The gospel for an age of doubt

Front matter

aass 61? 1 1 J

Book-^^

THE GOSPEL FOR AN AGE OF DOUBT

Contents

I. An Age of Doubt 1

n. The Gospel of a Person ... 41

III. The Unveiling of the Father . . 81

II

Subtlest thought shall fail and \earnmg falter, Churches change, forms perish, systems go,

But our human needs, they will not alter, Christ no after age shall e'er outgrow.

Yea, Amen ! O changeless One, Thou only,

Art life's guide and spiritual goal, Thou the Light across the dark vale lonely, —

Thou the eternal haven of the soul.

— John Campbell Shairp.

n

The prevalence and the quality of modern ffow shall

J-,, 'ii-.j' J ±. J J •, we serve the

doubt, with its discontent and sadness, its ^^^^^g^^ ^g^f self-misgivings and reactions, its moral inconsistencies and fine enthusiasms, bring the preacher who is alive and in earnest, face to face with the most important question of his life. What can I do, what ought I to do, as a preacher, to meet the strange, urgent, complicated needs of such a time as this?

First of all, as a man, — and every preacher ought to be a man, though not every man is tound to be a preacher — as a man, it is necessary to lead a clean, upright, steadfast, useful life, purged from all insincerity, and lifted above all selfishness, and especially above that form of religious selfishness which is the besetting peril of those who feel themselves rich in faith in the midst of a generation that has been made poor by unbelief. Never has there been a time when character and conduct counted for

The Crospel of a Person

Proposed remedies insufficient.

more than they do to-day. A life on a high level, yet full of helpful, healing sympathy for all life on its lowest levels, is the first debt which we owe to our fellow-men in this age.

But beyond this, is there not something personal and specific which the conditions of the present demand from us, as men who have not only the common duty of living, but also the peculiar vocation of speaking directly and constantly to the inner life of our brothers ? We want some distinct and definite message, which is to be clearly formed in our thought and feeling and utterance, as the central, guiding, dominating force in all our efforts to realize the fine aspiration of the old hymn ;

" To serve the present age, My calling to fulfil, — Oh, may it all my powers engage To do my Master's will ! "

Now the moment we look at the problem in this light, we see that there are various lines of activity open to us, and along all of these lines men are making promises and prophecies of usefulness and success. The cures which are suggested for the malady of the age are many and diverse. Of some of them we need speak only in passing, to recognize that for us, at least, they are unsuitable.

The Grospel of a Person 45

Herr Max Nordaii, for example, in his Reaction to

11 . 1 1 T^ ^' T barbarism.

curious and chaotic book, Degeneration, diagnoses the sickness of modern times as the result, not of a loss of faith, but of a fatal increase of nervous irritability produced by the strain of an intricate civilization. He declares that the malady must run its course, but that in time it will be healed by the restorative force of ^^misoneism, that instinctive, invincible aversion to progress and its difficulties that Lombroso has studied so much and to which he has given this name." ^

The name is certainly not a pretty one, nor do I think that, after the first feeling of pleasure in learning to pronounce a newly imported word has passed, the contemplation of its meaning will afford us any profound sense of satisfaction or hope. The picture of mankind as a magnified Jemmy Button, returning from his temporary residence in England to his native Terra del Fuego, and flinging away his gloves and patent-leather shoes, to relapse into a peaceful and contented barbarism, is not inspiring. Who is there that would care to devote his life to the hastening of such a result ? Who but the veriest quack, himself affected by the hysteria of the age, would think of curing

1 Max Nordau, Degeneration (New York, 1895), p. 542.

the convulsions of St. Vitus' dance in an overstrained humanity by throwing the patient into tlie stupor of typhoid fever ? Psychical Another and very different method of deal-

ing with the malady of the times is suggested by those who believe that Science itself, in the immense future advance which is predicted for it, will supply the antidote for the scepticism which has accompanied its previous course. New discoveries will be made which will support the proposition : II faut avoir une dme. New arguments will be constructed which will give us a scientific demonstration of the unseen universe and the future life. It is in this spirit that Mr. F. W. H. Myers calls attention to the phenomena of mesmerism and hypnotism and telepathy, and suggests that the need of the age is a more cordial and general interest in the investigations of the Society of Psychical Research. ^ I do not think, for one, that these investigations are to be slighted or despised. They may be of great value. But it is difficult to believe that this is the source to which the preacher is to look either for his inspiration or his message. For, in the first place, it is highly improbable that science is about to make any such aston-

^ Science and A Future Life (Macmillan, 1893), pp. 34, 44.

