The faith by which we live; a plain, practical exposition of the religion of the incarnate Lord

Front matter

V .AVE

BISHOi: FISKE

.0

Preface

THIS practical little book aims to present in popular form, free from technicalities, some of the great foundation truths of Christianity as they are related to life. It is a thorough revision and rearrangement, with some additions, of a work which I published some years ago under the title. The Religion of the Incarnation. The revision and rewriting have made it practically a new book and I have given it, therefore, a new name. In its earlier form the book has been out of print for several years. I have delayed reissuing it, first, because of doubts as to the real need of another edition, and second, because I was not content to have it reprinted without the revision it has now had.

Eepeated requests for its publication have convinced me that it still has real usefulness. There seems to be no other book which quite takes its place. When the clergy of Porto Kico tried to find a popular manual for translation into Spanish for use in Latin America, they could discover nothing which better met their need and it has lately been translated and published and given a wider circulation as printed in monthly installments in El Nuevo Siglo, viii

While the revision has made it a new book, I have been surprised, nevertheless, to discover how little it needed change in substance rather than form. The old truths of our religion are ever new. New facts but show the vital power of the old faith. The terrible years of war through which the world has passed would have driven one mad, were it not that we had that faith to live by. A gospel that tells of a God who entered into the tragedy of human life and understands and sympathizes has been the only gospel for years of trial and dark struggle. I wonder if others of the clergy have been discovering, as I have, not that they cannot preach the old faith, but that they can preach nothing else. The things we used to say have not lost their value; they have gained new force. With but the change of a sentence or two in their practical application, they bring new messages for men and women of a new age.

I wonder, too, whether others have felt, almost as a new revelation, the deep significance and practical power of the faith we have been preaching — ^but possibly, until now, preaching somewhat academically. In a remarkable charge to his clergy, delivered during some of the darkest days of the war, the Bishop of Oxford showed how the dominant ideas which have been laying hold of men — ^the idea of liberty for all and of the equal spiritual worth of every individual; the conception of brotherhood and of sacrificial service; the larger ideal of the fellowship of the nations in a world-wide human commu-

^ Gore : Dominant Ideas and Corrective Principles,

PREFACE is nity — are really Christian ideas and are necessarily involved in any honest interpretation of the Gospel. In its great task of self-reformation and worldredemption, the Bishop summons the Christian community to return with the old enthusiasm, to the old religion of the Creed, the Bible, the Church, and the Sacraments, but to interpret these in terms of what is interesting everyone who has a heart to feel and a brain to think and so ^^to make men feel afresh that Jesus Christ is the true prophet of liberty, brotherhood, and catholicity^^

The purpose of this book is much simpler and more elementary; but in its humbler way it points out the same lesson — not so much by way of showing the religious and moral changes which the great world catastrophe has brought about and the Christian answer to the problems it presents (this has been done by others in the years when we were in the thick of the conflict), as by stating what the Gospel revelation and the Gospel scheme of redemption really are and the grounds on which we accept both — and stating this in the every-day language of every-day people.

I do not like to call this a manual of instruction. It is that, but I hope it is more. It is a plain, practical, common-sense exposition of the Christian faith, written in language that the average, every-day man can understand ; but it is not — or I hope it is not — ^just a summary and explanation of a series of dry doctrines. It is both creed and conduct, belief and practice, dogma and devotion — a statement of faith,

X THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE

but the statement of a faith by which men live. The doctrines of Christianity are but the logical exponents of its facts. We accept them, not as mere items of information, but as interpretations of those facts which are the springs and sources of the Christian life — that life to which we would re-dedicate ourselves in these days of splendid service.

CONTENTS xi

Contents

I. — Cbeed and Conduct 1

II. — Why I Believe in God 15

III. — The Holy Trinity 25

I. HOSE who have been engaged in religions work

1 in the home camps or abroad, during the years of the Great War now happily ended, have had unusual opportunities to judge of the religious life of America and of the general effectiveness of our Church work. The tale they bring has not been altogether encouraging.

