VOL. VI
APRIL, 1915
No. 4
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The King's Business
“Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.”—Rev. 1:5
Published once a month by the BIBLE INSTITUTE OF LOS ANGELES LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, U. S. A.
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O N E D O L L A R A Y E A R
The New Chime of Eleven Bells in the Bible Institute, like the Bells in other promi nent buildings in America and in many places abroad was made by JUntwlg fe ll (Eo. 22 RIVER ST., TROY, N. Y. 177 BROADWAY
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NEW YORK
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®Iu> liin g 0 lUtfitUFfiS MOTTO: " I the Lord do keep it, I will water it every moment lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.“—Isa. 27:3. R. A. TORREY, EDITOR T. C. H o r t o n J. h . H u n t e r —ASSOCIATE EDITORS— Organ of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, Inc. Los Angeles, California, U. S. A. Entered as Second -Class Matter" November 17, 1910, at the postoffice at Los Angeles, California, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Copyright by Bible Institu te of Los Angeles, 1915
DIRECTORS
Lyman Stewart, President. William Thorn, Secretary. T. C. Horton, Superintendent. E. A. K. Hackett.
Rev. A. B. Prichard, Vice-President. Leon V..Shaw, Treasurer.
B. A, ToTrey.
Giles Kellogg. H. A. Getz.
S. I. Merrill.
J. M. Irvine.
DOCTRINAL STATEMENT We hold to the Historic Faith of the Church as expressed in the Common Creed of Evangelical Christendom and including: The Trinity of the Godhead. The Deity of the Christ.
The Maintenance of Good Works. The Second Coming of Christ. The Immortality of the Spirit. The Resurrection of the Body. The Life Everlasting of Believers. The Endless Punishment of the Im penitent. The Reality and Personality of Satan. (7) Bible Women. House-to-house visitation and neighborhood classes. (8) Oil Fields., A mission to men on the oil fields. (9) Books and Tracts. Sale and dis tribution of selected books and tracts. (10) Harbor Work. For Beamen in Los Angeles harbor. (11) Yoke Fellows Hall. Thoroughly manned. Our Mission for men with Boot Black and Newsboys Class and Street Meetings. (12) Print Shop. For printing Testa ments, books, tracts, etc. A complete establishment, profits going to free dis tribution of tracts.
The Personality of the Holy Ghost. The Supernatural and Plenary au thority of the Holy Scriptures. The Unity in Diversity of the Church, which is the Body and Bride of Christ. The Substitutionary Atonement. The Necessity of the New Birth. P u rp o se The Institute trains, free of ^ cost, accredited men and women, in the knowledge and use of the Bible. Departments: W The, institute Classes held daily exceptSaturdays and Sundays. (2) Extension work. Classes and con ferences held in neighboring cities and towns. (3) Evangelistic. Meetings conducted by our evangelists. (4) Spanish Mission. Meetings every night. (5) Shop Work. Regular services in shops and factories. (6) Jewish Evangelism. Personal work among the Hebrews.
OUR WORK
Two Great Books for the Times by the noted and successful evangelist Rev. R. A. Torrey, D. D. Those live Christians who are looking for the imminent coming of Our Lord, and who therefore desire the best obtainable information on this topic, will be deeply interested in “The Return of the Lord Jesus” Recently issued Dr. Torrey bases every statem ent upon Scripture, and speaks with no uncertain sound. This book is also invaluable in awakening honest b u t un informed Christians to one of the most precious truths bequeathed by Christ to H is followers. The book also contains a convenient classification of Scrip ture passages, “Pre-Millenarianism o r Post-Millenarianism— Which? by Rev. J. H. Sammis, and “How 1 Became a Pre- Millenialist,” by Rev. Jam es H. Brooks, D. D. Cloth, fifty cents; paper, twenty-five cents.
“The Wondrous Joy of Soul Winning” Dr. To rrey ’s most recent book
deals with the great mission of the truly-alive Christian. It shows not only the blessedness of this sacred ministry, bu t also the im perative duty resting upon all true beliévers. R e a d i t — a n d p a s s i t o n ! Cloth, fifty cents Either of the above books will be sent upon receipt of list price by The B io la Book Room Bible Institute of Los Angeles 539-558 South Hope Street Los Angeles, Cal.
THE KING’S BU S INE S S Voi. 6 APRIL, 1915 No. 4
E D I T O R I A L
A series of volumes called “The Fundamentals,” and known to all English speaking ministers of the Gospel and prominent Protestant Christian workers, has been issued by two Christian laymen, and the stupendous project has been successfully executed of «sending a
Testimony of the Fundamentals to Be Continued
total of 3,000,000 copies of the publication regularly to all English-speaking Protestant religious workers who requested it. In completion of the original plan, the twelfth and closing volume has recently been issued. When it be came known that this volume would complete the publication, letters poured in upon the Executive Secretary of The Fundamentals from different parts of the world requesting that in some way this testimony be continued. The two laymen, when informed of this widespread desire, decided that the best way to continue the testimony is through The King’s Business, and they therefore made arrangements with the editors and publishers of this magazine by which this could be done. To the 100,000 men and women who have thus definitely asked it, the magazine will be sent. It is planned that there will appear each month an article along the lines of The Fundamentals, written by the same men who wrote those articles 01 by men representing, with an equal ability, the same doctrinal point of view. It is expected that there will be articles by Rev. Canon Dyson Hague, D. D., Rev. Prof. W. H. Griffith-Thomas, D. D., Rev. Dr. A. C. Dixon, Mr. Philip Mauro, Rev. Dr. L. W. Munhall, Sir Robert Anderson, Rev. Dr. W. B. Riley, Rev. Thomas C. Whitelaw, D. D., Rev. Andrew Craig Robinson, M. A., and other well-known writes in Great Britain and America with whom arrangements have already been made or will soon be made. Some of the manuscripts which have been submitted for publication in The Fundamentals, but which could not be used for lack or space, or because coming too late, will appear in Thè King’s Business. In addition to these apologetic and doctrinal articles, there will appear each month a sermon by some preacher whom God is greatly blessing in the work. Some of these sermons will be new, some of them will be a repro duction of the best sermons preached in the past. Great emphasis will be laid in the magazine on the teaching of the International Sunday School Lessons. It is aimed to make the magazine absolutely indispensable to the Sunday School teacher. There will also be other departments, but everything directed toward the study, teaching .and preaching of the Bible and the promotion of the prayer life and the increase of evangelistic effort.
