First of all, we may do so by a contemplation of His
works in nature. "The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy work." By some men, indeed, the glory is unperceived. There are some men who look upon a mountain as a mere mass of rock and stone, a thunderstorm as a mere phenomenon of the atmosphere, and a fair flower as a mere combination of leaves and petals. God pity them — the poor blind souls! But when the eyes of our souls are opened, then as we stand before a great mountain range we shall say: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: from whence shall my help come?"; in the fury of the storm we shall think of Him who did fly upon the wings of the wind; and the flowers of the field will reveal to us the weaving of God — and even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
In the second place, God is known by His voice within us. The contemplation of the universe, of which we have just spoken, brings us to the very brink of infinity; the world is too vast for us, and all around it is enveloped by an impenetrable mystery. But there is also an infinity within. It is revealed in the voice of conscience. In the sense of guilt there is something that is removed from all relativity; we stand there face to face with the absolute. True, in the humdrum of life we often forget; but the strange experience comes ever again. It may be in the reading or witnessing of a great drama; the great tragedies, in the world's literature, are those that pull aside the curtain of the com- monplace and makes us feel anew the stark irrevocableness of guilt. It may also be, alas, in the contemplation of our own lives. But however conscience speaks, it is the voice of God. The law reveals a Lawgiver; and the character of this law reveals the Lawgiver's awful righteousness.
In the third place, God is known through the Bible. And He is known through the Bible in an entirely fresh and peculiar way. True, the Bible does repeat and enforce what ought to have been learned elsewhere; it does reinforce the voices of nature and of conscience; it tells us anew that the heavens declare the glory of God; it presents the law of conscience with a new and terrible earnestness as the law of God. But it does far more than all that; it also presents God in loving action, in the course of history, for the salvation of sinful men. From Genesis to Revelation, from Eden to Calvary, as the covenant God of Jsrael and as the God and Father of ouf Lord Jesus Christ, all through th? varied course of Bible story, God appears in the fulfilment of one loving plan. The marvel is that it is so plainly the same""' God throughout. The manner of His action varies; we see various aspects of His person; He appears in anger as well as in love. But it is plainly the same Person throughout: we rise from the Bible — I think we can say it without irreverence — with a knowledge of the character of God. There is a real analogy here to our relation with an earthly friend. How do we come to know one another? Not all at once, but by years of observation of one another's actions. We have seen a friend in time of danger, and he has been brave; we have gone to him in perplexity, and he has been wise; we have had recourse to him in time of trouble, and he has given us his sympathy. So gradually, with the years, on the basis of many, many such experiences, we have come to love him and revere him. And now just a look or a word or a tone of his voice will bring the whole personality before us like a flash; the varied experiences of the years have been merged by some strange chemistry of the soul into a unity of affection. So it is, somewhat, with the knowledge of God that we obtain from the Bible. In the Bible we see God in action; we see Him in fiery indignation wiping out the foulness of Sodom; we see Him leading Israel like a flock; we see Him giving His only begotten Son for the sins of the world. And by what we see we learn to know Him. In all His varied dealings with His people He has never failed; so now we know Him and adore Him. Such knowledge seems to be a simple, an instinctive, thing; the varied dealings of God with His people have come together in the unity of our adoration. And now He is revealed as by a flash by every smallest dispensation of His providence, whether it be in joy or whether it be in sorrow.
As thus made known, surely God is sufficient for all our needs. There is no limit to His power; if He be our champion, we need not fear what principalities and powers and the whole universe can do. He alone is righteous; His presence will make us spotless as the light. He is loving, and His love will cast out fear. Truly we can say with Paul: "If such a God be for us, who can be against us?"
But that text begins with "if," and it is a stupendous "if." "If God be for us"— but is God for us? Many persons, it is true, trip along very lightly over that "if"; they have no doubt about the matter; they are quite sure that God is for them. But the curious thing is that those who have no doubt about the matter are often just the ones who are most sadly wrong. The people of Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah had no doubt; they were quite sure that God was for them; but they went into exile all the same; God was not for them at all. The Jews in the days of John the Baptist had no doubt; were they not God's chosen people? Even in the darkest days of Roman rule they were quite sure that God would give them the victory. But as a matter of fact the axe was even then laid at the root of the tree. The Pharisee in the parable was quite sure that God was for him when he went up into the Temple to pray — "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are.... or even as this publican." But the publican, it will be remembered, went down into his house justified rather than he.
These men were all quite sure that God was for them, but they were all entirely wrong. How then may we be sure; and if we become sure, is not our assurance a delusion and a snare? How can we remove the "if" of this text; how can we be sure that God is for us?
There are only two possible ways.
One way is to do what is right. God always stands for the right; if we are right, then no matter what men and demons may do God is on our side. But are we right? The Pharisee was quite sure that he was right, hut as a matter of fact he was most terribly wrong. May we not be equally mistaken?
No doubt we think we,can avoid the Pharisee's error. God was not for him, we say, because he was sinfully contemptuous toward that publican; we will be tender to the publican, as Jesus has tafight us to be, and then God will be for us. It is no -doubt a good idea; it is well that we are tender toward the publican. But what is our attitude toward the Pharisee? Alas, we despise him in a truly Pharisaical manner. We go up into the temple to pray; we stand and pray thus with ourselves: "God I thank thee that I am not as other men are, proud of my own righteousness, uncharitable toward publicans, or even as this — Pharisee." Can we really venture thus, as the Pharisee did, to stand upon our obedience of God's law, as being better than that of other men, whether publicans or Pharisees, in order to assure ourselves of God's favor?
Paul at least said, "No!"; and surely Paul has some right to be heard, since it is he who gave us the heroic text to which we have turned. Paul had tried that method, and it had failed; and the seventh chapter of Romans is a mighty monument of its failure. The power of the flesh is too strong; we are living over an abyss of sin and guilt. Of course we may forget what lies beneath; we may forget if we are willing to live on the surface of life and be morally blind like the Jews before the exile or the Pharisee who went up into the Temple to pray. But when the eyes of our souls are opened, when we catch a terrifying glimpse of the righteousness of God, then we are in despair. We try to escape; we try to balance the good in our lives against the evil; we give tithes of all we possess; we point frantically to our efforts as social workers; and thus we try to forget the terrible guilt of the heart. Such is the bondage of the law.