The vast majority of the millions of Americans enrolled as soldiers and sailors professed some religion. This profession was usually definite enough to include preference for some particular religious body, if not the claim of adherence to it. But of those who stated that they were identified with some Christian denomination large numbers admitted, in response to questions, that they rarely if ever go to church. Attendance at public worship is at best infrequent, irregular, and spasmodic, often confined to a service now and then on some special occasion for a sermon to the lodge, or something of a similar sort. While the mass of men are listed as giving some religious preference^ an appallingly large per cent, of them report that they are not baptized. They do not know the reasons for baptism and apparently have never heard any explanation of its meaning or necessity. This is particularly true of one of the great middle western camps where a faithful canvass was made by the chaplains. In most cases investigation was not carried so far, but there are indications that the facts are about the same everywhere. Young fellows who have sung in choirs, some who as boys have been members of vested choirs for several years, have never seen a baptism nor heard a word about that sacrament either in sermon or instruction.

As to the men who state that they are Church members fully fifty per cent, of those questioned admit that they have not received Communion in years ; some have never received. They do not know how the Holy Communion is administered or the reasons for its celebration.

Among all the men there is found a pathetic ignorance of the Bible and of the simplest facts of Christianity. Though brought up in so-called Bible churches, whose chief boast is that they teach the Word, large numbers of men have no knowledge of Scripture beyond a vague remembrance of a few scattered texts, some of the verses of the shepherd psalm, an Old Testament story like that of David and Goliath, one or two of the parables, perhaps an incident in the life of Christ. Few of them have any clear idea of our Lord's life as a whole. They know something of the Christinas story and (less clearly) the story of Good Friday — ^that is all. No one has ever taught them (at least not in such a way as to fix it in their memory) who Christ was^ when He was born, where He lived, what He did, why He was put to death, how He rose. Certainly they do not know the tremendous claims He made or the traditional interpretation of the meaning of His life. They do not really understand the simplest statements of Christian belief. The creeds are a sealed book. Often (so it would seem) they have heard little of creeds, though they have a rather definite prejudice against dogmas or doctrines — ^^a plain man has no use for them^^ they declare.

Finally, they do not pray. Pressed for reasons, they say that it does no good or that nobody ever taught them how. At any rate, many of them when questioned admit that they do not say their prayers, either on their knees or after they have tumbled into bed, unless we except an occasional recital of the Lord^s prayer or some childish rhyming petition.

This is not, of course, a criticism of the soldier. Assuredly not. The men whose religious convictions and practices we have had an opportunity of observing are a cross section of American society, representing every class and type of American life. What they are is what America is — if it is as good. What they believe and do is about what the mass of the American people believe and do. What they are ignorant of we may fairly suppose are the things of which American men generally, in about the same proportion, are ignorant or to which they are indifferent. Of course there are numbers of active Church members and equally of course many of these are well-instructed and consistent in the practice of their religion, but the number of men who are not is a serious indictment of American Christianity and to most people an unexpected revelation of the inefficiency of American church organizations.

I repeat that this is not a criticism of the soldier. Some of us who have taken the trouble to investigate know what religious conditions are in rural America and in villages and small towns — conditions that led the lat-e President Hyde to select as the title of a study of rural conditions ^'Impending Paganism in Xew England.*^* I talk with all sorts of people as I travel about the country and I know that even the most startling figures of the weakness of Christianity in the small towns do not tell half the story. If we could get as thorough a survey of city life we should not find it much better.^

Xor must it be supposed that this plain statement of facts is an attack upon the soldiers morals. Grave moral problems were revealed by the draft, it is true, but never have these problems been faced as frankly and fearlessly as now and never has there been so thorough a campaign of education or so effective a programme of protection. Young men in France and in camp here were safer than young men at home.

The tremendously encouraging thing to which all

^ See my Sacrifice and Service, pages 3-6.

Christian warworkers testify is that our men have shown a fine, sturdy moral earnestness and conviction. With all their ignorance they are really religious at heart. Were it not for the reticence and reserve which is characteristic of most men when religion is discussed, we should probably learn even more for our encouragement, but there are indications in plenty that the soul of the soldier is sound. An overseas test made repeatedly among soldiers everywhere, from the landing ports to the trenches, showed that an overwhelming majority of the men have very clear ideas as to what they consider to be cardinal virtues and contemptible sins. Courage, unselfishness, generosity, and modesty or humility make up their code of morals. All these are %ed rock" virtues. A well-known American evangelist, Mr. Fred B. Smith, who has had unusual opportunities for observing the men and talking with them frankly, declares that the more one studies the set of standards which the young men put before them the more one is amazed at the unerring way in which they have picked out the great essentials of character. "I do not claim," he says, ^^that all men have these standards. The draft was a great net which drew together millions of men of all classes, all degrees of education. They are not angels! Some of them are far from it. But the code here given does express the prevailing sentiment of the mass of the men."