ishing advance, either in methods or results, as some men anticipate. The best authorities admit this, and warn us that there are "limitations in the nature of the universe which must circumscribe the achievements of speculative research." 1 Mr. Myers hunself makes the same admission, and says that so far as our discoveries are confined to the physical side of things, there is no ground whatever for sanguine hope. Moreover, in the second place, whatever work may be done in this direction must be accomplished, not by preachers, but by scientists. The average preacher has no particular vocation, and no adequate qualification, for the task. Neither by temperament nor by training is he fitted to judge of these matters. Now and then you will find a rare exception ; but as a rule nothing could be of less value than the scientific sermons of preachers who have only a bowing acquaintance with science. If the cure of modern scepticism is to be accomplished by the further progress of physical investigation, at least we must confess that this enterprise is not for us.

But there are two other ways of dealing with current doubt which demand closer attention. One of them is the philosophic

1 C. H. Pearson, National Life and Character (Macmillan, 1893), p. 291.

The Q-ospel of a Person

Thorough-going rationalism.

method of a reductio ad ahsurdum. The logic of rationalism is applied to its own premisses in order to show that they are unfounded and unverifiable. The result of this attack, as it has been made with a relentless and masterlyhand by Mr. Arthur James Balfour in his Defence of Philosophic Doubt, is to exhibit the startling fact that "the universe as represented to us by science is wholly unimaginable, and that our conception of it is what in Theology would be termed purely anthropomorphic."^ The evidence for the existence of a world composed of atoms and ether is no more conclusive, the account which science gives of their nature and qualities is no more coherent, than the evidence and account which faith gives of a world created by a personal God and inhabited by immortal souls. Pure agnosticism is thus forced into the service of Christianity and used to destroy all a priori objections to it. Giant Doubt is brought low by turning his own weapons against himself, even as Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, slew the Egyptian "with his own spear." ^

The value of this service of philosophy is

1 A Defence of Philosophic Doubt (Macmillan, 1879), pp. 284, 285, 287-289.

2 1 Chron. xi. 23.

considerable. The Christian preacher ought not to be ignorant of its actual results, for they are such as to encourage him in preserving his independence against the tyrannous claims of positivism ; nor unfamiliar with its methods, for they are fitted to train and discipline his mind by hard exercise and exact work. But it must be remembered that only a mighty man of valour, one who, like Benaiah, ranks above the host, and above the thirty captains of the host, can hope to play a leading part in this enterprise of "carrying the war into Africa." It must be remembered also that the reduction of scientific naturalism to an absurdity falls far short of the establishment of religious faith as a verity. Grateful for all that philosophy can do, and is doing, to clear the way, the preacher must have a principle, an impulse, a line of action which will carry him beyond the negative result of making unbelief doubtful, to the positive result of making belief credible.

At this point our attention is called to an- Theological other way of dealing with current scepticism, "^^^ *-^^" ^^^ — the dogmatic method, which relies for the defence of faith upon the construction of a complete and consistent system of doctrine in regard to God and man, the present world and the future life. Faith, in other words, is to be established by fortification, surrounded and entrenched with banquette and parapet, scarp and ditch and counterscarp of iron-worded proof, defended on every side by solid syllogisms, and impregnable against all assaults of unbelief. It is foolish not to recognize the great work which has been done along this line by wise and strong men in the past. Those who affect to despise it and make light of it, are simply ignorant of some of . the loftiest achievements of the human intellect. The works of Augustine and Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, of John Calvin and Richard Hooker and John Owen, of Ralph Cud worth and William Chilling worth, of Richard Baxter and Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler, of Jonathan Edwards and Charles Hodge and W. G. T. Shedd, are massive works. They impose a sense of wonder upon every thoughtful observer.

Changed But concerning the attempt to conquer mod-

GOThd'it'iOTlS

ern doubt by a system of dogmatic theology, certain things must be remembered. The conditions of warfare change from age to age. The vast fortresses of solid stone whose possession was once regarded as the security of nations, are not ranked so high as they were a hundred years ago. The earthwork, the rifled cannon, the iron-clad ship, the torpedo, have wrought great changes. Deductive logic is just as strong as it ever was, but somehow or other men are not as much impressed by it. Induction is the method of to-day: and that is a subtle, evasive, mobile method. It cannot be shut in by a ring of fortresses. Already the dogmatic systems in which the inductive method is ignored or subordinated (whether made long ago, or constructed yesterday on ancient models) are out of date. They are good for the men who are within them, but on the outside world they have no more effect than Windsor Castle would have in protecting England from a foreign invasion.

