Ruling ideas of the present age

Front matter

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Preface

By the will of the Hon. Richard Fletcher, a fund was committed to the trustees of Dartmouth College, the income of which was to be expended in obtaining and publishing, once in two years, a prize essay whose purpose it should be to impress on the minds of all Christians '' a solemn sense of their duty to exhibit in their godly lives and conversation the heneficent effects of the religion they profess^ and thus increase the efficiency of Christianity in Christian countries^ and recommend its acceptance to the heathen nations of the world.''^

In accordance with this provision the trustees asked for essays, in the year 1894, upon the question : " In what ways ought the conception of personal life and duty to he modified? " The essay which follows is the one to which the prize was awarded.

IV PBEFACE.

The title given to the volume was suggested, as most readers will know, by Canon Mozley's " Kuling Ideas in Early Ages." Not only is it needful to interpret the thought of past ages to the men of the present day, it seems also necessary to interpret the present to itself. The regulative truths which are working themselves out in the experience of every generation are often but imperfectly articulate, and it is a good service if one can help his neighbors to discern the meaning of the intellectual and ethical movements that are going on around them. This essay is a humble attempt at such an interpretation. It is not assumed that all the ruling ideas of the present age are here defined ; but it is hoped that some of the more important among them have been pointed out.

W. G.

First Congregational Church, Columbus, O., October 4, 1895.

Contents

PAGE

I. Change your Minds 1

n. The Doctrine of Fatherhood .... 17

I. Change Your Minds

The first words of that Porerunner who came preaching in the wilderness of Judea were these : " Change your minds, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The coming of that kingdom is always a call to men to change their minds. A new conception of life and duty is the condition of entrance

into the kingdom. We must be transit

formed before we can be naturalized ; but we are transformed by the renewing of our minds, by getting new ideas of life and duty. The feelings, the choices, the habits, are also changed, but the foundation of it all is a new conception of the meaning of life.

The kingdom of heaven came, in the days of John the Baptist, only to those who changed their minds, and adopted its ruling principles as the law of their life. Just as fast and as far as the fundamental ideas of that kingdom were appropriated by men were its boundaries widened and its empire confirmed. The seat of this government is in candid minds and consenting wills. " The kingdom of God is within you."

This kingdom was coming while John was preaching in the wilderness, and while Jesus was speaking on the Mount of the Beatitudes, And ever since then the disciples of Christ have been offering the prayer, " Thy kingdom come." The prayer is answered, century by century and day by day. The kingdom does come. It continues to come, in stronger force, with wider sway, as the years go on. But how? Only as men change their minds, and give it freer entrance to their lives and larger authority over them.

The men who heard John speak changed their minds about some things, and the kingdom of heaven came, in some partial measure, to them. They changed their minds about the sufficiency of the Jewish ritual. They saw that the formalities of the ceremonial worship were not enough ; that they must do works meet for repentance. Religion, they had come to apprehend, was not a matter of form, but a matter of conduct. When this change in their habitual thinking had taken place, the kingdom of heaven had come to them with a measure of power ; it had occupied a large area of their thought.

But there were wide spaces yet unsubdued to the obedience of the perfect law of liberty. The kingdom of heaven comes into every man's life very much as Israel came to Canaan : it enters in and intrenches itself. But there is still much land to be occupied ; there are hostile tribes in many strongholds ; there must be a great deal of active campaigning before the whole territory is subdued. The kingdom has come, but its sway must be confirmed and extended. It has not yet fully come. The prayer that our Lord taught us never loses its meaning. And therefore those disciples of John needed every day to hear the same injunction, — " Change your minds, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." "You have gained some new conceptions of life and duty," — we can imagine the Baptist saying to them, — "by means of which the kingdom has drawn near to you, and taken possession of some portion of your life; but there are many other changes which will need to be made from time to time, in your habitual thinking, in order that the kingdom may be more fully established in your life. You will need to change your minds about the King himself, to whom I have borne witness ; for your first thought of his kingdom will be altogether inadequate. When you get rid of your crude ideas about him, and perceive that the Messiah is not to be a temporal king, then the kingdom of God will have come nearer to you. Thus, year

CHANGE YOUE MINDS. 1

by year, you will be changing your minds ; old thoughts about God and his Son and his Church and his Word will be passing away ; new views, new meanings, new interpretations, will displace the old ; you will constantly be renewed in the spirit of your minds. And thus, with these larger and more perfect conceptions of the truth as it is in Jesus, the kingdom of God will come to you with ever-increasing power ; you will be able to apprehend wdth all saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ, that you may be filled with the fullness of God."