My own experience, once more, has taught me to be an optimist about the average man everywhere. He has very simple ideas of religion but he always gets down to essentials. To him religion means unselfishness^ generosity, sincerity, cleanliness of soul, a genuineness and straightforward honesty that despises cant and therefore is chary of religious professions, an abiding faith in goodness, a very real humility because of his own defects (or, as we should say, sins) and a readiness, for that reason, to forgive defects or sins in others. He has only a vague consciousness of God and yet somehow, whether he prays or not, we feel that he is conscious of Him — as the child is conscious of the mother in another part of the house and would miss her if he knew she had gone away.^

All this gives us courage, but it is the courage of brave endeavor to make the most of the essential virtues, not the audacity which leads us to deny unpleasant facts. Camp and field and hospital have given wonderful testimony to the splendid possibilities of humanity. Only, as Hankey reminds us, men fail to connect these things with Jesus Christ, much less do they connect them with His Church. They do not see that the virtues they admire come to fruition in Christian soil. The pity of it is that, because men have not really known Christianity, we have been missing all this fine service and men have failed to develop their latent possibilities. What splendid things we might have done, with such material to work on !

The fundamental moral ideas are instinctive. Under the generous impulse of service and sacrifice

* See The Experiment of Faith, chapter iii.

in stirring times they are manifested in a splendid way. But — they are so easily forgotten. Men's morals fall so quickly when the props and supports are gone. At the high call they rise to splendid heights, but in humdrum days ideals are dulled all too soon. The man who has the courage of the crisis often fails in the courage of the commonplace and the moral instincts are less clear when it is only ordinary duty that calls them out.

Once more: Even if the heart of America is right, as we really believe it is, it is right in spite of our religious incompetence. There is still a lot of ^^diffused Christianity^' in the world. Men are living by the impulses and motives of a former faith. Ideals of religious and god-fearing ancestors are not rooted up in a generation. Many a man who gives no time to prayer or public worship and little thought to religion and morals has an instinctive "faith of inheritance''.

But what about the next generation? We were drifting far and fast, here in America, were we not? We had got a long way off from the old moral moorings. Our spiritual consciousness was sadly dulled, our religious instincts sadly weakened, our moral restraints sadly relaxed, our standards sadly lowered. Fortunately for us, the war came before it was too late — war which stripped us of some of our creature comforts and made the things of the spirit loom larger, war which summoned us to fight for an ideal, war against enemies who had made sin so hideously ugly that it has to some extent shamed it out of our own hearts. We were preserved from utter surrender to love of luxury, selfish ease, materialism, moral indifference, money-madness. And we have discovered that at the core American life is still sound. It is not too late to save us.

An oflBcer overseas puts it clearly 'in a letter sent to me recently: ^^N"ow that the brutality, bestiality, and crimes against women have shown me here in devastated France how horrible sin can become, I have asked myself often why I am as decent a man as I am, for I frankly acknowledge that I have not been very keen on religion. I have come to the conclusion that most of my goodness is inherited goodness. I have made up my mind that if I get back I shall do more to pass on to my children what I got from devout, religious parents. I shall try to create in my home more of the Christian atmosphere in which I was brought up. I don^t want my boy to start handicapped.^^

I honestly believe that only in Jesus Christ shall we find sure salvation. I want to make men understand that all the ideals of goodness they ever had are found in Christ — and found there to perfection. I want them to recognize their unacknowledged debt to Christ. I want them to see, also, that everj^thing Christ was God is. I want them to have moral strength and permanence and I believe that in Him is the only source of moral power which is sure and unfailing. I do not believe that Christian morals will last long apart from Christian faith and I think, therefore, that it is important for the churches to inaugurate a campaign of instruction — ^not merely a preaching crusade or mission but a campaign of careful, regular, systematic, practical instruction. We must have ^^a reason for the hope that is in us^\ Unless our moral life is deep rooted, it will soon wither.

