Faith in the modern world

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II The Freedom Of Faith

II THE FREEDOM OF FAITH

I am glad to comply with the request of The Independent to discuss in its columns my recent book, Christianity at the Crossroads (Baptist Sunday School Board, Nashville). One point seems to be hard for some readers to grasp. It is that the book nowhere appeals to authority. It appeals to truth. Some fundamentalists have criticized it because it does not set up a doctrine of an “Snfallible and authoritative” Scripture. Some modernists who perhaps read the chapter headings, criticize it because, as they allege, it does appeal to authority. The fundamentalist criticism is futile because the idea of an ‘Gnfallible and authoritative” Scripture is apart from the argument. The modernist criticism is based upon a fiction of the modernist imagination.

I am an evangelical Christian. This does not mean any form of words set forth in any particular doctrinal system. It means acceptance of the New Testament as a substantially true record of facts, including the supernatural origin and works of Christ, his atoning death, his resurrection from the dead and present reign and power.

My evangelical beliefs are not imposed upon me. They are freely chosen. They come by a perfectly free and legitimate spiritual and intellectual process, that is by honest weighing of evidence and acceptance of basic facts. The fundamentalist often insists that you must pepe first build up a doctrine of an infallible Scripture and then demand the acceptance of the gospel on the basis of the doctrine. I hold that the facts of the gospel precede the doctrine of inspiration and must be dealt with first. .

The modernist assumes that when he has (as he thinks) successfully attacked the doctrine of an “infallible Scripture” he has destroyed the gospel. He is wrong. He also must face the facts.

Here we come to the heart of the matter. Christianity joins hands with science in respect for facts and in hatred and repudiation of sham and make-believes. The common ground of science and the Christian religion is loyalty to fact.

The book is a plea for all the great human rights: the rights of science, the rights of philosophy, the rights of religion. All of these seek truth based upon facts. The methods of research differ, the aim is the common aim to know the truth. Science works with the principle of causality. Philosophy works with rationality. Religion deals with personality. It is the differences that give them distinctive value. It is folly to attempt to flatten out the universe, to level it down to one principle. Electrons, atoms, molecules are interesting subjects of study. But you do not find love, joy, peace, longsuffering revealed in them. Matter, force and motion are fundamental facts of physics. But you do not discover faith, loyalty, hope, endurance, sacrifice in these physical realities. You find them in personal relations.

Certainty in religion is religiously conditioned.- Certainty in science is scientifically conditioned. Certainty in philosophy is philosophically conditioned. Science, philosophy and religion are sisters, free, untrammeled, joyous and harmonious when pursuing their respective aims. There is and can be no conflict when they have each wrought out their problems fully. Each is autonomous. Religion exists in its own right, has its own methods of verification, its own canons of research, its own criteria of truth.

The diversity of method as between science and religion is based upon the distinction between physical causation and free causation, that is, between will and force. Men discover religious truth through the experience of God’s saving grace in Christ. The facts and reality of God and salvation are known thus through a living experience. This involves an act of the will. Men discover truth in physical science by observing the activities of matter and energy. Become as a little child in the presence of any fact in nature if you would know the meaning of the fact. Become as a little child in the presence of Jesus Christ if you would know the truth of the Christian religion.

The attempt to reduce the two modes of arriving at truth to one is absurd. Checkers and chess are played on the same kind of a board with sixty-four squares, but by different rules. To insist upon playing checkers by the rules of chess, or the other way around, is nonsense. Play the game by the rules of the game. It is equally foolish to try to “reduce” religion to physical science or science to religion. Both are “scientific,” of course, in their loyalty to fact. They enrich and re-enforce each other by diversity of method in discovering truth.

Christianity is based upon history. The gospel is first of all a fact, as Professor Carnegie Simpson has so well said—the fact of Christ. The center of the current controversy is the question as to the facts of the New Testament. Modernists usually substitute ideas for facts. Fundamentalists often miss the point by substituting doctrines for facts.

There are four ways in which the modernist attempts to set aside the facts of the New Testament. These are the way of the philosophic world-view, tha way of physical science, the way of historical criticism and the way of comparative religion. We evangelicals welcome all these ways of discovering truth. If our faith cannot endure the tests thus applied, of course it cannot endure. Let us look briefly at the result of the effort in all these ways. The first is the way of the world-view.

