shown himself
Master of the world, when his ideals
have proved themselves the conquering
ideals, when humanity as a whole has
owned his sway and is conformed to his
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
character, when all men see God in him
with the same clearness and certainty as
is now the case with those who are con
sciously his disciples, then, and not till
then, will our proof of his deity be fin
ished and the apologist's work be done.
If, then, we would win men to our
faith in the deity of Christ, our faces
must be turned not to the past but to
the future. You remember how it was
with the disciples in those memorable
hours which followed the crucifixion.
Their thoughts were on the past, on
those unforgettable days by the lake
shore, when they had walked and talked
with the Master, who spake as never
man spake. They were no less loyal to
Christ than they had ever been. But
their loyalty was a sorrowful loyalty, for
they never expected to see their Mas
ter's face again. Their Christ was a
Christ of the past. They worshipped a
Saviour whose work was finished.
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THE DEITY OF CHRIST
And then came Easter morning, and
they realised that the Christ they had
thought dead was alive. What a trans
formation it wrought in their whole out
look on life! Instead of looking back
ward they now looked forward to the
new triumphs still to be won as they
went out to preach Jesus, the crucified,
whom God had raised up and whose
power and authority all the world would
some day recognise.
The church, too, like those early dis
ciples, has often turned its face to the
past. It has been tempted to think of
God's work as finished in what Jesus
did nineteen hundred years ago in Pales
tine. In its adoration of the crucified
Jesus it has sometimes forgotten the liv
ing and reigning Christ.
But, thank God, we are finding out
our mistake. God's revelation did not
stop with Calvary, It includes Easter
and all that followed it. In our mod-
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
ern world of aspiration and struggle and
longing, with its unanswered questions
and its challenging opportunities, he is
still at work revealing and redeeming.
He is calling us by his Spirit to be his
interpreters to the new age, preparing
the way for that better day when all
men shall share our faith in the divine
Christ because all shall share our experi
ence of his transforming and enfranchis
ing power.

[ 224 ]

VI
THE CHURCH: ITS PRESENT
OPPORTUNITY AND DUTY
In the last chapter we considered the
contribution of modern theology to our
understanding of Christ's deity. We saw
that this doctrine has social as well as
individual significance. In Jesus God
has shown us not only what he himself
is like but the type of character which he
desires to see realised in every one of us.
Here is a faith which is at the same time
an ideal and a challenge. How is this
challenge to be met?
This brings me to the final topic in
the present series — the church, its oppor
tunity and its duty. It is the point at
which we have been aiming all along.
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
Let me recall the ground we have
traversed. We began by considering what theol
ogy can do for the preacher, and we saw
that it can do two things: it can give
him a general point of view and it can
help him in the particular problems
with which he has to deal.
I called attention, in the first place,
to certain general conclusions of mod
ern theology which are helpful to the
preacher. We saw that religion is a
fundamental fact in human hfe with
which every man must reckon whether
he will or no. We saw, further, that re
ligions differ in kind and that differ
ence in kind means difference in value.
We saw that if there is to be a univer
sal religion it must be Christianity, since
Christianity alone is able to satisfy the
permanent religious needs of mankind.
We saw, finally, that Christ is central in
Christianity. He is its distinctive con-
[ 226 ]