Men, whether in camp or at home, are wonderfully responsive to straight, definite Christian teaching. They are sick unto death of the second and third rate lecturettes on ethics which we have substituted for Christian preaching. They are weary beyond expression of pulpit appeals to patriotism, denunciations of ^^booze'^ and attacks upon evils everybody recognizes and nobody fears to condemn. (They want religion linked up to life, but if evils are to be assailed there are crying social and economic evils which it takes courage to mention!) They want something strong and definite, instead of the weak, watery, colorless stream of platitudinous moralizing with which they have been deluged from Sunday school days on. Their happy-go-lucky acquiescence in an indefinite religion is not their fault. Says one chaplain,' whose opportunities for observation have been unusually wide :

"With most of the men, one meets not merely with no resentment but with a positive interest in religion from the beginning. Vital Christianity Tiits them where they live'. Simple, virile preaching of

God, of His importance, His reality, His friendsHp, His power, His sternness. His love, of the need for repentance, of the need for that help which is sometimes, but not in the camp, called ^grace', of the grim viciousness of that animal selfishness which is called ^sin^, of the strength and manliness of the God-Man Jesus Christ, of the heroism of Calvary, of the possibility of our becoming, with His help, like Him, real men and not mere T^easts that walk on our hind legs^ of the Church as the blessed company of His friends, of the sacraments as human touches from a present Lord — they love it ! I have heard them applaud and cheer it. I have seen them pour out after sermons and thank the preacher for it — not the sentimental goody-goodys, but big, strong, husky fellows with grips of steel/^

This book has been written to supply the need of instruction. It gives practical if solid teaching, on which more popular courses of instruction may be based.

What is written here is grounded in the assumption that what a man believes is as important as what he does, just because as a rule what he does will depend on what he believes. One cannot divorce creed and character. The Christian character is really the outcome of the Christian creed. If we surrender the creed, with its insistence upon the facts of our Lord's life, in time we shall lose the character which sprang out of it. J^'ever again will it be possible to say, with casual and careless finalit}^, that it makes no difference t!

what a man believes. Prussianism has stamped the lie forever on that plausible untruth.

After all, what are dogmas? It is always well to define terms: what, then, are Christian dogmas? Simply the logical statement of Christian facts. Many of those who object to doctrinal teaching are sincere believers in Jesus Christ. Let us start there. Who was He? What was He? Where are we to learn about Him? How does He bring us the life eternal ? How are we to keep it ? How does He save us and how and where are we to receive the benefit of the work He has done for us ? These and a hundred other questions spring up at once and Christian dogmas are nothing more nor less than the answers to such questions. It is quite evident that the important thing is to follow Christ, even though we cannot adequately define Him, but the kind of obedience we render and the faithfulness of our following in His steps will depend on our answers to questions like these. One who is alive to the meaning of Christ's life for his own soul will not rest satisfied until he has learned all that can be known about the Master — what were His relations to the Father whom He came to reveal, on what His authority rests, whether or not He is an infallible guide, why He may demand our allegiance and our love.

If we were to teach doctrine as a mere shibboleth, excluding all who cannot frame to pronounce some test word aright, men could not condemn us too strongly. Dogma divorced from life would be useless — worse than useless. But if the doctrines of Christianity are simply the logical expression of its facts, we cannot be rid of creeds even if we would.

Every doctrine of the creed has its influence on conduct. Our whole thought of the purpose of life depends on our grasp of these spiritual realities. The conception of God as a moral governor is that which gives us a moral standard of action. The conception of a Future Life gives us support in all our perplexities ; by it we are led to believe that we see only a fragment of a vast scheme and that injustice and oppression, pain and sorrow, will be remedied in the world that is to come. The conception of the Incarnation teaches us to recognize a new and ineffaceable relation between man and man; if Christ took upon Him our human nature every man, white or black, good or bad, saint or sinner, has in him some likeness to Christ and must not be neglected or despised. The conception of the Trinity tells us that subordination is consistent with equality and that it is the glory of the Triune God to be one a moral living for and in each other, in a mutual devotion such as serves as an example for men.^^* The conception of the Atonement declares to us the conquest of evil through suffering, tells us of a Christ crucified through weakness but living through the power of God, and shows us the glory of self-sacrifice, the moral beauty of a life given for others. What message has equalled that message during the long years of agony through which the world has passed? The concep-

* Mason: The Faith of the Gospel, tion of the Eesurrection makes every part of life important; teaching, as it does, the resurrection of the flesh, it impresses on us the sacredness of our bodies as well as of our souls.

So patient investigation will show that no doctrine — if it be rightly maintained — is without a bearing on conduct. False and imperfect doctrines will and must result in lives faulty and maimed which might have been noble and complete. The full Christian doctrine produces a full moral life. If it be translated into action it is an inexhaustible spring of strength. Dogma is necessary because dogma rightly applied is life. The man who believes in God must put his life down upon his faith. ^The thing for which the Christian exists is to make it easier for others to believe in God. He exists in order to verify God to his kindred, his neighbors, and to all mankind, to make God^s goodness and wisdom manifest, through his life, to his fellow men.''