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T H E K ING ’S BUS INESS Those who are looking for and working for a revival in some other way than through the preaching of Bible truth in the power of the Holy Ghost would do well to study history and learn how the historic re vivals in the Church have come. Every revival since
Historic Revivals Result of Sane Bible Study
Pentecost has come in the same way, viz., through the study of one Book— the Bible—and the truth of that Book being brought home, first of all to the hearts of a few men by the power of the Holy Ghost and then through them being brought home to the hearts of great communities. Some words written by Prof. James Orr, D. D., some time before his death in his book, “The Bible Under Trial,” are very significant: “The present age has abounding faith in ‘scholarship.’ When a scholar speaks about the Bible, let no man peep or mutter. And I should assuredly be the last to seem to throw any slight on sound and accurate scholarship. Let scholars be fought by all means with the weapons of scholars.. “But it is very much to the point to observe that it has never been by learning, by philosophy, by science, by 'scholarship, that the Church has been revived and saved in eras of great religious laxity and abounding in fidelity. When Jesus introduced His religion into the world He did not choose ‘scholars,’ but humble, simple-minded men, attached to Himself by a living faith, and endued with power from on high, to do it, as witnesses to His words, works, and resurrection. ‘The base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are.’ (1 Cor. 1:28). “So when- we come to the later age of the Reformation, what brought the remedy for the unbelief and spiritual evils under which that age groaned? Not scholarship or science, but the discovery in Scripture and faithful proclamation of the living Gospel of the grace of God by Luther and his fellow-reformers, men who had felt its power in their souls. “And once more, what rescued the Church from the torpor and death of the negation of the eighteenth century? The deliverance came, not from philosophy or learning, not even from the works of able apologists like Butler, but from the tides of the Spiritual Revival that swept over Britain, and were felt in other lands under* the preaching of such men as White- field and the Wesleys. This it was which gave evangelism the victory once more oyer indifference and unbelief, and breathed the new breath of life into society which introduced the era of missions to the heathen, Bible dif fusion, home evangelization, and the innumerable social reforms of the last century. It is to a like outpouring of the Spirit of God upon His Church, and to the same divine energy manifesting itself in holy lives and practical work, far more than to learned confutations, however valuable these may be in their place, that we must look for the overthrow of the forms of un belief that life up their heads among us today. The owls vanish when the daylight reappears.” Many persons today are looking- for a new light to dawn through science, philosophy, psychology and sociology, and if history teaches anything, it teaches that if we are to have new life and therefore new light, it must come in the same way that it always has come—in the illumination and power of the Holy Spirit.
The secular papers are making much of what they call “The Pope’s Prayer for Peace.” It is said that Pope Benedict has ordered to be recited in all the Catholic Churches in the United States on Passion Sunday, March 21, the following prayer:
Amusing Blunder Made by Pope
Benedict
DR. REUBEN A. TORREY Dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. President International Christian Workers* Association —1885-1892. Co-worker with the late D. «L. Moody, 1889-1899. Superintendent of Chicago Evangelization Society and Moody Bible Institute, 1889-1907. Pastor of the Moody Church, Chicago, 1894-1906. Conducted the Torrey-Alexander Missions in Australia, New Zealand, India, Germany, and Great Britain, 1902- 1905. Conducted the Torrey Missions in the United States and Canada, 1906-1911. Established the Montrose Bible Conference, 1908. Conducted Torrey Missions in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1911. Author of twenty-five volumes on Bible Study, Methods of Christian Work and Soul Winning, which have been translated into more than twenty languages and are used as text books in all lands.
