What Christianity means to me; a spiritual autobiography

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I How This Book Came to Be Written . . i II I Give Unto Them the Keys of the Kingdom 14

III The Church's One Foundation .... 32

Prologue

iThe Christianity of the Twentieth Century is not the same as the Christianity of Jesus Christ; and it ought not to be. For Christianity is a life, and after nineteen centuries of growth it can no more be the same that it was in the First Century than an oak is the same as an acorn, or America in 1920 is the same as America in 1787. Jesus told his disciples that the Kingdom of Heaven was like a seed planted, which from the least of seeds would grow to be a great tree. This is what has happened. The Roman Catholic Mass is quite different from the Last Supper as taken by Jesus and his friends in that upper chamber; the Westminster Confession of Faith is quite different from the Sermon on the Mount; the highly organized churches of the present day are quite different from the Church in the house as described in the Book of Acts. During these nineteen centuries philosophers have been trying to interpret Christian life and

experience and so have developed a Christian

vii viii PROLOGUE

theology; reformers have been trying to apply the principles inculcated by Jesus Christ to the varying and often complex conditions of society and so have developed a Christian social ethics; men and women have been trying to express their experiences in methods adapted to their various temperaments and so have developed Christian rituals; pagans coming into the Christian life have brought their paganism with them, so that while their paganism has been Christianized at the same time and by the same process Christianity has been paganized.

To-day throughout Christendom we are submitting this modern Christianity to a sifting process. We are trying to find out what in it is Christian and what pagan, what natural growth and what artificial addition, what we shall accept and what reject. The Protestants are rejoiced to see this sifting process going on in the Roman Catholic communion, the Liberals welcome it in the conservative churches; personally I welcome it wherever it appears and whatever questions it asks. Unbelief is less dangerous than insincere beliefs. But in this book I do not take part in this sifting process. Without attempting to determine what of modern Chris-

PROLOGUE ix

tianity is true and what false, I invite my reader to join me in an attempt to get back of all the product of centuries of life and thought, to inquire what was Christianity as it was taught by Jesus Christ in the First Century, to ascertain what is essential in his spirit and his teaching which makes Augustine and Luther, Calvin and Wesley, Lyman Beecher and W. E. Channing, in spite of their differences. Christian teachers, and the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity and the Social Settlement workers Christian despite their differences in temperament and method.

My critical studies have convinced me that we have in the New Testament a fair reflection of the teaching of Jesus Christ as it was understood by his immediate disciples in the First Century; that there is no inconsistency between his teaching and that of the Apostle Paul; that the Fourth Gospel was written by the Apostle John, or by one or more of his disciples recording reports received from him; that it truly reflects the mystical aspects, as Matthew reflects the ethical aspects of the Master's teaching; and that, if we would understand the Master, we must realize that he was both practical

X PROLOGUE

and mystical, Oriental and Occidental. But I do not accept the conclusions of those scholars who have attempted to distinguish in the Gospels between the teachings of Jesus and those of his interpreters. Such a discrimination cannot be accomplished by grammatical and exegetical methods.

I began the systematic study of the New Testament when I entered the ministry in i860. Since that time I have been a student of one book, a follower of one Master. My aim in life as teacher, pastor, administrator, editor and author, has been to understand the principles which Jesus Christ inculcated and to possess something of the spirit which animated him, that I might apply both his principles and his spirit to the solution of the various problems, individual and social, of our time. Other books I have studied, to other teachers I have listened; but in the main either that I might better understand Christ's teaching or better understand the problems to which that teaching was to be applied. Many problems which theologians have attempted to solve I am content to leave unsolved. Like the Hebrew Psalmist I do not exercise myself in things too wonderful for me. After sixty years

PROLOGUE xi

of study I still say with Paul, " I know only in fragments and I teach only in fragments." After more than sixty years of Christian experience, — for I cannot remember the time when I did not wish to be a Christian, — I still say with him, " I count not myself to have apprehended but I follow after that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus."

This volume is an endeavor to state simply and clearly the results of these sixty years of Bible study, this more than sixty years of Christian experience. The grounds of my confidence in the truth of the statements made in this volume are the teachings of Jesus Christ and his apostles as reported in the New Testament, interpreted and confirmed by a study of life and by my own spiritual consciousness of Christ's gracious presence and life-giving love.