But why should wexnot give up the struggle? It is so hopeless, and at the same time so unnecessary. Is God for us, despite our sin? Joyfully the Christian answers, "Yes." But why is He for us? Simple indeed is the Christian answer to that question: He is for us simply because He has chosen to be. He surely has a right to receive whom He will into His fellowship: and as a matter of fact He has chosen to receive us poor sinners who trust in Christ; He chose to receive us when He gave Christ to die. It was His act, not ours. The "if" of the text is a stupendous "if"; but such a word is not allowed to stand very long in the eighth chapter of Romans. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" — it is a large "if," but it melts away very soon in the warmth of God's grace. "If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not With him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?"
Appeal to God's act alone can enable us to face every adversary. It can of course enable us to face the unjust condemnation of men. What care we what men may say, if we have the approval of God? But it can do vastly more than that; it can enable us to face not only the unjust condemnation of men, but the condemnation of men that is perfectly just. And nothing else on earth or in heaven can enable us to do that. There are some things that the world never forgives; Peter could never, I suppose, have been received again into the society of gentlemen after he had played the traitor under fire. But God chose to receive him, and upon the rock of his faith the Church was built. There may be some foul spot in our lives; the kind of thing that the world never forgives, the kind of thing, at any rate, for which we who know all can never forgive ourselves. But what care we whether the world forgives, or even whether we can forgive ourselves, if God forgives, if God has received us by the death of His Son? That is what Paul means by "boasting" in the Cross of Christ. If we could appeal to God's approval as ours by right, how bravely we should boast — boast in the presence of a world of enemies! If God knows that we are right, what care we for the blame of men? Such boasting, indeed, can never be ours. But we can boast in what God has done. Little care we whether our sin be thought unpardonable or no, little interested are we in the exact calculation of our guilt. Heap it up mountain high, yet God has removed it all. We cannot explain God's act; it is done on His responsibility, not ours. "I know not," the Christian says, "what my guilt may be; one thing I know; Christ loved me and gave Himself for me. Come on now ye moralists of the world, come on ye hosts of demons, with your whisperings of hell! We fear you not; we take our stand beneath the shadow of the Cross, and standing
there, in God's favor, we are safe. No fear of challenge now! If God be for us, who can be against us? None, in heaven or in earth or in hell. 'Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
FAITH IN CHRIST
It appears from what has just been said that although theism is necessary to the Christian's faith in God, it is not all that is necessary. It is impossible to trust God in the Christian sense without holding that He is a free and living Person, Creator and Ruler of the world; but it is also impossible to trust Him without convictions that go far beyond that. Indeed the Christian doctrine of God in itself, far from leading to faith, would lead only to despair; for the clearer be our view of God's righteousness, the deeper becomes our consciousness of guilt. God has done all things well; we are His creatures upon whom He has showered His bounty; but a mighty barrier has been placed between us and Him by the fact of sin.
That fact is recognized in the Bible from beginning to end; and it is recognized with particular clearness in the teaching of Jesus. Jesus does indeed speak much of the Fatherhood of God, and His words are full of comfort for those who are God's children. But never does He speak of God as being the Father of all men; in the Sermon on the Mount those who can say, "Our Father which art in heaven," are distinguished in the sharpest possible way from the world outside. Our Lord came not to teach men that they were already sons of God, but to make them sons of God by His redeeming work. The Fatherhood of God as it is taught in the New Testament designates not a relationship in which God stands to all men, hut a relationship in which He stands to those who have been redeemed.
That assertion may be surprising to men who have never turned from what is said ahout the New Testament to what the New Testament says itself; but it is unquestionably true. It needs, however, to be guarded against two misunderstandings.
In the first place, it does not mean that the New Testament ignores those features in the relationship of God to all men which are analogous to the relationship in which an earthly father stands to his children. God is the Author of the being of all men, whether Christians or not; He cares for all; He showers His bounty upon all: 'and apparently the New Testament does here and there even use the term Father to designate this broader relationship. But what we are insisting upon is that such a use of the term is to say the least highly exceptional, and that it does not enter into the heart of what the New Testament means by the Fatherhood of God. It is not that the doctrine of the universal fatherly relationship in which God stands to His creatures is unimportant; indeed a large part of our previous discussion has been taken up with showing how very important it is; but our point is that the New Testament ordinarily reserves the tender words, "Father" and "Son," to describe a far more intimate relationship. Everything in the* Bible is concerned with the fact of sin; the relationship in which man as man stood to God has been broken by transgression, and only when that barrier is removed is there sonship worthy of the name. Thus we are not saying that the doctrine of the universal Fatherhood of God is untrue: but what we are saying is that far from being the essence of Christianity, it is only the presupposition of Christianity; it is only the starting-point which the New Testament finds in "natural religion" for the proclamation of the gospel of divine grace.
The second misunderstanding which needs to be guarded against is the common impression that there is something narrow about what we have designated as the New Testament doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. How narrow a thing it is, the modern man exclaims, to hold that God is the Father of some and not of all! This objection ignores the central thing in the New Testament teaching, and the central thing in Christianity; it ignores the Cross of Christ. It is true that men are separated from God by the awful fact of sin; it is true that sonship worthy of the name is possessed only by those who are within the household of \ faith: but what men do not seem to understand is that,> * '\ the door of the household of faith is open wide for all ir,,>. men to <come in. Christ died to open that door, and \ ^ the pity is that we try to close it by our failure to spread ^^ f) the invitation throughout all the world. As Christians -'* \f we OTJS^t certainly to love all our fellow-men every- ^k-/ where, including those who have not yet come to Christ; but if we really love them, we shall show our love not by trying to make them content with a cold • natural religion, but by bringing them in, through the ^. •.
proclamation of the gospel, into the warmth and joy of the household of faith.
In the Bible, then, it is not merely God as Creator who is the object of faith, but 'also, and primarily, God as Redeemer from sin. We fear God because of our guilt; buf"we trust Him because of His grace. We trust, Him because He has brought us by the Cross of Christ, despite all our sin, into His holy presence. Faith in God depends altogether upon His redeeming work.
