The Christ of nineteen centuries

Front matter

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Part I

Dr. Behrends' Own Account of Himself as a Student

for THE Work of Preaching .13

The Books that Helped Him Most 15

Tribute, by the Rev. C. C. Creegan, D.D 18

Dr. Behrends' Religious Career, by the Rev. Frank

B. Cressey , . . . 20

The Great Preacher 25

The Scope of Dr. Behrends' Ministry 28

Dr. Behrends in Cleveland 33

PART n.

The Temple and the Cross 35

The Edict of Cyrus 36

Overthrow of Babylon 37

Birth of the Synagogue 38

An Axiom to Remember 40

Grace to Live, and Grace to Die 40

Our Own Will 41

The Story of Esther 41

Daniel the Prophet of Deeds 43

Prayer a Dialogue 45

Daniel's Character 45

The Book of Job 47

The Philosophy of Suffering 49

The Scope of the Psalms 51

The Psalms Arranged 52

The Psalms as a Solace 54

CONTENTS

PAGE

David and Solomon Compared 55

The Book of Proverbs 56

A Priceless Necklace 57

A Book for the Young 58

Warning Against Robbery 58

Scope and Style of Ecclesiastes 59

Leaving the Pit of Despair 60

Office of the Heart 62

Why Am I a Christian ? 64

Testimony of John 65

The Mighty Message 66

An Unfaltering Faith in God 68

Righteousness Essential to Happiness 69

God, the Soul, and the Bible 71

The Principle of Righteousness 73

Modern Socialism Versus Christianity 75

Triumph of the Christian Plan 78

Gnasaphthani ? Gnanithani 80

Paraphrase of Psalm XVI 82

Paraphrase of Psalm XIX 84

Sing to the Heart of Jesus 85

Lord, I'm Trusting 87

Introduction to Birdseye Views of the Bible 89

Missionary Philosophy 91

How TO Study the Bible 94

The Name of Jehovah 96

The Spirit is Willing but the Flesh is Weak 98

The Nineteenth Psalm 102

A Call for Church Unity 109

The National Covenant with the Negro no

Studying the Bible iii

The Name of God 113

The World for Christ 115

The Law of Work Interpreted 118

Christ's Life not a Dream 120

The Doubting Apostle 123

Christ's Method with Thomas 124

The Fact of the Resurrection 125

CONTENTS

PAGE

Vigilance Indispensable to Moral Safety 128

Christian Unity 131

Philosophy of Preaching 135

Law of Christian Progress 136

The Survival of Christianity 138

Paraphrase of Romans iii., 21-26 141

Thanksgiving Observance 143

Meaning of the Divinely Inspired Bible 146

Statement and Treatment of Scriptural Differences 149

The Constraining Love of Christ 152

The Later Religious Spirit 155

The Atonement 156

Unity in Congregationalism 158

End of Ten Years in the Central Church 159

Future Punishment 160

Athanasius and the Incarnation 171

The Incarnation and Sin 175

The Only Way of Escape 180

Revolutionary Demands of Socialism 182

Sacredness of the Sabbath 187

Two Forms of Criticism 191

The Jews as Conservators 194

Testimony of Learned Jews 199

Evolution an Unproved Theory 203

Harnack and Literary Criticism 206

What Must I Do to Be Saved ? 209

The Lamp of Life 212

The Attributes of God , . . . 216

What is Man? 219

Who is Jesus Christ ? 224

Why Did Christ Die ? 229

What Does the New Birth Mean ? 233

Judgment of Self 238

Christ Dwelling in the Heart 243

Last Ministerial Anniversary 249

The Spiritual Body 252

The Incarnate Christ 257

Wayside Notes on Bible Criticism 269

II Contents

Christ Triumphant 275

God's Love First 282

The Effect on the Churches of Supporting Foreign Missions 294

Part III. Page

Half Hours with Jesus 304

What Jesus had to say about His Authority as a

Teacher 304

What Jesus had to say about the Old Testament 310

What Jesus had to say about the Guidance of the

Church by Himself 316

What Jesus had to say about God 321

What Jesus had to say about the Soul of Man 326

What Jesus had to say about the Devil 331

What Jesus had to say about His own Death and

Resurrection 337

What Jesus had to say about His Authority as King. 343 What Jesus had to say about the Kingdom of God . . 350

What Jesus had to say about Children 358

What Jesus had to say about Marriage and Divorce. 364

What Jesus had to say about Nature 371

What Jesus had to say about God's Care of His

Creatures 378

What Jesus had to say about Prayer 384

What Jesus had to say about Religion 392

What Jesus had to say about the Sabbath 400

What Jesus had to say about Heaven 407

Part I

Dr. Behrends own Account of Himself as a Student for the Work of Preaching.

