The Origin of Paul's Religion; What Is Faith?; The Virgin Birth of Christ

This book contains the material of a course of lectures which was delivered at the Grove City Bible School in the summer of 1925. More or less extensive use has been made of articles contributed by the author to The Princeton Theological Review, The New York Times, The Real Issue (published by the Philadelphian Society of Princeton University), and Christian Education (an article published also in The Sunday School Times'). A paper entitled "Faith and Knowledge," which was published in the Bulletin of the Fourth Biennial Meeting (held in June, 1924) of the Conference of Theological Seminaries and Colleges in the United States and Canada, has been incorporated in greater part in the course of Chapters I, III, and VIII. By kind permission of the Editor of The Woman's Home Companion, use has been made, in Chapter II, of several paragraphs of an article on "My Idea of God" that appeared in that journal for December, 1925.

The question, "What is Faith?", which forms the subject of the following discussion may seem to some persons impertinent and unnecessary. Faith, it may be said, cannot be known except by experience, and when it is known by experience logical analysis of it, and logical separation of it from other experiences, will only serve to destroy its power and its charm. The man who knows by experience what it is to trust Christ, for example, to rest upon Him for salvation, will never need, it may be held, to engage in psychological investigations of that experience which is the basis of his life; and indeed such investigations may even serve to destroy the thing that is to be investigated.

Such objections are only one manifestation of a tendency that is very widespread at the present day, the tendency to.disparage the intellectual aspect of the religious life. Religion, it is held, is an ineffable experience; the intellectual expression of it can be symbolical merely; the most various opinions in the religious sphere are compatible with a fundamental unity of life; theology may vary and yet religion may remain the same.

Obviously this temper of mind is hostile to precise definitions. Indeed nothing makes a man more unpopular in the controversies of the present day than an insistence upon definition of terms. Anything, it seems, may be forgiven more readily than that. Men discourse very eloquently today upon such subjects as God, religion, Christianity, atonement, redemption, faith; but are greatly incensed when they are asked to tell in simple language what they mean by these terms. They do not like to have the flow of their eloquence checked by so vulgar a thing as a definition. And so they will probably be incensed by the question which forms the title of these lectures; in the midst of eloquent celebrations of faith — usually faith contrasted with knowledge — it seems disconcerting to be asked what faith is.

This anti-intellectual tendency in the modern world is no trifling thing; it has its roots deep in the entire philosophical development of modern times. Modern philosophy since the days of Kant, with the theology that has been influenced by it, has had as its dominant note, certainly as its present-day result, a depreciation of the reason and a skeptical answer to Pilate's question, "What is truth?" This. attack upon the intellect has been conducted by men of marked intellectual power; but an attack upon the intellect it has been all the same. And at last the logical results of it, even in the sphere of practice, are beginning to appear. A marked characteristic of the present day is a lamentable intellectual decline, which has appeared in all fields of human endeavor except those that deal with purely material things. The intellect has been browbeaten so long in theory that one cannot be surprised if it is now ceasing to function in practice. Schleiermacher and

Ritschl, despite their own intellectual gifts, have, it may fairly be maintained, contributed largely to produce that indolent impressionism which, for example in the field of New Testament studies, has largely taken the place of the patient researches of a generation or so ago.

The intellectual decadence of the day is not limited to the Church, or to the subject of religion, but appears in secular education as well. Sometimes it is assisted by absurd pedagogic theories, which, whatever their variety in detail, are alike in their depreciation of the labor of learning facts. Facts, in the sphere of education, are having a hard time. The old-fashioned notion of reading a book or hearing a lecture and simply storing up in the mind what the book or the lecture contains — this is regarded as entirely out of date. A year or so ago I heard a noted educator give some advice to a company of college professors — advice which was typical of the present tendency in education. It is a great mistake, he said in effect, to suppose that a college professor ought to teach; on the contrary he ought simply to give the students an opportunity to learn.

This pedagogic theory of following the line of least resistance in education and avoiding all drudgery and all hard work has been having its natural result; it has joined forces with the natural indolence of youth to produce in present-day education a very lamentable decline.

The decline has not, indeed, been universal; in the sphere of the physical sciences, for example, the acquisition of facts is not regarded as altogether out of date. Indeed, the anti-intellectualistic tendency in religion and in those subjects that deal specifically with the things of the spirit has been due, partly at least, to a monopolistic possession of the intellect on the part of the physical sciences and of their utilitarian applications. But in the long run it is to be questioned whether even those branches of endeavor will profit by their monopolistic claims; in the long run the intellect will hardly profit by being excluded from the higher interests of the human spirit, and its decadence may then appear even in the material sphere.

But however that may be, whether or not intellectual decadence has already extended or will soon extend to the physical sciences, its prevalence in other spheres — in literature and history, for example, and still more clearly in the study of language — is perfectly plain. An outstanding feature of contemporary education in these spheres is the growth of ignorance; pedagogic theory and the growth of ignorance have gone hand in hand.

