Here is a momentous question on which both the safety of the church and her hold upon the masses largely depends. In this world as well as in the world to come, there is an impassable gulf between Dives and Lazarus. If the church deliberately chooses the company of Dives, putting on purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day, she cannot keep with Lazarus. The attempt may be made to effect conciliation by tossing biscuits across the gulf; or investing in second-class cars called "mission. churches" for those on that side who can be persuaded to ride in them. But this will not do. It is not money that is wanted so much as fellowship to bring the disaffected masses into sympathy with the church. The word Koinonia, community, or having in common, is a great characteristic word of the New Testament. The church is a heavenly commonwealth in which there is a community of life with the Head, and a community of goods with the members, and a community of sympathy with the world. If only the church could once more stand forth, transfigured in its primitive ideal, it would be certain to repeat its primitive conquests. Let the ministers of our great metropolitan churches who enjoy munificent salaries begin the reform by becoming like the chief apostle, poor that they may make many rich; and let the millionaire pew-holders follow their lead by parting their goods to such as have need, and see if the growing spirit of communism would not be speedily arrested, not by the counter-irritant of ridicule, but by the emollient of Christ-like example. 2. If we look to the upper and best educated classes of society we are confronted with a wide-spread and growing Agnosticism. And what is Agnosticism? It is culture ending in ignorance, as the highest mountain peaks are lost in clouds. I would not deride or pour contempt on this manifestation, lest I might be guilty of what an old writer has called "beating a cripple over the head with his own crutches." A loud-mouthed and boastful infidelity may awaken our contempt, but a lame faith stretching out its hands towards the great mysteries of life and eternity deserves to be pitied rather than pelted. And so I have delighted to quote to men of this school the words of Scripture concerning our Great High Priest, "Who can have compassion on the ignorant-the agnoousin, the agnostics."—"Who can have compassion upon the agnostics and upon those that are out of the way." But how shall the church meet this growing sentiment without the church? I may surprise you when I answer that at least one way to meet it is with an humble Christian agnosticism. Christianity is not a system of philosophy, but a revelation to The attempt to survey and map out its doctrines according to our logic-charts has always proved injurious. If theologians insist on being wise above what is written, the natural reaction will be that neologians will be ignorant below what is written. I am a most decided believer in a positive gospel; and concerning everything that has been revealed I consider we may be just as sure as concerning the conclusions of mathematics. But not everything which we desire to know has been revealed. The gospel exhibits a divine reserve, as well as a divine revelation; and the same voice of the great Teacher which declares concerning one realm of truth, "To you it is given to know," declares concerning another realm, "It is not for you to know." Now while upon such questions, as that of the resurrection of the body at Christ's second coming, there is a flood of light from Scripture, upon the state and employments of the soul between death and the resurrection hardly a ray of light has been thrown; and while the most positive information has been vouchsafed as to what God will do for the heathen who hear and believe the gospel, he has nowhere exactly informed us what will be the ground and method of his dealings with those heathen who have never heard the gospel. And yet such minute survey of this terra incognita of the intermediate state has been attempted; and such learned conclusions concerning this mystery of the heathen's accountability have been put forth that great religious bodies have been set in battle array and vast missionary interests have been imperiled upon these issues. If the most learned man in the whole fraternity of theologians had long ago faced these questions with a positive and dogmatic "I don't know," he would have been worthy to be counted "a prophet and more than a prophet." For it is the glory of a prophet that he can handle themes and deliver messages the full scope of which he does not presume to understand. 10, 11.) (1 Pet. 1. Now it has been the misfortune of Christian philosophers from the beginning until now, that they have made theology "dark with excess of light." The heresies which have afflicted the church have almost without exception been invented by learned scholars; and the speculations which have blighted the faith of believers have generally been hatched and brooded in the theological schools. The great mass of plain and practical Christians have as a rule kept the faith in its purity. For they have been content to believe more than they know; and to accept more than they could understand. Reason and faith are like the two compartments of an hour glass; when one is full the other is empty. Those who have been determined to know all things, revealed and unrevealed, have often thereby reduced their faith to the minimum, and in so doing they have contracted the very faculty by which we are to apprehend God. Now what I am urging is this: that just as sumptuous wealth in the hands of the church has always been a curse, begetting among the common people a moral and material poverty of the most abject sort; so a sumptuous learning in the schools of theology has proved a curse to the faith and piety of Christians by inducing a contrary extreme of deep religious poverty. This is exactly what agnosticism is-the spiritual pauperism which stands over against the theological and philosophical wealth with which it. has been attempted to endow the gospel of Christ. Paul declares that in giving the gospel God "destroyed the wisdom of the wise." If this wisdom of the wise gets installed in our theological chairs and presides there, it will in turn destroy the gospel. It is written that "when the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." If the wisdom of this world attempts to reverse this order, and to please men by the learnedness of preaching it will darken and bewilder those that would believe. Here, I solemnly conceive, is one of the most serious perils to which our Protestant ministry is exposed to-day, that it shall be impoverished by excess of learning; that instead of going forth with the humble equipment of the word of God which is "the sword of the Spirit," it shall attach the first importance to German learning and to Greek philosophy. Having enjoyed the best advantages of the schools, for which I am devoutly thankful, I am perpetually humbled to see how much better many of the unschooled lay-preachers of our time can handle the Scriptures than the mass of clergymen who have passed through the theological curriculum. I do not undervalue the seminary in saying this, but beg that we should consider the point at which it is most conspicuously failing. I would wish, for one, that no more chairs might be endowed in our theological institutions for teaching the relations of Christianity to science; that those courses in polemics which stuff men's heads full of the history of all the heresies which have afflicted the church from the beginning, might be shortened more and more; and the time thus saved be given to the one thing of studying the Bible and practicing with the "Sword of the Spirit." Magnificent, and far surpassing all that has gone before, is the electric light; but the shadow which it casts is the darkest and densest that ever yet fell upon the earth. And I believe that in New England, where the light of philosophic Christianity has been the most brilliant, and the intellectual lenses and reflectors for its diffusion the most clear and polished, the shadows of agnosticism and atheism fall most darkly. Oh that our teachers of theology were content to know less, that they might know more; that they were less endued with the spirit of modern thought and more deeply baptized by that Spirit that has been sent to us "that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." The acute and eloquent Robert Hall set it forth as the sum of his experience, that power in the pulpit depends neither on "refinement of thought nor subtlety of reason." And then he added, "You have only to draw your instructions immediately from the Bible, imbibe deeply the mind of Christ, and let his doctrine inspire your heart, and your situation in comparison with other speakers will resemble the Angel of the Apocalypse who was seen standing in the sun." 3. If we look now to the lower and criminal classes, we are confronted with that most perilous of social perils, strong drink. The loudest appeal that comes from its victims is the cry for protection. Not permission for this pestilence to walk in darkness and this destruction to waste at noonday, but prohibition is the most earnest plea. The recent instance of a gentleman who is the subject of an uncontrollable periodic appetite advertising in the papers that he would prosecute to the extent of the law any one who should sell him strong drink, is a typical case. Not only the drunkards' wives and children, but the drunkards themselves by thousands in their lucid moments, cry out for protection against the liquid fiend. And looking at it simply as citizens, it would seem clear that they should have what they ask, if Mr. Gladstone's maxim is true, that it is the duty of the government to make it as easy as possible for its subjects to do right, and as difficult as possible for them to do wrong. But I am speaking for the church now. And I am free to say that unless she is deliberately ready to make "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell," her voice ought to be unanimous for the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of strong drink. If that were her voice, government and legislators and congressmen would not be long in hearing of it and acting accordingly. It should be enough for the Christian that his Bible says, "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him and makest him drunken." For when God says " Woe," no government has a right to say "Weal." If, then, we are so far gone in apostacy that nation and state and city are found playing the role of Tetzel and peddling indulgences to these man-slayers and home-destroyers, whether under the name of high license or low license, it is certainly time for Luther to be heard from in every Christian pulpit throughout the land. To me it is as clear as day what the voice of the church ought to be on this question, unless she is ready to be left behind in working righteousness, to be out-moraled by the moralists and out-humanized by the humanitarians. I tremble to think what a half-century more of legalized license of the liquor traffic will do for our country if it shall be permitted. And my apprehension is not merely in regard to the ruin and havoc it will bring to the drunkards' homes; but especially concerning its effects upon sober Christians, in debauching their consciences and confusing their ethics. When I tell you that there are cities in Germany where prostitution is not only licensed, but made so respectable that the candidates for the harlot's profession are required to bring a certificate that they have been confirmed in the Established Church before their permit can be granted, you can see what the principle of license leads to. If we have not reached this depth of shame in our country we are on the way to it, when ministers of Christ are found riding in Tetzel's indulgence wagon and lending their sanction to the auctioning off of licenses to the rumsellers-" high licenses" it may be-which are as respectable as the confirmation certificates just referred to, but which lead just as surely to the lowest hell. I know, of course, the defense which is made of such permission; "Men will sell strong drink, therefore regulate the traffic." |