The modernist will often tell you frankly that his “world-view” is his controlling idea. His theory of the universe precludes the acceptance of the supernatural elements in the New Testament. My answer to this position in Christiamty at the Crossroads is twofold: first, it is a reversion to medievalism to judge facts by world-views; and second, world-views or philosophies do not yield a satisfactory basis for religion.

As to the first point, world-views must conform to facts, not facts to world-views. This insistence is where the modern man is greatly in advance of the medieval man. It is strange that modernists insist upon a medieval point of view to sustain modernism. One of the chief fruits of modern science and Christianity is the demand that facts come first. Get your facts first of all, then build your world-views.

The second point in the reply is that world-views, or philosophies, do not afford a satisfactory basis for religion. Philosophies are weak or strong according to their assumptions. But they vary as the colors of an evening cloud. Each rational system, from its own standpoint, destroys all the others. Philosophies mutually devour each other. A gifted Munchausen told of a fight between two snakes. They mutually and reciprocally swallowed each other by the tail until suddenly both vanished from view. Philosophies almost do that with each other, especially when they are not grounded in solid facts. Christian philosophy is based upon the historic facts of the New Testament and the facts of religious experience.

The second is the way of physical science. It is held that physical science proves the uniformity of nature and thus disproves the miracle. In other words, physical science applies the basis for the world-view already mentioned. Miracles which are treated as violations of nature’s laws are, therefore, impossible. The resurrection of Jesus could not have taken place. The reply is that a world-view should rest upon all the facts including will, freedom and personality as well as physical law. These are in perfect harmony with law. The miracle is not a “violation” of nature’s laws. It is God’s will working for a beneficent end. Both will and law are necessary to explain the universe. A man arguing against miracle defied his friend, who was whittling, to set aside the law of gravitation if he relaxed his grasp upon the knife. The whittler flipped the knife upward, and it stuck in the ceiling. The law of gravitation was not violated or suspended. Another force was introduced—will, freedom, personality.

The third way of setting aside the facts is historical criticism. The reply is that the modern critical movement leaves the essential features of the New Testament records intact; that the criticism which destroys the records divides into several mutually contradictory theories;

that none of them deals adequately with the earliest documents, Paul’s earlier epistles; that many parts of the records rejected are supported as strongly as other parts which are accepted by the critics; and that destructive critical theories grow out of world-views and are not based upon the science of criticism itself.

The fourth way is comparative religion. It is alleged that Christianity is an echo of the ethnic faiths of surrounding countries. The reply is that while there are some common terms employed by Christianity and the ethnic faiths, the alleged parallels are not made out. Judaism accounts for most of them. Others are purely fanciful and arbitrary. Besides this the doctrines accorded by objectors to the ethnic faiths are found not only in the late, but in the earliest of the Christian records.

I have discussed facts rather than doctrines, not from lack of appreciation of doctrines, but because the Christian facts preceded the doctrines, and gave rise to the doctrines. The facts are primary. Abolish all the doctrines, if you will, and begin with the facts, and the essentials of doctrine would come back. The current issue, then, is not primarily an issue about doctrines. It is an issue about facts.

The open secret of the New Testament is that the Christ who was crucified, and raised from the dead, and who ascended to the Father, is the Creator of Christianity. The Acts and Epistles tell the story everywhere. The word “began” in Acts 1: 1 is the turning point, the watershed’s dividing line between schools of thought. Jesus began to work in the Gospels and continued in the Acts and Epistles. So we evangelicals believe. Modernists affirm that he began in the Gospels but that he does not continue to act in history except through his ethical teachings and influence. The apostles chose a man to succeed Judas because he was a witness to the resurrection. Peter and Paul’s preaching in Acts turns upon the resurrection. The Epistles throb with the resurrection power. Christianity without it is as powerless as an electric machine with the current cut off. Modernism soft-pedals or denies the resurrection. It thus changes the nature of the religion of the New Testament.

You cannot leave out the supernatural and keep the Christian religion. Evangelicals insist upon keeping the Christian causes linked with the effects to be produced. The modernist who imagines he can devise a workable Christianity out of ethical ideals alone is as naive as a certain unsophisticated farmer who wanted an engineer to build him a pump to irrigate ten thousand acres. When asked what power he would use to drive the pump he replied, “I am able to pay for a pump big enough to generate its own power.” Christianity is at the crossroads, but it is not likely to imitate this farmer. If the thirsty world is to be supplied with the Water of Life, there must be power behind the pump.

