Modern thought and traditional faith

Preface

There has never been a time in the history of scholarship when Truth for Truth's sake was so earnestly pursued as now. There has never been an age when the scholar was so fully and critically equipped for the ascertainment of Truth as in the present. It is in these convictions that this book is written.

The ground reviewed in this volume is mostly historical, and the greater part of the facts as set forth have long been accepted without challenge. At the risk of appearing quite elemental, I have, in the earlier chapters, traversed a history which to scholars has long been familiar. These chapters, while not exhaustive as discussions, do, I believe, so indicate the character of the mediaeval ages, the faith, the science, the political conditions of those ages, as to make sufficiently clear the character of the background from which the modern thought -world has emerged.

Owing to mental habits which are controlling in many minds, and which have been domesticated in traditional thinking, I may not, perhaps, hope, especially in the brief section of the book devoted to the history of biblical criticism, to meet in all cases with sympathetic readers. I can only say, however, that throughout the preparation of this volume I have been infinitely far removed from a desire to disturb the faith of any for the sake simply of so doing.

There are some things, however, which seem to me reasonably certain. If it be true that any minds are viii PREFACE

resting in a traditional view, however cherished such view, which does not in itself represent the real truth, the truth for which an enlightened scholarship must stand, then it is far better that such persons should be disturbed rather than that they should remain content in error. Nothing in the last resort is of value, nothing will finally stand, save the truth. A traditional error in religious faith, however ancient its history or respectable its associations, might to-day prove an unmeasured peril to the Christian Church. The educated generation, now so surely coming to the front, is by the very processes of its training largely critical. It may be accepted with absolute certainty that the controlling mind of this generation will not rest in any faith which cannot stand the test of most critical examination. The question of criticism fundamentally is one of immeasurably greater importance than that of disturbing or failing to disturb the favored notions of an unscholarly belief. It is a question of so addressing Christian truth to the high-school and university-bred young life of the present world as to command both their intelligence and their conscience. No generation of mind has been trained in an intellectual atmosphere so fraught with the spirit of scientific research, of philosophical criticism, with a passion for accuracy of knowledge, as that which surrounds the younger life of to-day.

Disturbance of old, and often cherished, views has always been an incident of intellectual progress. It is a part of the price and of the risk which the world has to pay for all its real advances. But such disturbance would better occur a thousand times over than the persistent attempt to bind the Church to views which

PREFACE ix

the educated mind of the age has not only outgrown, but which it utterly rejects. Where one mind would make shipwreck of faith because of disturbance of inherited views, a score of more valuable minds would pass beyond all control of a Church which would refuse hospitality to what a learned age must accept as the critical and approved findings of truth.

But it is time that another side of this whole question of criticism should be clearly stated and emphasized. There is really no reason, not one, why the faith of the humblest Christian should be in the slightest sense disturbed, no reason why the ardor and devotion of the most simple worshiper should be in any measure cooled or lessened, by the legitimate findings of biblical criticism. As in all fields of research, some minds have doubtless entered viciously into the sphere of this criticism. But as a matter of fact the fruits of biblical criticism as handed over to the Church have been winnowed and gathered by devout, consecrated, and most capable Christian minds. The holy mission of this criticism has been not to destroy, but to upbuild. The summed-up purpose and results of both the textual and literary criticism of the sacred Scriptures have been to give to the world the Bible, the Bible alone, in its purest form. The Bible, in its passage to us from the early Middle Ages, has had foisted upon it many traditional errors and false interpretations. It has been the mission of criticism to free the Bible from these obscuring errors. And so it has resulted that at no time during its history has the Bible as a book been so unincumbered with human traditions, with false interpretations; at no time has it been so pure in its text, x PREFACE

so well known in its literary history and in the chronological order of its books, as at the present. Never before have its spiritual teachings shone so beautifully, and never has the historic Christ stood forth from its pages so impressively, as to-day. The Bible was never so well understood, and never has it had so free opportunity to speak forth its own unmixed and original messages, as to-day.