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T H E K ING ’S BUS INESS “Dismayed by the horrors of a war in bringing' ruin to peoples and nations, we turn, 0 Jesus, to Thy most loving heart as to our last hope. O God of Mercy, with tears we invoke Thee to end this fearful scourge; O King of Peace, we humbly implore the peace for which we long. “From Thy sacred heart Thou didst shed for the world divine charity so that discord might end and love might reign among men. During Thy life on earth Thy heart beat with tender compassion for the sorrows of men; in this hour made terrible with burning hate, with bloodshed and with slaughter, once more may Thy divine heart be moved to pity. “Pity the countless mothers in anguish for the fate of their sons, for the numberless families now bereaved of their fathers; pity Europe, over which broods such havoc and disaster. Do Thou inspire rulers and peoples with, counsels of meekness, do Thou heal discords that tear nations asunder. ‘Thou who didst shed Thy precious blood that they might live as brothers, bring men together once more in loving harmony; and, as once before, to the cry of the Apostle Peter: ‘Save us, Lord, we perish,’ Thou , didst answer with words of mercy and didst still the raging sea, so now deign to hear our trustful prayer and give back to the world peace and tranquility. “And do Thou, O most holy Virgin, as in other times of our distress, be now our help, our protector and our safeguard. Amen.” . , Everyone must sympathize with the Pope’s longing for peace and ap prove of his action in urging the church under his administration to pray for peace, but certainly the Pope, if he is infallible, should quote Scripture cor rectly He refers to “the cry of the Apostle Peter: ‘Save us, Lord, we perish’/ ’ But in the inspired record this is not recorded as Peter’s cry, but as the cry of the whole company of the disciples (Matt. 8:25, 26 )/ And Peter is not specified at all in any account given of the incident. The Pope seems to have confused this incident with another in the 14th chapter of Matthew, where Peter attempted to walk on the water and got his eyes off his Lord and onto the winds and Waves and began to sink, when he cried “Lord, save me” (Matt. 14:30). Possibly, this is not altogether a blunder on the Pope’s part; for it may seek to give him a prominence in this incident which the Bible record does not, and that, therefore, he does not hesitate to corrupt the Word of God in order to gain his point. It is furthermore to be noted that the disciples did not appear in a very favorable light in the incident to which reference is made, for after offering the prayer to which the Pope inaccurately refers, our Lord immediately rebuked them, saying, “Why are ye fearful, oh, ye of little faith?1’ (Matt. 14:26). We will not stop to point out other things in this proposed form of prayer that show the Pope’s ignorance of Bible teaching.
A testimony by Sir W. Robertson Nicoli on the im- portance of the faith and hope of the Second Coming as found in the following clipping from the Bible of To-day, is full of suggestiveness: A G reat W eakness in M odern B ible T each
Faith and Hope in Second Coming of Our Lord
ing —The Faith and Hope of the Second Advent, by W. Robertson Nicoli, editor of The British Weekly. Dr. Nicoli preached the sermon on the occa sion of the centenary of Dr. Horatius Bonar, in the Grange United Free Church, Edinburgh, on January 24. In closing his discourse, which was
THE KING’S BUSINESS 273 marked by sympathy and insight, he referred to the place ^in Dr. Bonar s teaching of the Second Coming of our Lord. Dr. Nicoll said: “I close with a word on one great theme of Dr. Bonar’s ministry, of which, as it would seem, we hear little now. He was absorbed from first to last in the faith and hope of the Second Advent. Whenever we °Pen the New Testament we find it thrilling to the heat and joy of that manifesta tion and coming of the Lord when we shall see Him as He is. Edward Irving, with all his errors, did one thing. He revived for his generation the Parousia as the definite hope of the Church which witnesses to the Lord’s death till He come. Dr. Nansen has recently told us what science has to say about the end of the world. He tells us that the end will take place after millions of years, when the sun has been cooled. Life will then have to cope with greater and greater difficulties of existence until it finally will become gradually less and less favorable for the complicated and highly developed animals, whilst the simple low organisms will probably be those that will live longest until even they disappear. But the faith of the Church is that Christ, who once offered Himself in our nature as the; full, per fect, and sufficient sacrifice, satisfaction, and oblation for the sins of the whole world will come again. The Christ who comes will be the Christ who departed, and His coming will be in like manner as the disciples saw Him go, visible, corporeal, local. We, according to His promise, look for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. I venture to think it a great weakness of our teaching that so little is said about the blessed hope and appearing of our great God and Saviour. Meanwhile, if He returns not in our lifetime, we know that we are dying people all of us, that there are before us death, judgment and eternity. So let us offer the prayer:
“A- few more years shall roll, A few more seasons come, And we shall be with those that rest, Asleep within the tomb. Then, O my Lord, prepare My soul for that great day; O wash me in Thy precious blood, And take my sins away!”
In a recent issue of the Literary Digest is a very sug- gestive article entitled, “A New Kingdom of Israel,’ which naturally raises the question, Will a Jewish Kingdom be set up in Palestine as a result of the present war? It reads:
Will Jews Return to Palestine as War Sequel?
“The re-establishment of the ancient glories of Zion, as a result of the present war, is very much more than a possibility. The change in the status of Egypt renders it desirable to England that Palestine be in thé hands of some Power whose interests should not clash with those of its Egyptian neighbor. This is made very clear from an editorial in one of the Arabic papers of Cairo, A l Watam, which thinks: ‘From geographical considerations Palestine is to Egypt what Albania is to Italy or the Netherlands to Great Britain. Current events have proved that Egypt can be one day or another threatened from that quarter. Therefore it is absolutely indispensable for Great Britain that this country should become a neutral State, or be annexed. But the objection to a British occupation of Palestine is that if the province opens a door on Egypt it also holds the relation to this country of an exit, and the presence of a British garrison in Palestine would keep the inhabitants of Syria awake. So it is better to solve the problem by neutrality.’