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
tribution to the life of mankind and the
standard by which all religious progress
must be tested.
We went on to apply these general con
clusions to the chief problems of prac
tical religion — the problem of the source
of faith, the problem of the object of
faith, and the problem of the effect of
faith upon daily living. We asked what
modern theology has to tell us about
the Bible, about God, and about salva
tion, and we saw that it is its effort to
interpret each of these central facts of
the religious hfe in the light of the dis
tinctive conviction of historic Christi
anity, the deity of Jesus Christ. It re
mains to ask how the results which we
have reached are to be made effective.
How are we to bring the convictions
we have gained to bear practically upon
human life?
We must do it by organisation. Every
great cause which has commanded the
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
allegiance of men has embodied itself in
institutions. We, too, must have some
means of social propaganda by which we
can touch men all along the hne and
win them to our cause. Such a means
is the Christian church. The church is
the religious society which has come into
existence for the very purpose of inter
preting Christ's spirit and perpetuating
his work. To the church is committed
that practical demonstration of his deity
which consists in the victory of his prin
ciples in the world.
What, then, do we mean by the church
of Christ and what exactly is its func
tion in society?
It is high time that we asked our
selves this question. One must be blind
to the signs of the times not to recognise
that there are important sections of the
population upon which the hold of the
church has weakened. I do not mean
to imply by this that the church is on
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
the down grade or that its influence is
decreasing. We are often told this, but
I do not believe that it is true. On
the contrary, I am confident that the
church is improving and that its efficiency
is growing. I do not believe there has
ever been a time in human history when,
taken in the large, the influence of the
church was more wholesome and more
beneficent. But this is quite consistent
with the fact that its progress is not as
rapid as we should like or its influence
as extensive. There are many excellent
people who hold aloof from the church.
It is not that they are irreligious or lack
ideals but that their moral and spiritual
life has found other outlets. They are
interested in settlements or in civic work,
or in organised philanthropy in some
one of its many forms. For their preach
ing they go to the poets or the philos
ophers. They do not seem to feel their
need of the church or to realise their
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
obligation to it. And yet they are peo
ple on whose sympathy and support we
ought to be able to count.
When we trace this alienation to its
roots we shall find that it is due not
simply to dissatisfaction with the prac
tical work of the church, but to the lack
of a clear understanding of its function
in society — in other words, to the lack
of a definite ideal.
This is especially true of those who
have been brought up under Protestant
influences. Standing as we do in a
peculiar sense for religious freedom, we
have been from the first suspicious of
organised Christianity. The church as
an institution is not made so prominent
with us as with some other bodies of
Christians, and it is not strange, there
fore, that many of our members should
be at sea as to its real function.
But sueh an attitude is very short
sighted. Institutional Christianity is not
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
a fact from which we can escape even
if we wished to do so. It meets us on
every side and enters into our most fa
miliar experiences. From childhood to
old age the church is our constant com
panion. It teaches our children; it mar
ries and buries us; it provides the forms
through which our spiritual aspiration
finds natural expression. If its influence
is evil it is an evil of colossal proportions.
If its effects are negligible it represents
a waste of energy so stupendous as to
be appalling. If it is an instrument of
good it is one so far-reaching that it is
folly not to use it to the full. All the
more if we are Protestants, believing in
freedom of opinion and individual re
sponsibility, do we need to have clear-
cut views as to the nature and function
of the church.
Fundamental to clear thinking is the
distinction between the church as a re
ligious society and the church as an ec-
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
clesiastical institution. The former is the
company of Christian people. It in
cludes all who have been touched by the
Spirit of Christ and live to promote his
cause in the world. The latter is the
organisation which has grown up in the
course of history, with its complex ma
chinery of creed and ritual, order and
discipline. The New Testament com
monly uses the word church in the first
of these senses. We to-day commonly
use it in the second. Failure to distin
guish between these two uses is re
sponsible for not a little of the existing
confusion. There are two points as to which cur
rent thought about the church needs to
be clarified. The first has to do with the
relation of the church as a company of
believers to the church as an ecclesias
tical organisation; the second has to do
with the function of the organisation.
All bodies of Christians agree that
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
there is a difference between the eccle
siastical institution we call the church
and the company of persons whose spir
itual life it is designed to express and to
promote. They divide in their estimate
of the relative importance of the two.
According to one view the continuity of
the church's life depends primarily upon
the institution. It is the church as an in
stitution which God has appointed to be
the vicar of Christ and to which he has
intrusted the deposit of truth and grace
which he has provided for the guidance
and salvation of mankind. According to
the other view the continuity of the
church's life depends primarily upon the
persons who compose it. The true apos
tolic succession is the succession of con
secrated fives, and the institution we call
the church is an instrument which the
Christian people have created under the
guidance of God's Spirit to assist them
in their work of propaganda and of min
istry. [ 233 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
It is true that the implications of the
two principles are not always consis
tently drawn. While the first represents
what we commonly call the Catholic
and the second the Protestant view of
the church, the contrast is by no means
confined to the members of the ecclesi
astical bodies which bear these names.
There are Catholics, like the Modern
ists, whose view of the church approxi
mates that of Protestantism. There are
Protestants who in their conception of
the church are essentially Catholic, and
there are many, both Catholic and
Protestant, who have never thought the
question through at all. Life does not
develop along lines of logic, and the
history of churches, as of individuals,
is the story of compromise, sometimes
deliberate, more often unconscious.
Nevertheless, the contrast persists and
with the growth of knowledge is bound
to come to clearer and clearer conscious-
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
ness. Whatever may be our practical
attitude in view of the particular eccle
siastical situation, in ideal we must be
Catholic or Protestant, and the choice of
ideal will, in the long run, determine our
practical activity. It is important, there
fore, that we who call ourselves Protes
tants should realise clearly just what the
choice involves.
First, then, let me say that it does
not involve the perpetuation of the sec
tarian spirit which in the past has often
been associated with the name. One
may freely admit that in the particular
questions which have been in debate
between Catholics and Protestants the
right has not always been on the same
side. One may recognise that Catholi
cism, with its reverence for authority and
its strong sense of social solidarity, has
emphasised a side of religion over which
Protestants have been tempted to pass
too lightly. Christianity is larger than
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MODERN THEOLOGY AJSTD THE GOSPEL
any one of its existing forms, and we
may be sure that the religion of the
future, if it is to be truly Christian, will
make place for all the truth for which
Catholicism stands and provide for all the
needs which now find their satisfaction in
institutional Christianity.
But of this, too, we may be sure, that
if the Christianity of the future is to
be truly Christian it will apply to its
conception of the church the same prin
ciples which determine its thought of
God and of salvation. It will not tol
erate any substitute for that free inter
course between the Father and his child
which is the normal relationship between
those who are spiritually akin. It will
accept with thankfulness all the heritage
which has come down to us from the
past, of creed and sacrament and ritual
and institution, but it will use these as
means and not as end. It will never for
get that the true church of Christ is the
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
whole company of Christian people in
all the manifold forms of their activity,
and that what we call the church to-day
is only one form, although a most im
portant form, of this many-sided activity.
And this brings me to the second of
our two questions — that which has to
do with the specific function of the
church as an institution. Here, too, we
find two views. According to the first
of these the church is the all-embracing
Christian institution, the agency through
which the Christian people ought to
express their Christianity all along the
line. According to the second, it is one
among other agencies which they use for
this purpose. It is the Christian people
organised for religion, that is to say, for
worship, for religious instruction, and for
inspiration. I believe that the second view is the
truer. The church as an institution is
a specialised form of Christian activity.
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
It exists to remind men of God and to
help them to realise his presence as the
supreme reality.
At first sight it might seem as if this
were to assign the church a very narrow
function. But when we remember what
kind of being God is we see our mis
take. The God we worship is the Lord
of the whole earth. He is not our Father
only but the Father of all men. His so
cial purpose embraces every human be
ing, and he has taught us through Christ
that the worship he requires is service.
It does not follow, however, that this
service must find its sole expression
through a single channel. Society in
cludes many different institutions — the
home, the school, the workshop, and the
state. These, too, as well as the church,
may become organs of Christ, agencies
through which his Spirit may find ex
pression. It is a good thing to open a
day nursery for neglected children but
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
a better thing to make such homes that
children will not be neglected. It is a
good thing to open a hospital for tuber
cular patients but a better thing to have
such a healthful city that we shall have
no tuberculosis. Our business as Chris
tians is to Christianise society as a whole.
When all our institutions, I repeat, do
their work so well that the church does
not need to supplement them, then, and
not till then, shall we have succeeded in
our aim.
This does not mean that the church
should never do anything but preach
religion. As a matter of fact, it does
much more. It has social functions. It
is the gathering place of the community,
the one spot in which men of all ranks
and social position meet together on an
equality. It has philanthropic functions:
it dispenses charity to those who are in
need, visits the sick, feeds the hungry,
ministers to the prisoners. It has ethical
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
functions: it stands for righteousness in
the community and through its clubs and
organisations often takes an active part
in movements for civic betterment and
reform. There are, indeed, some com
munities in which the church is the one
comprehensive institution about which
centre all the activities of the Christian
people. What is sometimes called the
institutional church is concerned with
education and with amusement, with po
litical activity and with economic bet
terment as well as with religion. It
has its libraries and its club-rooms, its
mothers' meetings and its kindergartens,
its gymnasiums and its employment bu
reaus, and so on through all the mani
fold list of interests which have been
developed by our complex social hfe. It
is entirely natural and proper that this
should be so. It is always wasteful to
duplicate machinery, and when there is
no other organisation in existence of
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
which it is possible to make use it is
legitimate and, indeed, necessary for the
Christian church to step in and do the
work that needs to be done.
But we are talking of ideals and here
there is need of clear thinking if we are
not to go astray. Our contention is
that however useful and necessary these
other functions of the church may be
they are incidental to its true work,
which is religion. The primary object
of the church, we maintain, is to keep
alive in the world the consciousness of
God as the supreme fact of human life.
If we fail here no lesser success will atone
for our failure.
Are we, then, to suppose that when the
kingdom of God comes there will be no
more need of the church? Let me an
swer this question by another. Are we
to suppose that when the kingdom of
God comes we shall no longer realise
our relation to God as the supreme fact
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
of human life, that we shall no longer
desire to express our communion with
him in prayer and praise, that we shall
no longer wish to tell others what he
means to us and to hear what he means
to them, that we shall no longer turn
to him for inspiration for service and
guidance in duty? So long as we do
these things we may be sure that we
shall still have a church, for it is to meet
these needs that the church exists.
When, therefore, I propose for our con
sideration "The Opportunity and Duty
of the Church" I use the word church in
the familiar sense in which we all use it.
I am thinking of the institution of which
we are members, the institution of which
the historic churches are part, the Chris
tian people organised for religion. And
we wish to know of this church two
things: first, What is its opportunity?
and, second, What is its duty?
I can answer this double question in
[ 242 ]