We feel sure that theology, in time, must The future and will vindicate its claim to be considered as ^^ ^^^' an essential factor in the intellectual life of man, by adapting itself to the changed conditions, and producing even mightier works by the new methods than those which it produced by the old. Already we see the promise of a renaissance of dogmatics in such books as Mulford's The Republic of Grod, Harris' The Self- Revelation of Grod, Orr's The Christian View of God and the Worlds and Fairbairn's The Place of Christ in Modern Tlieology. But we must remember that even those who anticipate and

52 The Grospel of a Person

Great things predict this reconstruction of the old truth on

demandedof . ,. , ,i . ,. m

the new the- ^^^ ^^^ lines most enthusiastically, recognize clogian. that it must be a long and difficult task, and that the man who is to be a master-builder must have a magnificent equipment. How exhilarating at the first sight, but at the second sight how overwhelming and discouraging, are the demands of the age upon him who would fain be an epoch-making theologian, as they are stated, for example, in Mr. Balfour's Foundations of Belief or in Dr. George A. Gordon's inspiring book The Christ of To-day. Truly it appears that such a man must realize the supposition of St. Paul : he must speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge. Who is sufficient for these things? It will take a long time for the best of us to learn all this. Perhaps the most of us may never go so far. Meantime, whether we are labouring towards that goal, or despairing of it, we need something divinely simple and divinely true that we can preach at once, directly, joyfully, fervently to the heart of the age. A view of the world, a Welt-anschauung, is desirable, perhaps in the long run necessary, for the mind of man ; but there is another thing

TJie Gospel of a Person 53

which is more desirable and of prior necessity, ^ startingand that is a standpoint of practical conviction f^l^f^ ^^ ^j^^ from which to obtain such a view. It may be fi^^^ necesbut a foothold, only a single point of contact, but we must have it, and it must be solid as a fact. A complete and consistent theology is a consummation most devoutly to be wished for ; but before it can come there must be something else, — a living, active power of faith in the soul. This power, as we believe, already exists in every human being. But there is only one thing that can awaken it and call it into action, and that is a gospel^ a message clear as light, which in its very essence is a force to quicken and stir the soul.

We look out upon the world and we see that Preaching some men have had such a gospel without be- ^^ power, ing in any sense finished and systematic theologians. St. Paul and St. Peter and St. John had it. St. Chrysostom and St. Francis of Assisi and Savonarola had it. John Wesley and George Whitfield had it. In different ages and under different conditions these preachers had the primal message which moves men to believe. And in our own age, under our own conditions, a like message has been proclaimed with power. Pere Lacordaire preached such a message in Notre Dame, and Canon Liddon in

64 The Grospel of a Person

St. Paul's, to listening thousands. Bishop Brooks made it thrill like a celestial music through the young manhood of America; and Dwight L. Moody has spoken it with vigorous directness in every great city that knows the English tongue. In many things, in ecclesiastical relation, in theological statement, in dress, in manner, in language, these preachers are unlike. One thing only is the same in all of them, and that is the source of their power. Their central message, the core of their preach ing, is the piercing, moving, personal gospe' of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Sav iour of mankind. This, in its simplest form ; this, in its clearest expression ; this presentation of a person to persons in order that they may first know, and then love and trust and follow Him — this is pre-eminently the gospel for an age of doubt.

The Gospel The adaptation of our central message, thus conceived and thus expressed, to meet the peculiar needs of a time of general scepticism, is the theme of this lecture. I do not say that this is the whole of Christianity. I do not say that when the preacher has delivered this message in this form he has fulfilled all of his duties. He may have to bear testimony against errors of thought and vices of conduct ; he is certainly bound to give encouragement and guidance to new efforts of virtue and new enterprises of benevolence in every field. But his first and greatest duty, the discharge of which is to give him influence over doubting hearts and strength for all his other work, is simply to preach Christ.

This gospel meets the needs of the present The gospel time because it is the gospel of a fact. " *

Personality is a fact. Indeed we may say that it is the aboriginal fact ; the source of all perception ; the starting-point of all thought ; the informing and moulding principle of all language. " All human observation implies that the mind, the 'I,' is a thing in itself, a fixed point in a world of change, of which world of change its own organs form a part. It is the same, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. It was what it is, when its organs were of a different shape and consisted of different matter from their present shape and matter. It will be what it is, when they have gone through other changes."^

1 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Quoted by Hutton, Contemporary Thought, I., p. 114.

Personality is the foundation.

This fact of a rational, free, conscious, persistent self is the foundation of all sensation and of all reflection ; it is the basis of physics as well as of metaphysics. By contrast it gives us our first notion of matter ; by resistance, our first notion of force ; by operation, our first notion of causality. It is a necessary assumption even in the philosophies of agnosticism, positivism, and materialism. They cannot move a step without it.