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T H E K ING ’S BUS INESS “How this neutrality can best be assured is discussed by the English papers, and the general opinion seems to be that the problem can be most satisfactorily solved by recreating in Palestine a Jewish State under the pro tection of one or other of the great Powers. The London Globe considers that such a step would be acceptable to all concerned, and goes on to say: ‘The Jews, after two thousand years of a life of a wandering nation, still cling most fervently to the hope of some day being restored to their ancient , patrimony. The most satisfactory solution to the problem, therefore, would be the installation of the Jews as the rulers of Palestine, which will then become an independent State and cease to menace English interests in Egypt. ‘Russia will also agree to such an outcome of the present difficulties. In its promise to the Poles to make Poland an autonomous government, Rus sia will have to face many difficult and perplexing problems. The most diffi cult of these is the presence of a large Jewish population in Poland, to whom the Poles are not sympathetic. This element may cause much trouble and disturbance, in the formation of a new- State, and it will be to the interests of Russia to remove this disturbance as early as possible. The Polish Jews are especially anxious for a return to Palestine. They constitute the more orthodox element of the Jewish, community, who pray and hope most fer vently for such a result. By facilitating their transference to Palestine, which shall be a land of their own, Russia will be able to secure peace and harmony in its own territory and carry out its sacred promise to the Poles in a most natural manner and without much friction.’” The novel suggestion that this new and restored State be placed under the protection of the United States is made by the London Daily Chronicle, which thinks tha t: “Even.were the new Zion to become an accomplished fact, and the Jews once more had a national hearth, and home, provision would still have to be made for Christian guardianship of the Holy Sepulcher and other sacred places to which every year scores of thousands of Christians, chiefly from Russia, make a pilgrimage. We assume that a new Palestine, whether it be predominantly Hebrew or non-Hebrew, will at the outset be a State with limited self-government rights under the protecting wing of some great Power. Who is that Power to be? France has traditional claims to the protectorate of Christian races in Asia Minor and has historic links with Syria. ■ England is the protector of Egypt, and Palestine for ages has ac knowledged the suzerainty of the Pharoahs. ‘America has for many years displayed a wonderful enthusiasm for mis sionary and educational work in Asia Minor. That Palestine should be placed under the guardianship of one or the other of these Powers seems fairly obvious.” In Jewish circles the proposal has naturally received the approval of the Orthodox schools of thought and of the Zionists, while some of the leaders of Jewish reform movements in England are disposed to be favorable This is all exceedingly interesting to students of prophecy, and especially to those who have been looking for the speedy return of the Jews to the Holy Land, as a preparation for the events that the Bible clearly tells us shall occur in connection with the return of our Lord to this earth. Of course, it is not necessary according to prophetic teaching that any of these things shall occur before the return of our Lord in the air to receive His own to Himself.
Bible Teaching and the 20th Century By DYSON HAGUE Vicar of the Church of the Epiphany and Professor of Liturgies, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Formerly Canon of S t Paul’s Cathedral, London, Canada
we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8-10.) Above all, he was the daring ad vocate of the theorem that there is no causal connection between our sin and Adam’s Fall, or that Adam was in any sense the representative of his race, as St. Paul states in Romans 5: 12-21. In one word, his teaching evidently was that we make a great mistake in laying emphasis upon the sinful nature of man and our need of Divine Grace, because there is in everybody a certain natural holiness, and that neither evil nor good is born in anyone. It’s the result of either evil or good example, and environ ment is the great thing. Pelagius would be a very popular preacher to day—especially with admirers of “The Inside of the Cup.” Now, it is evi dent to any open student of the tend encies of the Twentieth Century that this sort of teaching has permeated many of the theological fountain heads of to-day, and from these cre ators of theological opinion it has filt ered into the minds of a large num ber of the influential speakers and authors of today. The current teach ing of many of the influential theo logians of today is simply a revamped Pelagianism. THEOLOGICAL FOSSIL. Total Depravity is now largely re garded as a myth. It is looked upon as the fossil of a lost and effete the ology- - The teaching of the Bible that the heart is deceitful above all things', and desperately wicked, and the teaching of St. Paul which reveals
UR PROPOSAL is to deal with certain theo logical tendencies of the age, and to show the re lation of these age-ten
dencies to the teaching of the Bible, especially as concerns its anti-Pela- gianism and Soteriology, its Christ- ology and anti-Arianism. Perhaps there is no fallacy of the age that is more popular than its practical Pe- lagianism and its general attitude with regard to the nature and the guilt of sin. What do we mean by Pelagianism ? Pelagius—Briton, monk, philosopher—was the outstanding polemic theologian of his age. He was the champion of human nature, and of all that it is able to accomplish by itself. In his days the idea of the Superman was happily unexcogitated, and Darwinism, of course, unknown —but Pelagius was the ardent advo cate of the possibilities of human nature apart from grace, and the super-excellence of man as man. Ob sessed with the nobility and ability of man as man, he was the first to categorically deny the innate heredi tary doctrine of sin. It was the philosophical inference from his pri mary assumption that ability limits obligation. He was the first apolo gist of a kind of teaching rampant to-day in many circles, Christian and non-Christian, which is practically tantamount to Sinlessness, and in clean contradiction to the teaching of St. John: “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in Us. If we say we have not sinned
