Progress in Christian culture

Front matter

Class _i

(bjpgitt'N .

CDFURIGHT DEPOStT

Table Of Contents

CHAP. PAGE

1. BY SELF-EXAMINATION AND CORRECTION 9

2. BY BIBLE STUDY 24

Chapter One PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: BY SELF-EXAMINATION AND CORRECTION

Every human life, no matter what its state, is visited by frequent convictions that it is neither as strong nor as noble as it ought to be and that wholesome corrections are in order. The frequency and force of these convictions will depend somewhat upon age and condition; they may be entertained or instantly rejected, but they come, making their own silent appeal for better things.

Life is rarely one gradual rise from infancy to age. It is rather a succession of ascents, often rapid for an hour or a day ; then comes a long, level roadway along which no elevation can be discovered. Ascents usually follow times of careful self-examination. "For a man to know his faults and errors," says one, "is the first step toward what is better and nobler." As the sight of sickness and disease always moves us to seek health, so the consciousness of personal weakness or sin drives us toward strength and righteousness.

Self-examination often fails of beneficial results because the examiner is sure to be more generous with himself than anybody else would be. His judgment is warped by his desires. He is wont to allow himself indulgences which he would deny others. Mohammed contended that, because of the arduous labors he was asked to perform, Allah allowed him many special indulgences and multiplied his powers of enjoyment. The result of this selffavoring is seen in the sensuous and material pleasures promised the faithful in the Moslem paradise.

It is so easy to persuade oneself that hereditary encumbrances or enforced relations in society entitle him to more than the average mortal receives of what we are wont to call "the good things of this world." A western banker — on trial for appropriating a surplus to his own use, when by law it belonged to a body of stockholders — said he believed himself entitled to the money inasmuch as he had built up the business. Many a man, looking at his own life, has a similar feeling. He asks all other men to be scrupulously honest, commendably pure, humble and self-effacing, self-denying and filled with brotherly kindness, but because he has built up his own fortune, and because of his peculiar circumstances, he believes he is entitled to shade these requirements noticeably in his own case. Deep down in his heart he knows this is little and mean and he feels ashamed, but he keeps a bold front and will defend his selfish indulgences with loud voice and the air of one who is being unjustly persecuted by the world.

To be of any value self-examination must be carried on in a spirit of absolute candor. So far as possible the personal equation, and particularly the selfish equation, must be eliminated. While we should not be unjust, we should be as exacting of ourselves as we would be of another. We should be the cross-examiner for the prosecution and not the favoring lawyer for the defense. If we are Christians we should follow the admonition of the great poet and do the work, "As ever under our great Taskmaster's eye."

And now, if we are ready to proceed, what shall the examination cover? For purposes of clearness and convenience we may divide the work into two or three parts, considering first the question of our conduct. By universal agreement we understand this to cover "our mode of performing our ordinary life duties ; the character of our relationship with others ; the wise use of our opportunities for serving others; the proper occupation of our leisure hours; the worthy meeting of our life responsibilities."

Let us imagine a man who has been allowing his life to drift with the social current of his day. He has been easy and generous with himself, inwardly

ii contending, although never openly stating, that he believes he is entitled to the best things he can procure. He works hard and so argues that he has a right to exact a good deal of others. The graces of life he has neglected to cultivate, and he is magnanimous for revenue only. He makes an occasional sacrifice, but only when it is sure to be witnessed by a large and sympathetic audience.

Naturally he is not oversensitive about his personal conduct, and — while he lauds purity and personal virtue as necessary for the safeguarding of our moral and ethical standards — he does not allow this to stand in the way of his own selfish desires. Such a man is usually -successful in business and therefore has money in sufficient quantities to supply all his wants. His standing in the community is very good. True, the prudish reformers look with horror on some of his selfish indulgences, but that is their fault and not his. He has never committed murder and he has committed theft only in harmony with the most approved twentieth century practices. He is a healthy, free-and-easy, self -gratifying, Godneglecting sort of individual, such as can be found in large numbers in every city.