All through those early days, the disciples were constantly getting new ideas, — revising their theories about Christ and his kingdom, throwing overboard their old notions and taking in a new stock of working theories. On that night, after the crucifixion, when the eleven, and those that were with them, heartsick and despairing, saw Jesus standing in the midst of them, and heard him saying, " Peace be unto you ! "

I a new conception entered into their minds, — - a conception which revolutionized their lives. Another such new idea came with a shock on the day of Pentecost ; another, in a different way, but no less effective, when the first council gathered in Jerusalem, and Paul and Barnabas showed the church how God had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles. It was in a very imperfect and partial way that the kingdom of heaven came, at first, even to the twelve apostles. It was a good while before it got full possession of them ; they had to change their minds over and over to make room for it. This fact appears in their writings.

"A comparison of the various types of New Testament doctrine shows us further that the Christian idea is there presented to us in various stages of development. The speeches of St. Peter recorded in the earlier chapters of the Acts of the Apostles represent a more primitive type than we see in the first Epistle ascribed to that apostle. The Epistle of St. James is elementary in its treatment of the Christian life and truth, while in St. Paul's Epistles we have a rich elaboration of the doctrine. St. Paul himself shows an advance from the comparative simplicity of what he wrote to the Thessalonians to the profound ideas of the Epistle to the Romans, and again a further advance, especially in Christology, in the Epistle to the Colossians. In St. John we not only have a choice and characteristic type of Christian doctrine : it is evident that we have also a later development. We are quite accustomed to this representation of progress in revelation ; we see that it is in harmony with the divine method in nature : but still we may be slow to perceive what it involves. Different stages of progress, viewed side by side, necessarily present divergent aspects ; sometimes they appear to be quite contradictory. Progress is not a smooth movement ; it involves a struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, — repudiation of the old, and painful assimilation of the new. The garment is rent; the wine-skin is burst." ^

We are not concerned to deny that the progress through which these early disciples were passing was something other and deeper than a mere change of opinions. The Spirit of truth who had come to abide with them is also the Spirit of purity, of gentleness, of patience, of charity ; they were all the while growing in grace, as well as in the knowledge of the truth. But the fact cannot be concealed that the intellectual changes through which they were passing were many and momentous : there never has been a time in the history of the church when the followers of Christ were changing their minds so rapidly and so radically as at this time. This is only saying that there never was another time when the mind of the church was so thoroughly alive.

There are many who seem to suppose that the approach of the kingdom of heaven in-

^ Faith and Criticism : Essays by Congregationalists, pp. 70, 71.

duces a stationary mental condition among men ; or that if, upon this advent, any change occurs in intellectual conceptions, it is once for all ; that the minds of those who are brought under this sway become fixed in a certain set of notions, and that it is a mark of disloyalty if any sign of an inquiring disposition appears. That this would be contrary to all the analogies of nature is evident enough. Life, in every one of its forms, produces constant changes : " Behold, I make all things new," is its word of power. And Paul seems to say that this law of change is the law of the spiritual life : "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature ; the old things are passed away ; behold, they are become new." Though the outward man may be decaying, he tells us, " the inward man is renewed day hy day.^'' What is the inward man ? Does the term designate only the sentiments, the feelings? I suppose that we have no right to put this narrow construction upon it. The work of renewal is intellectual as well as emotional. The new hopes and loves spring from new thoughts, new aspects of life, new conceptions of duty. The attempt to keep one part of the inward man in bandages while the other parts are allowed to grow must result in deformity and feebleness. It would be easy to predict the result, even if we had not before our eyes so many illustrations of its fatal character.