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court; but as for the decent and re spectable, the church-going and virtu ous, they are not guilty; nor have they fallen and come short of the glory of God.” There is nothing that Culture hates so much as the assertion of the uni versality of sin. And it hates it be cause the very concept of sin, accord ing to the Scriptural ideal, militates so bluntly against the evolution phil osophy. It undermines it. It evacu ates it of meaning. The two are con trary the one to the other. If the one is true the other must be false. IGNORE THE CHRIST. Now, very closely connected with this development is the practical dis appearance from the theory of mod ernism of the Biblical idea of the need and the fact of Salvation. It is the rational corollary of the natural de velopment of man. The later gospel is practically that of a self-salvation and the unnecessary Christ. The in dividual is to save himself; a salva tion by culture and civilization and character-building, with Divine grace thrown in as a kind of sleeping part ner. As to the Synergism of Phil. 2 :12, 13—“Work out your own salva tion —for it is God which worketh in you both to do and to will ”—it is ap parently unconsidered. And the lat est of all gospels, the so-called Hu manistic Scheme of Redemption, is that the individual is to look to so ciety for salvation; or, as one of its foremost advocates has put it, (in fact, it is the concrete creed of anti- Christian Socialism) “The help we once expected from invisible and in corporeal agencies (that is, of course, from God and Christ and the Bible and angels and invisible spiritual in fluences) we are now demanding from man. Society is to save the man.” It is, bluntly speaking, salvation by environment. Culture is apparently
man as a sinner, not so much on account of what he does, but on ac count of what he is, is in these days a hard saying, and who can hear it. Humanity wants to be applauded, and Sunday after Sunday in a thousand pulpits to receive bouquets for its achievements, its progress, its nobil ity, its generosity. In fact, nothing seems to excite the anger of modern ism so much as the frank statement of the actuality of original sin, and the intrinsic guiltiness of sinful man. When it hears, it springs up like a man in wrath, and decries it, denies it, fumes at it. For the modernist estimate of sin is essentially anti- Christian and anti-Scriptural. Sometimes it is as frankly out spoken as Sir Oliver Lodge, who de clares that as a matter of fact the higher man of to-day is not worrying about his sins at all, still less about their punishment, (Man and the Uni verse, p. 220) and roundly denies the existence of original sin. But wheth er as frank as this representative voice, it is certain that modernism would repudiate with strong repudia tion the teaching of the Bible on the subject that Sin is the corruption of our universal nature; that it deserves God’s wrath; for “anything that sug gests an angry God . . . is rejected as falling below the best secular mor ality of today” — (Foundations, p. 278). The modern philosophic spirit is found in the evolution of an age- type, a myriad fine specimens of man hood and womanhood, irreproachable in character, kind-hearted and chari table, but without consciousness of the guilt and death of sin, might be found who say: r “This is our Creed. We believe that there is none under sin; there is none unrighteous, no not one. We know that whatsoever the law saith, it saith to those who flagrantly and openly transgress the law, to the in mate of the prison and the police
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conceived of as a kind of living or ganism with a social consciousness, a civilizing force sufficient to supply the universal human need, and offering scientific solution for every problem ethical and sociological. In one word, the Soteriology of the modern may be briefly comprehended in this say ing: “Salvation is salvation of the body ; not of the soul, and the way of salvation material conditions and a higher social life.” The advance of science—especially biological and so cial science—has been accompanied by a displacement of the very idea of a soul which allows of its salvation by redemption and the cultivation of the body. Development- of the body and the amelioration of physical condi tions has become the modern evangel. It finds its climax in the teaching of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose ideas so colored the stream of German thought that he became, according to Menck en, his prominent biographer, the prophet and embodiment of those hab its of thought dominant among the thinking men of fhe world to-day. (I have often said of late that I am not astonished at the philosophy of Nietzsche, but that I am astonished at the influence of Nietzsche). The teaching of Nietzsche centered in the body. “I am body, entirely body and nothing more. ‘Soul’ is only the name of something in the body. That which is called flesh and body is of such incalculably greater importance that the rest is nothing more than a small appurtenance.” What Nietzsche meant exactly by the “Superman” is a conundrum which some of his biographers give up, but apparently it was the culminating evolution of man kind from species to super-species. Hé apparently Had an idea of developed manhood to be obtained by breeding, just as you would breed prize horses and-—pigs. But it is all of the earth, earthly; of thè body, bodily. And the
ultimate goal of life is apparently for man to be the finest of animals. A SAD CONCEPTION. There is something unspeakably sad in the Nietzsche conception of life, and his frenzied and vicious denial of anything like supernatural help and human need, that it reminds one of the famous apothegm of the great Dutch theologian Van Oosterzee, that “the man who disowns his need of deliverance remains as much a stran ger to the microcosm within him as he is to the macrocosm around him and above him.” The Christianized form of this is a kind of modern version of the old Salvation by Works theorem. It is that the ordinary man’s case is not serious, or his heart in any true sense desperately wicked. Those who have been in the last gutter of sin may need something more than a civ ilizing salvation, but the average man needs but a little culture and a little more culture, and he will by charac ter-building secure his ultimate salva tion. When we turn from this to Bible doctrine we are struck with the deep gulf fixed between the two. According to St. Paul (and, by the way, Nietzsche says of St. Paul that he was one of the worst of men; a liar of the worst kind; a pandering anarchist; an appalling imposter, who forged and distorted and falsified the Christ he invented) ; man is of God but has fallen; sin entails a separation from God, and incapability of return ing; its results are ruin to character, failure of life, fear of death, condem nation in judgments and its dessert, the wrath of God. And the first need of man is rehabilitation, and though man is helpless and hopeless in him self, has no righteousness, no power, yet God in Christ has done for us what we could not do; has gained for us what we could not gain, and now confers by grace through faith that life gift which is at once his justifica-