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
as many sentences. The opportunity of
the church is to become the leader to
which all earnest men will turn for gui
dance and inspiration in the moral and
spiritual revival which is going on all
about us. The duty of the church — and
that means of all of us who belong to it
— is to use this opportunity to the full.
Let me explain more fully what I mean,
And first of the opportunity.
I say the opportunity of the church
is to become the leader to which all
earnest men will turn for guidance and
inspiration in the moral and religious re
vival which is in progress all about us.
I assume that there is such a moral
and religious revival. I will not stop to
prove this. In the new standard of busi
ness morality, in the new ideals of civic
responsibility, in the growing humanita-
rianism which shows itself in the move
ment for social betterment in all its
manifold forms, we are aware of a new
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
spirit which we cannot ignore. Even
those who are not in sympathy with it
are influenced by it. Men find they can
not do with impunity what they used to
do without question a dozen years ago.
Now, the notable fact about this great
moral revival is that it has been to a
very considerable extent independent of
the church as an organisation. Individ
ual ministers here and there have taken
part in it. Individual church members
have made notable contributions to it.
But the church as a whole, the church as
an organised body, has too often held
aloof from it. It has not been the ac
knowledged leader to which those who
are interested in social reform have
turned. I do not believe that this is as it
should be. I believe that the leaders of
the church ought to be leaders in every
movement for moral and social upfift
and that they are qualified to become
[ 244 ]