" They reckon ill who leave me out."

To deny personality is to deny the possibility of any kind of knowledge and reduce the universe to a blank. 1

Moreover, it is not only true that the recognition of our own personality lies at the root of perception and reasoning. It is also true that contact with other personalities, conscious, intelligent, free, and persistent like ourselves, is the gateway through which we reach the reality of all external things. To a solitary mind the outward world may be only a dream. But the moment two minds come into contact and communication, it becomes at least a permanent possibility of sensation. By comparison and contrast with the sensations and experiences of

1 Alfred Williams Momerie, Personality, the Beginning and End of Metaphysics (Blackwood, 1889), pp. 23, 132.

others, we verify our own. If it were not for this the whole universe would dissolve around us like the baseless fabric of a vision. The subtle analysis of modern science, transforming the apparently solid elements into invisible atoms, and these atoms into vortex rings in the impalpable and immeasurable ether, throws us back, more and more, upon personality, subjective and objective, as the only thing that remains sure and immutable.

Persons, then, are the most real and substan- Persons are tial objects of our knowledge. They touch us at more points, they affect us in more ways and with greater intensity, they fit more closely into the faculties and powers of our own being, than anything else in the universe. A person who has influenced us or our fellow-men leaves a more profound, positive, permanent, and real impression than any other fact whatsoever. We live as persons in a world of persons, far more truly than we live in a world of phenomena or laws or ideas.

Now, in an age that is characterized, as some German writer has said, by " a hunger for facts," the gospel of a person, if it is rightly apprehended and preached, ought to have peculiar power because it is a factual gospel. We can come to those who are under the benumbing spell of universal doubt and say : Here is a fact, a personality, real and imperishable. It is not merely a doctrine that was believed in Palestine eighteen hundred years ago. It is some one who was born and lived among men. It is not merely a theory of God and the soul and the future life that sprang up in the East in the first century and has strangely spread itself over the world. This religion is historical in every sense of the word, as the actual fulfilment of an ancient hope, and the starting-point of a new life.

The reality xhe person of Jesus Christ stands solid in the history of man. He is indeed more substantial, more abiding, in human apprehension, than any form of matter, or any mode of force. The conceptions of earth and air and fire and water change and melt around Him, as the clouds melt and change around an everlasting mountain peak. All attempts to resolve Him into a myth, a legend, an idea, — and hundreds of such attempts have been made, — have drifted over the enduring reality of His character and left not a rack behind. The result of all criticism, the final verdict of enlightened commonsense, is that Christ is historical. He is such a person as men could not have imagined if they

Tlie Gospel of a Person 59

would, and would not have imagined if they could. He is neither Greek myth, nor Hebrew legend. The artist capable of fashioning Him did not exist, nor could he have found the materials. A non-existent Christianity did not spring out of the air and create a Christ. A real Christ appeared in the world and created Christianity. This is what we mean by the gospel of a fact.

n

And here we come at once into sight of the ^« gospel

of CL fOTCBt

second quality of this gospel which is peculiarly fitted to meet the needs of a doubting age. If it be true that a person is a fact, it is no less true that a person is a force. The world moves by personality. All the great currents of history have flowed from persons. Organization is powerful; but no organization has ever accomplished anything until a person has stood at the centre of it and filled it with his thought, with his life. Truth is mighty and must prevail. But it never does prevail actually until it gets itself embodied, incarnated, in a personality. Christianity has an organization. Christianity has a doctrine. But the force of Christianity, that which made it move and lent it power to move the world, is the Person at the heart of it, who gives vitality to the organization and reality to the doctrine. All the abstract truths of Christianity might have come into the world in another form, — nay, the substance of these truths did actually come into the world, dimly and partially through the fragmentary religions of the nations, more clearly and with increasing, prophetic light through the inspired Scriptures of the Hebrews ; but still the world would not stir, still the truth could not make itself felt as a universal force in the life of humanity until

" The Word had breath, and wrought

With human hands the creed of creeds, In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought." ^

I think we must get back, in our conception of Christianity and in our preaching of it, to this primary position. The fount and origin of its power was, and continued to be, and still is, the Person Christ.

