Fundamentals

Preface

The author's purpose in this volume is neither more nor less than to set forth in simple form those Basal Truths of the Christian religion which are fundamental to all rational and reliable belief. He believes that these truths may be fully and clearly elucidated without the slightest tinge of sectarianism, and in a more simple phraseology than is usually employed in the writings of pur standard theologies. The object, therefore, at which these pages aim, is such a presentation of Fundamental Truth as shall be readily apprehended by those who have not been privileged to receive a technical training in Christian vi PREFACE.

doctrine. If this aim shall prove to have been

realized, and the mists be lifted from that

spiritual landscape which so many disciples

desire more clearly to discern, he will be more

than satisfied.

W. F. M.

Contents

PAGE

I. God II

II. Man , ^;^

I. God

a formal definition of God. Mo formula can be framed concerning him, which can at all simplify the conceptions we have already ; and no explanation is possible which can reduce the divine nature to the level of our comprehension.

And, on the whole, we are glad that this is so ; for we believe that it is wisest and best. How much narrower our life would really be if there were no Infinite Being, into whose immensity thought might run out and lose itself ; no Incomprehensible Being, in whose grandeur and glory our souls might be entrancingly absorbed; and in whose mysterious presence we might bow in adoration and in awe.

We are surrounded with evidences of the being and presence of One who is infinitely above and beyond us, which appeal with equal force to reason and to faith. But these evidences do not make him fully known.

There- is a God in History; and though one reader may fail to perceive the brightness of the vision, it may be plainly discerned by the

I

GOD. 13

neighbor at his side. No sceptic should forget that the real philosophy of history is the march of Providence down through the ages. But it must none the less be admitted that the study of Providence does not wholly suffice us here.

The Hebrew conception of God, as the *' I AM," the Almighty, the self-existent, and eternal, tended more and more, in the lapse of ages, to sever him from all immediate contact with human affairs. He was, even to his chosen people, a God behind a veil. He dwelt in light unapproachable. He was a stern lawgiver, an inexorable judge, rather than a God commanding their love and trust

Nature does not clearly reveal him. The visible creation is but his vesture, and not his veritable self. Our most far-reaching ideas of him are but as shadows. Our largest and holiest contemplations of his nature leave us still insensible to what he is in the essence of his being. The most thoughtful spirits of our race have engaged themselves, all down the centuries, in the study of his perfections; and though the knowledge of God has been constantly increasing with the growth of human thought, yet these brighter minds have never reached a height from which they could survey the vast domain his nature covers, or know him in the fulness of his power.

Thus thought, which grapples all other problems, is powerless here. Reason, which penetrates to the heart of things material, is unable to decipher the scrolls on which his character is displayed. Imagination can blend no colors with which to paint the portrait of him who '' makes the clouds his chariot, and rides upon the wings of the wind." And even Faith, while it believes in his reality, openly confesses that it does not, and cannot, comprehend him as he is.

But, notwithstanding all this, a belief in God, and a desire to know more of him, is well nigh universal. That cry of Philip's, *' Lord, shew us the Father and it sufficeth us," is not so

GOD. 15

much the voice of his own curiosity, as it is the expression of the heart-longings of the great human family for a fuller knowledge of, and a better acquaintance with, the great Head of the household, the common Father of the race.

Men still desire to know God through the senses. They do not hesitate, even yet, to ask for ocular demonstrations of his existence and character. The thought in thousands of minds is, '* If we could once see God, we should then be fully content." They have the feeling that such a sight would settle all doubts and questionings, and give rest and peace to the soul now agitated with the unceasing conflict of religious hopes and fears. We must admit that such thoughts are very natural; but the trouble is that they are only natural, while God is spirit, and for this reason, if for no other, he cannot possibly be discerned in this way.

But it does not follow, as some would have us think, that because God cannot be realized through the medium of the physical senses, that we must therefore remain in total ignorance concerning him ; for there are many things realized in the experience of every day, which are, in a large degree, subject to this same law.

Thought and affection, considered in themselves, are incapable of manifestation to the senses. We cannot handle an idea, or see a thought, or taste the sweetness of an affection, in the literal and real sense in which we ask for the vision of the Most High. We can only show our thoughts by giving them a material setting. We can only reveal our affections by clothing them in material forms. And then, looking upon the setting and the form, we draw our conclusions concerning the existence and the nature of the thoughts and feelings thus enshrined.