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
such, and I wish now to give the reasons
for my faith. They are three:
In the first place, the church has ac
cess to the largest number of people
who are open to moral influence. In the
second place, it has command of the ulti
mate religious motive. And, in the third
place, it is of all institutions the most
free from conflicting interests.
In the first place, the church has a
responsibility for leadership in this move
ment because it has access to the largest
number of people who are open to moral
influence. I am anxious here not to be misun
derstood. I am far from assuming that
the church has any monopoly of virtue
or unselfishness. One must be blind, in
deed, not to recognise how large a con
tribution is being made to social progress
to-day by men and women who are out
side the church. But what I mean is
this, that if we take things in the large
[ 245 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
it will be found that the Christian church
includes in its membership a greater
number of men and women who feel
their moral responsibility for others' wel
fare and who are open to moral appeal
than any other single organisation or,
indeed, than all other organisations to
gether. If you do not believe this, read
such a paper as the Survey, the organ of
the charitable interests of this country,
and see how large a place the religious
motive plays in the lives of the men and
women who write for it. Study the list
of contributors to any of the great so
cieties that have to do with organised
charity; go out yourself and try to raise
money for any good cause and see how
much you can get from men and women
who have no connection with the church,
and you will realise that, however im
perfect Christians may be and however
far they fall below the standard which
their religion sets, they are still more
[ 246 ]

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
open to the appeal of social need and so
cial responsibility than any other equally
large group of people. Here is a great
force waiting to be utilised for good, and
it is our business as Christian ministers
to see that this is done.
But, in the second place, the church
ought to assume leadership because it
has command of the ultimate religious
motive. That motive is God's love for
man and the corresponding love of man
for man which it calls forth.
We stand to-day, with reference to this
matter of moral and social reform, in a
very different position from the genera
tions who have preceded us. We know
(or, at least, we are in a fair way to
know if we will) what we ought to do to
establish the kingdom of God on earth.
I have spoken in earlier chapters of the
contribution which modern science has
made to the study of theology, but the
contribution of science to philanthropy
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
is even more notable. We have been
studying these social evils which are all
about us, and we have found that many
of them are not irremediable. Take, for
example, such a matter as tuberculosis,
which is so prominently before the pub
lic to-day. We know that this is a
preventable disease. If we do what we
ought we can stamp it out as com
pletely as we have stamped out chol
era and smallpox. Take the matter of
prison reform. Take the matter of ju
venile delinquency. Take even the great
question of poverty itself. Vast as these
problems are, stupendous as is the im
pression which they make upon the im
agination, we know that they are not
insoluble. If each one of us would do
what he ought to do we could transform
society and bring in the kingdom of God.
But the trouble is that so many peo
ple do not want to do it. We see what
ought to be done, but we are not will-
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
ing to make the sacrifice. Often it does
not seem to us worth while. At a recent
meeting of the National Conference of
Charities,* the president, Homer Folks,
passed in review the progress for the last
few years in social and charitable reform.
He pointed out how slow this progress
had been and how often the bright hopes
with which a new movement had been
begun had suffered shipwreck, and he
traced the cause of this failure back to
the place where all the most serious fail
ures of life belong — to the lack of ade
quate motive. Men were not willing to
exert themselves or to make the sacri
fice that was required.
Here is the great opportunity of the
Christian church, for in the gospel of
the God of love we command the su
preme motive and can supply the power
which science alone can never furnish.
When I realise that the poor fellow who
*Cf. "Survey," vol. xxvi, pp. 526-531.
[ 249 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
is dying of consumption in the back room
of some dark tenement is my brother,
that the young girl who has gone on the
street to earn her living because some
man deceived her is my sister; when we
all realise our personal relationship to the
men and women who are the victims
of social injustice and economic wrong
we shall set about righting their wrongs
with a vigour and enthusiasm which in
the long run will be bound to tell. Who
is to do it if we do not? Who is in so
good a position to do it if they would?
And this brings me to the third of the
three advantages which fit the church for
leadership. I mean its freedom from con
flicting interests. There is no institution
which is so well fitted as the Christian
church to take the lead in the betterment
of society, because there is no other insti
tution which exists exclusively for the
promotion of Christlikeness.
Here again I am anxious not to be
[ 250 ]