Indeed it is not the preaching of dogma to which men object, it is the exaggerated dogmatic spirit. There is a wide difference between dogma and dogmatism — the one broad, sane, reasonable, insisted on as the only safe foundation of helpful, warm-hearted service; the other narrow and sectarian, often distorting the truth by unduly emphasizing some one principle of the faith at the expense of much else that is equally true and important. It is dogmatism that arouses opposition and dislike — ^that fashion of presenting doctrine with sledge-hammer blows, or cranmiing it down men's throats, or insisting upon it for its own sake with, little or no effort to prove its necessity or its usefulness.

This book then is more than a manual of instruction. It is an effort to state Christian truth in a practical and reasonable way. Above everything else, it means always to show, either explicitly or implicitly, that in the full acceptance of Christian truth lie the richest possibilities of life.

II

THEEE is no clear, clean-cut proof of the existence of God. There is, of course, probable proof, moral certainty, but there is no demonstrative proof. Belief in God is a matter of faith, not of intellectual assurance. On the whole, however, most of us are sure of God. Men are naturally predisposed to belief in Him. Instinctively they trust conscience and listen to the voice of the heart. One of the strongest arguments for the existence of God is this instinctive belief of the race that He does exist — we call it the argumentum consensus gentium when we wish to appear learned. But this book is for plain, practical people who do not care whether we are scholars or not, so long as we talk common sense. To most men it is unthinkable that there is no God and the fact that they all think alike about it is a strong argument, whether they know what name to give it or not.

Probably the biggest argument against God^s existence as a supreme moral governor over a universe He has made is the presence of evil in the world. We cannot understand why, if there is a God, He did not make the world good and keep it good; or, if that were impossible, why He permits evil to go so long unpunished. How many times, during the Great War, that question went up from men^s hearts in passionate protest against evil!

Yet the very thing within me which demands God^s intervention and asks that He scourge evil from the earth is proof of the God whose existence and whose goodness I am tempted to doubt. Whence came that mysterious voice of conscience? Where do I get my standards of right and wrong? Does not the moral law, as of necessity, demand a Moral Law Giver? I know, too, that there is an unchangeable law of happiness, a real connection between joy and goodness, between moral misery and sin. How comes it that I cannot be content when I know that I am disregarding the inner voice ? Conscience itself cries out that there is a God.

The real strength of the argument for God^s existence — ^the thing which makes us call it moral proof, even if it be not demonstrated certainty — is that it is a converging argument. So many roads all lead to the same place ; so many signs all point the same way. Suppose we take some of these converging proofs, one by one, in a plain, practical, common-sense way.

An incident is related of an eminent astronomer which shows how men, in the name of reason, are guilty often of the most irrational conduct. The great scientist had a friend who strenuously denied the existence and power of God. The astronomer had with much care constructed a concave in miniature, upon which he represented all the planets and stars in their places, together with their evolutions and courses. One day this friend came to see him, and noticing the ingenious piece of work, asked, "Who made that r

"Who made it repeated the astronomer. "Why, nobody ; it came by chance.^^

"Jfonsense said his friend. "Keally, who made

itr

"Nobody,^^ came the reply again. "It came by chance, I tell you.^^

"Don^t be absurd,^^ was now the response, in irritation. "Someone must have made it. Why don't you tell me who it was?'^

Then the astronomer, turning to his friend, said : "This poor miniature which I have made to represent what God has created in the universe you say cannot have arisen from an irresponsible cause ; and yet you tell me that the wonderful and mighty works around and above us are a mere fortuitous combination of atoms. How do you explain your inconsistency?'^

The anecdote will illustrate one of the arguments that convince us of the existence of a supreme Creator and Ruler of the universe. Every effect must have had an adequate cause, and every design must have had a designer. Were I to find a watch, wonderfully calculated to fulfil the evident purpose of its manufacture, it would be absurd for me to suppose, just because I could not see the maker of it, that it came into existence by a mere chance, that somehow the various parts accidentally fell together and fitted into each other with perfect correspondence and by a fortunate coincidence were able to mark the passage of time. Seeing the watch, noticing the evident design in its various parts and observing the precision with which the mechanism does the thing it was manifestly intended to do, I cannot but say : Surely this thing had a maker. It is not by a lucky chance that the parts have come together and can do what I see them doing; someone designed it to do this; someone made it so that it would accomplish that for which it was designed. In other words, when I see a watch I know that there must have been a watchmaker.