SOME years ago Dr. Behrends favored a representative of the Brooklyn Eagle with a talk about himself, principally as to his preparation for pulpit work, including his course of reading and his method of study ; and now, the story which he then told is reproduced; the great preacher, although his voice is silenced for ever, speaks for himself. He said :

When I began my ministry I adopted what I presume is almost the universal custom of spending the entire week in the preparation of my sermons. One I always wrote out in full and endeavored to prepare for the second without the use of the pen. I soon discovered my mistake. The well speedily became empty. I found that I must pay more attention to accumulation and less to expenditure. I began to give the best half of my week to general hard study, critical reading of the Bible, philosophy, ethics, science, history and theology. I began to find the hardest studies most helpful as giving keenness of edge to thought. Two days now suffice for the work of immediate preparation, one day for each sermon. The work is done easily and rapidly because of the increasing momentum secured by general study during three or four days of the week. It was a hard thing to do at first, but I persevered, and I have always been glad that I began so early.

For a number of years I continued to read half of my sermons and to prepare the other half without use of the pen. But my written and speaking styles were out of harmony. I found myself living a double mental life. My preaching lacked uniformity and the individuality which grows out of the use of a single method. So I abandoned both methods and adopted a third, that of preparing a careful brief, mastering its contents without special attention to the language, and then freely reproducing it in speech, and without the use of a note. This has been my habit since, and I am sure that, for me, it is the best.

The written preparation usually amounts to about two thousand words, one third of a fully written discourse. The thought is put as compactly as possible, and with special regard to clearness and precision. No elaboration, either of argument or of imagery, is attempted at the time of composition ; this is left to the subsequent review, to which an hour or an hour and a half is given immediately preceding the service, and very much is left to the friction of thought which an active and attentive audience always excites. I know the disadvantages of such a method. It prevents a man from filling up a barrel, upon the contents of which he can draw in an exigency. To preach an old sermon, prepared in this way, requires nearly as much work as the creation of a new one. Exchanges do not bring relief, and supplies lose their attraction.

I want my vacations for absolute rest, and I get it. But I have found the advantages many and great, and I am sure that, for me, it is the best. So I mean to stick to it, whatever may be the judgment of others ; and in this matter every man must be his own homilectical instructor. I have ceased to read lectures on preaching, because you might as well expect to learn how to make butter by reading treatises on churns as to learn how to preach by reading lectures on the subject.

The Books that Helped Him Most.

As to the books which had helped him most in his work, Dr. Behrends, on a subsequent occasion, spoke as follows:

In Theology I have been greatly indebted to the monographs of Dorner, Julius MuUer, Lee and Dove, and to the more general treatises by Hodge, Dwight, Van Oosterzee, Martensen, Philippi, Luthardt, Hare and Jonathan Edwards. In Biblical Interpretation I have consulted, with constantly increasing satisfaction, the works of Calvin, Meyer, Alford, Elliott, Lightfoot, Trench, Delitzsch, Godet, Murphy, Tholuck, Alexander, Olshausen, and Perowne. Neander, Glesseler, Gucricke and Schaff have been my guides in general Church history. Milman and Stanley, Samuel Hopkins, Isaac Taylor, Dollinger and Ranken have been

IS favorites of mine. D'Aubignc's histories I read with avidity. Calvin's ''Institutes," and the works of Andrew Fuller and of Robert Hall were much thumbed by me twenty years ago. I have derived much profit from Herzog's ''Real Encyclopaedia/' a perfect thesaurus of critical and theological learning. The Britannica ranks next, in my judgment, its use requiring great caution. Motley has always been one of my favorite historians. The works of Coleridge early fell into my hands, and I have always held them in high esteem.