That fact explains an important feature of the New Testament teaching about faith— the feature, namely, that the New Testament ordinarily designates as the object of faith not God the Father but the Lord Jesus Christ. The New Testament does indeed speak of faith in God, but it speaks more frequently of faith in Christ.
The importance of this observation must indeed not be exaggerated; no man can have faith in Christ without also having faith in God the Father and in the Holy Spirit. All three persons of the blessed Trinity -v are according to the New Testament active in redemp- 1 tion; and all three therefore may be the object of faith when redemption is accepted by sinful men.
Redemption was accomplished, however, 'according to the New Testament, by an event in the external world, at a definite time in the world's history, when the Lord Jesus died upon the cross and rose again. In Christ the redeeming work of God became visible; it is Christ, therefore, very naturally, who is ordinarily represented as the object of faith.
But as in the case of God the Father, so in the case of Christ, it is impossible to have faith in a person without having knowledge of the person; faith is always based upon knowledge.
That important principle is denied by many persons in the modern world in the case of Christ, just as we have seen that it is denied in the case of God the Father.
It was denied in typical fashion, for example, in a sermon which I remember hearing some years ago. The subject of the sermon was the incident of the healing of the centurion's servant.1 That centurion, the distinguished preacher said in effect, knew nothing about theology; he knew nothing about the Nicene or Chalcedonian doctrine of the Person of Christ; he knew nothing about the creeds: but he simply trusted Jesus, and Jesus praised his faith in the highest terms. So we also, it was said in effect, may be quite indifferent to the theological controversy now raging in the Church, and like the centurion may simply take Jesus at His word and do what Jesus says.
From the point of view of common-sense reading of the Bible that sermon was surely quite incorrect; it was rather an extreme instance of that anti-historical forcing of the plain words of the Bible which is so marked a feature of the intellectual decadence of the present day. Where is it said in the Gospel narrative that the centurion obyed Jesus' commands; where is it said that he did anything at all? The point of the narrative is not that he did anything, but rather that he did nothing; he simply believed that Jesus could do something, and accepted that thing at Jesus* hands; he simply believed that Jesus could work the stupendous miracle of healing at a distance. In other words, the centurion is presented as one who had faith; and faith, as distinguished from the effects of faith, consists not in doing something but in receiving something. Faith may result in action, and certainly true faith in Jesus always will result in action; but faith itself is not doing but receiving.
But the sermon in question was not merely faulty from the point of view of common-sense reading of the Bible; it was also faulty from the point of view of psychology. The centurion, it was said in effect, knew nothing about the Christology of the creeds; he knew nothing about the doctrine of the two natures in the one person of our Lord; yet he believed in Jesus all the same. Clearly the inference intended to be drawn was that opinions about Jesus are matter of indifference to faith in. Jesus; no matter what a man thinks about the person of Christ, it was maintained in effect, he may still trust Christ.
That principle is maintained with the greatest confidence by. present-day writers and speakers on the subject of religion. But surely it is quite absurd. Let us see how it would work out in ordinary life. Can it really be held that I can trust a person irrespective of the opinions that I hold about the person? A simple example may make the matter clear.
Suppose I have a sum of money to invest. It may be father a wild supposition — but just let us suppose. I have a sum of money to invest, and not knowing al&iut-tlie stock Market I g® til an of mine and ask him to invest my savings for me. But another acquaintance of mine hears of it and injects a word of caution.
"You are certainly taking a great risk," he says to me. "What do you know about the man to whom you are entrusting your hard-earned savings? Are you sure that he is the kind of man that you ought to trust?"
In reply I say that I do know certain things about the man. "Some time ago he came to this town and succeeded in selling the unwary inhabitants of it some utterly worthless oil-stock; and if he is not in jail, he certainly ought to be there. But," I continue, "opinions about a person may differ — that is merely an intellectual matter — and yet one may have faith in the person; faith is quite distinct from knowledge. Consequently I can avoid the unpleasant duty of raking up the past of the speculative gentleman in question; I can avoid unseemly controversy as to whether he is a rascal or not, and can simply trust him all the same."
Of course if I talked in that way about so serious a thing as dollars and cents, I should probably be regarded as needing a guardian; and I might soon find my property being better managed for me than I could manage it for myself: yet it is just exactly in that way that men talk with regard to the subject of religion; it is just in that way that they talk with regard to Jesus. But is it not quite absurd? Surely it is impossible to trust a person whom one holds in one*s mind to be untrustworthy. Yet if so, we cannot possibly be indifferent to what is called the "theological" controversy of the present day; for that controversy concerns just exactly the question whether Jesus is trustworthy or not. By one party in the Church Jesus is presented as One in whom men can have confidence in this world and the world to come; by the other party He is so presented as that trust in Him would be ignoble if not absurd.
Yet there may be an objection. "Faith," it may be said, "seems to be such a wonderfully simple thing. What-has the simple trust which that centurion reposed in Jes'us to do with the subtleties of the Chalcedonian creed? What has it" to do even with a question of fact like the question of the virgin birth? And may we not return from our theology, or from our discussion of details of the New Testament presentation, to the simplicity of the centurion's faith?"
To this objection there is of course one very easy answer. The plain fact is that we are by no means in the same situation as the cenjturion was with reference to Jesus; we of the twentieth century need to know very much more about Jesus in order to trust Him than the centurion needed to know. If we had Jesus with us in bodily presence now, it is quite possible that we might be able to trust Him with very little knowledge indeed; the majesty of His bearing might conceivably inspire unbounded confidence almost at first sight. But as a matter of fact we are separated from Him by nineteen centuries; and if we are to commit ourselves unreservedly to a Jew Wjho lived nineteen hundred years ago, as to a living person, there are obviously many things about Him that we need to know. For one thing, we need to know that He is alive; we need to know, therefore, about the resurrection. And then we need to know how it is that He can touch our lives; and that involves a knowledge of the atonement and of the way in which He saves us from our sin. But it is useless to enter into further detail. Obviously it is a very strange thing that persons of the twentieth century should come into a relation of living trust with a man of the first century; and if they are to do so, they must know much more about Him than His contemporaries needed to know. Even if the centurion, therefore, could get along with very little knowledge of the person of Christ, it does not follow that we can do so.