We may reverently assert, that to a certain degree God has followed this same method in the revelation of himself to man. He has

GOD. 17

taken to himself the material form best known to man; man's own form, in fact; and through this medium of manifestation, has sought to make himself more fully known.

But we must move carefully here. We must not assert that the divine becomes human; but only that Jehovah veiled himself in our human nature, that he might be better understood. God does not, in the more common sense, become man ; but he enshrines his divinity in a human form, for the purposes of the fuller revelation he desires to make to us, of himself, and of his love. The divine brought fully to the level of the human would be divine no longer. The divine simply enshrined in the human is still blessedly the same.

Any human conception of God must necessarily be largely human in its character. To be of any conscious helpfulness to man, the Divine Being must have a human expression. And from this it follows that our methods of thinking of the Heavenly Father must be

BASAL TRUTHS.

largely the same as those by which we think of '' our fathers in the flesh." Finite minds cannot comprehend the infinite as such; and God must be manifested through a finite medium, before we can come to the knowledge of his nature, or discern the relations subsisting between himself and us.

And yet there is a sense in which the knowledge of God becomes a necessity of our very being. Ignorance and misconception concerning his nature and character are not only fatal to piety and peace, but they are fatal to the free growth and full development of all in us that is worth possessing, — of all that really makes man, ma/i.

Nature and providence speak of God, and speak for God ; but they do not clearly reveal him. Creation is but his outer garment. Providence is but the chariot in which he rides forth to the accomplishment of his will. The starry worlds above us are but the lamps w^hich light him on his path. The great uni-

GOD. 19

verse, as a whole, is but the crystallization of his thought. These are not God. These are but faint and distant glimpses of the outgrowths of his divine almightiness. If we can obtain no nearer view than these afford, then we shall never know him in reality and truth.

We therefore arrive, almost unconsciously, at the conclusion, that if we are to know God, it must be, and can only be, through a revelation made by God himself; and w^e may take it for granted that any such revelation will be reliable and trustworthy in the very highest degree. And this brings us face to face with the central inquiry, Has God made any such revelation of himself to man?

Passing by the marvellous representations of the Deity which meet us in the written word, we point you to that '* great mystery of godliness, God manifest in flesh;" God dwelling with man in the form and likeness of man, imprinting his footsteps on the things with which we are most familiar, holding intercourse with US in our own language; and thus imparting to us, in a manner well within the limits of our comprehension, the completer knowledge of himself.

Looking thus upon Jesus, we reverently and believingly declare that what he was, that God is. He was literally, Immanuel, '^ God with us." He was the revelation of God's spotless innocence and purity; of his unbounded rectitude, and unvarying truth; of his overawing majesty and illimitable love; and as we proceed with the study of the manifold graces which shine forth in him, we become more and more deeply convinced that we can see, and can only see, '' the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

It may appear strange that in the study of such a theme we should pass over the valuable testimony of the written word. But recall the fact that knowledge is a growth through successive stages, and that the idea of God, as presented in the Bible, grows gradually clearer as human

GOD. 21

capacity and intelligence increase. The Old Testament is largely a pathway into the New; and the New Testament, which is universally regarded as the greatest of our literary possessions, is chiefly occupied with the record of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

We do not of course deny that the Old Testament contains a revealment of God ; but it is the great and incomprehensible Jehovah we there behold. The dark clouds which rest upon Sinai, through which we obtain some glimpses of God in the aspect of a stern and arbitrary sovereign, must be tinged with the sublime radiance of that great sunset which occurred on Calvary, before the sovereign can be transfigured into the Father, and Jehovah be seen as the God of love. But in the New Testament the clouds of parable and dark saying have been rifted, the veils have been rent, the walls of partition have been torn away, and we see in Jesus the brightness of the divine glory, the express image of our

God. The broad chasm between the human and the divine is spanned by the one widesweeping arch of the incarnation ; and we stand in the very presence of the revelation for which we seek.

What then do we learn of God in Jesus, that the world had not fully known before?