The undergraduate student of the present day is being told that he need not take notes on what he hears in class, that the exercise of the memory is a rather childish and mechanical thing, and that what he is really in college to do is to think for himself and to unify his world. He usually makes a poor business of unifying his world. And the reason is clear. He does not succeed in unifying his world for the simple reason that he has ho world to unify. He has not acquired a knowledge or a sufficient number of facts in order even to learn the method of putting facts together. He is being told to practise the business of mental digestion;

but the trouble is that he has no food to digest. The modern student, contrary to what is often said, is really being starved for want of facts.

Certainly we are not discouraging originality. On the contrary we desire to encourage it in every possible way, and we believe that the encouragement of it will be of immense benefit to the spread of the Christian religion. The trouble with the university students of the present day, from the point of view of evangelical Christianity, is not that they are too original, but that they are not half original enough. They go on in the same routine way, following their leaders like a flock of sheep, repeating the same stock phrases with little knowledge of what they mean, swallowing whole whatever professors choose to give them — and all the time imagining that they are bold, bad, independent. young men, merely because they abuse what everybody else is abusing, namely, the religion that is founded upon Christ. It is popular today to abuse that unpopular thing that is known as supernatural Christianity, but original it certainly is not. A true originality might bring some resistance to the current of the age, some willingness to be unpopular, and some independent scrutiny, at least, if not acceptance, of the claims of Christ. If there is one thing more than another which we believers in historic Christianity ought to encourage in the youth of our day it is independence of mind.;

It is a great mistake, then, to suppose that we who are called "conservatives" hold desperately to certain beliefs merely because they are old, and are opposed to the discovery of new facts. On the contrary, we welcome new discoveries with all our hearts, and we believe that our cause will come to its rights again only when youth throws off its present intellectual lethargy, refuses to go thoughtlessly with the anti-intellectual current of the age, and recovers some genuine independence of mind. In one sense, indeed, we are traditionalists; we do maintain that any institution that is really great has its roots in the past; we do not therefore desire to substitute modern sects for the historic Christian Church. But on the whole, in view of the conditions that now exist, it would perhaps be more correct to call us "radicals" than to call us "conservatives." We look not for a mere continuation of spiritual conditions that now exist, but for an outburst of new power; we are seeking in particular to arouse youth from its present uncritical repetition of current phrases into some genuine examination of the basis of life; and we believe that Christianity flourishes not in the darkness, but in the light, A revival of the Christian religion, we believe, will deliver mankind from its present bondage, and like the great revival of the sixteenth century will bring liberty to mankind. Such a revival will be not the work of man, but the work of the Spirit of God. But one of the means which the Spirit will use, we believe, is an awakening of the intellect. The retrograde, antiintellectual movement called Modernism, a movement which really degrades the intellect by excluding it from the sphere of religion, will be overcome, and thinking will again come to its rights. The new Reformation, in other words, will be accompained by a new Renaissance; and the last thing in the world that we desire to do is to discourage originality or independence of mind.

But what we do insist upon is that the. right to originality has to be earned, and that it cannot he earned by ignorance or by indolence. A man cannot be original in his treatment of a subject unless he knows what the subject is; true originality is preceded by patient attention to the facts. It is that patient attention to the facts which, in application of modern pedagogic theory, is being neglected by the youth of the present day.

In our insistence upon mastery of facts in education, we are sometimes charged with the desire of forcing our opinions ready-made upon our students. We professors get up behind our professorial desks, it is said, and proceed to lecture. The helpless students are expected not only to listen but to take notes; then they are expected to memorize what we have said, with all our firstly's and secondly's and thirdly's; and finally they are expected to give it all back to us in the examination. Such a system — so the charge runs— stifles all originality and all life. Instead, the modern pedagogical e'xpert comes with a message of hope; instead of memorizing facts, he says, true education consists in learning to think; drudgery is a thing of the past, and selfexpression is to take its place.

In such a charge, there may be an element of truth; possibly there was a time in education when memory was over-estimated and thinking was deprived of its rights. But if the education of the past was one-sided in its emphasis upon acquaintance with facts, surely the pendulum has now swung to an opposite extreme which is more disastrous still. It is a. travesty upon our pedagogic method when we are represented as regarding a mere storing up of lectures in the mind of the student as an end in itself. In point of fact, we regard it as a means to end, but a very necessary means; we regard it not as a substitute for independent thinking, but as a necessary prerequisite for it. The student who accepts what we say without criticism and without thinking of his own is no doubt very unsatisfactory; but equally. unsatisfactory is the student who undertakes to criticize what he knows nothing whatever about. Thinking cannot be carried on without the materials of thought; and the materials of thought are facts, or else assertions that are presented as facts. A mass of details stored up in the mind does not in itself make a thinker; but on the other hand thinking is absolutely impossible without that mass of details. And it is just this latter impossible operation of thinking without the materials of thought which is being advocated by modern pedagogy and is being put into practice only too well by modern students. In the presence of this tendency, we believe that facts and hard work ought again to be allowed to come to their rights: it is impossible to think with an empty mind.