And all this excellence of result has been secured without the destruction, or even disturbance, of a single vital Christian truth. The Bible remains more intelligibly than ever the record of heaven-inspired messages to men. From cover to cover it is luminous with the revelation of God. The matchless portraiture of the Christ, a creation which it would be impossible for all the intellectual and artistic geniuses of the race to produce, stands forth in clearer and more unquestioned light than ever before. The critical process has not disturbed, much less marred, a single promise or privilege which the older Bible held out to the Christian worshiper. In this record there still stand in untarnished beauty the doctrines of the Fatherhood of God, of redemption and forgiveness of sin through Jesus Christ, and of the witness of the Spirit to pardoning grace and to the blessed and joyful fellowship of sonship in God's family. In this record, as richly as ever, are encouragements to prayer, assurances of helpful and sufficient grace for the Christian's battling life, grace to give patience in trial, victory over temptation, comfort in sorrow, and triumph in death. And, finally, like diamonds of the first brilliancy, set in the very crown of this revelation, there are pressed upon the vision of the saints assur-

PREFACE xi

ances of a blessed immortality and the inheritances of a heavenly hereafter.

It is high time that the modern critical study of the Bible should be relieved in popular thought from its hobgoblin reputation. The teachers, the trained and competent scholars of the Christian Church, owe this service to the common good. It is with this conviction that I, though among the least of the scholars in Judah, have felt prompted to write this book. The critical movement, while rendering the highest and most indispensable service to Christian truth, has, often through misapprehension, often through ignorant and vicious caricature, been made a stone of stumbling to the common thought. It is a high duty for men in responsible places as teachers in the Christian Church to lift this burden of popular misconception from this most beneficent work.

It seems clear that very much of popular misapprehension and consequent damage to popular faith in revelation might have been avoided if the leading scholars of evangelical denominations had made it their task to set forth clearly and calmly to the world the ascertained results of biblical critical study. Dr. William Sanday, perhaps the foremost authority in New Testament Christology in the world of English scholarship, says: "The theologians ought to carry the nation with them in each step of their own progress; they ought to warn the nation what is coming, and they ought to inform the nation as soon as it has come. It is perhaps true that we theologians have been rather backward in doing this, and that, as a consequence, some things have come to the nation in a more startling form and with a greater degree of seeming novelty than they really possessed."

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Frankly, as to my own great denomination, I can but feel that we have not as yet reached a desirable adjustment to the critical movement. That such adjustment will finally come there can, I think, be no question. The ranks of both our ministry and laity are increasingly recruited by university and specially trained minds. Men who have received their schooling and culture at the very seats of critical learning cannot remain ignorant of critical processes, and they will not always remain silent. But thus far there would, I think, be little to justify the claim, if made, that from the official leadership of this Church there has emanated very much to encourage our younger educated minds in cultivating familiarity with modern processes of biblical critical study. It must be admitted by the observant student that, so far as American Methodism is concerned, in its attitude toward the critical movement, it is clearly not abreast with that of the mother Wesleyan Church in England.

This Church, however, in view of the intellectual atmosphere in which it was born, in view of the broad intellectual tolerance of its great founder, in view of the attitude of some of its early and most famous scholars, ought to be among the very foremost of religious bodies to welcome and to encourage a reverent, yet a free, untrammeled, critical investigation in all fields of religious truth.

It is to be feared that many who join in the traditional laudation of Mr. Wesley as the great founder of Methodism fail to share with or to appreciate his own broadminded toleration. In his Journal of May 18, 1788, he makes this characteristic entry 1

PREFACE xiii

"I preached in the evening on, Now abideth faith, hope, love; these three. I subjoined a short account of Methodism, particularly insisting on the circumstances, — There is no other religious society under heaven which requires nothing of men in order to their admission into it, but a desire to save their souls. Look all around you, you cannot be admitted into the Church, or society of the Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Quakers, or any others, unless you hold the same opinions with them, and adhere to the same mode of worship. The Methodists alone do not insist on your holding this or that opinion; but they think and let think. Neither do they impose any particular mode of worship; but you may continue to worship in your former manner, be it what it may. Now, I do not know any other religious society, either ancient or modern, wherein such liberty of conscience is now allowed, or has been allowed, since the age of the apostles. Here is our glorying; and a glorying peculiar to us. What society shares it with us?"

A name held in highest veneration in Methodism is that of Adam Clarke. His Commentary on the Bible was considered in its day a great and most exceptional monument of biblical learning. It represented enormous toil and research. Now, nearly one hundred years since the last volume was written, this work still continues to have a steady sale. But it seems a fact very little known, in popular thought almost undreamed of, that long before the time when literary criticism had become a developed science Adam Clarke was a pioneer in biblical criticism. He may perhaps be justly regarded as the greatest "higher critic" that Methodism has ever produced.