There is, however, another answer to the objection. Men say that faith — for example the faith of the centurion— is a simple thing and has nothing to do with theology. But is faith really so simple a thing? The answer is not so obvious as many persons suppose. Many things which seem to be simple are really highly complex. And such is the case with respect to trust in a person. Why is it that I trust one man and do not trust another? Sometimes it may seem to be a simple thing; sometimes I trust a man at first sight; trust in these cases seems to be instinctive. But surely "instinct" in human beings is not so simple as it seems. It really depends upon a host of observations about the personal bearing of men who are trustworthy and those who are not trustworthy. And usually trust is not even apparently instinctive; usually it is built up by long years of observation of the person who is trusted. Why do I trust this man or that? Surely it is because I kntfw t$m; I have seen him trieH a'gain arid again, and he has rung true. The result seems to be very simple; fit the end a look or a tone of the voice is sufficient to give me as in a flash an impression of the whole person. But that impression is really the result of many things that I know. And I can never be indifferent to what is said about the one whom I trust; I am indignant.about slanders directed against him, and I seek to defend my high opinion of him by an appeal to the facts.
So it is in the case of our relation to Jesus. We are committing to Him the most precious thing that we possess — our own immortal souls, and the destinies of society. It is a stupendous act of trust. And it can be justified only by an appeal to facts.
But what becomes, then, it may be asked, of the childlike faith which seems to be commended by our Lord Himself? If faith is so elaborate an intellectual affair, how could Jesus ever have said: "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein."2 Surely a little child does not wait until all probabilities have been weighed, and until the trustworthiness of its parents has been established at the bar of reason, before it reaches out its little hands in simple trust.
In answer, three things need to be said.
In the first place, in holding that knowledge is logically the basis of faith we are not holding that it necessarily precedes faith in the order of time. Sometimes faith in a person and knowledge of the person come in the same instant. Certainly we are not maintaining that faith in Jesus has to wait until a man has learned all that the theologians or even all that the Bible can tell him about Jesus; on the contrary, faith may come first, on the basis of very elementary knowledge, and then fuller knowledge may come later. Indeed that is no doubt quite the normal order of Christian experience. But what we do maintain is that at no point is faith independent of the knowledge upon which it is logically based; even at the very beginning faith contains an intellectual element; and if the subsequent increase of knowledge should show the person in whom trust is reposed to be untrustworthy, the faith would be destroyed.
In the second place, the question may well be asked whether the faith of a child, after all, is independent of knowledge. We for our part think that it is not, provided the child has come to the age of conscious personal life. The child possesses, stored up in its memory, experiences of the mother's goodness, knows how to distinguish her from other persons, and hence smiles at her approach.- Very different is the nontheological "faith" of the modern pragmatist, that can subsist independently of the opinions which may be held as to the object of faith. Whatever may be said for that pragmatist attitude, it is certainly as unchildlike as anything that could possibly be imagined. A child never trusts a person whom it holds with its mind to be untrustworthy. The faith of the modern pragmatist is a very subtle, sophisticated, unchildlike thing; jwhat is really childlike is the faith that is founded upon knowledge of the one in whom trust is reposed.
There is, indeed, perhaps one stage of childhood where the intellect is in abeyance; but it is the stage where conscious personal life has not yet been begun. Is it that stage to which Christian faith ought to return? There are many who answer this question, implicitly if not explicitly, in the affirmative; these are the mystics, who hold that religion is an ineffable experience in which the ordinary faculties of the soul are quiescent, and who must hold, if they be consistent, that the goal of religion is a sheer loss of individual consciousness through the merging of the soul in the abyss of the divine. It is toward such mysticism that the modern depreciation 6f the intellect in religion really tends. No doubt the anti-intellectualism of our day does not often consciously go so far; but that is not because the starting-point is right, but because the way has not yet been followed to the end. The ultimate goal of the modern view of faith is a nirvana in which personality is lost.
In the third place, we have so far really not gotten at what Jesus meant at all. When our Lord bade His disciples receive the kingdom of heaven as little children, was it really the ignorance of the little children to which He appealed? We think not. No, it was not the ignorance or children to which our Lord appealed, but their conscious helplessness, their willingness to receive a gift. What mars the simplicity of the childlike faith which Jesus commends is not an admixture of knowledge, but an admixture of self-trust. To receive the kingdom as a little chilvd is to receive it as a free gift without seeking in slightest measure to earn it for one's self. There is a rebuke here for any attempt to earn salvation by one's character, by one's own obedience to God's commands, by one's own establishment in one's life of "the principles of Jesus"; but there is no rebuke whatever for an intelligent faith that is founded upon the facts. The childlike simplicity of faith is marred sometimes by ignorance, but never by knowledge; it will never be marred — and never has been marred in the lives of the great theologians — by the blessed knowledge of God and of the Saviour Jesus Christ which is contained in the Word of God. Without that knowledge we might be tempted to trust partly in ourselves; but -with it we trust wholly to God. The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we trust Him; the greater be our progress in theology, the simpler and more childlike will be our faith.
There is no reason, then, for us to modify the conclusion to which we were led by an examination of the centurion's faith; faith in Christ, we hold, can be justified only by an appeal to facts.
The facts which justify our appeal to Jesus concern not only His goodness but also His power. We might be convinced of His goodness, and yet not trust Him with these eternal concerns of the soul. He might have the will to help and not the power. We might be in the position of the ship-captain's child in the touching story, who, when all on shipboard were in terror because of an awful storm, learned that his father was on the bridge and went peacefully to sleep. The confidence of the child very probably was misplaced; but it was misplaced not because the captain was not faithful and good, but because the best of men has no power to command the wind and the sea that they should obey him. Is our confidence in Jesus equally misplaced? It is misplaced if Jesus was the poor, weak enthusiast that He is represented as being by naturalistic historians. But very diff erent is the case if He was the mighty Person presented in the Word of God. The question as to which was the real Jesus may be decided in one way or it may be decided in the other; but at any rate it cannot be ignored. We cannot trust Jesus if Jesus is unworthy of our trust.