FAITH

AND SCIENCE ee

III Faith And Science

But, as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him—1i Cor. 2: 9.

Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth —Mark 9: 28.

Both these texts show the contrast between the testimony of the senses and the discoveries of faith. Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard—but faith penetrates beyond sense and discovers new worlds.

I had the pleasure recently of hearing an address by a scientific man on the subject, “Scientific Prophecy.” It was an exceedingly interesting forecast of the possible course of scientific achievement. Many things were foretold bearing upon human welfare. Among them were the chemical production of food in various forms, the cheapening of light and power for mechanical and other purposes, the conquest of cancer and other diseases, the increase of speed limits on land and sea and in the air, - the possibility of intercommunication between the planets of our solar system. These and other possible advances in knowledge and powers were confidently affirmed.

These prophecies were based upon past achievements. The speaker reminded us of the slowness of man to believe in the possibilities of the past which later became established facts. Wise men said yellow fever and diphtheria would never be mastered. In earlier days the electric telegraph seemed an absurd hope. The idea of the navigation of the air was ridiculed as among the wildest dreams of the crack-brained. The telephone and wireless were inconceivable. One prophet said some years ago that science was already full grown; no genuinely new force would be discovered. And yet man went on discovering new laws and new forces. Soon the X-ray and the radio came to light. Today science is more eager and alert and purposeful than ever. She is on tiptoe, as it were, for new revelations in the great reservoir of nature.

All along the way it has been a conflict between sense and faith. Eye saw not, ear heard not, and men doubted. But men of faith went on searching. Pasteur made his great discoveries, and the germ theory revolutionized medicine. The diphtheria antitoxin was produced, the millions of children were saved from death. The mosquito was detected in his deadly work of transferring the yellow fever germ, and that dread scourge was tamed.

The truth has gradually emerged that the universe about us is an inexhaustible storehouse of forces, of laws, of gifts from God to man awaiting his discovery. It abounds in hidden fountains of power, cataracts of energy, lakes and oceans of divine blessing, which challenge us to our highest skill. But these things do not at first appear to the senses. Eye hath not seen them, ear hath not heard them—until scientific research uncovers them. And then suddenly they burst upon the eyes in dazzling splendor, or reverberate upon the ears like a great cataract plunging over a precipice.

In this way men gradually come to see that science and religion are in full agreement in their basic attitudes and instincts. Both work by faith. Both have large capacity for belief. Both learn by experience that doubt para-

__lyzes_while faith stimulates. Doubt, of course, has its place as a means towards the discovery of truth. It protects against illusion and credulity and self-deception. But doubt by itself tends to paralyze, while faith is a very sharp spur to effort. The true wisdom dictates not that we should believe as little but as much as possible. What the eye does not see and the ear does not hear may, nevertheless, be awaiting us on the other side of the veil of sense, clad in radiant garments and literally burdened with gifts and blessings for us. There are some very important truths which grow out of the contrast between faith and sight. I name a few of them.

The first is that the human mind and the universe around us are made for each other. They match each other as the glove matches the hand for which it is made. The unseen, unheard, unsuspected facts and forces are all about us. The mind of man is like a photographic plate. When exposed to these facts and forces and the right focus is attained, it registers them. Another intelligence, like our own, seems clearly to have made the world about us. It communicates to us its own truths. Every new fact and law we discover is a fresh proof of the presence of a greater mind than ours speaking to us through the things that are made. The music of the orchestra is not music to any except those who have a musical faculty. It is mere noise to some animals who are offended by it. The leader may be hidden from the audience behind a screen. But the players on the instruments see his actions and through them he impresses his mind upon the hearers. God is the hidden leader of the great orchestra of nature. The outreaching of our finite minds for all knowledge is but the reflection in us of the mind of the infinite.

Surely that which made us meant us to be mightier by and by, Set the sphere of all the boundless heavens within the human eye,

Sent the shadow of himself, the boundless through the human soul,

Boundless inward in the atom, boundless outward in the whole.

Take one recent example of nature’s response to man’s waiting mind in its striving to see the invisible and to hear the inaudible. As men studied the lines of the solar spectrum they saw a new strange color. This led to the discovery of a new gas, called helium, which is merely the Greek word for the sun transferred to English. The next step was to discover this gas among the other gases of the earth. Then it was discovered that helium will not burn. And so it became a substitute for the highly inflammable hydrogen in the great dirigibles for navigating the air. Twenty thousand dollars’ worth of hydrogen was wasted in order to introduce helium into the Z R-3 when it arrived from Germany, in order. to make it safe from explosion:and to protect the lives of the airmen. Surely this was an instance of hitching not our wagon but our balloon to a star.