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It was from the mental loins of broad, tolerant, and progressive minds like Wesley and Clarke that the intellectual life of early Methodism was generated. Surely, with such an ancestry, the scholarship of modern Methodism ought to be under no suspicion of being a laggard in critical thought, and it ought to be under no trammel in the exercise of a devout freedom in any critical pursuit of knowledge.

Personally, I can have no doubt that Methodism could enter upon no era of its history that would be more unworthy of its origin and mission, that would be more destructive of its real power, that would invite a greater revulsion against itself of the best intellect of the times, than to organize itself into an ecclesiasticism repressive of, not to say menacing to, the spirit of freest intellectual investigation on the part of its teaching faculties, its ministry, and its scholarly laity.

So far as this volume is concerned, none could be more impressed with its fragmentariness than myself. There are many themes which would properly come under its title which I have made no attempt to discuss. Such as it is, however, I am not without hope that the book may serve a useful purpose. It is written in a reverent spirit, with a desire only to serve the truth. The studies out of which it has grown have been to me a source of great illumination and inspiration. The literature traversed for its preparation is, for a large part, elsewhere indicated. In the final revision of my manuscript I am much indebted to the critical suggestions of my friend Dr. R. J. Cooke, official book editor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as also to several other scholars of eminence among us.

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The book itself has been forged out of intervals which have come as fragments of leisure in the midst of exacting duties. It has been written mostly in my home library, and in the quiet hours of the early night. In its preparation there has not been the high advantage of continuous opportunity for the task. I now commit it to the public. If I may know that it renders a helpful service to any of its readers, I shall be most happily rewarded for the toil inseparable from its preparation.

New York, February i, 191 1.

Introduction

To introduce personally to his readers the author of the following work would be, in view of his many years of varied and distinguished service in the Church of God, a wholly superfluous performance. He needs no introduction. Nevertheless, because of his widely extended reputation as pastor, preacher, and successful Church official, enjoying the love and confidence of ministry and laity, it is not superfluous to set clearly before the reader the need and purpose of the thoughtcompelling volume which this discriminating thinker puts in our hands.

On one occasion in the United States Senate, after a rambling debate, in which the main question was lost sight of, Webster suggested that as a captain after a storm which has obscured the sky for many days first endeavors to find out where he is, so the Senate should endeavor to find its latitude and longitude on the subject before it. It is just such a service which the learned author of this work before us desires to render.

It cannot be denied that criticism, science, and philosophy, all the factors which enter into what is termed Modern Thought, have created much confusion in the minds of many earnest and sincere believers and thinkers inside and outside the Church. They hardly know where they are. In order that the whole situation may be clearly apprehended it is necessary that they should see the past and the present, the wide difference which separates them; the character, purpose, and results of

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modern scholarship, and the effect of the whole movement on evangelical faith and the progress of the kingdom of God among men.

To perform this service adequately is a large undertaking. Three essentials are necessary to such a performance: accurate knowledge, a judicial mind, and a vital experience of the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ. The revelation of God presents itself to every age, as it does to the individual, according to the capacity of that age to receive it, and every age, therefore, perceives the truth from a different angle. He is really no scholar at all, no matter what his technical knowledge may be, who thinks wisdom was born in the nineteenth century; who has not gathered up into his own thought the thinking of other ages, for not in vain have earnest thinkers through the centuries served in the temple of the Lord and inquired of him there. How essential it is that between conflicting results of critical investigation one should possess an unbiased mind, free as possible from the distorting influences of personal equation, will appeal at once to our highest reason. And yet, after all, it is, as Neander long since said, the heart that makes the theologian. It is essential that the scholar should be thoroughly grounded in criticism, science, and philosophy, and that he should maintain an intellectual hospitality to new data from every source, but above all it is absolutely essential that he should know Christ in the inner man, that he should know that he has passed from darkness to light through the power of Him who is the culmination of the progressive infallible revelation of God, for as a man thinketh in his heart so is he and of like character will be the product

INTRODUCTION xix

of his thought. That the author of this volume possesses these requirements will be conceded, and how successfully he has accomplished his task the following weighty pages abundantly testify. His comprehensive resume* of the intellectual status of the dark periods in the history of civilization, reminding us of the brilliant generalizations of Buckle, his clear apprehension of the needs of the present, his unwavering faith in and strong defense of the fundamental truths of the Christian revelation in spite of all that negative criticism may have to say against them, the inspiration of the Bible, the essential divinity of the Lord Jesus, his atonement for the race, miracles, the necessity of the new birth, and in the ultimate victory of the truth of God manifested in redeemed humanity through the power of a living Christ over all forms of sin and error, will commend the work to thoughtful readers who wish to know their bearings and to those who desire to see from the standpoint of a competent scholar to what extent the doctrines dear to the life of every believer are affected by the results of biblical criticism.