If such a man ever begins to examine himself on his own initiative he usually begins to compare his life with that of other men whom he knows. How vastly superior he is ! Like the Pharisee in the temple, he thanks God that he is not as other men, extortioners, blackmailers, adulterers. He pays his bills regularly, never fails to vote as his party managers dictate and talks much of patriotism. While he does not follow the outgrown custom of fasting twice in the week or paying tithes of all he possesses, he is careful about what he eats lest he suffer from ptomaine poisoning, and he does not gormandize for fear of the gout! Altogether he is a most commendable fellow whom God should be very glad and proud to have among his creatures in this runaway world !

The first mistake this man makes is clear : he has compared his conduct with that of other men, and they not the best that could be found, instead of with the great Example whom God sent as the standard for all lives. Any standard lower than the life of Jesus is sure to be faulty and lead us into error. He is the only model the sculptor of life dares to follow. Follow his faith, his conduct, his spirit of helpfulness and sacrifice, and your life will be as God wants it to be ; follow those of other men and it is sure to fail.

But the second mistake this man makes is quite as bad : it is the spirit in which his self-examination, or rather his comparison of self with other men, is made. He has been a biased witness; he started out to acquit himself and he gloriously succeeded. When the prodigal son came to himself in the far country it was to cry out, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight: I am no more worthy to be called thy son." It was the great, generous-hearted father who acquitted him.

When David was driven to self-examination he began :

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness :

According to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity,

And cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions;

And my sin is ever before me. . . .

Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean :

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

And at another time, equally moved, he cried out :

O Jehovah, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, And art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, But, lo, O Jehovah, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, And laid thy hand upon me. . . .

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me,

And thy right hand shall hold me. . . . Search me, O God, and know my heart : Try me, and know my thoughts ; And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.

This action on .the part of David is full of suggestion for every one of us; open up your life frankly before God and let him do the examining. There will be no mistake made. While he will condemn all that is bad he will rejoice in all that is good and you will at least feel that you are on good terms with him, as a child after chastisement is happy to be again on good terms with an earthly parent.

Most of us will need also to examine ourselves at the point of our faith. This is the power by which we take hold on God. Spiritual things will not all submit to the processes of reason; the great things of the soul, — life, death, immortality, — cannot be worked through and understood like a mathematical problem. Many men are making their greatest mistake right at this point. They are insisting that before they accept Christ and become Christians they be made to understand everything connected with it. They refuse to allow their children to enter the church because, they say, they do not understand all that is involved.

The answer can only be: Nobody understands everything about God, about Christ, about the Christian life. They all transcend human understanding; but that is not to say that they are not exactly as presented in the Bible and as revealed in the experiences of Christians of all ages. These great facts of the spiritual world we must accept by faith. God has never yet failed a soul that freely accepted him and he never will, for his nature does not change. Instead of insisting upon a complete physical or mental demonstration of the existence o£ God and the deity of Jesus Christ we should occupy the position of the poet who so confidently sang:

I do not ask to see the way

My feet will have to tread; But only that my soul may feed

Upon the living- bread. 'Tis better far that I should walk

By faith close to his side, — I may not know the way to go,

But, oh, I know my Guide.

And also of that early singer who cried so exultantly :

O gift of gifts ! O grace of faith !

My God, how c'an it be That thou, who hast discerning love,

Shouldst give that gift to me?

How can they live, how will they die,

How bear the cross of grief, Who have not yet the light of faith,

The courage of belief?

The crowd of cares, the weightiest cross,

Seem trifles less than light; Earth looks so little and so low

When faith shines full and bright.

O happy, happy that I am !

If thou canst be, O faith, The treasure that thou art in life,

What wilt thou be in death?

There is only one way to leap the chasm of mystery between man and God, between temporary physical life and eternal spiritual life. That is by faith. Believe the Bible. Believe what it says about the plan of salvation, about immortality. You want these things to be so; the Bible says they are so; all human experience points toward their verification. Then kill all doubt by openly and frankly accepting them and believing them.

But the vital thing in our religion is our personal relationship to Jesus Christ. At this point we may well examine ourselves as Paul challenged the Corinthians to do. If we demand fine things in others do we have them in our own life? If we demand that others have Christ in their lives can we prove that we have him in ours?

An enlightening story is told of a young man from the middle west who entered a great eastern university. His preparation had been exceptional. Entrance examinations were taken with ease and the word went around that here was the best pre- . 17 pared freshman that ever entered the university. Added to this, the youth was a devout Christian. He was handsome and well mannered and at once began to attract unusual attention.

