The Fundamental Principles of Christianity in the Light of Modern Thinking* By REV. JOHN M. MACINNIS, B. D. IV. THE GREAT ARREST
I N our attempt to discover the mean ing and value of life we were forced to recognize that the reve lation of God in Christ is the key to its secret. The central fact in that revelation is the fatherhood of God. The fundamental principle in father hood is the paternal passion—the de sire of life to reproduce itself. Hence, the determining factor in creation is the passion in the Father’s heart to create an instrument capable of mani festing His life. Man is the consum mation of this creation and his life finds its fullest and only perfect ex pression in Christ. He is God’s inter pretation of man and of the purpose of creation. When we are brought into the pres ence of this ideal life we become pain fully conscious of the fact that man as we find him in history and expe rience is not fulfilling the purpose of his life. We recognize in Christ the kind of life that we would naturally expect to find in God. When Jesus says “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” we instinctively feel that He is telling the truth. In the pres ence of that truth we feel condemned. We instinctively feel that that is what we ought to be. On the other hand, we are sure that is not what we are, and we feel guilty—because of our failure. In the presence of Jesus we are painfully conscious that there is something fundamentally wrong in the life that we are living. What is it ?■ You answer “Sin.” Yes, but what is sin ? This brings us in our simple ♦A ddress delivered a t th e M ontrose B ible C onference, T h u rsd ay , A u g u st 7, 1913, 9 a. m. C opyright, by Jo h n M . M a d n n is, 1913.
studies to one of the most real and difficult problems in human experience. Prof. Peake says, “It is a problem be fore which the greatest men have had to confess defeat.” “No one,” says Prof. Lotze, “has here found the thought which would save us from difficulty, and I, too, know it not.” Here is the striking statement made concerning it by the late Prof. James Orr. “What we name sin is, from the religious point of view, the tragedy of God’s universe. What it is, how it came, why it is permitted to develop itself into the havoc and ruin it surely entails, what is to be the end of it, above all, how its presence and work ing are to be reconciled with goodness, holiness, love in the God who has per mitted it—these are the crushing questions that press upon the spirit of fevery one who thinks deeply on the subject.” In its very conception sin is that which ought not to he; which ought never to have been. How, then, or why is it here, this awful, glaring,, deadly omnipresent reality in human history and experience?” We cannot evade this question and to treat it lightly is to be pathetically superficial. To turn it aside as something we are not to bother our heads about is a startling revelation of an appalling moral and spiritual blindness. Prof. James Y. Simpson in speaking of this attitude says, “To say that ‘the higher man of today is not worrying about his sins at all’ is simply to refer to an insensibility, a numbness that is the sure forerunner of spiritual death; to find satisfaction in the fact is not to befriend humanity.”
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