It is evident, then, that new conceptions of Christian life and duty must always be in order. The substance of the Christian experience is permanent, but its forms are always changing ; its manifestations, like the grace from which they spring, are new every morning and fresh every evening. Loyalty to Christ, confidence in his word, readiness to know and do his will, — these are changeless principles of the Christian character ; but the question how I can best manifest this loyalty, by what message spoken, by what obedience rendered, is a question for every day. " New occasions teach new duties," and every new duty is the expression in concrete form of a new truth, — the embodiment in act of a new conception of life. The truth must not be overlooked that, while the kingdom of heaven can only come to those who accept the new conceptions in which its meaning and power are conveyed, yet it is the presence of this kingdom which awakens these thoughts. The apparent contradiction is only the law of reciprocity which we encounter whenever we deal with the phenomena of life. It is the moisture of the earth that attracts the showers, and it is the showers that water the earth. Upon the desert no rain falls, and because no rain falls there it is a desert. Some things stand related to each other so reciprocally that each is both the cause and the effect of the other. The summer brings life to the tribes of earth, and the tribes of earth lead in the summer. The seed produces the plant and the plant produces the seed. What we have said, therefore, respecting new conceptions of truth as conditioning the progress of the kingdom does not conflict with the affirmation that it is the progress of the kingdom which gives rise to these new conceptions of truth. It was the growth of Christianity which forced upon the council at Jerusalem the truth that the Gentiles were fellow-heirs, and the wider acceptance of that truth sped the progress of Christianity. It is the increase of Christian love — what Mr. Kidd calls the accumulation of a great fund of altruistic feeling — that has compelled the adoption of a new philosophy of society, and the adoption of that philosophy promotes the growth of altruistic feeling. The wholesome changes that have taken place in the dogmas of the church have generally been the response to a purified and heightened ethical sentiment. It was because the kingdom of God was coming with increasing power that men were compelled to change their minds about witchcraft, and about the damnation of non-elect infants, and about a good many other horrible doctrines. And, conversely, the putting away of these dreadful notions from their minds has cleared the way for the coming of the kingdom of God.

The presence of the moral and spiritual forces by which the kingdom is revealed must, therefore, be signalized by many changes in men's conceptions of truth and duty. The larger life will call for ampler theories ; the better practice will demand a better philosophy. It is the belief of the writer of these chapters that the kingdom of heaven is coming among men at this time with great power, and that therefore there is a loud call to men to change their minds. I am not denying, mark, that other changes than t*hose of an intellectual nature are demanded ; the need of a radical change in the ruling love and in the habitual conduct is not even questioned ; but it is the object of this book to point out some of the changes in men's thinking which the present conditions of Christian society most clearly indicate. All of these changes are now in progress. Some minds have already passed through them. The new truth has been welcomed by these disciples, and the way of the kingdom into their lives has been prepared. No novelty will, therefore, be presented here. I shall only point out certain existing tendencies of thought which, as it seems to me, ought more and more to prevail, — certain ideas, already influential over many minds, which, when they are generally accepted, will greatly accelerate the progress of the kingdom.

II. The Doctrine Of Fatherhood

Of the first man the scriptural idea is that he was created in the image of God : '* So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him." This, if we connect with it the immediately following endowment of dominion over the earth, is the highest, the grandest, the most inspiring and ennobling idea and description of man ever given. There is in it essentially the idea of sonship, and so of the fatherhood of God. In its fullness this was first reached by Christ, but it was the scriptural idea from the beginning. Without the image there is no sonship. With it we have all that is implied in that, though the depth and fullness of the love of God as a Father could never have been apprehended except through Christ. — Makk Hopkins, The Scriptural Idea of Man, page 1.

Take all in a word : the truth in God's breast Sits trace for trace upon ours impressed ; Though He is so bright and we so dim, We are made in his image to witness Him.

Upon the race and upon the individual Jesus is always bringing into more and more perfect revelation the certain truth that man, and every man, is the child of God. This is the sum of the work of the Incarnation. A hundred other statements regarding it, regarding Him who was incarnate, are true ; but all statements concerning Him hold their truth within this truth, — that Jesus came to restore the fact of God's fatherhood to man's knowledge, and to its central place of power over man's life. — Phillips Brooks, The Influence of Jesus, page 12.

II.

THE DOCTRINE OF FATHERHOOD.