It is hardly to be wondered that such a man would stir up some envy and jealousy. Professors openly commended him; the pastor of the church he attended referred to him as the most promising man he had ever met. His triumph seemed assured when to his amazement erstwhile friends began to look askance at him and some to treat him with unmistakable coldness. Clearly there was a change of attitude in his associates for which he could find no explanation.

At the time this remarkable youth entered the university another young man from the same town matriculated. He was the son of a rich and overfond parents who had done everything for their boy except give him enough attention to raise him right. He was small-souled and dull-witted and immediately began to have trouble in making his grades. He saw the humble youth from his own town sail past him as a cup-winning yacht passes a mud scow, and his small soul was enraged. So he began to insinuate : "If I should tell all I know, my fine young man would not hold his head so high. I could make his boasted Christianity hang its head in shame. If these professors and church people knew what I know they would withhold their flatteries and guard their daughters." When particulars were demanded he wagged his head and said he thought he had better say no more. Seeing at last that his vague insinuations were falling harmless, he came out openly and charged the brilliant youth with the ruin of a simple-minded orphan girl who had subsequently died of humiliation and a broken heart.

At last the strange and groundless tale reached the ears of the brilliant freshman. It was like a blow from a woodman's ax. Stunned at first beyond speech, he did not even deny the accusation, but started in the early evening to the room of his townsman to ask him quietly what he meant by it all. When the lying youth opened his door and saw the man he had wronged standing there in all the majesty of his unspoiled manhood, he cried out, "My God, Stimson, don't kill me!" and started to rush past him and escape. "No," said the honest youth, "stay here. I want to have a talk with you." Frightened beyond self-control the weakling turned into his room, rushed through an open French window and leaped two stories to the ground below. He fell among shrubbery which scratched and tore his tender skin and, striking the ground head first, suffered a broken arm and shoulder blade.

When he regained consciousness Stimson was standing over him. "What in the world did you do this for, Johnnie? I did not come to harm you. While I have noticed a change in the attitude of all around me, I was unwilling to believe you were telling the story they say you were telling and came to find out from your own lips. Come, let me carry you to the hospital. We must have these injuries dressed." "No," said the suffering youth, "call a doctor and start me for home. When you tell what you know about me, I had better be dead than be here. I have said you were guilty of the crime I committed back home two years ago."

"But, Johnnie," said the Christian, "I do not intend to tell what I know either here or back home. Why should I blast your life? I think you have suffered enough already at the court of your own conscience. I am ready to nurse you back to health and keep my lips closed."

As the stricken youth came slowly back to normal strength in the university hospital he had time to think much and long. Calling a classmate to his cot one day he said : "George, tell the boys for me that what I said about Stimson is not true. He is a man from the sole of his foot to his crown and he is the best Christian I ever knew. He beats the good Samaritan, for he not only saves a man's body, but he saves his soul also. He is an incarnation of Christianity."

Would your Christianity reveal itself similarly in a crisis time? The phrase of Dr. Grenfell is significant : "When you start out to commend your gospel you are not simply to announce it as a good thing, or to urge others to adopt it that they may be more agreeable to you, but to commend it to them by what it has obviously done for you." Are you proving to the world that you have Christ in your life by what you do as well as by what you say? Are men drawn to Christ by what they see he has done for you?

When the self -examining here proposed is finished, are you going to stop there? If you do, all your hard and unwelcome work has been for naught. Self-examination lends itself to progress only when you immediately act upon what you discover about your life. If your conduct is not up to Christian standards, bring it up. Do not wait for outside forces to work the change. Do the good work yourself. If your faith in God and his providence is weak ; if it does not support you in time of crisis and make all life beautiful and your hope for the future radiant, go back to your Bible and to the lives of the saints. Read what the Book says and note how the saints lived. Test God at the point of his promises and see that he never fails. Dwell with him in communion; work for him in meeting the needs of his earthly children. Leave transcendentalism and German philosophy alone. They are as empty as the rain barrel in midsummer and as lifeless. Spend much time with God and do much work for men, and your faith will grow as a garden in springtime and its fruits will be as rich and nourishing.