Why then do those who reduce Jesus to the level of humanity, who regard Him (if traditional language be stripped off) simply as a Jewish teacher of long ago, the initiator of the "Christ-life" — why do such persons speak of having "faith in Jesus"? They do so, I think, because they are slipping insensibly into a wrong use of terms; when they say "faith in Jesus," they mean really not faith in Jesus but merely faith in the teaching and example of Jesus. And that is a very different thing. It is one thing to hold that the ethical principles which Jesus enunciated will solve the problems of society, and quite another thing to come into that intimate, present relation to Him which we call faith; it is one thing to follow the example of Jesus and quite a different thing to trust Him. A man can admire General Washington, for example, and accept the principles of his life; yet one cannot be said to trust him, for the simple reason that he died over a hundred years ago. His soldiers could trust him; for in their day he was alive; but we cannot trust him, because now he is dead. And when persons who believe that
Jesus was simply a great teacher of long ago, and are not particularly interested in any personal identity between that mystic experience which they call "Christ" in the soul and the historic person Jesus of Nazareth — when such persons speak of "faith in Jesus," the expression is merely a survival, now meaningless, of a usage which had meaning only when Jesus was regarded as what He is said in the New Testament to be. Real faith in Jesus can exist only when the lofty claims of Jesus are taken as sober fact, and when He is regarded as the eternal Son of God, come voluntarily to earth for our redemption, manifesting His glory even in the days of His flesh, and now risen from the dead and holding communion with those who commit their lives to Him.
The truth is that in great sections of the modern Church Jesus is no longer the object of faith, but has become merely an example for faith; religion is based no longer upon faith in Jesus but upon a faith in God that is, or is conceived to be, like the faith that Jesus had in God.
This mighty transition is often unconscious; by a loose use of traditional language men have concealed from themselves as well as from others the decisive step that has really been taken. By no means all, it is true, of those who have taken the step have been thus self -deceived; there are among them some real students of history who detect clearly the momentous difference between a faith in Jesus and a faith in God that is like Jesus' faith. For such scholars the origin of "faith in Jesus" becomes the most important problem in the entire history of religion. How was it that a Jewish teacher, who (in accordance with modern naturalism) did not exceed the limits of humanity, came to be taken as the object of religious faith; how aiid when did men add to a faith in God that was like Jesus' faith a faith in Jesus Himself? However and whenever this event took place, it was certainly a momentous event. Of course to anyone who accepts the testimony of the Bible the problem is quickly solved; the New Testament throughout — the Gospels as well as the Epistles — depicts Jesus of Nazareth as one who from the beginning presented Himself, and with full justification, as the object of faith to sinful men. But to modern naturalistic historians the problem remains; and by the more thoughtful of them it is placed in the very forefront of interest. How was there added to faith in God, encouraged and inspired by Jesus, a faith in Jesus Himself?
Many solutions of this problem have been proposed in the course of modern criticism, but none of them has won universal acceptance. According to the older Liberalism, represented, for example, by Harnack, faith in Jesus as Redeemer, in the Pauline sense, was merely the temporary form in which the religious experience brought about by contact with the real Jesus had to be expressed in the forms of thought proper to that day. According to a radical like Boussett on the other hand, faith in Jesus arose in Damascus or Antioch, when, in a meeting of the disciples full of ecstatic phenomena, someone uttered the momentous words,
"Jesus is Lord," and thus the One who in Jerusalem had heen regarded as absent in heaven came to be regarded as present in the Church and hence as being the object of faith. Many other solutions, or varieties of the few generically differing solutions, have been proposed. But it cannot be said that any one of them has been successful. Modern naturalism so far has expended all its learning and all its ingenuity in vain upon the question how it was that a Jew of the first century came to be taken as the object of religious faith, despite the strictness of Jewish monotheism, by contemporaries belonging to His own race.
Yet although we do not think that scholars like Bousset have been successful in solving the problem, they have at least seen clearly what the problem is; and that is great gain. They have seen clearly that faith in Christ is quite different from a faith merely like Christ's faith: and they have seen clearly that not the latter but the former is characteristic of the historic Christian Church, If the choice of the Church is now to be reversed, the radicalness of the decision should not be ignored.
Such clearness, however, is, unfortunately, in many quarters conspicuous by its absence; there are many who by a sort of spiritual indolence or at least timorqusness xseek to conceal the issue both from themselves and from others. It is evident that they have a sentimental attachment to Jesus; it is evident that they love Him; why then should they try to decide whether such attachment is or is not what is designated by the New Testament and by the historic Church as "faith"?
"Surely," men say, "it is better to let sleeping dogs He; surely it is better not to mar the peace of the Church by too careful an effort at definition of terms. If those who are called 'Liberals' in the Church will only consent to employ traditional language, if they will only avoid offending friend as well as foe by the unpardonable ecclesiastical sin of plainness of speech, all will be well, and the work of the Church can go satisfactorily on as though there were no division of opinion at all."
Many are the ways in which such a policy is commended to our favor; plausible indeed are the methods by which Satan seeks to commend an untruth; often the Tempter speaks through the lips of sincere and good men. "Let us alone," some devout pastors say, "we are preaching the gospel; we are bringing men and women into the. Church; we have no time for doctrinal controversy; let us above all have peace." Or else it is the greatness and beneficence of the work of the organized Churcfi which catches the imagination and inspires the cry of "peace and work." "Let us sink our doctrinal differences," it is urged, "and go on with our work; let us quit defending Christianity and proceed to propagate it; whatever be our theological differences let us conquer the world for Christ."