In thus recommending the work we do not, of course, indorse as the teachings of the Church every statement of the author, nor commit ourselves to all of his conclusions, especially those relating to the Old Testament. Dr. Mains speaks for himself, and modestly disclaims any intention of speaking for the Church or for any institution. He simply reports the findings of eminent Christian scholars and pleads for tolerance of their views till they are found to be erroneous. With the methods of biblical criticism we may heartily agree, but it does not follow that we must therefore blindly xx INTRODUCTION

accept all the supposed results. Certainly we shall not take away infallibility from the Bible and bestow it upon the critics. The history of biblical criticism only too clearly teaches that assured results often change, and it is no reproach to any Church that it does not revise its creed every time a biblical critic changes his opinion. But it is also true that no Christian teacher should dread either the methods or the results of genuine criticism. Biblical criticism is not the enemy, but the friend, of truth. It sifts the essential from the nonessential. The Word of God standeth sure. Dry leaves and withered twigs may be driven by the wind, but the trees of the Lord which are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted, these will remain.

It only remains to be said that evangelical scholarship, for which this book stands, has no sympathy or alliance with so-called Modernism, or with the program of Modernism. Starting from textual criticism and using the religious-historical method, Modernism may be used, on the theory of doctrinal development as first propounded by Newman, to account for and justify the doctrinal aberrations of the Roman Church, but it is utterly destructive of evangelical faith. Biblical criticism in the hands of evangelical scholars has no more affinity with Abbe* Loisy's The Gospel in the Church than it has with the theories of the old Tubingen rationalists; with Tyrrell's Christianity at the Cross Roads than it has with Schmeidel's Ultra-radicalism, or Harnack's Essence of Christianity, which is not Christianity at all but an amorphous incoherency between Unitarianism and Reformed Judaism.

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With the author, we can only hope that this work, reverent in spirit, beautiful in simplicity of style, exact in statement of thought, and pervaded all through with the aroma of a living faith in the power of God's inspired Word, may be of the largest possible service.

R. J. Cooke.

Alas! the lofty city! and alas!

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day

The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away !

Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,

And Livy's pictured page! but these shall be

Her resurrection ; all beside — decay.

Alas for Earth, for never shall we see

That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free.

— Byron.

Nine hundred years after the fall of the Western Empire, in the reign of Pope Martin the Fifth, two of his learned servants, Poggius and a friend, viewing the ancient ruins from the Capitoline Hill, thus moralized: "The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman Empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and tributes of so many nations. This spectacle of the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill. Cast your eyes on the Palatine Hill, and seek among the shapeless and enormous fragments the marble theater, the obelisks, the colossal statues, the porticoes of Nero's palace; survey the other hills of the city, the vacant space is interrupted only by ruins and gardens. The forum of the Roman people, where they assembled to enact their laws and elect their magistrates, is now inclosed for the cultivation of potherbs, or thrown open for the reception of swine and buffaloes. The public and private edifices, that were founded for eternity, lie prostrate, naked, and broken, like the limbs of a mighty giant; and the ruin is the more visible, from the stupendous relics that have survived the injuries of time and fortune." — Gibbon.

History records no such triumph of intellect over brute-force as that which, in an age of turmoil and battle, was wrested from the fierce warriors of the time by priests who had no material force at their command, and whose power was based alone on the souls and consciences of men. Over soul and conscience their empire was complete. No Christian could hope for salvation who was not in all things an obedient son of the Church, and who was not ready to take up arms in its defense; and, in a time when faith was a determining factor of conduct, this belief created a spiritual despotism which placed all things within reach of him who could wield it. — Lea, History of the Inquisition,

Chapter I The Middle Ages

The term "Modern Thought" implies a distinctive age or era in which the contents of this term must have had their development. It is of interest to inquire what kind of an age it was which preceded that to which we ascribe the birth of modern thought. It has long been the custom of the historian to divide the later centuries into what he is pleased to name the " mediae val" and " modern' ' periods. The boundaries which mark these periods may not always be easily defined, but they as certainly exist as do the bounds between night and morning.