Thus man’s faith is rewarded. The great deep of God’s mind answers the great deep of the human mind. Man’s faith never loses its reward when wisely directed, because the same Being made the universe and the mind which grasps it.

A second truth growing out of the contrast between faith and sight is that the world about us is far richer in meaning than we have imagined. Just as men have been incredulous as to steam and electricity and other forms of power in the past, so also, although in a less degree, they are incredulous today. That which keeps

FAITH IN THE MODERN WORLD 39 ry the world back-is not faith, but doubt. It is the pioneering mind which makes the great discovery. The friends of Columbus warned him that his ships would come to the jumping-off place and plunge to destruction in a bottomless abyss. Doubt would have paralyzed the effort, but faith led Columbus to the discovery of a new world. Faith refuses to measure the future by the past, although a wise faith always respects the past. Doubt can achieve what others have achieved in a measurable degree. Faith can achieve the impossible.

Now, faith knows no limit to what it may discover in the spiritual universe. Just as the mind of man is made for nature, so also the soul of man is made for God. When men call, God answers in Christ. “In him,” says Paul, “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” The spiritual faculty which we call faith joins us to God. Out of faith springs love, and love is _ the great revealer of spiritual riches. Paul prays for the Ephesians: “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that ye might be filled, even to all the fulness of God.” As Professor Moffatt’s translation of this passage suggests, the meaning is that if men wished to get a conception of “length,” if they desired some adequate idea of “breadth,” of “height” and “depth,” they were to let Christ dwell in their hearts by faith, and thus become rooted and grounded in love.

In the third place, I remark that the more refined the forms of matter, the more significant they are. Science is trying to find the ultimate constitution of things, the bricks, as it were, out of which the universe is built. Once we heard much of atoms. Now we hear much of electrons or some other minute forms of existence. These are like little solar systems each with central nucleus and infinitessimally small particles revolving about it. And we are actually told that in comparison with their magnitude the relative distance between an electron and its central nucleus is greater than that between the earth and the sun. Thus scientific faith penetrates ever more deeply into the unseen and unheard universe. We are impressed with the fact that these refined forms of matter seem to lead us up ever closer and closer to God, the source and origin of all things.

Where the origin of life is present the mystery and beauty as well as the reality of the invisible are even more impressive. Some one watched through a powerful microscope the slow incubation of the egg of a fish under the heat of the sun, and described what he saw. He said it was as if the invisible fingers of a painter were at work with a brush. He sketched in first of all in very dim outline the shape that was to appear. Then came heavier strokes. With careful precision the details were perfected, and at length the organism was complete.

And so we come in our careful study of physical nature to the spiritual vision. Science leads us up almost to the gates of paradise. If we listen we can hear the song of the angels on the other side of the walls of sense. Delving down into matter, tunneling out into the secret places of the physical, science comes right up to the gates of the new Jerusalem, with its streets of gold and pearly gates. But it takes eyes adjusted to the spiritual vision to see the heavenly city, and ears attuned to heavenly music to hear the halleluiahs within.

In the fourth place, I think the contrast between faith and sight supplies a clew for the understanding of God’s method with man. Here we are imprisoned upon a little planet, and surrounded by a universe so vast that it staggers the imagination even to attempt to grasp it. And yet this vastness awakens a true echo in man. The measureless distances and magnitudes stir something in man akin to themselves. He finds himself reaching out in desire and thought that he may fully know the meaning of it all, that he may master these forces which play around him. Manifold and complex as these natural laws and forces are, they lure man’s spirit on and on to the very frontiers of being. In all his struggles he is rewarded with new discoveries which in turn whet his insatiable appetite, and thus his nature comes to its own true destiny under a law of endless growth.

Not only are we imprisoned upon a little planet, we are also imprisoned in bodies which are limited in many ways. We are forever tossed about between our sense life and our deep instincts for the eternal. Our dim vision, our dull hearing and our gross sense of feeling confine us in a little circle of experience which keeps us baffled and laboring under a sense of the futility of it all. And yet we never can rid ourselves of these deeper spiritual yearnings which tell us of that which is infinite and eternal in ourselves and which point to the infinite and eternal One whom we Christians have learned to call Father.