Plausible words these are, and uttered sometimes no doubt, by truly Christian men. For such men we have full sympathy; their eyes are closed; they have no inkling of the facts; they have no notion how serious is the issue that faces the Church. But for us, and for all who are aware of what is really going on, the policy of
"peace and work," the policy of concealment and palliation, would be the deadliest of sins. IJJ'he Church is placed before a serious choice; it must decide whether it will merely try to trust God as Jesus trusted Him, or whether it will continue to put its trust in Jesus Himself. Upon that choice depends the question which of two mutually exclusive religions is to be maintained. One of the two is the redemptive religion known as Christianity; the other is a religion of optimistic confidence in human nature, which at almost every conceivable point is the reverse of Christian belief. We must decide which of the two we shall choose. \ But above all things let us choose with our eyes open; and when we have chosen let us put our whole souls into the propagation of what we believe. If Christ is the object of faith, as He is held by the New Testament to be, then let us proclaim Him not only in our pulpits but by all our activity in the Church. There is nothing more unreasonable than to preach the gospel with our lips and then combat the gospel through the funds that we contribute to agencies and boards or through the votes that we cast in Church councils and courts.
It is the encouragement of such inconsistency that places the most serious ethical stain upon Modernism in evangelical churches today. It is not a stain which appears merely in weaknesses and inconsistencies of individual men — for such failings we have the greatest possible sympathy, being keenly conscious of worse moral failures in ourselves than can be found in other men — but it is a stain that is inherent in the settled policy of a great party in the Church. Concealment of the issue, the attempt to slur over a mighty change as though full continuity were being preserved, the double use of traditional language, the acceptance on false pretences of the support of old-fashioned evangelical men and women who have no inkling of what is really being done with their contributions or with their votes — these are things that would convince us, even prior to historical or theological investigation^ that there is something radically wrong with the Modernist movement of the present day. "By their fruits ye shall know them," said our Lord,3 and judged by that ethical standard the present movement will not stand the test. There are, indeed, exceptions to the particular fault upon which we are now insisting — for example the exception formed by the honesty of the Unitarian Churches, for which we have the very highest possible respect — but the chief outward successes of Modernism have been won by the wrong methods of which we speak. A true Reformation would be characterized by just what is missing in the Modernism of the present day; it would be characterized above all by an heroic honesty which for the sake of principle would push all consideration of consequences aside.
Such a Reformation we on our part believe to be needed today; only, we believe that it would be brought about, not by a new religion which consists in imitation of the reduced Jesus of modern naturalism, but by the rediscovery of the gospel of Christ. This is not the first time in the history of the world when the gospel has been obscured. It was obscured in the Middle Ages, for example; and how long and how dark, in some respects, was that time! But the gospel burst forth with new power — the same gospel that Paul and Augustine had proclaimed. So it may be in our own day; the gospel may come forth again to bring light and liberty to mankind. But this new Reformation for which we long will not be brought about by human persuasions, or by consideration of consequences, or by those who seek to save souls through a skfllful use of ecclesiastical influences, or by those who refrain from speaking the truth through a fear of "splitting the Church" or of making a poor showing in columns of Church statistics. How petty, in the great day when the Spirit of God again moves in the Church, all such considerations will seem! No, when the true Reformation comes, it will come through the instrumentality of those upon whom God has laid His hand, to whom the gospel has become a burning fire within them, who speak because they are compelled to speak, who, caring nothing for human influences and conciliation and external Church combinations and the praise or blame of men, speak the word that God has given them and trust for the results to Him alone. In other words, it will be brought about by men of faith.
We do not know when such an event will come; and when it comes it will not be the work of men but the work of the Spirit of God. But its coming will be prepared for, at any rate, not by the concealment of issues, but by clear presentation of them; not by peace in the_ Church between Christian and anti-Christian forces, but by earnest discussion; not by darkness, but by the light. Certainly it will not be hindered by an earnest endeavor to understand what faith in Christ really is, and how it differs from a faith that is merely an attempt at imitating Christ's faith.
Such an endeavor may perhaps be furthered by a consideration of one or two of the shibboleths which appear in the religious literature of the day. Nothing like completeness will be necessary; we may begin at almost any point in the literature of the Modernist movement, in order to discover the root from which it all comes.
There is, for example, the alternative between a gospel about Jesus, and the gospel of Jesus. The Church, it is said, has been so much concerned with a gospel about Jesus that the gospel of Jesus has been neglected; we ought to reverse the process and proclaim the gospel that Jesus Himself proclaimed.
With regard to this proposal, it should be noticed that even in its relation to the question of the seat of authority in religion, it is not so innocent as it might seem. ^ It proposes that the seat of authority shall be "the teachings of Christ." But the seat of authority for the historic Church has been not merely the teachings of Christ, but the whole Bible. For, the Bible, therefore, which was formerly regarded as the Word of God, is to be substituted the very small part of the Bible which consists in the words which Jesus spoke when He was on earth. Certainly there are difficulties connected with such a change, due, for example, to the fact that Jesus, who is to be held as the supreme and sole authority, placed at the very basis of His own life and teaching that view of the authority of the whole Bible which is here so lightly being abandoned. The view which regards the "teachings of Christ" as the sole authority seems therefore to be self -contradictory; for the authority of Christ establishes the authority of the Bible. The truth is that "the teachings of Christ'* can be truly honored only when they are taken as an organic part of the divine revelation found in the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation; to isolate Christ from the Bible is to dishonor Christ and reject His teaching.
But the point now is not that the substitution of the teachings of Jesus for the whole Bible as the seat of authority in religion is unjustifiable, but rather that it is at any rate momentous. If it must be accomplished, let it at least be accomplished with full understanding of the importance of the step.
The true seriousness of the substitution of the gospel of Jesus for a gospel about Jesus is not, however, limited to the bearing of this step upon the question of the seat of authority in religion; even more serious is the different attitude toward Jesus which the step involves. The advocates of a "gospel of Jesus" in the modern sense seem to imagine that the acceptance of such a gospel brings Jesus closer to us than is done by the acceptance of a gospel about Jesus. In reality, the exact opposite is the case. Of course if the "gospel about Jesus" is not true, if it sets forth not the facts that inhere in Jesus Himself, but merely the false opinions of other persons about Him, or "interpretations" of Him which have merely temporary validity, then the gospel about Jesus does place a veil of falsehood between Jesus and us and should be rejected in order that we may find contact with Him as He actually was. But entirely different is the case if the gospel about Jesus sets forth the facts. In that case that gospel hrings us into a kind of contact with Him compared with which the mere acceptance of a gospel which He Himself proclaimed is a very cold and distant thing.
