Fundamentals of faith in the light of modern thought

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Hughes 5

Preface 9

Introduction

Having had the privilege of an advance reading of the pages which follow, and having been requested to write some words of preface, I gladly enter these pages to serve as the forerunner for one of my friends and pastors.

I cannot think that it so much matters whether I agree with every sentence that the author of this book has written. Doubtless few of us have ever found several hundred pages of writing with every detail of which our own personal views would correspond. For there is, after all, a personal orthodoxy, and there is a church orthodoxy. If we try a man by the personal standard, he may be quite heretical; if we try him by the church standard, he may be very sound. This is because a church standard is and should be broader than a personal standard. If it were otherwise, thousands of labels of infallibility would plague the world. As an example, the Methodist Episcopal Church has no one doctrine of scriptural inspiration. Mr. Wesley wisely put it that "the canonical books of the Old and New Testament Scriptures contain all things essential to salvation." Years of thinking could not possibly have yielded a better or safer statement. That broad creed of inspiration has saved our church from a crisis. I hold to the dynamic theory of inspiration; one of my ministerial friends holds to the verbal theory. From my personal standard I must regard him as heterodox, and from his personal standard he must regard me as heterodox. But from the church standpoint we are both orthodox, having room for each individual view within the ample statement of the church's creed.

Now, the author of this book has won for himself the repute for independent thinking. His mind is not unacquainted with ventures. But the adventuresomeness is wholly reverent. The pioneer always remains the mystic; and when he does not dogmatically pronounce a sure opinion of the nature of the burning bush, we still know that he has obeyed the divine command for reverence, and that he regards the place whereon he stands as "holy ground." His touch upon the mysteries is never profane, nor sacrilegious, nor blasphemous, nor even overbold. As I read the manuscript it seemed to me more than once that I could see the author listening intently and could hear him saying, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." It is very good and

INTRODUCTION 7

important to maintain that mood in the Church of the Living God,

As for the main message of the pages, how much it is needed to-day! The world is noisy; we need to hear the still small voice. The world is nervous; we need to catch our Lord's command to rest. The world has a great visible; we need to get sure glimpses of the Invisible. The world is unduly lured by its own passing life; and it needs to lay hold on Him who is "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." Consequently, the eternal in time is precisely the sense that the heart of the fussy world needs; and, like a refrain, that is at once major and minor, that note sounds in this volume. Above the towers of our clanging earthly cities, we see the turrets of the everlasting City of God. The mood of "everness" defeats the mood of "temporariness." The children of the Lord walk the ways of men; and those ways are all made to slope upward to those gates which we shall enter to go no more out forever. It is wonderful to dwell in eternity here — to feel that all fragments of the earthly calendar are made complete, by God's grace and our own purpose, so that even now the dates that are written under the term "Anno Domini" are given the meaning of the everlasting Lord.

That, dear readers all, is the impression that this book has made on my own mind and heart. I am proud to have within the Boston Area a man who, in the midst of busy pastorates and of overseas service, has been thinking these thoughts. And I am glad to place these words of mine in the front of his book, as I put up a prayer that the message herein given may have a genuine mission for many of the Lord's children.

Edwin H. Hughes.

Maiden, Massachusetts.

Preface

The purpose of the chapters which follow is to attempt an interpretation of some of the more important facts of our Christian faith in terms of the ethical and scientific concepts of our own day.

One principle has furnished the key to this interpretation, namely, the assumption that the fundamental fact of human history is the growth of eternal life in time, and that the value of any doctrine will depend upon its relation to this fact. This principle has determined both the choice of topics and the order of their arrangement.

The doctrines of the Christian Church are made the subject of severe criticism to-day. Many men have withdrawn their consent from these doctrines, because they can no longer accept a certain form of statement with which they regard them as identified. I believe that there are eternal truths underlying these articles of faith, and existing independent of them, which every honest and reasonable man will support, if they are brought to his attention. These are the truths by which we must live. I have endeavored to bring them to light here.

I do not mean to infer that what is presented in these pages is the sum-total of my own belief regarding any one of these truths. It is not my purpose, for instance, in the treatment of the claims of Jesus, to dismiss at a stroke a line of evidence which is dear to the hearts of many, and to them superlatively important. I insist, however, that if for any reason that evidence becomes valueless to anyone, Jesus still has certain fundamental claims upon a man's life, by reason of which that man owes to him his service and devotion. It is these claims that I have tried to make prominent in this argument.