Our answer to this important question must necessarily be brief, for the broad realm of our Saviour's earthly career cannot be traversed in a single hour. But just as the planets blaze forth in their richer glory, amid the paler but still beauteous light of the surrounding stars, so there are distinguishing features in the character of Jesus, and certain truths which shine resplendent in his teachings, from w^hich we may select by way of illustration. Even these we must present in bare and meagre outlines ; but we do so in the hope that, your thought being directed into these channels, you may go forward and work out the details of the glorious revelation for yourselves.

GOD. 23

But before referring specifically to these qualities and characteristics, we must ask you to pause and think this thought. If Jesus is divine, if he is '' the Word," and the Word is God ; then these distinguishing features of his character are nothing less than the characteristics of God himself

With this thought well to the front, take up the study of the principle of goodness, as it finds embodiment in his daily life. In that life, goodness is carried to a degree of perfection which amazes even the best and holiest of men. It is all-embracing, and all-controlling; without limit in any direction, and without hindrance at any point.

We have mentioned it first, here, because it is the dominant chord in his harmonious career. It is regnant in his every thought. It gives its own rich color to his every word. It stamps itself indelibly upon his every deed. There is, therefore, no need that we pause for specific illustrations. His life is one great illustration in itself, from first to last.

Now apply the thought just given, and what is the result? Is it not this? If goodness is the distino-uishin^^ feature of the life of Him who came to reveal God, then we are led to the indisputable conclusion that goodness forms the basal element in the character of God himself. And in the reaching of this simple conclusion, we have built a permanent foundation on which we may stand securely while striving to press forward into the deeper knowledge of Him in whom we fain w^ould trust.

As we pursue this line of thought still further, one of the first things we discover is, that the God we have so often shunned, the Being we have regarded with an awe amounting at times to a positive dread, is so full of tenderness and compassion, so infinite in goodness and in grace, that no sacrifice is too great for him to make for our welfare, even to the giving of his only-begotten and well-beloved Son.

Or, take a second thought, and study it from the same view-point. Can a righteous

GOD.

God forgive the wilful breaking of his law? Can sin be pardoned, and the sinner be reinstated in the divine favor, and thus recover his lost peace?

What sadder story than that of the fall of Peter stands anywhere recorded on the history of the world's past? No need to repeat the wearisome and terrible details. They are but too familiar to us all. But our inquiry is. How did Jesus deal with this base ingrate? Did he spurn him from his presence, and drive him into the outer darkness of isolation and contempt? The story of the Saviour's patient forbearance, his gentle pity, and his generous help to his fallen but penitent disciple, forms one of the most tender and complete illustrations of a disinterested and unselfish love with which we have been made acquainted since human history began.

But as we look yet more closely at the Christcharacter, we find that the example we have quoted is but one among many; and that this was the spirit which dominated his Hfe throughout. And again we assert that if Jesus is divine, and the revealer of the divine mind and will to men, then his treatment of the fallen Peter is a picture of God's treatment of the race ; and that if the same spirit of repentance and reform were manifested by all men, we can see no reason why all should not be forgiven, and restored to the same happy relations to the common Father, which Peter afterwards enjoyed with Jesus Christ.

This opens the way to a third thought. In the study of the life and character of Jesus, we see that God and man can really enter into the most intimate and tender fellowship.

As we approach this part of our subject, we desire to emphasize the statement that until we have realized this, we have failed to grasp one of the greatest truths which the coming of the Christ was meant to teach. It is not enough that we see him living a perfect human life; carrying our infirmities without

GOD.

falling beneath the load ; laying the physical at the feet of the spiritual ; and subordinating the human to the divine. We must see him linking the divine and human into oneness; and we must see this as the great mission of his career.

Do you not discern that the doctrine of Christ's true and proper divinity carries with it all this, and more? Is it not clear to you, that the relations he sustained to men, both saints and sinners, are veritable revelations of the relations sustained to us by God? Anything less than this is but a surface view of his career at best. He moves among men as the exponent of the divine mind, and will, and heart; and not merely as an example of human purity and perfectness. He reveals to us, at every point, the fact that God is not far removed from, and indifferent to, the affairs of his creatures ; but that he dwells among us, seeks to influence our thought, to regulate our conduct, to guide our waywardness, and to

BASAL TRUTHS.

bind us to himself; to link his life with ours, our life with his.