The relation of man to God is a subject concerning whicli there is need of clearer ideas. The doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood has long been regarded as fundamental in theology ; it lies so palpably upon the face of the New Testament that it could hardly be avoided ; but the qualifications and limitations with which it has been held have greatly reduced its significance. Theoretically, God has been confessed to be the Father of men ; but it has been assumed that, after all, it is only with the regenerate that any parental relations are maintained. The child, it seems to be supposed, has the power of annulling the fact of the fatherhood. This breach having been made, the real relation is no longer that of Father and child, but that of strangers and aliens ; and none of the benefits of the fatherhood are within reach of the child until a change in his status has somehow taken place. You must tell men that God is their Father, but you must be very careful not to let them get the idea that they are his children. The conception is difficult to entertain, but there is force enough in it greatly to sophisticate the ideas of men respecting the deepest fact of their lives.

Some of us who are fathers find it hard to understand how a child can annul the fact of fatherhood. It does not appear to be a matter over which the will of the father or the will of the child can have any control. The relation is not contractual, and so terminable by the choice of either party or of both parties ; it is natural and unrepealable. He who is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh cannot be other than my child, no matter what his wish or mine may be ; no matter what the laws may say ; no matter what crimes he may commit, or by what enormities he may outrage my fatherly feelingo

While he lives, and while I live, that relation will subsist. Nor can I understand how there could ever be any willingness on the part of a true father that the relation should be terminated. The obligations of fatherhood are not affected by the child's misconduct. The more disobedient and the more ungrateful he is, the stronger are the reasons why I should seek to save him. The time may come when I shall feel helpless to do anything for him ; when my very love will forbid me to offer him relief and succor ; when I shall see that the best medicine for him will be the fruit of his own doings : but there can never be a moment, in any world, when the heart of the father will not spring to help and save a child who is willing to be helped and saved. If we, being evil, cannot eradicate from our hearts parental instincts and obligations, how much less can the Father in heaven ignore or deny his fatherhood !

There need be no shrinking, then, from the clear affirmation that God is the Father of US all; and, having said this, we need not stultify ourselves by going on to deny that we are all his children. The distinction which theology has labored to make cannot be made by the human reason. The fact of the Divine Fatherhood, in all its fullness, with all its natural implications, must be distinctly declared. If it is true, it is the greatest truth of which any man can think, and we must not suffer it to be confused or belittled. To make every man see that, not according to some legal fiction, — not as the result of some possible pact or concession, — but according to the immediate and the everlasting fact, he is a child of God, made in the divine image, with all the possibilities and all the responsibilities of the sons of God resting now upon his conscience, is to bring the strongest possible motive to bear upon his life.

If he is living unworthily, if he is exposed to mortal peril, these facts need not be concealed, they may be all the more cogently asserted. The very misery and shame of his condition is this, that, being a child of God, he is where he is. The child cannot annul the fact of his paternity, but he can dishonor his Father and destroy himself. Fatherhood is not, alas ! a barrier against ruin. The prodigal can spurn his Father's love and go into the far country, and can stay there, despite his Father's love, and perish there. But all the while he is his Father's child ; it is the one truth that needs to be brought home to him : if anything can rouse him and reclaim him, it will be the recognition of this truth.

Another corollary of this truth is of vast moment. It means that goodness, the most glorious and perfect goodness, is, in the deepest sense of the word, natural to man. Evil may have become a second nature to him, but the evil impulses and tendencies are not his real self. " For the good which I would I do not, but the evil, which I would not, that I practice. But if what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me." The evil nature

24 THE DOCTRINE OF FATHEBHOOD.

is not I ; it is a false, an artificial self, which has usurped a power over me to which I must not consent. I am a child of God, and the divine impulses and motives which I find in my heart are the real man. He who comes to be the Eevealer of God and the Redeemer of man comes to help me to realize myself to be a man. In the words of a great modern teacher : " There is no human affection of fatherhood, brotherhood, childhood, which is not capable of expressing divine relations. Man is a child of God, for whom his Father's house is waiting. The whole creation is groaning and travailing till man shall be complete. Christ comes not to destroy but to fulfill. What is the spirit of such words as these ? Is it not all a claiming of man through all his life for God ? Is it not an assertion that just so far as he is not God's he is not truly man? Is it not a declaration that whatever he does in his true human nature, undistorted, unperverted, is divinely done, and therefore that the divine perfection of his life will be in the direction which these efforts of his nature indicate and prophesy?"!