It was during my seminary course that the sermons of F. W. Robertson fell into my hands, and produced upon me a profound impression, which still remains. Horace Bushnell I regard as one of the suggestive and stimulating writers. I have read all his books with greediness, though unable to follow him in all his conclusions. One of the earliest theological books I ever read was Bledsoe's "Theodicy.'' I was only fifteen years old, but I read it with the eagerness of a starving man, and the questions which it discusses have always enlisted my profound interest.

In Philosophy, Sir William Hamilton has been my master, whose influence upon me has been qualified by that of Calderwood, Caird, Porter, McCosh and Lotze. In Ethics, Butler, Kant and James ^lartineau have had most attraction for me. The latter, especially, has always been one of my favorite authors. The only product of Carlyle's pen that I have ever had the patience to read was his "History of Frederick the Great," and that stirred me profoundly. I always read Goethe with pleasure and profit.

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I fell upon the 'Tickwick Papers" during my college course, and Charles Dickens has always had a singular fascination for me. Later, Washington Irving had great attractions for me, though for a dozen years or more I have rarely opened his volumes. I have the liveliest remembrances of the novels by George Eliot and Georg Ebers.

In Poetry, my reading has not had a very wide range. It has been confined to Homer, Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning and Longfellow, though most of my friends would probably be surprised to learn that I had read even these. De Quincy and the elder DTsraeli were often in my hands twenty years ago. Rawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies'' were more interesting to me than any novel, and Lecky's ''History of European Morals" stirred me more deeply than any work of fiction could have done.

In the voluminous literature called forth by Strauss' and Renan's Lives of Christ, I have derived the greatest help from Hanna, Farrar, Young, Andrews, Fisher, Pressense, Westcott, and Weiss. Oberlin, Kurtz and Oehler have been of great service to me in Old Testament theology. Delitzsch I regard as the prince of Old Testament commentators, though in some respects Calvin is his superior; while, for the New Testament, the palm of superior merit belongs to Meyer, with a very high place for Alford and Ellicott. I have made no mention of Mill and Spencer in Philosophy; of Darwin and Huxley and Tyndall in Science ; of Buckle and Draper in Philosophical History; of Davidson and others in Bi))lical Criticism, because their reasoning has not carried conviction to my mind. The logic has been vicious in its unsupported assumptions. There are other departments, notably that on Political Economy, on which I have not touched, simply because the list of names would be too widely extended.

I

Tribute by the Rev. C. C. Creegan, D.D.

[August number of the Ainerican Missionary, 1900.]

Born in Holland in the home of an humble Lutheran preacher, he came to this country with his parents when five years of age. While teaching school, in his seventeenth year, near Portsmouth, Ohio, he was converted by the preaching of an obscure Methodist minister, and at once decided to fit himself for the work of the ministry. Largely by his own efforts he worked his way through Denison University, Ohio, graduating in 1862 in a class of three, all of whom became prominent clergymen. Three years later he completed his theological studies at Rochester Theological Seminary at the head of his class, and was called at once to the pastorate of a large Baptist Church in Yonkers, N. Y., where he remained eight years. He was then called to the First Baptist Church of Cleveland, Ohio, where he won great distinction as a platform orator.

It was during this pastorate, which lasted three years, that Dr. Behrends, after a great struggle, decided to resign from this strong church, where he was very popular, and enter another denomination. Six happy years were then spent in the Union Church of Providence, R. I., where he was recognized as one of the foremost preachers in the State and nation. Dr. Behrends was a great scholar. It is the beHef of those who knew him well that he was able to fill any chair in any of our theological seminaries. His services were in frequent demand for courses of lectures in our leading colleges and seminaries, and at least two of these courses have been put into book form. While his services were often sought for on great occasions, such as the annual meeting of the American Missionary Association, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and similar gatherings, his best work was done in his own pulpit. His sermons were always prepared with the greatest care, and except on rare occasions, were delivered without a note, and with wonderful beauty of diction and irresistible logic to the audiences of two thousand cultured people who hung on his words every Sabbath, and who regarded him, not without good reason, ''the greatest preacher in America."