If the growth of ignorance is lamentable in secular education, it is tenfold worse in the sphere of the Christian religion and in the sphere of the Bible. Bible classes today often avoid a study of the actual contents of the Bible as they would avoid pestilence or disease; to many persons in the Church the notion of getting the simple historical contents of the Bible straight in the mind is an entirely new idea.

When one is asked to preach at a church, the pastor sometimes asks the visiting preacher to conduct his Bible class, and sometimes he gives a hint as to how the class is ordinarily conducted. He makes it very practical, he says; he gives the class hints as to how to live during the following week. But when I for my part actually conduct such a class, I most emphatically do not give the members hints as to how to live during the following week. That is not because such hints are not useful, but because they are not all that is useful. It would be very sad if a Bible class did not get practical directions; but a class that gets nothing but practical directions is very poorly prepared for life. And so when I conduct the class I try to give them what they do not get on other occasions; I try to help them get straight in their minds the doctrinal and historical contents of the Christian religion.

The absence of doctrinal teaching and preaching is certainly one of the causes for the present lamentable ignorance in the Church. But a still more influential cause is found in the failure of the most important of all Christian educational institutions. The most important Christian educational institution is not the pulpit or the school, important as these institutions are; but it is the Christian family. And that institution has to a very large extent ceased to do its work. Where did those of us who have reached middle life really get our knowledge of the Bible? I suppose my experience is the same as that of a good many of us. I did not get my knowledge of the Bible from Sunday School or from any other school, but I got it on Sunday afternoons with my mother at home. And I will venture to say that although my mental ability was certainly of no extraordinary kind I had a better knowledge of the Bible at fourteen years of age than is possessed by many students in the theological Seminaries of the present day. Theological students come for the most part from Christian homes; indeed in very considerable proportion they are children of the manse. Yet when they, have finished college and enter the theological Seminary many of them are quite ignorant of the simple contents of. the English Bible.

The sad thing is that it is not chiefly the students' fault. These students, many of them, are sons of ministers,* and by their deficiencies they reveal the fact that the ministers of the present day are not only substituting exhortation for instruction, ethics for the-, ology, in their preaching; but are even neglecting the education of their own children. The lamentable fact is that the Christian home, as an educational institution, has largely ceased to function.

Certainly that fact serves to explain to a considerable extent tEe growth of ignorance in the Church. But the explanation itself requires an explanation; so far we have only succeeded in pushing the problem farther back. The ignorance of the Church is explained by the failure of the Christian family as an educational institution; but what in turn explains that failure? Why is it that Christian parents have neglected the instruction of their children; why is it that preaching has ceased to be educational and doctrinal; why is it that even Sunday Schools and Bible classes have come to consider solely applications of Christianity without studying the Christianity that is to be applied?1 These questions take us into the very heart of the situation; the growth of ignorance in the Church, the growth of indifference with regard to the simple facts recorded in the Bible, all goes back to a great spiritual movement, really skeptical in its tendency, which has been going forward during the last one hundred years — a movement which appears not only in philosophers and theologians such as Kant and Schleiermacher and Ritschl, but also in a widespread attitude of plain men and women throughout the world. The depreciation of the intellect, with the exaltation in the place of it of the feelings or of the will, is, we think, a basic fact in modern life, which is rapidly leading to a condition in which men neither know anything nor care anything about the doctrinal content of the Christian religion, and in which there is in general a lamentable intellectual decline.

This intellectual decline is certainly not appearing exclusively among persons who are trying to be evangelical in their views about the Bible; but it is at least equally manifest among those who hold the opposing view. A striking feature of recent religious literature is the abandonment of scientific historical method even

1 For a salutary insistence upon the fact that if we are to have applied Christianity, we must also have "a Christianity to apply," see Francis Shunk Downs, "Christianity and Today," in Princeton Theological Review, xx, 1922, pp. 287-304.

among those who regard themselves as in the van of scientific progress.

Scientific historical, method in the interpretation of the Bible requires that the Biblical writers should be allowed to speak for themselves. A generation or so ago that feature of scientific method was exalted to the dignity of a principle, and was honored by a long name. It was called "grammatico-historical exegesis/' The fundamental notion of it was that the modern student should distinguish sharply between what he would have said or what he would have liked to have the Biblical writer say, and what the writer actually did say. The latter question only was regarded as forming the subject-matter of exegesis.

This principle, in America at least, is rapidly being.abandoned. It is hot, indeed, being abandoned in theory; lip-service is still being paid to it. But it is being abandoned in fact. It is being abandoned by the most eminent scholars.