Lyman Abbott.

The Knoll,

Chapter I How This Book Came To Be Written

On this my eighty-fifth birthday I look back over the intervening three-quarters of a century and see myself a boy of eight or ten, growing up in a Puritan household under Puritan training.

This boy's mother is dead, his father is hundreds of miles away, his home is with a grandfather w^hom he reveres and an aunt whom he loves. His supreme ambition is to be like his mother, his father, his grandfather, his aunt. They are his ideals.

He has read his Bible, has attended church, has heard sermons, though not listened to them, has been at Sunday School, has honestly tried to do right, to obey his conscience and the laws of God

I as they have been explained to him by the Bible and his religious teachers. He has heard the text, " Thou, God, seest me," and has wished that God did not. He has been afraid to answer to God, has dreaded the time when he shall stand before God's judgment seat. To him God has been a kind of awful and omnipresent police justice, and he a scared culprit who knows he is liable to punishment, but does not clearly know why. To him, in short, religion has been little more than a succession of sinnings and repentings.

As he has grown older, he has had explained to him from the pulpit, often, the conditions of salvation. The explanation, as he has understood it, is something like this: He has broken the law of God. It is necessary that he should be punished. God is first of all a just God and must punish those who offend his law. But Jesus Christ is merciful rather than just, perhaps rather more merciful than just. He has, therefore, come to the earth and suffered the penalty of sin in order that the sinner may be let off from that penalty. In order to be let off from that penalty, the sinner must believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he has come to earth, and that he has suffered the penalty. This boy, growing to youth and from, youth to young manhood, cannot bring himself to believe anything merely because he is told that he must believe it. He wishes to believe only the truth. His temperament is such that he cannot accept such a theological statement simply on authority. He begins, therefore, a course of theological study. He gets Pearson on the Creed and reads it through. Then he takes up the successive articles of the creed and reads various treatises elucidating them. Brought up in a Puritan household, he naturally turns to Puritan divines. He reads Calvin's " Institutes," Jonathan Edwards on the " Will," D wight's " Theology." But the more he studies, the more mysterious this theology becomes. It does not fit in with his ideas of righteousness that one person should be punished for another person's sins.

It does not appeal to his affections, this portraiture of a God who can be satisfied only by inflicting penalty on those who have done wrong. It does not appeal to his reason, this religion which requires him to forgive his enemy until seventy times seven, yet tells him that God will not freely forgive the least sin of the most unconscious sinner. His associations are in the Church of Christ. The men and women whom he most reveres are members of that church. The work which the church is tr^ang to do increasingly appeals to him. Finally, he goes to the orthodox pastor of an orthodox church and explains his difficulty and states his experience. His experience is very simple : " I would like to have a character like that of Christ and to do the kind of work that Christ did in the world and I am sorry that my character is not more Christlike and my work more worthy. But the system of theology, with its Three-Persons-in-One God, its vicarious atonement, its eternal punishment, its foreordination and decrees, I cannot understand; and the more I stud}^ it, the less I understand it." And the orthodox minister replies to him : " We none of us understand it very well and we should be glad to have you join the church." And he does join the church. As he looks back upon it, he has reason to suspect that he was accepted, not on his very imperfect confession of faith, but on the fact that his father and his uncle were members of the church and he was believed to be a young man without bad habits.

About this time he begins to attend Plymouth Church and to get from the preaching of Henry Ward Beecher a different conception of theology and also a different conception of religion. The change in his apprehension is gradual, so gradual that, as he looks back over a period of more than half a century, he finds himself unable to realize it with any vividness or to describe it with any accuracy. Even now, as he attempts to describe its result, he is quite conscious that his description is inadequate, if not inaccurate, and will be certainly misunderstood, but it is something like this: He begins to believe that Jesus Christ is not an ambassador from God to Man, not an intermediary between God and Man, not a victim who has borne the penalty which God exacts of man, but God entering into a human life that he may enable men to understand him.