The secret of the great success of Dr. Behrends as a preacher was not to be found in his striking personaHty, nor in his musical voice, nor in his profound scholarship, but rather in his strong faith in the Bible as the Word of God, and his only creed, and that Christ Jesus, the Divine Saviour, is to win the whole world to Himself. From this belief he never wavered, and to him the preaching of the Gospel to men, and seeing them come into the kingdom, was tlie joy of his soul.

Dr. Behrends' Religious Career.

By the Rev. Frank B. Cressey, Baptist Church, Weymouth, Mass.

\_Congregationalist^ May 31, 1900.]

Adolphus Julius Frederick Behrends was born at Nijmegen, Holland, December i8, 1839.

Dr. Behrends' life was one of exceeding difficulty, exceeding triumph. Dutch by birth, he was also by birth and childhood training a Lutheran, almost of the Roman Catholic type; so far as was possible in the United States all the influences of a State religion gathered closely about him. As a young man, his parents then living in Ohio, he read the Bible for himself, found its teachings to be seriously at variance with the religion of his home life, and promptly decided to accept the Bible. The cost of such acceptance was very great. His father's door was closed against him ; for Christ's sake he became homeless.

His study of the Bible decided him to become a Baptist; also, from the Bible he learned not only his way to Christ but his work for Christ to preach Christ. He determined to secure an education; went to Denison University, Greenville, Ohio, and ''worked his way through college," during the presidency of that skilled scholar. Dr. Samson Talbot. Then at Rochester Theological Seminary, he was a pupil of the prince of teachers and preachers, Dr. E. G. Robinson, with whom in the class-room he had many a tilt — an exercise heartily enjoyed by both.

Dr. Behrends graduated from Rochester Seminary in 1865, married an estimable Presbyterian woman of Rochester, and settled with the Warburton Avenue Baptist Church of Yonkers, N. Y., its membership including Dr. Edward Bright, editor of the New York Examiner, and from whose hands (unless serious mistake is here made) Mrs. Behrends often received the Lord's Supper before she became a Baptist. Dr. Behrends remained at Yonkers eight years, and while there preached a "Baptist'' sermon extreme enough for the most extreme Baptist. He then went to the First Baptist Church of Cleveland, Ohio, which brought him again into the State of his Lutheran boyhood, and also into immediate neighborhood relations with at least one minister whose denominational antagonisms were by no means helpful to one of Baptist thought and feeling. In scarcely more than a year after going to Cleveland he was led to preach one of the strongest of so-called "open-communion" sermons. It grieved his church, and brought on him the venomously severe criticisms of many. But his church did not ask him to resign, such prominent members as James M. Hoyt and B. F. Rouse seeming to feel that lack of agitation and lapse of time would help the pastor to come again into the Baptist faith.

Yet the criticisms continued, and after more than a year, Dr. Behrends resigned, and went immediately to the pastorate of a Congregational Church in Providence, R. I. A copy of his letter of resignation lies before me; its date is January 23, 1876. By his request it took effect eight days later. He says: "After thirteen months of varied experience, since the utterance of my views on the communion question, I find myself so radically at variance with the denominational spirit that a peaceful withdrawal from the Baptist body seems to me my only honest and honorable course." He speaks of ''unrestrained assault" upon himself, which had become ''practically unendurable and almost a wrong at the bar of his conscience," but immediately adds that he does "not impeach his brethren as guilty of conscious and designed intolerance." "I propose to indulge in no parting philippics, nor do I mean to assume a polemical attitude. I wish to withdraw quietly, and as peacefully to resume my work as a Christian minister in the next field of God's appointment. For you and for me the world is wide enough and time is too short and too precious to be wasted in needless friction."