If you find your hold on Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world is weak and unfruitful, go back to his life on earth and study it deeply. In his marvelous little book recently reprinted, Peter Bayne says Jesus Christ is the best witness for Christianity. You cannot know him intimately and still reject him. He is rejected only by those who do not know him or by those whose knowledge of him is superficial. Those best qualified to speak join eagerly with Paul when he says, "Christ in you, the hope of glory."

Get more and more of Christ's fine spirit into your life. Study the prophecies concerning his coming; study his life and his matchless teachings : study his influence on society for nineteen hundred years ; compare Christian nations with non-Christian nations and account for their superiority ; be honest in the acceptance of obvious conclusions and then determine that, since Christ is what he is, since he has done what he has for individuals and nations, you will stop quibbling and doubting and accept him openly as your Saviour.

Do not allow a few unanswerable questions or the fatuous harangues of a few blatant infidels to rob you of your Lord. Accept Abraham Lincoln's advice to Joshua Speed about the Bible, 'Take all of this Book that you can on reason and the rest on faith and you will live and die a better man." Determine that your religion is going to mean something to you and every life you can influence; plunge into the work of the church, saying that, while you feel your weakness and inability, you are willing to try, being determined to do what you can for the uplift of men and the advancement of the kingdom of God while your powers are fresh and keen, and all your life will become beautiful and yourself a growing factor in Christ's conquest of the world.

Chapter Two PROGRESS IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE: BY BIBLE STUDY

The ambition to go higher which our Creator has planted in every man moves him to search on every hand for forces that uplift. One is not enough. He has discovered that there are many. Night and day he plies hand and heart and brain that he may possess again the godlike qualities of knowledge, righteousness and true holiness which he had in such large measure on the day of his creation.

Every instructed mind is sure that among the forces that make for higher righteousness none is so powerful as genuine Christianity and that, to be a right Christian, he must be possessed of the marvelous contents of the Word of God; its supreme revelations; its examples of lofty righteousness; its stern calls to duty; its sublime utterances of faith and worship ; its matchless story of the Saviour and his appeal to men to walk in his footsteps. No man, possessed of all this wealth of divine truth, can withstand its upward pull.

And all this is by no means to deny that other literature has a high cultural value. The moral teachings of Socrates and the lofty life philosophy of Plato have done much for the uplift of the race. Pagan literatures from all nations yield many gems of great moral value, but it is far from heartening to observe that where a people have had nothing but these they have declined rather than advanced in higher culture. One can hardly go into ecstasies over the literature of Buddhism and Confucianism when the result of them is modern India and modern China.

James Freeman Clarke in his "Ten Great Religions" tells of an enthusiast over pagan sacred writings who said that while he kept all of these non-Christian writings on one side of his desk he kept the Bible on the other side, and that for solid value and cultural power the Bible far outweighs them all.

In harmony with this is the statement by a now lamented Bible scholar 1 before the Ecumenical Council a few years ago :

The Christian apologist may fearlessly invite the comparison which is being already so widely made between the Bible and other sacred books. He need not fear it. The Bible does evidence itself as such a revelation as God might make, while the sacred books of other religions run off into metaphysical abstractions or grotesque puerilities or mere ethics. We need to press the comparison, only being careful that the whole Bible with its progressive and unified system of

1 George T. Purves, D.D.

truth is put into the hands of the pagan world. Testimony is abundant that there is no better defense of Christianity than the Bible itself.

Discussing the question of the elevation and Christianization of the Mohammedans, Rev. C. T. Wilson, a missionary from Palestine, said at the same conference: "First of all, we should press the circulation of God's Word, especially in the sacred Arabic tongue. The rapid growth of education in the East is enabling many people to read it for themselves, while the efforts of the Turks to stop its circulation have been overruled to facilitate it."

Missionaries in every quarter of the world are telling us constantly of natives who come to them from distant parts of the countries in which they are working already converted and asking for Christian baptism. On inquiry it is found that in some way the converted ones came into possession of a leaf or a portion of the Bible. The marvelous story, read in their own tongue, has laid hold upon their hearts and the Holy Spirit has led them to the Saviour.