To have witnessed just once, as we see it in the Christ, the possibility of such a union, is, in itself, an advance upon all the revelations which had gone before ; and casts a golden halo about the sublime destiny which God has planned for us, which no man who is not wilfully blind need fail to see.

Consider, in this light, those tender words of Jesus which relate to the peaceful future of his followers; and see how they illuminate the great truth that it is not the will of God that any man should perish, but that all should rise to the felicities of an eternal life in his own presence.

To understand him fully when he says, ^^Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;" and especially as he makes the sublimer declaration, '' I am the resurrection and the life ; '' we must recognize the statements themselves

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as the utterances of the Infinite and Eternal One. We must see that it is divinity uttering . itself through humanity, just as the soul utters itself through the body; and that the connection is as close and real in the one case as in the other. But if we can realize this, then we may also feel that Deity stands in relations to us, as simple and as real as those which subsisted between the Saviour and his followers; and that the revelations of the divine to us, may be as direct and definite as those he made to them.

We have, then, in the Incarnation, God's answer to our call for a fuller and completer knowledge of himself To look steadily past this sublime manifestation, and to persist in seeking for God in the dim and shadowy distances of human speculations, whether philosophical, or scientific, or theological, is an error so palpable as to border closely upon the realm of sin.

If we had confined ourselves strictly to the

Statements of the written word, which is the more common method of procedure in studies of this class, the result would still have been the same. At the opening of that record we see God in the visible creation proceeding from his power; and, at the end, we see him in the visible Christ proceeding from his love ; and we again assert that, what Christ was, that God is. He is the Alpha and Omega ; the beginning and the end are one.

II. Man

" When God created man, His last and best work, this was as if a king, having built a great city, and adorned it with many and various works, after he had perfected all, should command a very great and beautiful image of himself to be set up in the midst of the city, to show who was the builder of it."

Theodorus Mopsiiestejius,

MAN.

So God created man in his own i^nage}

In the sublime and fascinating narrative of creation, with which our Scriptures open, we have come into possession of a vast fund of information concerning the origin of the things we see about us, which could only have been imparted by the Being in whose all-comprehending mind the visible universe had its birth. If it is true that none but God could create, it is also true that none but God could reveal. With the method of this revelation we are not just now concerned. The nature of the story bespeaks its origin as divine ; and with this we are content.

^ Genesis i. 27.

This study of the origin of things gathers much of its fascination from the fact that creation is the utterance of God's thought, the makincr visible of the workings of his own mind and will. Our science tells us that in the universe thus created, there are evidences of a growth from the lower to the higher; and our Scriptures open up to us the vision of the divine thought, first bringing order out of chaos, and then advancing step by step to the creation of man, as the crown and consummation of the whole.

On the morning of the sixth day, the Divine Being looked out upon the material universe in its completed form. The darkness which had mantled over chaos was dispelled. Sea and land occupied their own distinctive spheres. Verdure and beauty clothed the landscape with garments of loveliness, and the myriad forms of life. had already entered upon the work of peopling the green earth with reproductions of themselves. But, as yet, there was no perceiving

MAN.

mind to gather up creation's lesson, and no reflecting soul to offer its adoring love to Him from whom creation sprang.

Then God said, " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ; and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth ; " and, the resolution being thus formed, it was instantly carried into effect, — and God made '* man in his own image," as our text declares.

Man is, therefore, the last and fullest expression of God's thought. In him the creature becomes intelligent, self-conscious, endowed with will, and capable, to some extent, of meeting with, and understanding his Creator. In him, God finds room for the utterance, not merely of his wisdom and his power, but for that which is most profoundly moral and spiritual in his own nature. In him, God finds a creature who can sympathize with his purposes, who can respond to his affection, and can offer scope and field for the exercise and display of the whole fulness of his plans and aims.

Man is a compound, or more properly, a complex being. He is a link between the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, the temporal and the eternal. On the bodily side he is but dust ; while on the spiritual side he is an emanation from the ail-creating God. Both phases of his being are equally mysterious and perplexing; and both bespeak the same infinitude of care and skill.