Suppose that all your life you had dreaded an awful God, or in fear submitted to a fateful God, or hesitated between defying and cringing before a hated God, or vainly sought to understand a hiding God, and suddenly the curtain were rent aside and you saw the luminous figure of the living Christ, and over his head were written the words, *' This is thy God, O man." Something like this was the experience which dawned on the mind of this youth growing into manhood. He had thought of God as infinite power. Here is a God revealed to him, not by an awful manifestation of supernatural power but by the endearing manifestation of an unparalleled love. He had thought of God as infinite intelligence. Here is a God, revealed in the life of a man who is limited in his wisdom as the men about him, knowing no more of geography or history or science than those whose life he shares. He had thought of God as impersonated justice, who could not bear to look upon any wrongdoing and to whom the peccadillo of a child and the crime of a Nero or a Caligula were all as one. He sees instead a God who takes the little children in his arms to bless them, turns to the weeping, fallen woman with the words, " Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more "; a God who reserves his indignation for the hypocrite who devours widows' houses and for a pretense makes long prayers. He had thought of God as a great king, sitting upon a great white throne, and he tried to send his prayers up thither by a kind of wireless telegraphy, though wireless telegraphy was not then known. But now, when he kneels to pray, he first reads something from the Gospels, then forms in his mind a picture of Jesus, sits down by the side of the man and talks with him and prayer becomes easy conversation. He had thought of God as an omniscient judge who knew him as the detective police know and dog the footsteps of a criminal. Now, he reads the story of a God in man who has known sorrow, has wrestled with temptation, has understood by experience the trials that come through the voices of ambition, of pleasure and of affection.

God is no longer to him a great unknown. This youth, growing to manhood, no longer goes to the great theologians for light. He goes to the simpler interpreters of Hfe. He remembers his own father, who might easily have made for himself a great reputation in science or in philosophy, but who gave himself to writing books for children that children could understand. He reads those letters of -the author of " Alice in Wonderland " to the little children, and sees how this great mathematician shared the children's life, felt their enthusiasms, participated in their imaginations, was a child with the children. And he begins to say to himself, " My God has come to me as these authors went to the little children. He has come to me that he might write in his life on earth a language which I can understand. He is one who sees life as I see it, experiences life as I have experienced it, shares my life with me, that I may see life as he sees it, experience life as he experiences it, share his life with him. Now I can understand him, for he has entered into my life. We understand each other. We are friends. He is to me the Great Companion."

This boy now grown to manhood, no longer goes up to the great white throne to find his God, no longer anticipates in the future life a day of judgment when he will stand face to face with God. His God who was here once is here still. The veiled, invisible figure that is always walking through life, always sitting at all men's side, was for one moment made so clear that human eyes could see him and human hands could handle him, then, hidden from human eyes, escaping from human touch, is the nearer to us because invisible, intangible. There is no home in which love is centered and cradled in which he does not sit as he sat in the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus whom he loved, no home where sorrow and tears have entered, in which he does not come saying, " There is no death. He that liveth and believeth in me can never die." There is no man beating upon his breast and crying out, " Oh, thou unknown God, have mercy upon me a sinner," to whom he does not say, " Thou art more justified than the proud man who thought he was righteous." There is no true wedding to which he does not bring the cheer of merrymaking friendship. There are no children whom he does not seek to take into his arms and put his hands upon them and bless them. There is no sorrow which he does not share with sorrowing humanity. The bitterest sorrow of all, remorse, the sorrow for wrong done that can never be undone, this he shares most of all. Henceforth, through all the subsequent years of this seeker's life, for him the glory of God shines in the face of Jesus Christ. He has no interest in theological debates concerning the metaphysical relation of

Jesus of Nazareth to the Eternal. He finds no satisfaction in scholastic definitions of a triune andi little known God, in the ecclesiastical characterizations of Jesus as Liglit of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten not Made, and the like. His interest is in the divine light which Jesus Christ has brought into the world. His satisfaction is in the experience of fellowship with the God revealed in Jesus Christ, — a God who is upoa the earth and whose life is ever a Christ life, — a life of love, service and sacrifice.

Inspired by this faith in a God whose glory is reflected in the face of Jesus Christ, he is possessed with a growing desire to give this faith to others. It means so much to him. It so lightens burdens, strengthens purpose, inspires with courage, solves perplexities, simplifies life, bestows peace, that he longs to give to others the gift which has been given to him. He leaves his chosen profession of the law, not because he is dissatisfied with it, but because he is eager to devote all his engeries to the joyous task of giving to others the glad tidings which have made him glad.