It is abandoned by Professor Goodspeed, for example, when in his translation of the New Testament he translates the Greek word meaning "justify," in important passages, by "make upright."2 I confess that it is not without regret that I should see the doctrine of justification by faith, which is the foundation of evangelical liberty, thus removed from the New Testament; it is not without regret that I should abandon the whole of the Reformation and return with Professor Goodspeed to the merit-religion of the Middle Ages. But the point that I am now making is not that Professor Goodspeed's translation is unfortunate because it involves—as it certainly does — religious retrogression, but because it involves an abandonment of historical method in exegesis. It may well be that this question how a sinful man may become right with God does not interest the modern translator; but every true historian must certainly admit that it did interest the Apostle Paul. And the translator of Paul must, if he be true to His trust, place the emphasis where PauF placed it, and not where the translator could have wished it placed.

What is true in the case of Paul is also true in the case of Jesus. Modern writers have abandoned the historical method of approach. They persist in confusing the question what they could have wished that Jesus had been with the question what Jesus actually was. In reading one of the most popular recent books on the subject of,religion, I came upon the following amazng assertion. "Jesus/* the author says, "concerned himself but little with the question of existence after death."3 In the presence of such assertions any student of history may well stand aghast. It may be that we do not make much of the doctrine of a future life, but the question whether Jesus did so is not a matter of taste but an historical question, which can be answered only on the basis of an examination of the sources of historical information that we call the Gospels.

And the result of such examination is perfectly plain. As a matter of fact, not only the thought of heaven but also the thought of hell runs all through the teaching

'of Jesus. It appears in all four of the Gospels; it appears in the sources, supposed to underly the Gospels, which have been reconstructed, rightly or wrongly, by modern criticism. It imparts to the ethical teaching its peculiar earnestness. It is not an element which can be removed by any critical process, but simply suffuses the whole of Jesus' teaching and Jesus* life. "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."4 "It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire"5 — these words are not an excrescence in Jesus' teaching but are quite at the centre of the whole.

At any rate, if you are going to remove the thought of a future life from the teaching of Jesus, if at this point you are going to reject the prima facie evidence, surely you should do so only by a critical grounding of your procedure. And my point is that that critical grounding is now thought to be quite unnecessary. Modern American writers simply attribute their own predilections to Jesus without, apparently, the slightest scrutiny of the facts.

As over against this anti-intellectual tendency in the modern world, it will be one chief purpose of the present little book to defend the primacy of the intellect, and in particular to try to break down the false and disastrous opposition which has been set up between knowledge and faith.

No doubt it is unfortunate, if our theme be the intellect, that the writer has so very limited an experimental acquaintance with the subject that he is undertaking to discuss. But in these days the intellect cannot afford to be too critical of her defenders, since her defenders are few enough. Time was when reason sat in regal state upon her throne, and crowds of obsequious courtiers did her reverence. But now the queen has been deposed, and pragmatism the usurper occupies the throne. Some humble retainers still follow the exile of the fallen queen; some men still hope for the day of restoration when the useful will be relegated to its proper place and truth will again rule the world. But such retainers are few— so few that even the very humblest of them may perhaps out of chafcity be granted a hearing which in reason's better days he could not have claimed.

The attack upon the intellect has assumed many forms, and has received an elaborate philosophical grounding. With that philosophical grounding I am not so presumptuous as to attempt to deal. I am not altogether unaware of the difficulties that beset what may be called the common-sense view of truth; epistemology presents many interesting problems and some puzzling antinomies. But the antinomies of epistemology are like other antinomies which puzzle.the human mind; they indicate the limitations of our intellect, but they do not prove that the intellect is not reliable so far as it goes. I for my part at least am not ready to give up the struggle; I am not ready to rest in a pragmatist skepticism; I am not ready to say that truth can never be attained.

But what are some of the ways in which the intellect, in the modern religious world, has been dethroned, or at least has been debarred from the sphere of ultimate reality?

In the first place, and most obviously, there is the distinction between religion and theology. Theology, it is said, is merely the necessarily changing expression of a unitary experience; doctrine can never be permanent, but is simply the clothing of religious experience in the forms of thought suitable to any particular generation. Those who speak in this way protest, indeed, that they are not seeking to do without theology, but are merely endeavoring to keep theology in its proper place. Theology, it is admitted, is necessary to religion; there can never be religion without some theology; but what particular theology it shall be, they hold, depends upon the habits of thought that prevail in the age in which the theology is produced.

In accordance with this principle, various creeds have recently been produced to take the place of the great historic confessions of faith — various creeds intended to "interpret" Christianity in the "thought-forms" of the twentieth century and to provide -a basis for Christian unity. It is perfectly obvious that these modern formulations differ from those that they are intended to supplant in many important ways. But the most important difference of all has sometimes escaped notice. The most important difference is not that these modern creeds differ from the historic creeds in this point or that; but it is that the historic creeds, unlike the modern creeds, were intended hy their authors or compilers to he true. And I for my part believe that that is the most necessary qualification of a creed. I cannot, therefore, accept the protestations of those pragxnatists who maintain that they are not hostile to theology. For if theology is not even intended to be permanently and objectively true, if it is merely a convenient symbol in which in this generation a mystic experience is clothed, then theologizing, it seems to me, is the most useless form of trifling in which a man could possibly engage.