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
misunderstood. I realise as well as any
one the imperfection of the church.
Organisation in any form has its difficul
ties and its dangers. The mere work of
running the machine absorbs so much of
our energy that the strength and time
that ought to go to higher and more im
portant things are wasted. That which
was meant to be a means tends to be
come an end, and before we know it the
institution which should be our servant
has become our master.
But while this is true of the church,
as of every other institution, it is less
true of the church than of other institu
tions, for the simple reason that by its
very constitution the church is brought
continually face to face with the moral
and religious ideals of Jesus Christ.
Other institutions may make splendid
contributions to the upbuilding of the
kingdom of God, and, thank God, they
are making them. But, after all, they are
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
incidental to the main purpose for which
they exist. The newspaper must make
money for its stockholders, and the editor
is only in part free. The teacher has the
whole field of human knowledge to culti
vate, and what he has to contribute of
moral and religious inspiration is by the
way. But the Christian minister exists
for the single purpose of making real to
men the purpose of God for the salva
tion of the world. There is no other task
which is laid upon him and no other
obligation to which he is committed than
this, and if he fail here his failure is of
all failures the most inexcusable.
This brings me to my second and last
proposition, that it is the duty of the
church — and that means of us who are
its members — to use this great oppor
tunity to the full.
You will notice that I have put this
statement in a personal form. When we
are talking of opportunity we can speak
[ 252 ]

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
in the abstract, but duty is always an
individual matter. It comes home to
the conscience of some specific man or
woman. The duty of the church means
your duty and mine.
Let us analyse this duty more in de
tail and see what it is like. As I see
it, it has two phases. It is, in the first
place, a duty of vision and, in the second
place, a duty of action. There is some
thing for us to see and something for us
to do.
First of all, there is something for us
to see. I put this first because it is most
important. Our first business as minis
ters is to have an ideal. If we do not
know what we want to do it will be
hopeless for us to try to do it.
When I was coming over the Canadian
Pacific recently I passed through the
wonderful horseshoe tunnels just beyond
Mount Stephen. The railroad turns into
the mountain and there curves completely
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
around, descending all the time until it
emerges far below the place where it en
tered. Crossing the valley to the other
side, it repeats the same operation and
thus transforms a grade which had been
so heavy that it required four engines to
move a train in safety into one which is
practicable with a single engine.
These tunnels are one of the great en
gineering feats of the continent, and I
was interested to know how they were
built. It seems that the engineer had
planned his route so carefully that two
sets of workmen beginning at opposite
ends of the tunnel had met in the centre
scarcely an inch apart. "And the in
teresting thing about it," said my in
formant, "is the fact that the engineer
made the plans of the tunnel while he
was still on the plains."
But who set the engineer to work?
Who took him from his office in the city
and brought him to, the mountains and
[ 254 ]

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
said: "Here is your problem; solve it"?
That was a man of a different type —
the idealist who first saw Vancouver and
Montreal as parts of a single railway sys
tem and refused to believe in the exis
tence of any obstacle strong enough to
keep them permanently apart.
In our work of social reconstruction
we need engineers to plan in detail the
lines along which the train of progress
is to move. And it is impossible to
value their work too highly. But engi
neers alone, however complete their mas
tery of social mechanics, will never bring
in the kingdom of God. There must be
some one first to see where the train
needs to go and to inspire others with
his faith that the desired goal can be
reached. That is the office of the min
ister of religion. He may not know in
detail how the obstacles are to be over
come that keep us from the promised
land, but he must know where the land
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
lies and what it has to offer. He is the
prospector who points the way for those
who are to follow, and his first duty is
to see straight.
But it is not enough to see. We must
act upon what we see. And this brings
me to the second of our duties as min
isters, which is application. As Chris
tians we are responsible for making the
church the most effective instrument pos
sible for accomplishing the great work
which is given it to do. There is material
here for a book in itself. Let me, in clos
ing, simply touch on two or three points
which lie on the surface.
We saw that the church as a religious
institution exists for three purposes: wor
ship, religious instruction, and inspira
tion. How far is it realising its ideal in
this threefold respect?
Take worship. If what we have been
saying is true, this is the supreme func
tion of the Christian church. The church
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
exists to make God real to the conscious
ness of man. And when I say God I
mean the Christian God, the Father of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. If
Christianity is true, then God is not only
the most real but the most glorious and
significant of facts, and the purpose of
our gathering in church Sunday by Sun
day is that we may realise afresh the infi
nite resources of inspiration and strength
which this great fact puts at our com
mand and go out solemnised, comforted,
but, above all, consecrated to the work
to which we were called through Christ.
But if this is our purpose in going to
church, everything that we do in church
ought to contribute to this purpose.
From the opening prelude to the bene
diction, every word that is spoken and
every note that is sung ought to play its
part in deepening our consciousness of
God. Nothing ought to be permitted
in the service that is merely formal or
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
conventional, nothing that is shallow or
insincere, nothing that is a hindrance
rather than a help to faith.
And yet, how hard it is to realise this
ideal in practice! How much that we do
in church is haphazard and unrelated!
How easy it is for the minister to con
centrate his attention upon the sermon
and let the earlier parts of the service
degenerate into a mere routine! How
easy to be content with the forms that
have come down to us from the past
in hymn and liturgy and prayer without
making our own the living faith of which
they were the expression and which must
vitalise every new use we make of them
if they are really to result in a more
vivid consciousness of God! Above all,
how few of us feel our responsibihty for
the creation of those new forms of wor
ship which shall express in dignified and
fitting language the discovery of God's
power and activity in the social move-
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
ments of our time which is so charac
teristic a feature of present-day Chris
tianity! More than by its sermons, an
age is known by its hymns and by its
prayers. It is an encouraging sign of the
times that the new forms are beginning
to appear. May we not hope that such
prayers as Professor Rauschenbusch's
"Prayers of the Social Awakening," * and
such hymns as have recently been gath
ered by Mrs. Mussey in the Survey, f are
prophetic of many more to follow —
prayers and hymns no less conscious of
God's presence and glory than the great
est of the hymns of the past, but differ
ing from them in the fact that they find
God at work here and now and revive
the old prophetic hope, too long forgot
ten, of a day when God's will shall be
done on earth?
Or take the second of the three func
tions I have referred to — religious teach-
* Pilgrim Press, Chicago, 1909. f January 3, 1914.
[ 259 ]

MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
ing. How far is the church realising
the ideal here? Protestantism, as we all
know, has always emphasised the teach
ing function of the minister. It stands
for a faith that is intelligent and robust
and believes that such faith is the birth
right of every Christian believer.
Yet, as one who has been for many
years a teacher, dealing with young men
coming from all over the country, noth
ing has impressed me more than the
lack of thorough grounding in the essen
tials of Christianity. Men come to the
seminary who have been brought up in
Christian homes, who have studied in
Christian colleges, who have been mem
bers of the Christian church all their
lives, and yet who know little of the
Bible, who are ignorant of the history
of Christianity and of the government
of the church and, above all, who know
nothing of theology.
There are many reasons for this. In
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
part it is due to the change in our habits
of life which has altered the relation be
tween home and church and school. In
part it is the result of the change in edu
cational method which has substituted
freedom of choice for the older disci
plinary curriculum. Above all, it is due
to the change in the angle of vision to
which reference was made in the opening
chapter, the loss of the old view-point
before the new has come to take its place.
But, whatever the cause, the fact remains
that there are multitudes of people in
our churches who cannot give an intelli
gent reason for their faith — indeed, who
have never given serious thought to the
ultimate questioris with which faith is
concerned. Here is our opportunity as Christian
ministers. It is with the ultimate reali
ties that we have to do. It is our busi
ness to teach men what they most need
to know about God and the soul, sin and
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
salvation, duty and destiny — the great
questions which sleep in the soul of man
until some crisis calls them to the fight.
But to do this effectively we must do it
deliberately and intelligently. We can
not be content with an occasional sermon.
We must make our entire ministry one of
teaching, and that means we must be
gin by teaching ourselves. We must live
day by day with the great themes. We
must know what is being written about
them by the great thinkers; we must
test what we have read and thought by
the life problems of the men and women
we touch, and we must pass on what we
have so learned and tested to all whom
we can reach. How this is to be done
in detail I cannot say. It is a complex
problem varying according to the differ
ent conditions, and each man must solve
it for himself. But the ideal is one that
should be common to us all, namely,
to make an intelligent acquaintance with
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
the great essentials of our Christian faith
an integral part of the intellectual equip
ment of every Christian.
What a difference it would make in our
preaching if we could take for granted
such an acquaintance on the part of our
congregations ! With what assurance we
should preach the great themes, the
themes that we so often pass over now
for fear that they will not interest the
people. We should have no fear then
of doctrinal preaching, for we should
know that there is nothing in the world
to which men will respond so quickly as
doctrine, provided the doctrine preached
has been warmed by the fire of experi
ence; for doctrine is only another name
for truth, and truth is what enlightens
and guides and inspires.
And how is it with the third of the
great functions of the church — inspira
tion? Must we not confess failure here?
When we bring our ministry to its prac-
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
tical test in consecrated lives — lives, I
mean, spent in devotion to the great
common causes through which human
brotherhood is realised — are we not more
than ever convinced of the gap between
our ideal and our accomplishment?
This failure is due not simply to the
fact that as preachers we have not pre
sented the claims of the gospel in suffi
ciently persuasive and compelling terms;
it is due also, perhaps even more, to
the fact that we have not been able to
utilise effectively the energy we have
released. There are people who cannot
teach a Sunday-school class or talk in
prayer-meeting, and yet who would like
to do something for Jesus Christ. But
many of our churches are so imperfectly
organised that there is no way of making
use of their services. There is an unex
pended balance of power in the church,
of which we are not making full use.
What we need to do is to divert this
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
power into the proper channels, to es
tablish such points of contact . between
our churches and the agencies which are
engaged in moral and social reform that
they can draw on us for the recruits they
need, and to create such a sentiment in
the church that service so rendered shall
be recognised and honoured as being
as truly church service as preaching or
praying. But it is not only that we are not
doing the things we ought to do: we are
wasting our energy in things that are un
important; we are expending in compe
tition among Christians the power that
we ought to be using in the attack upon
the intrenched evils of society.
I spend my summers in a New England
village whose united resources would be
just sufficient to maintain one strong
church, but we have three, each com
peting with its neighbours for the support
of the community. In other villages no
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
larger you can find four or five, while
not far away there are great reaches of
untouched territory where the gospel is
never preached. How can we expect peo
ple to believe that the church is in ear
nest when we waste our resources as we
do? That is why church unity is so im
portant. It is important for practical
reasons, because without it we cannot
provide adequate openings for the ener
gies of our strongest men and our most
devoted women. We cannot grapple as
efficiently as we might and as we ought
with the great common evils which are
all about us. But it is even more impor
tant in its bearing upon our ideals, for
without it we cannot make the church
what it was meant to be — the body of
Christ, the organ for the expression of
his Spirit in the world.
How is this ideal to be realised? What
can we do to make the church what in
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
our heart of hearts we know it ought to
be? There are two possible things we
can do. We can meet and discuss the
things on which we differ, and we can go
out and work for the things on which we
agree. Both are useful, but the second
promises quicker and more lasting results.
In recent years there have been held a
number of conferences upon church unity,
but thus far they have accomplished little
because they have all run against the
initial difficulty of which we spoke at the
outset — the fundamental difference in the
conception of the church itself.
Yet all the while the cause of unity
has been making progress. Why? Be
cause Christians have been forming the
habit of working together. You cannot
work with a man without understanding
him better, and you cannot understand
him better without liking him better, and
when you understand a man and like him
you are willing to live with him.
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
We have an example of what may be
done on the foreign field. Here the pres
sure of a common need is bringing Chris
tians together, and their practical co
operation is bringing forth new forms of
organisation adapted to express and to
further this common purpose. The sec
retaries of the foreign missionary societies
meet every year for conference, fields of
labour are mapped out and plans talked
over. In China alone there are six union
theological seminaries, while most recently
the Edinburgh Conference gave splendid
illustration of what we may call the ecu
menical Christian consciousness.
The example set abroad is being fol
lowed at home. Here, too, the churches
are coming together to study the com
mon problems which face us all ahke,
and this growing consciousness of unity is
finding expression in such bodies as the
Federations of Churches, local and na
tional, and the Home Missions Council.
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THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH
But, after all, this is only the beginning.
When we have covered the field and mo
bilised our forces the question will still
remain. What are we to do with them?
What good will it do to unify our organ
isations unless we can direct the forces
we command into channels of useful and
efficient service? What is the use of hav
ing a strong church unless it becomes in
fact what we have seen it ought to be —
the leader in the great moral and religious
revival of which we have been speaking?
And so I come back to that with which
I began — the ideal. The church will be
what it ought to be when enough people
see what it ought to be and want what
they see.
It is the preacher's business to make
men see. Preaching is the impartation
of truth by personal contact, however
brought about. It is such a presenta
tion of the ideal as shall commend itself
to the heart and lay hold upon the will,
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MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE GOSPEL
such a presentation as shall make God
so real a fact to the consciousness of man
that his soul shall be lifted up in worship;
but, at the same time, such a presenta
tion as shall make God's loving purpose
for all mankind so clear that worship
shall inevitably bear fruit in service.
Preaching, in a word, is such a presen
tation of the gospel as shall make Chris
tian doctors, Christian lawyers, Christian
teachers, Christian statesmen, Christian
philanthropists, Christian workmen,
Christian fathers and mothers, and so
at last a completely Christianised so
ciety. This is the minister's work, and
there is no greater.