The clear apprehension of this truth, that the work of redemption is just bringing back man to his real self, would impart to our gospel in many quarters a new significance. ''He restoreth my soul." Is not this, indeed, the very thing that he came to do ? Salvation came to the prodigal " when he came to himself." Nothing better can be done for the most degraded outcast than to bring him to himself. Sin is temporary insanity. The mind wanders. The man is not himself. The restoration of clear thinking, the return of the power to comprehend his own identity, this is the beginning of the better life.

The notion that the Christian life is an unnatural life; that in conversion we take on a new and foreign selfhood; that the sentiments and habits of the renewed man are radically different from those of the

1 The Light of the World, by Phillips Brooks, p. 7.

26 THE DOCTRINE OF FATHEBHOOD,

"natural" man, — all tliis grievously hinders the acceptance of our gospel, or perverts it, when it is accepted, into a caricature of itself. Much of this is due to a crass and unspiritual exegesis, — to the hardening of Pauline metaphors into philosophical distinctions. True, that Paul contrasts the natural man with the spiritual man; but what does he mean by " the natural man " ? True, that in many texts the hostility of the unregenerate nature to God is emphasized : but is it the real human nature that is thus characterized, or that artificial, second nature which has overgrown the true humanity ; is it Paul's " I myself," or Paul's " the law in my members " ? True, that " adoption " is spoken of as part of the work of salvation ; but is this adoption a necessary legal process through which men must pass before they can become the children of God, or is it a rhetorical figure by which is signified the welcome of unfilial children returning to their loyalty ? Can we really assume it to be a fact of theological science that the filial relations of men to God have become so disturbed by sin that a legal process of restoration is necessary ? What infinite confusion has been introduced into our thinking about God by such attempts to turn the language of feeling into the language of science I

No ; the real gospel truth- is, that Christ comes to put us in possession of ourselves, — to help us to drive out the usurping powers of darkness, and to take the rights and dignities that belong to us as men. " Now are we the sons of God," and He wants us to know it and live up to it. "All of our Christian thinking and talking," says Bishop Brooks, "has been and is haunted by a certain idea of failure and recommencement. Man is a failure, so there shall be a new attempt ; and in place of the man we will make the Christian ! There is nothing of that tone about what Jesus says. The Christian to Jesus is the man. The Christian, to all who think the thought of Jesus after Him, is the perfected and completed man. Just see what this Involves. Hear with what naturalness it clothes the invitations of the gospel. They are no strange summons to some distant unseen land ; they are God's call to you to be yourself. They appeal to a homesickness in your own heart, and make it their confederate. That you should be the thing you have been, and not be that better thing, that new man which is the oldest man, the first type and image of your being, is unnatural and awful. ... If Christ can make you know yourself ; if, as you walk with Him day by day. He can reveal to you your sonship to the Father ; if, keeping daily company with Him, you can more and more come to know how native is goodness, and how unnatural sin is to the soul of man ; if, dwelling with Him who is both God and man, you can come to believe both in God and in man through Him, — then you are saved, — saved from, contempt, saved from despair, saved into courage and hope and charity, and the power to resist temptation, and the passionate pursuit of perfectness." ^

That this is a conception of the Christian life quite unlike that which has prevailed in most of our evangelical communions cannot, I think, be denied. That it is a distinctly higher and truer conception than those which have been current is scarcely debatable. The appeal which it makes to the human heart is far more inspiring ; the possibilities which it sets before us more alluring. When this great truth gets full possession of the mind of the church, the kingdom of heaven will come with increasing power.

1 The Light of the World, pp. 10, 22.

III. The Doctrine Of Brotherhood

Now there is another part of charity, which is the basis and pillar of this, and that is the love of God for whom we love our neighbor ; for this I think charity, to love God for himself, and our neighbor for God. All that is truly amiable is God, or, as it were, a divided piece of Him that retains a reflex or shadow of himself. Nor is it strange that we should place afEection on that which is invisible ; all we truly love is thus. What we adore under affection of our senses deserves not the honor of so pure a title. Thus we adore Virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be invisible. Thus that part of our noble friends that we love is not the part which we embrace, but that invisible part which our arms cannot embrace. — Sir Thomas Browne, Beligio Medici, Part II., sect. xiv.