To that purpose he has now for sixty years given

HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN ii

himself in various forms of activity, but with unvarying purpose. As pastor, secretary, editor, author, he has had no other aim. As preacher he has known no other sennon. His first book was a Life of Jesus Christ; his second, a volume on certain New Testament aspects in Old Testament teachings; his third, a Commentary on the New Testament. When he has written on the Bible, it has been to interpret the prophets and apostles of the olden time as messengers of a God revealed in man. When he has written on theology, it has been to interpret life as a discipline of men being made God-like. When he has written on politics or sociology, it has been to throw some light on the path that leads to the kingdom of God. When he has written as editor of a weekly journal, it has been to interpret current history in its relation to this development of the human race and to apply to current problems, individual and social, the principles inculcated by Jesus Christ and still more the spirit which Jesus Christ possessed. From first to last, he has been a student of one book, the New Testament. Other books he has studied, including the Old Testament, for the light they throw either on the teaching of the New Testament or on the sorrowful conditions of human life for which Jesus Christ has brought a remedy. From first to last, he has been a disciple and a follower of one Master. A Congregationalist because he was born and brought up in the Congregational Church, he has been equally ready to work with prelate or layman. Catholic or Protestant, believer or agnostic, Jew or Gentile, whether he formally acknowledged allegiance to Jesus Christ or not, provided he was imbued with the spirit of the Christ and was endeavoring to inculcate the principles of the Christ. That he has always been correct in his own interpretations, he does not imagine. .But looking back over that sixty years, he can and does affirm, as in the presence of the Master, that his one controlling purpose has been to give to others that secret of a happy life which he has found in his faith that Jesus the Christ, is the Savior of all men, especially of them that believe.

And now that he has passed four score years, he attempts to set down here, simply and clearly, what he believes is the message which Jesus Christ has brought to the world. This book has long lain in his mind. Its failings will not be due to lack of meditation; they will be due to the fact that no one man can tell all that Christianity means. He can only tell what Christianity means to him. This book, therefore, will be a fragment, as every book on the teaching of Jesus Christ must be a fragment. " We know in fragments and we prophesy in fragments," says the Apostle Paul. I am content to add my fragment to those contributed by abler predecessors and, as this volume sums up the teaching of a lifetime, it will repeat sometimes, doubtless in form as well as in substance, what the writer has before taught; and as the writer's understanding of the Master has grown and, therefore, changed from year to year, this interpretation will be inconsistent probably in more than one passage with interpretations which he has before given to the world. Nor does he intend to make any apology for either the interpretation or the inconsistency, for his aim is not to exhibit either originality or consistency, but to interpret to others that message of life which more than half a centur>- of study in and meditation upon the life and teachings of the Master have interpreted to him.

Chapter II I Give Unto Them The Keys Of The Kiistgdom ^

I WAS ordained to the Christian ministry in i860, my first pastorate was in Terre Haute, Indiana, and almost my first pastoral activity was the organization of a Congregational Bible Class for the study of the Life of Christ. Its membership included men and women of every variety of religious opinions, some of them not in my congregation. One elderly gentleman was a Calvinist who always doubted whether he had been elected, another brought up under the religious instruction of Dr. Furness in Philadelphia and Theodore Parker in Boston, believed with the latter that a " perfect man " was but the dream of silly school girls. There were two rules and only two for the government of the class: the first, that every member was absolutely free to express his opinion without hindrance ; the other, that while the freest inter-

1 See Appendix I.

chang-e of opinions was encouraged, debate was not allowed. We studied the Life together in a quite frank and, I beheve, very honest endeavor to learn from the original narratives what we could of the character, mission and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. We all had our prejudices but we could not assume them to be true. Whatever belief any one of us entertained he must be able to make clear to himself in order to make it clear to his neighbor. These prejudices, freely presented but neither attacked nor defended and never treated otherwise than with respect, had a tendency to neutralize one another. In such an atmosphere I found necessity for much more severe study than I had ever known in college. My original conception that Jesus Christ was the founder of one of the four or five great world religions, that this religion had in its foundation a well defined theology, a church organization and a form or forms of worship, and that the present variations in creed, church organization and forms of worship are either corruptions which have crept into the church or unessential and permissible variations, was rudely shaken in that first year of joint study. Subsequent studies have not reestablished that conception. They have overthrown it.