The ability of Christianity to stand the final test of a religion will rest, in the last analysis, not upon its marvelous aspects, but upon its truth concerning the nature of the human soul in its relation to God, and to eternity.

Horace B. Williams.

Manchester, New Hampshire.

Chapter I Some Present-day Tendencies In Religion

These are days of religious unsettlement. While human life has made marvelous gains on its material side, and has won for itself incalculable wealth, on its spiritual side it is marked by destitution and the lack of deep conviction. Outwardly our civilization has a most imposing presence, but earnest souls are conscious that it lacks something which is necessary to give it abiding worth. Various attempts are made to discover the secret of this lack. In the main these attempts have failed because they have been unable to break away from the spell of the conditions which they seek to correct. It would seem, then, that a search after the great need of our age should begin with an examination of the outstanding religious tendencies of the age, to ask whether they are the leaders or the servants of that which they are called to direct.

The history of Christianity may be divided 11 into two great epochs, separated, roughly speaking, by the year 1600. These divisions are not mutually exclusive, they unfold into and overlap each other, but they represent periods when the life of Christian society has been dominated by tendencies distinct and opposite. The former may be characterized as the supernaturalistic, the latter as the naturalistic epoch in the church's life,

Christianity arose in an age when the foundations of society were crumbling. The pagan religions had failed and passed the scepter to philosophy. Philosophy had ended in skepticism and the negation of those values upon which humanity had set her heart. Judaism arose in an attempt to interpret life in larger terms, but the failure of her national existence had involved the collapse of her religious hopes. The Roman Empire had established political order, but she lacked the power to create and preserve the deeper values of life. As a result the ancient world came under the shadow that must fall on any age that is not girded by great ideals.

"On that hard pagan world disgust

And secret loathing fell.

Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell." 1

1 Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold. London, The Macmillan Company. 1910. Poem, "Obermann Once More."

Then it was that Christianity appeared, presenting a new view of life. If the old order had failed, she proposed the reality of a new order. She came to men with the proclamation of an invisible kingdom in which life's aims could be realized. If the visible world had proved insufficient, if it was unable to preserve the deeper values of life and give to life an abiding meaning, this was because it was only the husk of an inner world. This inner world is spiritual, and man must link his life with it and live for it if he is to find peace. The church is the visible expression of this inner world, and provides the way into its life.

This announcement broke on that age like a burst of sunlight.

"So well she mused, a morning broke Across her spirit gray; A conquering, new-born joy awoke, And filled her life with day." 1

Men took heart and turned their faces toward the front. An exhausted society received a new vitality. A new life began to rise in the generations, and for a thousand years the Christian world moved forward under the impulse of that life,

1 Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold. London, The Macmillan Company. 1910. Poem, "Obermann Once More."

But it was inevitable that the interest of man should turn again to this world. The weakness of early Christianity lay in the fact that it accepted the verdict of the ancients that this world is wholly empty, and proposed an order of life that was separate from it. With the beginning of the seventeenth century the attitude of thought begins to change. Attention turns again to the world of nature. Its glory and its beauty begin to throb in the mind of man. Scientific method is born. Its application produces a new world-view. Nature is broadened immeasurably by discovery and investigation, while at the same time she wins a depth of meaning and a unity of life. A new age, the age of naturalism, begins.

Naturalism was inherently opposed to supernaturalism. The one looked for its guiding principle without; the other sought it within. Naturalism was based on two propositions destined to affect religious thought and life. It declared, first, that man is a part of nature, second, that nature is self-sufficient. And it was inevitable that under this influence the old view of a spiritual order apart from nature should gradually fade away.

II

At first the church opposed this attitude of mind. But it was no mere passing mood, and it was unavoidable that she should come under its sway. Although never openly indorsing the naturalistic position, she found herself compelled to deal with it, and later to make friends with it. To-day the forms of her life are largely determined by it. The outstanding religious tendencies of our day are inherently naturalistic tendencies. As we look over our religious life, what are its distinctive features?