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the Son of God. ( Saphir, Divine Unity, p. 27.) To turn now to the Christology of the Bible and of the Twentieth Cen tury. When we come to the subject of Christology, we find that it is very fashionable now in many theological circles to openly deny those constitu tive beliefs which were universally accepted as the explicit affirmations of the Creeds, and that the Church has been not a little shocked of late by what seems to be the surrender of the citadel faiths of the Bible on the part of some of her foremost teach ers. AVOWED ENEMIES. Years ago it was the habit of all earnest students of theological tend ency to familiarize themselves with the works of the leading antagonists of Christianity and the arguments of the infidels from Julian, Celsus and Porphyry, and Bolingbroke, Hume, and Voltaire, to the casuistries of a more modern age, in such works as Renan’s Vie de Jesu, Greg’s Creed of Christendom, and the more brilliant effort of “Supernatural Christianity.” These men were all of them actuated by intensity of conviction, and in genuity of suggestion, and like the ablest of the German and Dutch criti cal theologians, especially such as Spinoza and DeWette and Votke and Wellhausen, exhausted their philoso phy and scholarship in undermining the foundations of Christianity, espe cially with regard to the authority and credibility of the Bible, the Deity of Christ, and the actuality of His Virgin Birth, His miracles and Res urrection. But they were all of them infidels. They gloried in their free- thinking. They stood unabashed out side and like daring foes brought up their batteries. They made no pre tense to belief. When they tore to pieces the texts they hated, and pro truded ingenious theories about the
tion as a sinner, and his reconciliation to God. But perhaps the most stub born verse in the New Testament is Acts 4:12.. It plants itself four square against the creed of Modern Liberalism, which has been popular ized in Pope’s jingling apothegm in his “Essay on Man” : “For Modes of. Faith let graceless zealots fight; His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.” There is perhaps no more popular creed to-day than that of the man who regards with a complacent and equal izing generosity all creeds and sects; and glories in his conviction that after all it matters little what a man be lieves, whether it be a jumble of leg ends from the Talmud, the Vedas, and the Koran, the stories of the Greek Mythology, the Lives of Saints, or the teaching of the Scriptures—all of equal importance or non-importance. Faith—that is, true faith in God through Jesus Christ the Son of God —is a matter of indifference. Wheth er these ideas, so current to-day on this continent, are due to the wide spread tenets of Unitarianism, or the subtle diffusion of Swedenborgianism and Christian Science, which have percolated from the radiating centre of German rationalism, the German Universities, it would be hard to say; but there can be no doubt that an age that calmly accepts the doctrine of man’s evolution, through long natural processes, is hardly likely to accept a Gospel which has its basis in an In spired Word which declares the fall and sinfulness of the man God cre ated, and instead of wild dreams about the evolution of the Superman reveals the coming glory of the sons of God when we shall bear the image of the heavenly, not through evolu tion, but by the renewing of the Holy Ghost and the resurrection power of
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thought that not the whole of the Biblical tradition about Jesus is un doubtedly historical” !! In the name of the historical science he evaporates the so-called orthodox view of the Trinity, and the two na tures in the One Person of Christ, and declares that “all learned Protes tant theologians of Germany admit unanimously that the orthodox doc trine of the two natures in Christ cannot be retained in its traditional form” ; and says, “all our systematic theologians . . . are seeking new paths in their Christology.” I thought as I read this of the words of the inspired one: “Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways and see and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your soul. But they said, We will not walk therein.” RATIONALIST MEDLEY. But to turn from Loofs and his characteristically Teutonic medley of the baldest rationalism with seeming Christian faith, let us take the case of certain Oxford scholars who in the work entitled “Foundations” have en deavored to restate Christian belief in the terms of modern thought, and: more especially of Professor Sanday and his famous -letter to the Bishop of Oxford. The same curious phe nomenon of mind greets us. State ments apparently orthodox; affirma tions of the necessity of safeguarding the central truths, repudiations of any desire or attempt to undermine in any way the essentials of the faith, are combined with the freest admission of the imaginative or imaginary nature of some of our Lord’s miracles (that is, that they are not historically true), and the repudiation in the frankest terms .of the Virgin Birth; ( “I believe most emphatically His super-natural Birth: but I cannot scarcely bring my self to believe that His birth was un-
growth of myths and legends and clever explainings away of prophe cies and miracles, the possibility of which they denied, they did it as the open foes of Christ and the Bible. FALSE FRIENDS. But what has shocked the Chris tian world of late more than anything else has been the fact that the work of undermining and denying the fun damentals of the faith of Christen dom is now carried on, not by avowed foes, but by avowed friends. Suppose we take two examples: the one a lead ing German, the other a leading Eng lish Churchman. Perhaps the latest word in continental Christology is Professor Loofs’ “What is the Truth about Jesus Christ?” the Haskell Lec tures of 1911 (Scribner’s 1913). From the German viewpoint it is really a most moderate and acceptable presen tation of the question, and he evident ly claims no little credit for separat ing himself from the extreme ration alists who have carried on what is termed the “liberal Jesus-research,” such as Paulus, Strauss, Baur, Keim, Renan, Volkner, Schweitzer and Wellhausen. Sanday pats him on the back as one of the best and most cau tious of the Germans. He professes to approach the gospel story in the spirit of scientific investigation, and lays •down in his theorem nothing shall be “considered to be true by faith that historical science through the means at its disposal is forced to recognize as unhistorical.” He then goes on to say that the three sentences in the so-called apostolic creed “born of the Virgin Mary” ; “the third day He rose again from the dead” ; “He ascended into heaven,” are examples of Biblical tradition that is material, unhistorical, and continues: “It is, therefore,-in my opinion, the duty of all honest friends of the truth among the leading Christians to ac custom their congregations to the