At some time in the fifth of the Christian centuries there culminated one of the most pregnant events in human history — the fall and dissolution of the Roman empire. This empire, the most potent ever erected by human skill; which had annexed to its scepter the territories of the Western World, extending from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, and from the far North to the Desert of Sahara; an empire whose capital on the Tiber was known as the "Eternal City," which was itself immensely enriched and beautified by spoils of war gathered from all climes, and from whose throne and senate were issued the resistless decrees which governed the world; an empire whose statesmanship evidenced supreme genius for law and order, and whose brain gave birth to systems of jurisprudence which have taken a secure place in the codes of all subsequent civilizations; an empire whose armies were garrisoned in all cities and whose fleets covered the seas; an empire in which architecture and art, poetry, philosophy, and oratory so flourished as to secure for it for all time to come an imperishable and resplendent renown as the creator and promoter of highest intellectual values — this- -empirer~so vast, so mighty, so laboriously built and buttressed by the warrior, the statesman, and the jurist, fell at last under the stroke of barbarian hordes which had swarmed from the wildernesses of the North; went as helplessly as a disabled ship to its ruin or as might a frail framework built upon the sands before the smiting wrath of an ocean tempest.

The fall of Rome, and that for which it stood, was nothing less than a world-tragedy. Whatever might ultimately ensue, the whole of Western civilization was for the present, and for centuries to come, as by a fatal decree of Providence, smitten into the dust. The central, the organizing and directing seat of the world's government had perished, and there was no power to take its place. The Church had learned largely the secret of Roman authority, and, while the territory of Europe was to be divided into petty and rival kingdoms, and was to fall universally under the vassalage of feudalism, she was the only successor of Rome as asserting and securing for herself a central throne of authority and of spiritual and intellectual sovereignty over the people. In this function the Church was to render in those turbulent ages, and for all the future, a service of unmeasured beneficence.

Had it not been for the authority and the moral inspirations of the Church in this period, it is difficult, impossible, to imagine what might have been the fate of Europe, and, indeed, of mankind. The Church, as we too well know, was widely far from ideal. It was itself so paganized, so mercenary, so corrupt, that with its strongest hold upon Europe it was not able to rescue the centuries which were to follow from passing into history as the "Dark Ages." The Church, even though she furnished the central bond of authority and the chief moral shepherding of the people, was to give to Europe a control which was more barbaric than civilized, more pagan than Christian.

The Church reared its enormous power over the people on the basis of a well-nigh universal credulity which unquestioningly accepted its teachings, its authority, and its penalties as of divine sanction. Its supreme domination in civil affairs was a matter of slow growth. In its far-reaching organization and unity it had great advantage. On the side of the state, Europe was broken up into small principalities between which there inhered little of unity and much of rivalry. Diplomatically the papal chair for the strengthening of its own position often formed alliances with the more powerful of the secular rulers, and not infrequently such alliances resulted in the subordination of the pope to temporal authority. In the ninth century Charles the Great placed one pope on trial, and in the tenth century Otho the Great deposed two popes, and in their stead placed his own candidates upon the papal throne. The struggle for supremacy between pope and temporal ruler went on with varying fortunes until 1073, when Hildebrand, as Gregory VII, was consecrated pope. He was the dominant man of the age. His ideal was that the Church should be absolutely free from subjection to secular power. The pope as the successor of Saint Peter was God's first representative on earth, and as such should be absolute sovereign of the Church and the supreme temporal ruler of the world. To the support of this ideal he brought great genius and strength. He introduced drastic reforms against simony and the marriage of the clergy. He forced rulers far and near to swear to him their supreme allegiance. He was the first pope to depose a king. He not only formally deposed Henry IV, the powerful king of Germany, but as a condition of restitution to his throne, compelled him to submit to the most humiliating stipulations. The king, divested of every mark of royalty, garbed in the sackcloth of a penitent, and barefooted, stood in midwinter in the outer court of the castle of Canossa, and thus made formal submission.

Henry's penitence, however, was more diplomatic than real. While in the very guise of submission, he was in his heart plotting vengeance. Through civil war in Germany he was soon able to repossess himself of his throne. Later, he laid siege to Rome, which ended in his receiving the imperial crown. Gregory VII fled from the city, only shortly after to die in exile. He was, nevertheless, one of the supreme minds of the Middle Ages. Endowed with indomitable will, with untiring energy, imperious in temper, fearless in emergency, magnetic in influence, instinctively a leader, he was really the creator of that political Papacy which was afterward to rule the world.