I no longer regard Jesus Christ as the Founder of a system; I regard him as the Giver of life. I still think that the various Christian creeds, rituals and churches are instruments more or less honestly intended to promote in the community the spirit and teachings of Jesus Christ. But I do not think that any creed or combination of creeds can adequately define Christian thought, or that any forms of worship constitute an adequate expression of Christian experience, or that any church or all churches united can be an adequate instrument of Christian activity.

There lies before me as I write the creed of Plymouth Church (Brooklyn) adopted in 1848. It is no longer subscribed by its membe'rs, but in i860 assent was still required, and it fairly represents the theological opinions of liberal orthodoxy at that time. It affirms belief in one true God, Sovereign, Infinite in Power, Wisdom and Goodness, in the Bible as an authoritative rule of faith and practice, in the Trinity, in the Fall of Adam and in the vicarious atonement. I had been commissioned as a Congregational minister, part of whose duties it was to teach a system of theology of which these articles were an essential part. But when I came to study the teachings of Jesus with my fellow students in this Congregational Bible Class, I found that he never mentioned vicarious atonement or the Fall of Adam or the Trinity, and while he often quoted the Old Testament and always with a respect if not with a reverence which he never paid to the traditional teaching of the synagogue, he never apparently relied upon it as an authoritative rule of faith and practice. He said little or nothing about the Power or Sovereignty of God, but much about his Fatherly care and forgiving kindness; nothing about a Trinity, though much about his own spiritual oneness with his Father; he condemned in no uncertain terms the sins of his time but never traced them back to Adam; he said much about self-sacrifice, but nothing about priestly sacrifice to atone for sin. He never offered sacrifice himself and never counseled his disciples to do so; and never required or referred to any sacrifice as a condition of the forgiveness which he freely offered In his Father's name to those who wished to abandon their sin and escape from their bondage to it.^

It was not, however, merely a Congregational polity and a Congregational creed which I failed to find in the teachings of Jesus; I found there no system of ecclesiasticism and no system of theology. Ecclesiastlcism is defined by the Century Dictionary as " devotion to the interests of the church and the extension of its influence in its external relations." I did not find in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ any devotion to the interests of the church' or the extension of Its influence In its external relations. Theology Is defined by the Century Dictionary as " the science concerned with ascertaining, classifying and systematizing all attainable truth concerning God and his relation to the universe." I did not find in the teachings of Jesus Christ any endeavor to classify or systematically define all attainable truth concerning God and his relations to the universe. He was neither a priest nor a rabbi,

1 His direction to the leper in Mark i : 44 was to fulfill a sanitary regulation which required a leper to get a health certificate from the priest before the ban was removed and he could -again mingle with people.

and it was brought against him as an accusation by his critics that he had never received a theological education. He did not choose the companions of his ministry from either priests or Rabbis ; he and his companions were lay preachers and neither he nor they performed priestly functions. He urged upon his disciples the privilege of prayer and he attended the synagogue services on the Sabbath day, but he never urged public worship as a duty on others, and he was as ready to preach in the private houses, in the fields, or from the prow of a fishing boat as in a house dedicated to the worship of God. Apparently all places were equally sacred to him.

Nor did I find in Christ's teaching any provision of a new theology or a new ecclesiastical system to take the place of the old. Hfe made no attack on the religious forms or institutions of his time though he evidently did not regard them of vital importance. Born a Jew, he remained a Jew to the day of his death, yet he commended a Roman centurion as possessing greater spiritual faith than any orthodox Israelite he had ever seen, and told his hearers that there were pagans who would go into the Kingdom of God and there were Israelites who would be cast out. His teaching was not theological but vital. He taught men, says one of his earliest disciples, how to live — soberly, righteously and godly, looking for the appearing of God. It has grown increasingly clear to me with the passing years that the most radical difference between the teaching of Jesus Qirist and that of the churches is this : Jesus taught men how to live ; the churches have taught men what to think: Jesus tested men by their lives; the churches have tested them by their beliefs.

The notion that Jesus organized a Christian church to take the place of the decaying Jewish church has very little evidence to support it. The word church occurs only twice in the Gospels, and the Greek word means assembly or mass-meeting. It would not be inapt to translate it " town-meeting".^ In Galilee, finding the time too short and the work too large for his own unaided ministry, Jesus selected twelve from among his followers and commissioned them to preach in the villages while he preached in the cities.^ Later, in the larger