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natural" . . . ) the Resurrection; ( “the question at issue relates to a detail, thè actual resuscitation of the body of our Lord from the tomb. The accounts that have come down to us seem to be too conflicting and con fused to prove this” ( Sanday, p. 20) and the Ascension (“1 do not think that the evidence is sufficient to con vince us that the physical elevation of the Lord’s Body really happened as an external objective fact” (Sanday, p. 15) ; and Streeter adds—“I know of no living theologian who would maintain a physical Ascension,” i. e., in the same sense of a physical body rising into heaven.’A—Foundation, p. 132. In brief, Professor Sanday and some of the leading exponents of the modern Anglicanism, Fellows and Deans of Colleges, frankly declare that they and a great body with them do not accept the Creed of the Church, and the teaching of the Church of England as set forth in the 2nd and 3rd Articles—the Son, the Word of the Father, the Very and Eternal God, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, and Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again His body, with flesh, bones, and all things pertaining to the perfection of man’s nature, where with He ascended into heaven ! In a word, what was once the abhorrent monopoly of the atheists and the ra tionalists seems now to have become the profession of unbelief on the part of outstanding Churchmen. HARD TO ANALYZE. It is somewhat difficult to analyze the reason of this departure from the old paths, but it may be said that the causes are possibly these : First of all, and back of it all, down deep beneath it all, is unquestionably the letting go of the divinenéss of the Scriptures and the habit of regarding them as more or less human records. The at
titude of the modern theologian to the Bible is practically, identical with that of the former-day rationalists. It is handled precisely as any other book. There doesn’t seem to be the faintest trace of their accepting as a categor ical postulate “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” The a priori method of the believer who brings with him into the investigation of the Bible the belief that the Bible is the Word of God, and the Scriptures the Holy Scriptures, has passed, and there has come instead the a priori method of the modernist who comes to his investigation of the Bible and theol ogy with the philosophic prejudice, against the miraculous and ; the lib eral hatred of all that is orthodox and traditional. (Sanday, p. 26.) Another thing is the extraordinary supremacy of German thought and the incredible deference to German critical scholarship on the part of English-speaking theologians of all names and degrees. Dr. Sanday is not the only one who has dared to leap into the limelight as their cham pion. “It is surely a fact of some significance that the Protestant schol ars of the foremost nation of the world for penetrating thoughtfulness, thoroughness and technical knowl edge, should have arrived with a con siderable degree of unanimity just at this kind of conclusion.” “Germany has been at work on these problems for more than a century, like a hive of bees.” For anyone who had read even such a work as Loofs’ “What is the Truth about Jesus Christ?” must come to the conclusion that much of the talk, about newest evi dence and latest scientific research, and the historical investigation of thè recent facts regarding the texts of the gospels and the teachings and miracles of Jesus, is simply German credulity. They take all the theories of the infidels from the days of Por phyry to Cels’is, Strauss to Baur
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tian and for the Church to re-exam ine its foundations, and reach, if pos sible, that minimum of Divine Truth which the semi-sceptic, the partially- agnostic, and the more or less ration alistic layman and cleric will agree to, in order that everything may be re moved that is distasteful to the masses. (Campbell’s New Theology, p. 225.) They seem to say: We have 'a Bible inspired, a Christ Divine, a creed apostolic; but what do you object to: how much of it can you not agree with: what portion of it causes offense; which are the parts you would like us to cut out? We know you are of the age. You must, therefore, be philosophic. We know you are sensitively conscious of be ing modern. You must, therefore, be scientific. So here we stand, with ACCOMMODATION written all over us. We will explain away any thing, restate anything, abandon anything, in order to accommodate you. WHY MAKE TERMS?' But what is there either in the Bible or in the history of Christian experience to warrant the assumption either that religion must make terms with philosophy, or that the making of such terms will conciliate the philo sophic? According to the New Tes tament, the very opposite is the case. The cleverness of the especially clever, and the scholarliness of the specially scholarly, did not qualify them, ac cording to St. Paul, for reception of the truth, for the psychical man can not receive the things of the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 1:18-31; 2:4-14); and as to science and philosophy, he utters his earnest appeal that no one victimize us by the imposition of phil osophy (Col. 2:8) and that we guard the entrusted deposit of the faith res olutely avoiding the fallacies, scoffings and disputations of the pseudonymous gnosis (an inspired description of
dress it up in a little philosophic verbiage and call it> scientific evidence and modern research, and our critical Anglican scholars—about whom, ac cording to Sanday, “Nothing is wan ton, nothing supercilious, nothing cyn ical,” but with whom apparently a whisper from Loofs or Harnack is louder than a shout from St. Paul or St. John—fall into line, and, pro fessing with the utmost conviction their regard for the central realities of the faith, parade in a very philo sophic and approved style all sorts of anti-supernaturalistic conclusions. THE GREAT MISTAKE. But perhaps the strongest cause is the mistaken idea that the upholders of the faith are bound, as they never were before, to recognize the Zeit geist of the Twentieth century, ana do everything that is possible to con ciliate the man on the street—espe cially the man on College street. They start apparently with two amazing theorems. The first is that religion must make terms with philosophy (Foundations, p. 426). The second, that the more the supernatural is ex plained away or repudiated, the more the modern mind will become sin cerely and humbly Christian. They assume that the only religion that the world Of to-day will accept is one in harmony with science, philosophy, and scholarship. But tjie science, philos-- ophy, and scholarship of to-day, if not confessedly monistic, according to Professor James, who states that the old-fashioned Bible Christianity has tended to disappear in the British and American universities, is certainly ra tionalistic, and all who know any thing about the supremacy of Ger many in these domains, know full well that their science, philosophy, and scholarship is avowedly anti- Christian. Therefore, this seems to argue it is necessary for the Chris-'