1. The tendency to rationalize the content of religion. Never before was the demand so insistent that the facts of religion shall submit to critical examination. The scientific method of investigation that has spread itself throughout every sphere of life has invaded the sacred precincts of faith. No object of faith can hope to escape it. God, revelation, miracle, providence — all the sacred mysteries of other days — must present themselves before the bar of criticism. The man of to-day refuses to be bound by beliefs and opinions that have no other claim to reverence than their age. He insists that the Bible shall bear the weight of critical investigation and approve its claim against this test. Essentially this spirit is the Protestant spirit. Protestantism arose as a cry of freedom. It was the answer to the divine command, "Prove all things." Under its influence great good has been accomplished. The Bible has become a new book; religion has broadened its meaning; the light of intelligence has fallen upon the church's path.

2. The tendency to humanize religious values. One of the outstanding characteristics of the age is its return to the human standpoint. All the values of life are measured by their contribution to human welfare. Man finds the key to his problems within himself. Things are of worth as they minister to his life. In philosophy this new humanism has taken the form of a restatement of metaphysical problems originating with James, Dewey, and Schiller, and known as pragmatism, which measures all values in terms of practical consequence. This same spirit sets a definite task before religion. It must relate itself to everyday life. It must minister to human welfare. The church must justify her place in society by her contribution to man's material well-being. She cannot stand aside from the struggles of life — struggles political, economic, social. If so, she forfeits her right to the respect and support of men. In the battle of the workingman for larger liberty and larger gains she must show a sympathetic and active interest. But this tendency is inherently a naturalistic tendency. It is based upon the supposition that human life is sufficient in itself.

3. Closely associated with this is another — the tendency to socialize religious effort. This is the result of a new consciousness that the gospel of Jesus has its application to the present world, and that the kingdom of God is to be realized on earth in the reconstruction of human society. During the last twentyfive years we have passed over rapidly from the individual to the social emphasis in religion. The church is beginning to realize that to fulfill Christianity's mission to the individual she must Christianize social conditions. These are the molds in which the individual life is made. This tendency is giving birth to new forms of service. It is ordaining a new ministry and creating a new architecture. Not only so. It asserts itself as the sum of Christian duty. For is not the message of Jesus a social message, and is not love the fulfillment of the whole law? But the more insistent it becomes, the more it falls into the naturalistic position of the preceding tendency, that if men are fed and clothed and recruited, the social problem will be solved and life will come to its own.

III

These, I maintain, are the outstanding tendencies of the religious life of our day. They have been productive of much good. They have wrought for the spread of religious activity. But examined closely they present a negative aspect. Life has gained in breadth while it has lost in depth. Practical effort has grown immensely, but in the meantime the contemplative life has withdrawn into the background. Methods for deepening spiritual experience are dying out. The practice of prayer and belief in its efficacy are becoming less and less. The need of the means of grace for the deepening of the devotional life is no longer felt. Looking closer still, we discover that these tendencies are based upon a fundamentally false conviction, namely, that life is determined by external relations; that if external relations are changed, life will become wholly satisfactory. They forget that life draws from an inner source and must find its control there.

Thus we are not surprised to find that with all its achievement this is an age of religious unrest. Despite our gains in knowledge and the control of the resources of nature, we are not happy. Life is beset with stern contradictions and difficult problems, and lacks both the power and the insight to deal with these successfully. The ideals of our religion, with all their glamour and appeal, are unable to provide a principle broad enough to coordinate our multiplied activities or deep enough to command our unquestioning loyalty. Therefore the feeling is abroad that somehow religion is losing her soul.

Biblical criticism is good; but the Bible for many has lost that axiomatic certainty in the light of which the earlier ages lived, and we are apt to forget that intellect alone cannot settle the problems of faith, that reason alone cannot enter that life of the spirit that throbs through Scripture. Service of humanity is good; but we must remember that life is more than physical preservation, and that true welfare must be measured not by outward accretion, but by inward expansion. A testimony to the hollowness of the age comes to us from the recent European war. Conscientious men are asking, What is the matter? Is Christianity a failure? With all our civilization men are yet brutal and cruel. Something is the matter. The matter is that we have put success ahead of self-realization, that life is being lost in the effort to live.