Certainly this theologizing of the pragmatist is as far as possible removed from the kind of progress that is found in the advance of science. The scientist does indeed modify his opinions; one hypothesis often gives place to another which is intended to be a better explanation of the facts. But the point is that the new hypothesis, like the old, is intended at least to be permanently correct: it may have to give way to a better understanding of the facts, but there is nothing in the very nature of the case to show that it must give way. Science, in other words, though it may not in any generation attain truth, is at any rate aiming at truth.

Very different is,the activity of the pragmatist theologian. The pragmatist theologian, unlike the scientist, does not even intend his own formulations to be permanent, but regards them as merely symbolic expressions, in the thought-forms of one particular generation, of an ineffable experience. According to the pragmatist it is not merely inevitable that the theology of one generation should differ from the theology of another, but it is desirable that it should do so. That theology, according to the pragmatist, is the best which most perfectly expresses the experience of religion in the "thought-forms" of any particular age. Thus the Nicene Creed, it is said, was admirable in the fourth century of our era, and the Westminster Confession was admirable in the seventeenth century, but these formulations must of course now give place to twentiethcentury statements which so far as the literal or intellectual meaning is concerned are contradictory to them. Theology in other words is not to be judged in accordance with the degree of approximation which it attains to an eternally persisting norm of truth, but it is to be regarded as good or bad according as it serves the purposes of mankind and promotes an abundance of life. Indeed this pragmatist attitude toward difference in theology is applied not only to successive generations, but also to simultaneously existing nations and races. It is unreasonable, some advocates of missions are accustomed to say, for missionaries to ask Eastern races to accept Western creeds; the Eastern mind cannot be forced into a Western mould; on the contrary, the East must be allowed to give its own expression to the Christian faith. And so sometimes we read more or less formal expositions of belief that have come from the native churches of the East. What an interesting thing the formation of such expositions is, to be sure! A fresh, new expression of the Christian religion independent of all the conventions of the West! Unfortunately such expectations are often sadly disappointed when one reads the new formulations for himself; the vaunted freshness and. originality is often not to be seen, and what we actually have is a most unoriginal repetition of the vague naturalism of the contemporary Western world. The Eastern mind has turned out to he as like as two peas to the mind of the South Side of Chicago; all the stock phrases of modern agnosticism seem to be thoroughly acceptable to the Oriental students to whom they have been taught.

But if the results of these little experiments of the Eastern mind hardly seem to bear out the contention of the pragmatist — hardly seem to bear out the contention that the Eastern mind and the Western mind are so distinct that the thought-forms that suit one will not suit the other— the contention itself is thoroughly typical of our age; it is only one manifestation of a pragmatism that is all-pervasive. And that pragmatism involves the most bottomless skepticism which could possibly be conceived. According to the logic of the pragmatist position two contradictory doctrines may be equally good; for doctrine, in the opinion of the pragmatists, is merely the symbolic expression of an experience really inexpressible, and must necessarily change as the generations pass. There is, in other words, according to that view, no possibility that anything in the sphere of doctrine can be permanently and universally true..

Such a view of doctrinal changes is sometimes compared, as we have already hinted, to the progress of science; it is unreasonable, the pragmatist theologian says, to reject the physics and chemistry of the first century or the seventeenth century and yet maintain unchanged the theology of those past ages; why should theology be exempt from the universal law of progress?

But this comparison, as indeed should be plain from what has already been said, really involves a very strange misconception; far from advocating progress in theology, the current pragmatism really destroys the very possibility of progress. For progress involves something to progress to as well something to progress from. And in the intellectual sphere the current pragmatism can find no goal of progress in an objective norm of truth; one doctrine, according to the pragmatist view, may be just as good as an exactly contradictory doctrine, provided it suits a particular generation or a particular group of persons. The changes in scientific hypotheses represent true progress because they are increasingly close approximations to an objectively and externally existent body of facts; while the changes advocated by pragmatist theologians are not progress?.t all but the meaningless changes of a kaleidoscope.