Dr. Behrends' letter of resignation showed him to be utterly at variance with the denomination whose fellowship and honors he had so long enjoyed. That he held these divergent views intelligently and conscientiously no one of his Baptist brethren has ever doubted, however great their disappointment and sorrow at his holding them. And it is doubtless true that there was no real necessity for Dr. Behrends to leave the Baptist denomination so far as Baptists themselves were concerned. For while Baptists are intelligent and unflinching in their views of Biblical truth, there is always among them large and honorable room for brethren of quite dissimilar views. The thought still remains with many that it would have been better in many respects if Dr. Behrends, after preaching his "open-communion" sermon, had been contented quietly to continue as a Baptist. He loved his Cleveland church and his Cleveland church loved him. He went from them of his own accord; they sorrowed to have him go, and had he remained with them they would have been none the less a Baptist church than before.

In the letter of reply to the resignation, the church expressed profound surprise and regret that Dr. Behrends should then hold convictions as to Christian baptism so unlike those held by him when called to the pastorate and, in their view, "so out of harmony with the command of Christ and the just interpretation of the Scriptures and of apostolic usage." To this they add that in the severance of the pastoral relation they are "mindful of a cardinal principle of Baptist faith which concedes to all unfettered religious freedom," and assure him of their prayer that God's blessing may attend him in his labors with other denominations with whom he may be in accord, "and whom we would honor and love with unfeigned sympathy as sincere, and as entitled to freedom of conscience equally with ourselves, and as doing in their several spheres vital service for Christ." Dr. Behrends and the Baptists parted in mutual love and with mutual regret.

In a private letter written a year ago last March, he says : "I am glad to add that my old friendships have been a constant source of joy to me, very few having felt it their duty to question my sincerity. I left for the sake of peace, and because I saw that among American Baptists there were none who would stand on my ground or recognize it as tenable. I am not and would not be regarded as a representative Congregationalist in many minor matters, in which my Baptist training is manifest to all, but I am left to do my work in peace and receive the most cordial fellowship. Twenty-three years in my present church relations, sixteen of them in Brooklyn, have convinced me that I made no mistake, while I have every reason to be grateful that my early Christian life and my theological training were shaped under Baptist influences. Many of the questions which disturb New England theology to-day cause me no uneasiness, because Dr. Robinson steered me into the open sea, where these squalls do not blow."

Now that Dr. Behrends is dead, possibly an increased number will join with him and others in the thought that some qf the criticisms of a quarter of a century ago were needlessly severe. To dissent emphatically from a brother's religious views is one thing; to follow him torturingly is another thing. Also, may it not be that sometimes not sufficient allowance is made for one's former religious surroundings? A born-andbred Lutheran, like Dr. Behrends, would hardly be expected, from human point of view, to be as thorough a Baptist — whatever that may mean — as one with, perhaps, less real intelligence, who had never lived outside a Baptist family.

Dr. Behrends was a man of exceptionally great pulpit power ; he was a deep and careful thinker ; he has left a broad and deep mark as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is an honor to the Baptist ministry that he was once one of its number; he always retained a deep and abiding love for his Baptist brethren. His death is. a great loss to the religious forces of the United States.

THE CHRIST OF NINETEEN CENTURIES The Great Preacher.

[From Christian Work, May 31, 1900.]

In the death of the Rev. Dr. A. J. F. Behrends no ordinary man passes away, and no one denomination suffers less. As his sympathies and his whole religious nature struck deeper and extended higher than any denominational reactments and vaster than the area circumscribed by them, so his loss is a bereavement that falls upon the whole Church. We say this in no spirit of praise for the dead divine; — he is beyond all that, and to praise such a man, it is no mere hyperbole to say, is to gild refined gold. And here we may say, and most truly so, that Dr. Behrends was not only in the widest and most accurate sense of the term a great preacher, but he was one whose elements of greatness were perceived only by the few. Ordinarily he was known as a strong preacher, an earnest preacher, one who had evidenced his power by successfully succeeding such a remarkable man as Henry Martyn Scudder, preacher, physician, missionary, naturalist, poet, of deep sympathetic nature, high mental equipment and resourceful abilities. And although it may seem a great deal to say, it is, we believe, quite within the bounds of exact fact to assert that among the hundred thousand and more ministers in this country, in mental equipment no man could successfully assert a claim of superiority to the great man who has just passed away. From the precocious age of fifteen, when he mastered Bledsoe's Theodicy, to the close of his life, he acquired the whole gamut of the philosophies : Hamilton, Kant, Hegel, Lotze, and McCosh ;

Caird, Porter, Buller and Martineau were familiar to him, and were absorbed and mastered by him, while he reveled in Carlyle, delighted in Goethe, laughed in Dickens, and found refreshment and stimulation and rest in Homer, Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, in Lecky, Rawlinson, Sayce ; it may be said everything was grain that came into his hopper and was converted into nourishing, stimulating food.