This brings us to the one thing needful to our age: a reaffirmation of the reality and necessity of the spiritual life. Life must win an inner depth, if it is to win stability and peace. For life is more than outward relations. It has temptations to face, burdens to bear, sorrows to suffer, inner perfection to gain. These are possible only as we are able inwardly to transcend the world, and thereby gain a victory over it. The soul must live a life independent of the world, of time; it must be liberated from human limitation. This can be only as it wins an inner meaning for itself. Of this deeper life Jesus Christ is the world's example. He lived in constant communion with the infinite, and thereby his life was raised above sin and chance to perfection and truth. His kingdom was the inauguration of a new world of spiritual meaning and victorious trust. His teaching was the endeavor to show men the way into that spiritual world. In this his divinity consists: the depth of his experience, his consciousness of union with God. If Jesus Christ is to be the Saviour of this age, he must be our spiritual Master, that is, he must bring us in touch with a deeper life that cleanses the heart, strengthens the will, and renews the mind.

There comes to me a story from the later days of Jesus' life. One evening as the shades began to fall he came to that home in Bethany where he had rested so many times. There were two sisters there. One of them busied herself with the supper-getting; the other, realizing that Jesus' stay was short and that there were many things to ask about the meaning of life, sat at his feet and communed with him. Martha complained because her sister did not help, and Jesus said, "Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful: for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Two views of life are here presented to Jesus — a receptive idealism and a practical realism — and he is asked to choose. The other day Kipling wrote his poem entitled "The Sons of Martha," in eulogy of the latter view of life. The whole poem is replete with that fallacy that is too much characteristic of our age. For the ultimate question of life is Mary's question: how we can make firm its spiritual values. This is the end for which humanity exists. This is the road to our highest realization. To be able to say with Madame Guy on:

"I love thee, Lord, but all the love is thine, For by thy life I live.

I am as nothing, and rejoice to be Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in thee,"

Chapter II The Reality Of The Unseen

Our view of being is fundamental. It determines the character of our thought, the general direction of activity, and therefore the ultimate issue of life.

At first suggestion this statement may appear unwarranted. Among the factors that determine life we are not accustomed to place a man's philosophy, much less do we make it essential. Men who have won certain definite conceptions of reality are no doubt greatly influenced by the beliefs which these conceptions support, but their number is small as compared with the multitude who have never even thought of being as such.

We forget, however, that a belief need not come up to the level of clear understanding to become effective. Few beliefs of the common man are formally understood. They grow up in his life like the faculty of perception: need calls them forth and experience gives them form, but the process of growth and the result thus attained are largely unnoticed. A man may possess beliefs that are undefined, even unrecognized, but which nevertheless lend color to his every thought and deed. Whether we will it or not, we must build upon some philosophy of life. Thought must have a basis in conception; action must have some principle of coordination. There are also instincts and aspirations native to life, upon whose satisfaction happiness depends, which involve a man's view of being.

This demand for a philosophy of life is increased by reason of the transient nature of human affairs. If we dwell alone in the world of things — that is, in the world as it reports itself to us — we can find there nothing that abides. Life moves on amid shifting scenes, in which the very thread of its own experience is changing. Without some inner principle to bind together these changing experiences and make them one — one both in themselves and with the world — man's existence is weighed down by the sense of insecurity and all its more sacred values are robbed of meaning. Is there no permanence in things — no solid ground upon which man may plant his foot? In the changing life of phenomena is there nothing that abides? These questions press upon us and will not down. Upon the answer we give to them hangs the worth of life's meaning; without an answer, the impulse is gone that might lead us to make out of this changing world something great and good*

In general, two views of reality have been held by the thinking world. One, the materialistic view. This regards the external world as primary. What can be perceived by the five senses and investigated it calls the real. These outward things are the facts, they are the realities. The inner life of consciousness is interpreted in terms of the outer world, and finds its sufficient explanation as a result of physical processes.