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much that is taught in the German and American Universities!). As a matter of fact, a narrow little semi infidel world of German leadership has been arrogating to itself for half a century the name of scholarship, and a somewhat servile world of American and British modernism has been trying to make itself worthy of that fellowship by accepting all its postulates and admitting all its con clusions. When we turn | from the Christol- ogy of modernism to that of the Bible, we are struck with the con trast. The Christological atmosphere of the Twentieth century is frankly Arian or semi-Arian. It must be so. It is, of course, quite possible for a philosophic mind to completely re state both the Humanity and Deity of Christ, and yet acknowledge in some sense that He is both God and man. Yet how to assimilate the apostolic view of the Deity of Christ with the Loofs-Sanday denial of the Virgin Birth, the bodily Resurrection and Ascension, is a conundrum that a Teutonic theologian only can solve. It’s the Schleiermacher-Ritschlian at tempt to excogitate a Christology out of the philosophic consciousness con cerning the “Urbild” or Ideal Man. BACK TO THE BIBLE. A few words in .conclusion: It seems to me that our foremost need as modern clergy is to go back to the Bible. One fears that we read non multum sed multa, and that in the pursuit of problems and questions, we are side-tracked from the main ob ject of our lives. We are too much ashamed of-a child-like acceptance of the Word of God, and the continuous preaching of the Living Christ and the Living Word. We are liable to preach a Christ after the flesh, who is a Leader, a Teacher, an Exemplar, rather than the Christ Divine who
is the Saviour of the soul, and em phasize the salvation of the body rather than the salvation of the soud. The fallacies of Christian Science are working like leaven, and permeating vhe age-consciousness. Christian Science is supremely a religion for the body, and men forget that they can reach the bodies of people through their souls a thousand times better than they can reach their souls through their bodies. And it is the Divine plan, if St. Paul and St. Peter are to be trusted. In the second place, it seems to me our duty is to get rid of the terror that the German-scholarship bogey has too long inspired. If a few lead ers have retreated or gone over to the enemy, that is no reason why the rank and file should give way. There is a fine passage in Pascal’s Provin cial Letters, which tells how he once stood alone and battled with terrific earnestness for the truth against the whole of the Port-Royalists. After an exhaustive argumentation Pascal sank into unconsciousness through sheer physical exhaustion. These are his words: “When I saw those whom I regarded as the persons to whom God has made known His truth, and who ought to be its champions, all giving way, I was so overcome with grief that I could stand it no longer.” APPALLING FACT. The supremacy of German thought in criticism and theology for the past fifty years has been simply appalling. Germany has long imposed upon the world of theology and scholarship. She has strutted as a dictator. Her leadership has been accepted. Every bold advance of so-called Scientific Research on the part of the Germans, from Reimarus to Schweitzer, and from S'chleiermacher to Harnack, has been marked by a retreat on the part of leading British-Americaii theolo-
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the collapse of culture and philosophy as a force to regenerate a nation, so it will drive the Christians of this Twentieth century, with its pretended goodness, its pride of science, art and civilization, back to the simple Word. Surely our duty is to stand fast, and if we are only true to ihe Bible, and the Christ of God, a vista of unimag inable power and progress will be re vealed the Redeeming, the Risen, the Reigning, the Returning Son of God.
gians and scholars, and a surrender of the very citadels of criticism and theology. Our hope is that one result of this calamitous war will be the absolute collapse of the German supremacy in criticism, and a saner attitude on the part of British-American theologians towards German leadership. Our prayer is that as this war has given the overwhelming demonstration of J ESUS, my Lord, my God, My life to Thee I owe, For Thou has !borne my guilty load Of Sin and Death arid Woe. Thy Blood alone sufficed My captive soul to free At such a Ransom priced How dear my soul must be! Such wondrous love as this A seraph’s thought exceeds; Nor could he sing my song of bliss, Or pipe it on his reeds. On Thee I cast my care Whose tender grace Divine Of scanty crumbs made bread to spare, Of water choicest wine. A decade ago in the province of Hunan, China, missionaries were “foreign devils,” converts to Christianity were beaten, mobs yelled, “Kill the foreign devils!” and mis sionaries were murdered. Now the once beaten welcomes the evangelist in the city gates, the governor, himself attends the meetings and his own band plays at the close, “God Be W ith You Till We Meet Again"; 3000 students sit under the preach ing and 1000 accept the invitation to own themselves seekers of Jesus.
A SONG OF SALVATION By J. H. Sammis.
Mysejf, my all I lay Here at Thy feet outpoured; Behold thy servant and, I pray,
Help me to keep thy Word. And in thy field wide-spread I’ll toil through blight and bloom Till pillowed where Christ laid His head In Heaven’s ante-room. Till He who once appeared To put my sin away Shall come in clouds of glory sphered To usher in the Day. Or, like to him whose faith In Christ grew never dim, I’ll walk with God and not see death But mount alive to Him. Speaking of effects of the Sunday cam paign in the city, a woman said a neighbor of hers had told the driver of a beer wagon to stop delivering beer there. “The driver told her,” the woman went on, “that she was the tenth woman on his route to stop, and all had told him Billy Sunday did it.” Several other women told how saloon keepers were complaining of lost business. —Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia. Thè Beermen hate Sunday as they hate Sunday. Both play havoc with their trade.
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