We cannot fail to notice one remarkable phase of Dr. Behrends' character : his broad sympathetic nature. It was his wonderful development in this direction which gave him his sense of proportion By which he reversed the perspective of your narrow hyper-denominationalist. Instead of the denomination towering in the foreground, as it does with so many lesser minds, with him Christ and his Gospel were everything, while denominationalism was only the indistinguishable infinitesimal point in the distance. It was this spirit, this equipment, that carried him, in the intensity of his feeling and in the full conviction of his reason, at the late Ecumenical Council, to break out into his passionate utterances which carried his hearers by storm. Right in the midst of the movement, and at the very time when wild discussion was going on elsewhere over terminologies, and haggling was seen over creeds, Dr. Behrends, while confessing to his belief in creeds, said: "I will sign any creed that will permit me to sign all creeds. But unless you will permit me to sign all creeds, then I refuse to sign any of them." And again he declared: ''We must come back to the New Testament; our religion must centralize in personal devotion to the personal Christ. He is our Master, He alone. We must stop deifying dogma. We must stop deifying ritual." Not that our preacher would do away with creeds, but he would have them centered upon the fundamentals, not upon the tentative philosophies of religion; in other words, as he has been quoted in substance, one creed should include all creeds, and it should not be skeletonized speculation

Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,

and all finding no end, "in wandering mazes lost."

Up to the very last. Dr. Behrends gave close attention to the scientific discussions of the day, and their bearing upon religious thought. While for a time his thought inclined him to a more technical interpretation of Scripture than would seem to accord with his wide horizon line, we believe in the last few years of his life these views were modified, and with the modification came a relief from restriction, and the development of the broader view which placed his ratiocination in such complete accord with his wide sympathies as to bring him intellectual rest, while his power with men was correspondingly increased.

Taken away at sixty-one, dead in the plentitude of his powers, just as the fruit had ripened, the pastor of a church united upon him, a power in the pulpit, a comfort and stimulant in the pastorate, a strong man, a preacher of righteousness with whom scheme and "plan'' and philosophy were less than love and light and Ufe, one with whom the Gospel, and only the Gospel, made radiant the pathway to the skies, our preacher

THE CHRIST OT NINETEEN CENTURIES

passes away and leaves a lasting beneficent influence behind as he now sees the King in His Beauty in that land which for many of us is not very far off.

The Scope of Dr. Behrends' Ministry.

[From Brooklyn Eagle^ May 22, 1900.]

Dr. Behrends was a modest man, and most delicate in the performance of many of the duties incidental to his pastorate. This was particularly noticeable on the occasions of receiving members into the church for their first time, in the baptism of infants and adults alike, in the marriage ceremony, and in funeral observances. He studied the canons of good taste in every direction, sometimes even to the point of erring, in cases where the advice of over-punctilious persons prevailed. Left to his own individual judgment he was level headed, and invariably a reliable and wise counsellor. He excelled as a powerful preacher, one who dared to give utterance to his convictions after he had calmly weighed them in his study.

His last exhibition of this was given in his celebrated address at Carnegie Hall on May i. That was not a spontaneous outflow of an over-excited brain. The ground he assumed was all thought out, except as to some rhetorical effects, beforehand. His earnestness was as deliberate as it was bold and fearless. His recent sermon on ''The Incarnate Christ'' is one of the freest conceptions on this subject known in modern theology. Its statements are worked out with logical keenness and close sequence, and the doctrine of the incarnation is unfolded with a plainness of diction which commends itself at once to the commonest as well as the most cultured understanding. His pulpit deliverances were never ''over his people's heads/' but always addressed not only with the evident desire that the speaker should be comprehended, but with the manifest determination that his Master's message should be received as the dictum of Jesus Christ, and not the say-so of Dr. Behrends.