As over against this pragmatist attitude, we believers in historic Christianity maintain the objectivity of truth; and in doing so wte and not the Modernists become advocates of progress. Theology, we hold, is not an attempt to express in merely symbolic terms an inner experience which must be expressed in different terms in subsequent generations; but It is a setting forth of those facts upon which experience is based. It is not indeed a complete setting forth of those facts, and therefore progress in theology become possible; but it may be true so far as it goes; and only because there is that pbssibility of attaining truth and of setting it forth ever more completely can there be progress. Theology, in other words, is just as much a science as is chemistry; and like the science of chemistry it is-capa-ble of advance. The two sciences, it is true, differ widely in their subject matter; they differ widely in the character of the evidence upon which their conclusions are based; in particular they differ widely in the qualifications required of the investigator: but they are both sciences, because they are both concerned with the acquisition and orderly arrangement of a body of truth. At this point, then, we find the really important divergence of opinion in the religious world at the present day; the difference of attitude toward theology or toward doctrine goes far deeper than any mere di-. vergence in detail. The modern depreciation of theology results logically in the most complete skepticism. It is not merely that the ancient creeds, and the Bible upon which they are based, are criticized— indeed we ourselves certainly think that they ought constantly to be criticized in order that it may be seen that they will stand the test — but the really serious trouble is that the modern pragmatist, on account of the very nature of his philosophy, has nothing to put in their place. Theology, according to him, may be useful; but it can never by any possibility be true. As Dr. Fosdick observes, the liberalism of today must necessarily produce an intellectual formulation which will become the orthodoxy of tomorrow, and which will then in turn have to give place to a new liberalism; and so on (we suppose) ad infinitum,* This is what the plain man in the Church has difficulty in understanding; he does not yet appreciate the real gravity of the issue. He does not see that it makes very little difference how much or how little of the creeds of the Church the Modernist preacher affirms, or how much or how little of the Biblical teaching from which the creeds are derived. He might affirm every jot and tittle of the Westminster Confession, for example, and yet be separated by a great gulf from the Ref prmed Faith. It is not that part is denied and the rest affirmed; but all is denied, because all is affirmed merely as useful or symbolic and not as true.

Thus it comes about that to the believer in historic Christianity the Modernist preacher is often most distressing just when he desires to be most concessive. He has no desire, he says, to combat the faith of simple people in the Church; indeed the older "interpretations,** he says, may be best for some people even now. Such assertions are perhaps intended to be concessive; but in reality they are to the believer in historic Christianity the most radically destructive assertions that could possibly be made. It would from our point of view be better if the preacher, convinced of the falsity of supernatural religion in the sense of the New Testament and of the creeds, became an apostle with the courage of his convictions, and sought to root out of every one's' mind convictions that he holds to be false. In that case we should indeed differ from him radically, but there would be at least a common ground for discussion. But the assertion that the historic creeds may still be best for some people and the modern interpretations better for others, or the provision in plans of Church union that the constituent churches should recognize each the other's creed as valid for the other church's members — this1, we think, involves a sin against the light of reason itself; and if the light that is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness! A thing that is useful may be useful for some and not for others, but a thing that is true remains true for all people and beyond the end of time.

But if theology be thus abandoned, or rather if (to ease the transition) it be made merely the symbolic expression of religious experience, what is to be put in its place? Two answers, to this question may perhaps be distinguished in the religious life of the present day. In the first place, there is mysticism; and in the second place, there is a kind of neo-positivism.

Mysticism unquestionably is the natural result of the anti-intellectual tendency which now prevails; for mysticism is the consistent exaltation of experience at the expense of thought. But in actual practice mysticism is seldom consistent; indeed it cannot possibly be consistent if it seeks to explain itself to the world. The experience upon which it is based, or in which it consists, is said to be ineffable; yet mystics love to talk about that experience all the same. Dr. E. S. Waterhouse7 quotes an epigram of Mr. Bradley "to the effect that Herbert Spencer told us more about the Unknow- able than the rashest of theologians has told us about God." So it may perhaps be said that mystics are accustomed to express the inexpressible more fully than the ineffable character which they attribute to their experience may seem to warrant.

In particular, those who discard theology in the interests of experience are inclined to make use of a personal way of talking and thinking about God to which they have no right. A noted preacher, for example, relates an incident of his youth in which he overheard his father praying when he thought that he was alone with God. His father, says the preacher, was thoroughly orthodox, and devoted to the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Yet in that prayer, to the amazement of the boy, there was none of the elaborate theology of the Westminster Standards, but only a simple outpouring of the soul in the presence of God. "It was a prayer/' says the preacher, "in which he threw himself into the arms of his heavenly Father. There was in it no theology, no hell, no moral or substitutionary theory of the atonement."

But what was it after all that caused that simple outpouring of the soul? Was that prayer so independent of theology as the preacher seems to think? For our part we doubt it very much. All personal communion seems to be a simple thing; yet it is in reality very complex. My friendship for a human friend, for example, depends upon years of observation of my friend's actions. So it is exactly in the case of the communion of the Christian with his God. The Christian says: "Lord, thou knowest that we are on the same old terms." It seems very simple and very untheological. 'But in reality it depends upon the whole rich content of God's revelation of Himself in the salvation which He has provided through His Son. At any rate, pure feeling, if it ever exists, is non-moral; what makes our relation to another person, whether a human friend or the eternal God, such an ennobling thing is the knowledge which we have of the character of that person. The experience of the real mystic, then, as distinguished from that experience of direct contact with God in the depths of the soul which is popularly called mysticism — the latter being of course a part of all vital religion — is not Christian experience; for Christian experience is a thoroughly personal thing; the Christian holds fellowship with a Person whom he knows.,