Christ was This was the secret of His ministry. He gospel. Himself was the central word of His own

preaching. He offered Himself to the world as the solution of its difficulties and the source

Tennyson, In Memoriam^ xxxvi.

of a new life. lie asked men simply to believe in llim, to love Him, to follow Him. He called the self-righteous to humble themselves to His correction, the sinful to confide in His forgiveness, the doubting to trust His assurance, and the believing to accept His guidance into fuller light. ^ To those who became His disciples He gave doctrine and instruction in many things. But to those who were not yet His disciples, to the world, He offered first of all Himself, not a doctrine, not a plan of life, but a living Person. This was the substance of His first sermon when He stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth and having read from the Book of Isaiah the prophecy of the Great Liberator, declared unto the people "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." 2 This was the attraction of His universal invitation, " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." 2 This was the heart of His summary of His completed work when He said, " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."*

1 Henry Latham, Pastor Pastorum (New York, James Pott & Co., 1891), pp. 273-275.

3 St. Matt. xi. 28.

4 St. John xii. 32.

The life of the Church flowed from Chnst.

We are not considering, at this moment, the tremendous implications of such a personal self-assertion, unparalleled, I believe, in the founder of any other religion. We pass by for the present that famous and inevitable alternative, Aut Christus Deus^ aut homo non bonus est. The point, now, is simply this. As a matter of history, setting aside all question of the divine inspiration and authority of the Gospels, taking them merely as a trustworthy report of a certain sequence of events,^ it is plain that the force which started the religion of Jesus was the person Jesus. Christ was His own Christianity. Christ was the core of His own gospel.

Read on through the other books of the New Testament, the Acts and the Epistles, and you will see that they are just the record of the operation of this force in life and literature. It was this that sent the apostles out into the

1 The evidence for the historic trustworthiness of the Gospels may be found summed up in its modern form in Dr. Salmon's Introduction to the New Testament^ fourth edition (New York, Young & Co., 1889); in Bishop Lightfoot's Essays on ^'■Supernatural Beligion^'' (Macmillan, 1889); in Beyschlag's New Testament Theology (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1895), pp. 29-31, 216-221 of volume i. ; and in Prof. George P. Pisher's Grounds of Theistic and Christian Be- Zie/ (Scribners, 1883).

world, reluctantly and hesitatingly at first, then joyfully and triumphantly, like men driven by an irresistible impulse. It was the manifestation of Christ that converted them,^ the love of Christ that constrained them,^ the power of Christ that impelled them.^ He was their certainty* and their strength.^ He was their peace ^ and their hope.'* For Christ they laboured and suffered ; ^ in Christ they gloried ; ^ for Christ's sake they lived and died.^^ They felt and they declared that the life that was in them was His life.^^ They were confident that they could do all things through Christ which strengthened them.^^ xhe offices of the Church — apostle, bishop, deacon, evangelist, — call them by what names you will — were simply forms of service to Him as Master ; ^^ the doctrines of the Church were simply unfoldings of what she had received from Him as Teacher ; ^^ the worship of the Church, as dis • tinguished from that of the Jewish Synagogue and the Heathen Temple, was the adoration of Christ as Lord.^^

Now it was precisely this relation of the

The influence of Christianity came from Christ.

The magic

of Christ's name.

early Church, in her organization and doctrine and worship, to the person Christ, held fast in her memory as identical with the real Jesus who was born in Bethlehem and crucified on Calvary, conceived in her faith as still living and present with His disciples, — it was this personal animation of the Church by Christ that gave her influence over men. Contrary to all human probability, against the prejudice of the Hebrews who abhorred the name of a crucified man, against the prejudice of the Greeks and Romans who despised the name of a common Jew, she made her way, not by concealing, but by exalting and glorifying, the name of Jesus Christ. Indeed, it seems as if her career of conquest was actually delayed until that name was taken up and written upon her banners. It was in Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians,^ that the missionary enterprise of the Church began, and it was from that centre, with that title, that she went out to her triumph.

The name of Christ was magical ; not as a secret and unintelligible incantation, but as the sign of a real person, known and loved. It enlightened and healed and quickened the heart of an age which, like our own, was dark 1 Acts xi. 26 ; xiii. 1-3.

and sorrowful and heavy with doubt. It was the charm wliich drew men to Christianity out of the abstractions of philosophy,^ and the confusions of idolatry darkened with a thousand personifications but empty of all true personality. The music of that name rang througl\ all the temple of the Church, and to its harmonies her walls were builded. The acknowledgment of that name was the mark of Christian discipleship. To confess that " Jesus is the Christ " was the way to enter the Church. The symbolism of that name was the mark of Christian worship. The central rites of the Church were baptism into Christ and communion with Christ. Fidelity to His name was the crown of Christian martyrdom. Unnumbered multitudes of men and women and children went down to death because they would not deny the Christ. Whatever the early Church was and did, beyond a doubt her character and her activity were but the resultant of the personal influence that flowed from Jesus Christ.2