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INDEX

Amalekites, 56.
Anglicans, 59.
Antinomians, 60.
Apostolic succession, 233.
Arminians, 60, 190.
Assyria, 70.
Atonement, 101, 169, 170.
Authority, 34, 48.
Babylonia, 70.
Bible: need of, 48, 49, 64.
preacher's use of, 50.
definition of, 51, 52.
the older view of, 54.
function of, 53, 54, 55, 76.
interpretation of, 57, 59, 61.
as standard, 64, 68, 76, 77.
a progressive revelation, 67.
inerrancy of, 70, 84.
scientific study of, 72.
Christ key to, 77.
Bowring, 110.
Buddhism, 29.
Calvin, 104.
Calvinists, 60, 190.
Canadian Pacific tunnels,
253, 254.
Catechism, Smaller, 65.
Catholicism, 28, 235.
Chalcedonian Creed, 193.

Chalmers, James, 134.
Christ: norm of Christianity, 38,
41, 43, 148, 179.
standard for interpreting
Bible, 79.
humanity of, 179 seg.
deity of, 177, 187, 188, 195,
196, 197, 198, 199, 200,
202, 213, 217, 218, 222.
brotherhood of, 185.
personality of, 194, 195.
transforming power of, in
human life, 219.
Cf. also Jesus.
Christian experience, 221.
Christianity: the universal religion, 33,
36.
appeal of, 38.
different kinds of, 39.
definition of, 40.
the incarnation of the spirit
of Jesus, 42.
religion of freedom and
progress, 80.
Christian Science, 26, 95.
Christology of Paul and John,
79, 80.
Church: a means of social propa
ganda, 228.