Another substitute for a religion based upon the knowledge of God is positivism. The name itself is due to a phenomenon that appeared long ago, but the thing that the name represents has in all essentials been revived. It has been revived in rather definite fashion, for example, by Professor Ell wood in his popular book, The Reconstruction of Religion. Professor Ellwood himself detects his affinity for the older positivism, though he seeks to supplement the positivist religion of humanity with a pantheizing reverence for the world-process. But positivism has also been revived, though often unconsciously, by those popular preachers of the day who use the phrase, the "Christlike God," which is so distressing to men who have thought at all deeply upon the things at the basis of Christian faith — by those popular preachers who tell us that God is known only through Jesus. If they meant that God is known only through the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Logos, I might perhaps agree; and for my agreement I might perhaps find warrant in the eleventh chapter of Matthew. But of course as a matter of fact that is not at all what they mean. What they mean is that all metaphysics having been abandoned or relegated to the realm of unessential speculation — all questions as to whether there is a God who made the world hy the fiat of His will, or whether there is a life after death, or whether Jesus in very person is living today — all such questions having been abandoned, the soul of man may be transformed by the mere contemplation and emula* tion of the moral life of Jesus. Essentially, such a religion is positivism; it regards as non-essential all extramundane factors and sets up a religion of humanity — a religion of humanity symbolized by the name of Jesus. Certainly the Jesus to whom such a religion can appeal is not the Jesus of history — neither the Jesus set forth in the New Testament nor the Jesus who has been reproduced, or ever conceivably can be reproduced, by any critical process. For the real Jesus certainly was a theist, certainly did believe in a really existent God, Maker of the world and final Judge, certainly did accept the revelation of God in the Old Testament Scriptures, certainly did place the doctrine of heaven and hell at the very foundation of His ethical teaching, certainly did look for a catastrophic coming of the Kingdom of God. These things in much modern preaching are ignored. The preacher quotes some word of Jesus quite out of its context— perhaps even from the Gospel of John, which the preacher's own critical principles have discarded — and then proceeds to derive from that misunderstood word of Jesus a non-doctrinal religion of this world. Some of us, as we listen, may desire to ask questions. Some of us may desire to ask whether Jesus of Nazareth really made the more abundant life of man the ultimate end of existence; some of us may desire to ask whether Jesus really left His own person out of His gospel and whether we can really reject, on any critical principles, those words of His in which He claimed to be the Judge of the whole earth. But such questions receive short shrift from the Modernist preacher; they involve, he says, merely evasions, on our part, of the moral demands of Jesus. At no point does the passionate anti-intellectualism of the Modernist Church appear more clearly than here.

But can the human reason, especially as manifested in the historical sense, really be thus browbeaten into silence? For our part, we do not believe that it can. And when the.reason awakes, though the modern religion of humanity may conceivably remain, its appeal to Jesus of Nazareth at, least will have to go. We shall have to cease investing our pride in human goodness with the borrowed trappings of Christianity's emotional appeal; and the choice will have to be made between abandonment of Jesus as the moral guide of the race and acceptance of His stupendous claims.

Thus the relinquishment of theology in the interests of non-doctrinal religion really involves the relinquishment of Christianity in the interests of a skepticism than which a more complete could scarcely be conceived. But another contrast has an equally baleful effect upon the life of the present day. It is the contrast between knowledge and faith; and the consideration of that contrast takes us into the heart of our present subject. That contrast, as we shall see, ignores an essential element in faith; and what is called faith after the substraction of that element is not faith at all. As a matter of fact all true faith involves an intellectual element; all faith involves knowledge and issues in knowledge.

The exhibition of that fact will form a considerable part of the discussion that follows. It will not, indeed, form all of it; since the discussion will not be merely polemic; but after all the only way to get a clear idea of what a thing is, is to place it in contrast with what it is not; all definition involves exclusion. ^-WejjhajU. endeavor, therefore,.. by comparison of opposing views, as well as by exhibition of our own, to arrive at an answer to the question, "What is Faith?" If that question were rightly answered, the Church, we believe, would soon emerge from its present perplexities and would go forth with a new joy to the conquest of the world.

There are those who shrink from a consideration of these great questions of principle; there are those who decry controversy, and believe that the Church should return to its former policy of politely ignoring or taking for granted the central things of the Christian faith. But with such persons I, for my part, cannot possibly bring myself to agree. The period of apparent harmony in which the Church in America found itself a few years ago was, I believe, a period of the deadliest peril; loyalty to Church organizations was being substituted for loyalty to Christ; Church leaders who never even mentioned the centre of the gospel in their preaching were in undisputed charge of the resources of the Church; at Jboard meetings or in the councils of the Church, it was considered bad form even to mention, at least in any definite and intelligible way, the Cross of Christ. A polite paganism, in other words, with reliance upon human resources, was being quietly and peacefully substituted for the heroism of devotion to the gospel.