The meaning should be obvious to any thoughtful person. The vastness within man was meant to match the vastness around him. The fact that his mind and heart register the unseen and unheard realities about him as he gradually adjusts his nature to them is eloquent of

God’s purpose in placing us in our earthly prison house. By his grace we are to grow in knowledge and power until we attain the stature of full-grown men. It is a curious fact that while materialism has ever tried to terrorize man’s imagination by pointing to his littleness over against the greatness of the universe, man refuses to be cowed or terrified. He holds up his head amid the mighty framework of nature. He is conscious all the time that there is something in him greater than all things material. He groans and struggles amid his . sufferings, but it is a groaning not as a victim of greater powers so much as the instinct of one destined for a larger life. His nature is too big for the world, not too little. It is not that he is crushed like a worm beneath the wagon wheel, but rather that he is wounded like an eagle trying to escape from confinement.

The mission of Jesus was to interpret God to man, and to enable us to understand our true relation to the infinite. His coming was the invisible God appearing under conditions of time and space in order to remove all doubt from our minds as to the reality of God and of his boundless love. His atoning death was the recognition of our need for redemption from sin and its power. His resurrection was the loosing of the flood tides of the infinite life upon humanity.

It is in order now to point out a few practical conclusions from what has been said.

One conclusion is, it would seem that scientific men ought to be the greatest of Christian believers. In their research work faith always runs ahead of knowledge. They make a guess, or have an intuition or surmise. They proceed to hunt for facts to verify and, by and by, they discover some new truth.

Another practical conclusion is that nothing is really explained until we find God behind the things we see. The world and life have no meaning unless God is guiding things. Science describes the world. Religion interprets it. Both are necessary. There is no conflict between them. A fact has little value until you interpret it. And only religious faith can interpret the world.

Finally, I remark that all things are possible to him that believeth. Scientific faith proves this and religious faith proves it.

Modern science has been called a great adventure. It is the greatest of human adventures save one. And in the adventure is mingled romance and magic. It is the storehouse of wonders. Nothing has brought more thrills to men than the discoveries of science. But if science is a great and thrilling adventure, religion is a greater. Faith in God brings even greater discoveries. Jesus said: “Become as a little child before God. Let your mind and conscience and will open to him. Let him speak to your soul and you will enter a new spiritual universe.” “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11: 28-30). In this there are four great truths: 1. Christ himself is the object of faith: “Come unto me.” 2. We are to accept his authority in religion: “Take my yoke upon you.” 3. He perfectly fulfils for us the religious ideal: “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 4. Through him we come to a true knowledge of God: “and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

All that the spiritual life craves he brings: forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God, moral reenforcement for our feeble wills, a new sense of power to overcome temptation, gradual growth in the life of obedience and sanctification, a new joy in social service in sacrificial living and giving, a new vision of life and death and the future, a loss of the fear of death and assurance of immortality, the privilege of having a share in building God’s great moral kingdom which shall cover the universe; and thus the kingdom of science and the kingdom of religion shall blend into one great kingdom.

The things which eye saw not and ear heard not in nature, but which scientific faith discovered, shall be joined to the things which eye saw not and ear heard not in the realm of religion, but which religious faith discovered—and the two shall be God’s one great universal kingdom, eternal and unchangeable, save that it will forever expand to larger proportions and greater spiritual wealth and power.

IV The Pedigree Of Love

IV

THE PEDIGREE OF LOVE

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love—1 John 4: a, Se

It is a pity we have not some special word for Christian love. There are so many degrees and forms of human love, the danger is that we shall confound them. This love ranges all the way from mere sensuous love, through mild friendship and neighborliness and brotherhood up to moral heroism and martyr devotion.

But John’s epistle suggests a way of discriminating Christian love from other forms of it. That way is to trace its pedigree. My subject as suggested by the text is the Pedegree of Love, or the lineage of love. Last summer I met that wizard of the west, the man who has added millions upon millions of dollars per year to the corn crops of Iowa by his discoveries in corn culture. I asked for the secret of his success. His answer can be summed up in one word, pedigree. Select the best ears and the best grains of corn and propagate from that. Now we may apply this same principle to love, and when we have traced its lineage and followed back the family tree we may discover why it is the grace preeminent among the graces.