Acceptance of what Jesus Himself proclaimed does not in itself mean any more than that He is taken as a teacher and leader; it is only what might conceivably be done in the case of many- other men. A man can, for example, accept the gospel of Paul; that means merely that he holds the teaching of Paul to be true: but he cannot accept a gospel about Paul; for that would give to the apostle a prerogative that belongs only to his Lord. Paul himself expressed what we mean when he wrote to the Corinthians: "Was Paul crucified for you"?4 The great apostle to the Gentiles, in other words, proclaimed a gospel; but he was not himself the substance of the gospel, the latter prerogative being reserved for Jesus Himself. A gospel about Jesus exalts Jesus, therefore, and brings Him into far closer contact with us than could ever be done by a gospel of Jesus.
But what was this gospel which Jesus proclaimed, this gospel that is now to replace the gospel about Him which has been proclaimed by the Apostle Paul and by the historic Church? Our only knowledge of ft is obtained from the words of Jesus that are recorded in the New Testament. But those words as they stand make it abundantly plain that the gospel which Jesus proclaimed was also, at its very centre, a gospel about Him; it did far more than set forth a way of approach to God which Jesus Himself followed, but it presented Jesus as Himself the way which could be followed by sinful men. According to the New Testament our Lord even in the days of His flesh presented Himself not merely as Teacher and Example and Leader but also, and primarily, as Saviour; He offered Himself to sinful men as One who alone could give them entrance into the Kingdom of God; everything in His teaching pointed forward to His redeeming work in His death and resurrection; the culmination of Jesus' gospel was the Cross. The significance of redemption could not, indeed, be fully pointed out until redemption had actually been accomplished; and our Lord therefore pointed forward to the fuller revelation which was to be given through His apostles: but, although only by way of prophecy, yet clearly enough, He did, even when He was on earth, tell men what He had come into the world to do. "The Son of Man," He said, "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many/'5
So much will perhaps be generally admitted; if the words of Jesus as they are recorded in the Gospels are accepted as authentic, then the separation of the gospel about Jesus from a gospel of Jesus is radically false; for the gospel about Jesus (which is the gospel that all through the centuries has brought peace to burdened souls) was also the gospel which Jesus Himself, even in the days of His flesh, proclaimed.
If, then, we are to obtain a Jesus who kept His own
Person out of His gospel, and offered to men merely the way of approach to God which He had followed for Himself, we cannot do so by an acceptance of the New Testament account of Jesus' words as it stands, but can do so, if at all, only by a critical process within that account. The true words of Jesus must be separated from words falsely attributed to Him before we can obtain the modern gospel which omits redemption and the Cross.
But that critical process, upon investigation, is found to be impossible. Even in the earliest sources supposed, rightly or wrongly, by modern criticism to underly our Gospels, Jesus presented Himself not merely as an example for faith but as the object of faith.6 He invited men not merely to have faith in God like the faith which He had in God, but He invited them to have faith in Him. He clearly regarded Himself as Messiah, not in some lower meaning of the word, but as the heavenly Son of Man who was to come with the clouds of heaven and be the instrument in judging the world; He clearly pointed forward to some catastrophic event in which He was to have a central place, some catastrophic event by which the Kingdom of Heaven was to be ushered in. The truth is that the Jesus who preached a gospel of universal divine fatherhood and a sonship which was man's right as man never existed until modern times; the real Jesus presented Himself not merely as Teacher but also as Lord and as Redeemer. If, therefore, we are to hold to the real "gospel of Jesus," we must also
6 See James Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, 1909.
hold to "the gospel about Jesus/' and the separation between the two must be given up.
Another way in which the opposition between a religion that makes Jesus merely the example for faith and a religion that makes Him primarily the object of faith appears in the modern world, is to be found in the varying answers to the question whether Jesus was or was not a "Christian." According to a very widespread way of thinking Jesus was the Founder of the Christian religion because He was the first to live the Christian life, in other words because He was Himself the first Christian. According to our view, on the other hand, Jesus stands in a far more fundamental and intimate relation to Christianity than that; He was, we hold, the Founder of our religion not because He was the first Christian, but because He made Christianity possible by His redeeming work.
At no point does the issue in the modern religious world appear in more characteristic fashion than just here. Many persons hold up their hands in amazement at our assertion that Jesus was not a Christian, while we in turn regard it as the very height of blasphemy to say that He was a Christian. "Christianity," to us, is a way of getting rid of sin; and therefore to say that Jesus was a Christian would be to deny His holiness.
"But," it is said, "do you mean to tell us that if a man lives a life like the life of Jesus but rejects the doctrine of the redeeming work of Christ in His death and resurrection, he is not a Christian?" The question, in one form or another, is often asked; but the answer is very simple. Of course if a man really lives a life like the life of Jesus, all is well; such a man is indeed not a Christian, but he is something better than a Christian-— he is a being who has never lost his high estate of sonship with God. But our trouble is that our lives, to say nothing of the lives of these who so confidently appeal to their own similarity to Jesus, do not seem to be like the life of Jesus. Unlike Jesus, we are sinners, and hence, unlike Him, we become Christians; we are sinners, and hence we accept with thankfulness the redeeming love of the Lord Jesus Christ, who had pity on us and made us right with God, through no merit of our own, by His atoning death.
That certainly does not mean that the example of Jesus is not important to the Christian; on the contrary, it is the daily guide of His life, without which he would be like a ship without a rudder on an.uncharted sea. But the example of Jesus is useful to the Christian not prior to redemption, but subsequent to it.
In one sense indeed it is useful prior to redemption: it is useful in order to bring a sinful man into despair of ever pleasing God by his own efforts; for if thejife of Jesus be the life that God requires, who can stand in His holy presence? Thus to the unredeemed the example of Jesus has an important part in the proclamation of that terrible law of God which is the schoolmaster to bring men unto Christ; it serves by its lofty purity to produce the consciousness of sin and thus to lead men to the Cross.