In the face of such a condition, there were some men whose hearts were touched; the Lord Jesus had died for them upon the cross, and the least they could do, they thought, was to be faithful to Him; they could not continue to support, by their gifts and by their efforts, anything that was hostile to His gospel; and they were compelled, therefore, in the face of all opposition, to raise the question what it is that the Church is in the world to do.

God grant that question may never be silenced until it is answered aright 1 Let us not fear the opposition of men; every great movement in the Church from Paul down to modern times has been criticized on the ground that it promoted censoriousness and intolerance and disputing. Of course the gospel of Christ, in a world of sin and doubt, will cause disputing; and if it does not cause disputing and arouse bitter opposition, that is a fairly sure sign that it is not being faithfully proclaimed. As for me, I believe that a great opportunity has been opened to Christian people by the "controversy" that is so much decried. Conventions have been broken down; men are trying to penetrate beneath pious words to the thing that these words designate; it is becoming increasingly necessary for a man to choose whether he will stand with Christ or against Him. Such a condition, I for my part believe, has been brought about by the Spirit of God; already there has been genuine spiritual advance. It has been signally manifested at the institution which I have the honor to serve. The morale of our theological student body during the past years had been becoming rather low; there was marked indifference to the central things of the faith; and religious experience was of the most superficial kind. But during the academic year, 1924-1925, there has been something like an awakening. Youth has begun to think for itself; the evil of compromising associations has been discovered; Christian heroism in the face of opposition has come again to its rights; a new interest has been aroused in the historical and philosophical questions that underly the Christian religion; true and independent convictions have been formed. Controversy, in other words, has resulted in a striking intellectual and spiritual advance. Some of us discern in all this the work of the Spirit of God. And God grant that His fire be not quenched! God save us from any smoothing over of these questions in the interests of a hollow pleasantness; God grant that great questions of principle may never rest until they are settled right! It is out of such times of questioning that great revivals come. God grant that it may be so today! Controversy of the right sort is good; for out of such controversy, as Church history and Scripture alike teach, there comes the salvation of souls.

It is with such an ultimate aim that we consider the question, "What is Faith?" A more "practical" question could hardly be conceived. The preacher says: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved." But how can a man possibly act on that suggestion, unless he knows what it is to believe. It was at that point that the "doctrinal" preaching of a former generation was far more practical than the "practical" preaching of the present day. I shall never forget the pastor of the church in which I grew up. He was a good preacher in many ways, but his most marked characteristic was the plainness and definiteness with which he told the people what a man should do to be saved. The preachers of the present time allude to the importance of becoming a Christian, but they seldom seem to make the matter the subject of express exposition; they leave the people with a vague impression to the effect that being a Christian is a good thing, but this impression is difficult to translate into action because definite directions are absent. These preachers speak about faith, but they do not tell what tfaith is.

It is to help in some small way to supply this lack.that the present little book has been Written. If the way of salvation is faith, it does seem to be highly important to tell people who want to be saved just what faith means. If a preacher cannot do that, he can hardly be a true evangelist.

How, then, shall we obtain "the answer to pur ques- tionj how shall we discover what faith is? At first sight it might seem to be a purely philosophical or perhaps psychological question; there is faith other than faith in Jesus Christ; and such faith no doubt is to be included with Christian faith in the same general category. It looks, therefore, as though I were engaging upon a psychological discussion, and as though I ought to be thoroughly familiar with the epistemological and psychological discussions that are involved.

Undoubtedly such a treatment of the subject would be highly useful and instructive; but unfortunately I am not competent to undertake it. I propose therefore a somewhat different method of approach. How would it be if we should study the subject of faith, not so much by generalizations from various instances of faith in human life (though such generalizations will not be altogether absent), but rather by a consideration of faith as it appears in its highest and plainest manifestation? Such concentration upon a classic example is often the best possible way, or at any rate one very fruitful way, in which a subject can be treated.

But the classic example of faith is to be found in the faith that is enjoined in the New Testament. I think that there will be widespread agreement with that assertion among students of psychology whether Christian or not; the insistence upon faith is characteristic of New Testament Christianity; there is some justification, surely, for the way in which Paul speaks of the pre-Christian period as the time "before faith came." No doubt that assertion is intended by the Apostle as relative merely; he himself insists that faith had a place in the old dispensation; but such anticipations were swallowed up, by the coming of Christ, in a glorious fulfilment. At any rate, the Bible as a whole, taking prophecy and fulfilment together, is the supreme textbook on the subject of faith. The study of that textbook may lead to as clear an undersanding of our subject as could be attained by any more general investigation; we can learn what faith is best of all by studying it in its highest manifestation. We shall ask, then, in the following chapters what the Bible, and in particular the New Testament, tells us about faith.