But we are hearing of cases where the Bible and other Christian literature is affecting the life of whole nations — and these the nations one would least expect. Rev. George Owen, a missionary to China, told a wonderful story a few years ago which I give very largely in his own words :

What I have to tell you I can tell you at first hand from my own experience and observation. The year 1898 will, I think, be one of the most memorable in the long history of China. A great reform party arose, with the Emperor at its head, and took in hand the reconstruction of China after foreign models and under Christian influences. Among the leaders of that movement were some of China's most brilliant scholars and a few of her ablest and highest officials. The bulk of the party consisted of the young literary men, officials, merchants and gentry. Young China rallied to the cry of reform. Early in January, 1898, we were startled in Peking by the report that the Emperor had sent to the American Bible and Tract Depot and ordered a copy of the Bible and a copy of every tract and book that the depot could supply him for his own reading. These books were passed into the palace, and early and late you might have seen the Emperor of China, the master of four hundred millions of men, bending eagerly over those books and absorbing their contents. The report that the Emperor had become a student of Christian literature soon spread through Peking, and from Peking was carried to every part of the empire. The news gave great joy to all Christian workers, and from all parts of China wherever there was a Christian man or woman there went up an earnest prayer on behalf of the Emperor that, as he pored over the sacred page, or read some of the books explaining it, light from God should shine upon it. As we prayed an answer in part fell, for at the end of January an edict was issued sanctioning the establishment of a great national university in Peking based on foreign models and equipped with a staff of foreign professors. Many edicts followed, all breathing a liberal spirit and creating an atmosphere new in China. Among those edicts was one in which the Emperor lamented the frequency of attacks on Christian missions, and the officials were instructed to see that those attacks cease, and, moreover, to see that his Christian subjects should not suffer for their faith in Christ. Some of the leading reformers would fain have gone further, giving full toleration to Christianity on a level with Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism ; and some of the stalwarts went so far as to urge the adoption of Christianity as the national religion.

This reform movement, and the example of the Emperor, was widely followed among the literary men, and there sprang up a demand for Christian literature. Men were eager to get books on the religion, the history, the science, the politics and the institutions of the West. There arose a new cry out there, "Light, more light!"

Many will remember that the Empress Dowager, encouraged by conservative supporters, soon rose up against these reforms, but it was the folly of Chanute, who would stay the incoming tides of the sea. By a strange coincidence she and the Emperor whom she had so completely dominated died within a few hours of each other and the longbound empire passed into younger and more progressive hands.

Now the monarchy is overthrown and the most conservative of nations begins her career as a republic. She will not have an easy time. Enemies within and without will continue to make trouble, but as Greater China gathers strength from her growing knowledge of God's Word her power will increase until, before the present century is past, the "Sleeping Giant" will be well to the fore among the leading nations of the world.

Without doubt the most notable instance of national transformation and regeneration by the power of the Bible the world has thus far seen was that of England. Liberated from the close guardianship of Rome and the restraining bars of the Latin tongue by its translation into the vernacular by Wycliffe in the closing years of the fourteenth century, the Bible began to undermine the faith of the people in the cardinal doctrines of the Catholic faith : transubstantiation, the mass, the confession, indulgences, absolutions, pilgrimages to the shrines of saints, worship of their images, worship of the saints themselves. These doctrines were successively attacked by Wycliffe and his followers and repudiated by thousands.

"A formal appeal to the Bible as the ground of faith," says the historian Green, "coupled with an assertion of the right of every instructed man to examine the Bible for himself, threatened the very groundwork of the older dogmatism with ruin."

But the power of church and state, both opposed to the individual liberty fostered by the Bible, soon suppressed the Wycliffe heresies and for nearly a century and a half they lay smoldering in the hearts of a rebellious people. Early in the sixteenth century the work of Luther began to shake again the foundations of Rome. Then William Tyndale arose and put the New Testament into the hands of the common people. "He perceived," says the historian, "how impossible it was to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scriptures were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue." "If God spares my life," he said to a learned controversialist, "ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth a plow shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost." So great was the hostility of Rome to the young scholar's plans that, — from 1524 to 1526, when his efforts were crowned with success, — Tyndale passed through "poverty, exile, bitter absence from friends, hunger and thirst and cold, great dangers and innumerable other hard and sharp fightings."