If we regard man's body we are amazed at its comeliness and its utility. The adaptation of the several members to the particular functions they are fashioned to perform, is a study for a lifetime ; while the bringing of all these members under the control of a central will, is the unsolved puzzle, not of the physiologist alone, but of the race at large. Perfect in structure, and matchless in form, the human body has no parallel in nature, and no superior in the realm of created things.

MAN-

Of the nature of the soul we are wholly ignorant. We may define the soul as the life-power of the body; but how the soul imparts life to the body no living man can tell. Soul and body are so closely and mysteriously interlinked into each other that both are necessary to man's existence here ; but how and why this is so, we are entirely unable to discern.

But we have come to discover that the soul is not the body, and that the body is not the real man. Some one has said that '* man is not a body enshrining a soul ; but he is a soul wearing a body ; " and early in the history of our literature, Edmund Spenser sang, and, in a sense, sang truly: —

'' For of the soul the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make."

Nor must we overlook the further fact that just as man is in himself the connecting link between the material and the spiritual, embodying and illustrating both these phases of being,

SO the intellectual nature in man forms a connecting link between the body and the soul, partaking of both, dependent on both, yet different from either, or from both combined. It furnishes a means of communication between the two, and brings both into closer connection with the world without; but its greatest worth lies in the fact that it furnishes the only available means or medium for the study of man himself.

But in considering man, amid our present limitations, it is both natural and necessary that we confine ourselves mainly to the study of that one phase of his being which stands more directly connected with our text.

This we regard as the moral side of man's nature ; for, while it is true that it is in his mind and soul that man takes on the image of God, and that it is through the mind that we must seek to trace this likeness ; yet it is not merely in his general capacity to know, but in his special capacities for the knowing and doing of

MAN.

the right, that we shall discover the brightest and clearest manifestations of the divine element in him. We therefore turn from the hopeless task of striving to present his whole nature to the view, that we may glance at him as a creature formed for the companionship of his Creator, and destined to be with him, not only w^here He is, but as He is.

But before proceeding, we shall do well to note that we are not about to look for God in man, but only for God's image. To forget the limitations and restrictions under which we now exist, is to render our present study hopeless from the first.

For example: Man lives, but God is life. Man loves, but God is love. Man is spiritual, but God is spirit. Man is finite, but God is infinite. But while narrow in their range and scope, man's faculties and powers are the same in order and nature with those which constitute the mind and character of the Lord Most High.

At a few of the more prominent characteristics of man's moral nature we now desire to look ; and to seek in these for those traces of the heavenly and the divine, which our text would lead us to believe that we possess, — those flashes of divine light which form the distinguishing marks of man's present, and the foregleams of the exalted destiny, which, if the text be true, must of necessity await us in the not far distant future.

The basal factor in man's moral being is the Will. This is the central and the dominating force in the shaping of his character, and the regulating of his conduct. It sits enthroned among his faculties as king, and its rule is all-powerful, whether for good or ill. It is the power above all others which gives to man his individuality ; and no man is, or can be, master of himself, until he has brought this masterfaculty into subjection, and feels himself able to hold it under control. Goethe has said that '' He who is firm in will moulds the world to

MAN.

himself; " but we would rather say, He who has conquered his will may go forward and mould the w^orld to his own liking.

The will influences the intellect. It holds the mind to the study of a certain object, or it turns it resolutely away. Making its selections from the great streams of thought which the imagination or the reasoning power causes to flow through the mind, it virtually takes control of the life at its very beginnings. It puts its strong hand upon that floodgate, the raising or lowering of which puts our whole being into a whirl of intense activity, or reduces it to the silence of inaction, as the case may be.

The will sways the heart. It touches the fountains of our affection, determines our likes and dislikes, colors our dispositions and frames our tempers, imprints its stamp upon our feelings and directs our impulses ; and, to a far greater degree than we imagine, it makes us what we are.

Now it is in the possession of this great and

BASAL TRUTHS.

free-moving agent or faculty, that we catch our first ghmpse of the image of God in man. The divine and the human will are ahke in order and character, though different in degree. The will of man is mighty, the will of God is almighty; but in essence they are very much the same.