This view has always been popular, for to most of us the outer world seems the solid and real. It appears to be supported by the most tangible and obvious experiences of human life. Yet, closely examined, materialism is confronted by serious difficulty. This outer world can be known to us only by the senses, and we have no possible assurance that they report reality — things as they are. Indeed, we know that very often they deceive us, that they report things as we have reason to believe they are not. It may be that Lotze's claim that all perception of the external world is a deception, is extreme. Yet when we take into account the degree to which the perception of spatial objects is a mental synthesis, and is determined not by the "thing" itself, but by the habit of the mind, the ground for this claim becomes evident. Errors of perception are innumerable. One or two simple instances will call this to attention. You sit in a stationary railway carriage, while another train alongside begins to move. Immediately you decide that your train is moving and that the other is still, and only discover the mistake by reference to your sense of vibration or to some familiar stationary object. Your eye tells you that the afternoon sun sinking toward the west is moving; but as a matter of fact we are taught to believe that the sun is the great fixed central hub and that it is ourselves that move. There are cases, then, when certain of our senses deceive us, but being able to check up the impression with the other senses we call this an illusion. May there not be cases where our senses unite in deceiving us, but since most people's senses are like ours and they confirm our impression, we agree to call what is merely a great sensible illusion reality? At least there is room for grave doubt as to the sufficiency of the materialistic position.

Over against materialism is the spiritualistic view. This regards the spirit in man as the great reality. Spirit is the permanent, the enduring, it is the true life. Of this life man's body is merely an instrument which may at any time be thrown away. All that comes to us through the senses from the outside world is changing and temporal. Back of this too is a spiritual life and meaning which is forever unfolding itself. This is the reality — the abiding amid the changes of time.

It would be profitless here to enter into an exhaustive criticism of these two methods of interpretation. It is a sufficient statement that the great minds in every age, who have sought an answer to the deeper demands of life, have found themselves driven to the spiritualistic position. They have been forced to believe that the seen is the creation of the unseen, that the material world is the product of thought, that mind, not matter, is the great reality.

As a matter of fact, we all necessarily, though perhaps unconsciously, accept this view as a working basis of life. For instance, we call the structure in which we worship on the Sabbath a church, by which we mean, what? Materials? No! A church is the realized ideal of some architect, saturated with the most sacred sentiments of some worshiping congregation. Away yonder among the hills is a place you call home It is only a modest cottage built of the humblest materials, but you never think of it without sentiment, and you travel back there every summer to linger near it. From the standpoint of materials it is worthless; but as you sit upon its step some vacation morn that step and door and mantel are vocal of souls and experiences past and gone. The fact is we live in a world of invisibles, a world of homes and churches and schools, of ideals embodied and ideas visualized.

In like manner as we look out thoughtfully upon nature there comes to us a sense that this too is full of meaning. Its objects are symbols. In it is a soul that speaks to our soul. The hill and vale, the stream and field, are the characters of an eternal language. The same is true of the universe as a whole. This too is the embodiment of thought. The very fact that we can interpret it argues a reason immanent in it that answers to our own, for only that which proceeds from thought can be interpreted by thought.

We must estimate the meaning of things not in terms of the seen but of the unseen. This does not mean that we are to despise these earthly forms. The Oriental has taught his fellows that this world revealed to the senses is simply a mirage, and therefore it is to be ignored. A mirage is a mere semblance, but this is not our world. What we see and hear and feel is the temporal form of reality; it is the eternal subjected to creature use. The Christian ascetic withdrew from the world and hoped to enter into reality by thinking himself away from contact with the things of time. He failed of his aim because he forgot that there are no other characters than these earthly forms from which we can learn the meaning of reality, no other way-marks by means of which we can find the eternal.

II

This principle of interpretation applies not only to things but to events. The great world of events, like the great world of things, has an inner meaning which is the abiding reality amid the changes of circumstance.

There are two ways to read history, just as there are two ways to view reality. It may be considered as a mere succession of happenings, each event sufficient unto itself, each page we turn with a relation only of sequence to that which precedes. China creeping out of the distant past; Egypt sitting like a sphinx on the bank of her river; Greece, Rome, the Goths, the Saxons — they all follow each other in a wandering aimless manner. But there is another way: that expressed by Hegel when he says that history is "the unfolding of spiritual being in time." There is a purpose in it all which if understood would account for each step in the process. History is not a mere succession of events, it is the progressive unfolding of the divine idea; its inner meaning is spiritual. These things we call events are symbols — symbols of a hidden life, just as the bud and leaf are symbols of growth. In their good time they appear, for their brief day they endure, as the forms in time of an ever-growing, ever-changing life. They have value, not because of their temporal form, nor, as we are wont to think, because they bring pain or pleasure to the race; their meaning lies in this, that they are the birth-throes by which the eternal spirit goes on to higher forms of manifestation.