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INDEX

growing efficiency of, 229.
as religious society, 232,
233.
as ecclesiastical institution,
232, 233.
function of, 237, 238, 239,
241, 256, 259, 260, 263.
opportunity and duty of,
242, 243, 249, 252.
leadership of, 244, 247, 250.
unity of, 266, 267.
ideal of, 269.
Congregationalists, 59.
David, 50, 56, 64, 182.
Davis, 173.
Democracy, definition of, 211.
Doctrinal preaching, decline
of, 5.
Easter, 223.
Edinburgh Conference, 268.
Federation of Churches, 268.
Folks, Homer, 249.
Foreign Missions, 268.
God: object of faith, 87.
need of, how met, 88, 89,
90, 91, 113, 114.
difference in view of, 91.
definition of, 93.
Christian conception of, 93,
108.
as healer, 95.
object of worship, 95.
source of help, 95, 97.
as just and righteous, 96,
101, 107.

Fatherhood of, 99, 103.
Majesty of, 108.
relation to world, 117.
belief in, 195, 196.
as self-revealing, 203, 204,
209, 218, 223.
Good Samaritan, 80.
Hall, Cuthbert, 125.
Holy Spirit, 82, 100.
Cf. Spirit of God.
Home Missions Council, 268.
Immanence, 104, 123.
Incarnation, 106, 180, 220.
Inerrancy, 20, 84.
Infallibility of the Bible, 84.
Institutional church, 240.
Intemperance, 149, 150.
Irenaeus, 213.
Isaiah, 50, 63, 71, 73, 111,
169.
James, apostle — definition of
religion, 32.
Jeremiah, 51, 73.
Jesus: boyhood of, 183.
life of, 184.
as leader, 207.
need of, 212.
Messiahship of, 213.
Cf. also Christ.
John, 79, 187, 220.
Jonah, 205.
Jonathan, 64.
Joseph, 64.
Judaism, 28.
Justification by faith, 155.

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INDEX

Law, definition of, 117, 118.
Lazarus, 178.
Legalists, 60.
Love, 160, 163; salvation by,
160.
Luther, 6, 65, 77, 78, 85, 111,
154, 155.
Medicine, modern, 12.
Mephistopheles, 29.
Methodists, 59.
Minister: duty of, 255, 256, 262, 270.
opportunity of, 261.
Miracle: definition of, 120.
old attitude toward, 123.
evidence from, contrasted
with evidence from
experience, 205.
Modern theology, cf. Theol
ogy, modern.
Modernists, 234.
Mohammedanism, 28.
Moses, 50.
Mount Tabor, 182.
Mussey, Mrs., 259.
Mysticism, 35.
National Conference of Chari
ties, 249.
Nazareth, 182.
Nineveh, 205.
Origen, 57.
Paul, 51, 66, 75, 79, 111, 187,
204, 220.
Pharisees, 205.

Platonic philosophy, 200.
Prayer, 49, 50, 124, 125, 126.
Prediction, 71.
Presbyterians, 59.
Prodigal son, 80.
Prophecy, 71.
Prophets of Israel, 72.
Protestantism, 6, 19, 28, 234.
Psychology, 24, 184.
Rauschenbusch, Professor,
259.
Reformation, 6.
Religion: an ultimate fact, 22.
varieties of, 27, 28, 29, 30,
31, 33, 35, 36.
nature of, 33, 34.
of authority, 34.
mystic and ethical types
of, 34.
problem of authority in, 48.
scientific study of, 29.
Ritschl, 187.
Sacrament, 236.
Salvation: definition of, 131.
universal need of, 132.
evils to be saved from, 136.
from punishment, 138, 146.
from next world to this, 143.
from sin, 146, 147.
from selfishness, 158.
through love, 161, 162, 163,
164, 165, 166, 167, 168.
Saul, 121.
Saul (king), 55.
Saviourhood, 154, 158.
Schleiermacher, 187.

[ 273 ]

INDEX

Science, modern:
effect of, on view of uni
verse, 3, 11, 16, 105.
contribution of, to philan
thropy, 247, 248.
Service, 154, 156.
Settlements, 26.
Simeon, the Stylite, 31.
Sin: definition of, 148, 149.
social, 151, 152, 153.
Smith, George Adam, 73, 183.
Socialism, 25.
Solidarity of mankind, 143.
144.
Sonship, 155.
Spirit of God, 97.
of Christ, 135, 219, 220.
Spirit, witness of, 82, 221.
Supernatural revelation, 99.
Survey, 246, 259.
Tertullian, 24.
Theology, modern:
function of, 17.
distrust of, 20.
contribution of, to preach
er's equipment, 22, 23.

gives new evidence of old
facts, 24.
contribution of, to idea of
God, 88.
contribution of, to under
standing of Christian
ity, 201.
change of view-point, 10,
11.
Theology, the old:
its view of the Bible, 54
seq.
of God, 96 seq.
of salvation, 136 seq.
of Christ, 177 seq.
Thomas, 177.
Trench, 125.
Trinity, 100, 221.
Union Seminary, 125.
Unitarianism, 186.
Unity, church, 265, 266.
Uzzah, 56.
Wesley, 111.
Worship, 256, 257; new forms
of, 258.

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