But so far as any comfort or positive help is concerned, the example of Christ is useful only to those who have already been redeemed. We disagree very strongly therefore with those teachers and preachers who think that Jesus should first be presented as a leader and example in order that afterwards, perhaps, He may be presented as Saviour; we deprecate the popular books for young people which appeal to the sense of loyalty as the first way of approach to Jesus; it seems to us very patronizing and indeed blasphemous when, for example, Jesus' choice of a life-work is presented as a guide toward the choice of a life-work on the part of boys and young men. The whole method, we think, is wrong. The example of Jesus is, indeed, important, but it is not primary; the first impression to give to a child is not that of the ways in which Jesus is like us but that of the ways in which He differs from us; He should be presented first as Saviour and only afterwards as Example; appeal should be made not to latent forces capable of following Jesus' example but to the sense of sin and need.
Let it not be said that this method of approach is ill suited to the young, and founded on a false psychology; on the contrary, its effectiveness has been proved through the long centuries of the Church's life. Now that it has largely been abandoned boys and girls drift away from the Church, whereas when it was followed they grew up into stalwart Christian men and women. It is very natural for a child of the covenant to learn first to trust Christ as Saviour almost as soon as conscious life begins, and then, having become God's child through Him, to follow His blessed example. There is a child's hymn — a child's hymn that I think the Christian can never outgrow — which puts the matter right:
O dearly, dearly has He loved,
And we must love Him too, And trust in His redeeming blood,
And try His works to do.
That is the true order of Christian pedagogy — "trust in His redeeming blood" first, and then "try His works to do." Disaster will always follow when that order is reversed.
The Lord Jesus, then, came into this world not primarily to say something, not even to be something, but to do something; He came not merely to lead men through His example out into a "larger life," but to give life, through His death and resurrection, to those who were dead in trespasses and sins; we are Christians not because we have faith in God like the faith in God which Jesus Himself had, but because we have faith in Him.
But can we really have faith in Him? We cannot do so if He be the mere initiator of the "Christ life" who is presented in much modern preaching; but we can do so if He be the living Saviour presented in the Word of God.
One fearful doubt, however, still assails us. It comes from what may be called the cosmic aspects of human life, from the dread thought of the infinite abyss which is all about us as we walk upon this earth.
Reflections on the nothingness of human life, it must be admitted, are often rather dull; they clothe themselves readily in cant. But if a thing is true, it cannot become false by being hackneyed. And as a matter of fact, it cannot be denied that man is imprisoned on one of the smaller of the planets, that he is enveloped by infinity on all sides, and that He lives but for a day in what seems to be a pitiless procession. The things in which he is interested, the whole of his world, form but an imperceptible oasis in the desert of immensity, Strange it is that he can be absorbed in things which from the vantage ground of infinity must seem smaller than the smallest playthings.
It cannot be denied: man is a finite creature; he is a denizen of the earth. From one point of view he is very much like the beasts that perish; like them he lives in a world of phenomena; he is subject to a succession of experiences, and he does not understand any one of them. Science can observe; it cannot explain: if it tries to explain, it ceases to be science and sometimes becomes almost laughable. Man is certainly finite.
But that is not the whole truth. Man is not only finite; for he knows that he is finite, and that knowledge brings him into connection with infinity. He lives in a finite world, but he knows, at least, that it is not the totality of things. He lives in a procession of phenomena, but to save his life he cannot help searching for a first cause. In the midst of his trivial life, there rises in his mind one strange and overpowering thought — the thought of God. It may come by reflection, by subtle argument from effect to cause, from the design to the designer. Or it may come by a "sunset touch." Back of the red, mysterious, terrible, silent depths, beyond the silent meeting place of sea and sky, there is an inscrutable power. In the presence of it man is helpless as a stick or stone. He is as helpless, but more unhappy — unhappy because of fear. With what assurance can we meet the infinite power? Its works in nature, despite all nature's beauty, are horrible in the infliction of suffering. And what if physical suffering should not be all; what of the sense of guilt; what if the condemnation of conscience should be but the foretaste of judgment; what if contact with the infinite should be contact with a dreadful infinity of holiness; what if the inscrutable cause of all things should turn out to be, after all, a righteous God?
This great beyond of mystery— can Jesus help us there? Make Him as great as you will, and still He may seem to be insufficient. Extend the domains of His power far beyond our ken, and still there may seem to be a shelving brink with the infinite beyond. And still we are subject to fear. The mysterious power that explains the world still, we say, will sweep in and overwhelm us and our Saviour; alike. We are of all men most miserable; we had trusted in Christ; He carried us a little on our way, and then left us, helpless as before, on the brink of eternity. There is for us no hope; we stand defenseless at length in the presence of unfathomed mystery, unless — a wild, fantastic thought — unless our Saviour, this Jesus in whom we had trusted, were Himself in mysterious union with the eternal God. Then comes the full, rich consolation of God's Word- — the mysterious sentence in Philippians: "who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God"; the strange cosmology of Col-
ossians: "who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist"; the majestic prologue of the Fourth Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; the mysterious consciousness of Jesus: "All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him."
These things have been despised as idle speculation, but in reality they are the very breath of our Christian lives. They are, indeed, the battle ground of theologians; the Church hurled anathemas at those who held that Christ, though great, was less than God. But those anathemas were beneficent and right. That difference of opinion was no trifle; there is no such thing as "almost God." The thought is blasphemy; the next thing less than the infinite is infinitely less. If Christ be the greatest of finite creatures, then still our hearts are restless, still we are mere seekers after God. But now is Christ, our Saviour, the One who says, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," revealed as very God. And we believe. It is the supreme venture of faith; faith can go no higher. Such a faith is a mystery to us who possess it; it is ridiculed by those who have it not. But if possessed it pvercomes the world. In Christ all things are ours. There is now for us no awful Beyond of mystery and fear. We cannot, indeed, explain the world, but we rejoice now that we- cannot explain it; to us it is all unknown, but it contains no mysteries for our Saviour; He is on the throne; He is at the centre; He is ground and explanation of all things; He pervades the remotest bounds; by Him all things consist. The world is full of dread, mysterious powers; they touch us already in a thousand woes. But from all of them we are safe. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. - For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."