BY REV. CHARLES R. BROWN. THE MAIN POINTS. A Study in Christian Belief. 16mo. Cloth $1.25. 1899. THE WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY. SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. TWO PARABLES. Thoughts on the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. 12mo. Cloth. $1.25. 1898. FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY. CHICAGO, ILL. Paper Covers. The Outlook for Universal and Permanent Peace, 27 pp. The Twelve Men and the Other Seventy, 37 pp. Fifteen cents each. BAKER PRINTING COMPANY, OAKLAND, CAL. THE MAIN POINTS A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN BELIEF BY CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN PASTOR OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA "Now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum." HEBREWS vin: L THE WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY (INCORPORATED; SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 1899 COPYRIGHT, 1899 BY CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN To SAMUEL T. ALEXANDER In appreciation of his personal friendship, and of his generous loyalty in all the work of our Church PEEFACE. This book is not intended as a treatise on systematic theology. It came about in this way. In this large parish I was continually meeting religiously reared peo- ple who had lost confidence in some of the doctrinal statements accepted by them in earlier days as being the very words of eternal life. They had an uneasy feel- ing because "the traditional phrases of religious speech did not set forth with unstrained naturalness and trans- parent sincerity the facts of their religious lives." Some of them had therefore thrown all such phrases away and were practically offering their devotions at the altar of a revered but "Unknown God." Others with more conservative instincts retained the phrases, but with a silent yearning to have them interpreted anew, and thus compelled to yield their intended help for daily life. These people knew that within a comparatively few years many of "the great inherited, historical state- ments" of religion had come to be deemed inadequate: that consequently such truths were being restated in terms of actual life: and they were asking what this more modern way of thinking about religious matters had to say directly about certain cardinal doctrines. It seemed wise therefore to announce a series of ten doctrinal addresses on the somewhat ambitious theme, "The Message of Modem Orthodoxy." The special (7) PREFACE. This book is not intended as a treatise on systematic theology. It came about in this way. In this large parish I was continually meeting religiously reared peo- ple who had lost confidence in some of the doctrinal statements accepted by them in earlier days as being the very words of eternal life. They had an uneasy feel- ing because "the traditional phrases of religious speech did not set forth with unstrained naturalness and trans- parent sincerity the facts of their religious lives." Some of them had therefore thrown all such phrases away and were practically offering their devotions at the altar of a revered but "Unknown God." Others with more conservative instincts retained the phrases, but with a silent yearning to have them interpreted anew, and thus compelled to yield their intended help for daily life. These people knew that within a comparatively few years many of "the great inherited, historical state- ments" of religion had come to be deemed inadequate: that consequently such truths were being restated in terms of actual life: and they were asking what this more modern way of thinking about religious matters had to say directly about certain cardinal doctrines. It seemed wise therefore to announce a series of ten doctrinal addresses on the somewhat ambitious theme, "The Message of Modem Orthodoxy." The special (7) 8 PREFACE. topics named were the titles of the ten chapters in this book. It might have seemed risky to offer so long a course in doctrine to evening congregations in this busy, bustling western world of ours that now more than ever is looking out the Golden Gate and sighing for new material worlds to conquer. But somewhat to my sur- prise and greatly to my encouragement, the congrega- tions were unusually large and they steadily grew larger throughout the course. This fact strengthened me in the conviction that the people want our line of goods; they want to hear religion taught from the pulpit in downright, thoroughgoing fashion. The all-round preacher will naturally aim to set all our concrete hu- man relations in harmony with the will of God: he will not forget for a moment that "the field is the world" the place where religion is to grow is the "big, blooming, buzzing," confusing world where we are set down ; but the staple of his preaching could well be a spiritual message to the inner life. The people might dispense with much that is retailed in the pulpit be- cause they hear these sociological and political prob- lems discussed elsewhere by experts, but if we pastors do not bring them the truths of personal and vital reli- gion, who will? The good gold of our message may be coined in the mints of our own day, so that its image and superscription shall indicate that the men who bring it have felt in their own lives the need they seek to help, but the real value of it will come from the fact that its substance is that same good gold of eternal religious truth which has been standard in all the ages. After the course of addresses was concluded, I re- ceived many letters and personal requests urging me PREFACE. 9 to put them in print, as a brief, simple statement of Christian doctrine, and I have ventured to do so. They were delivered without manuscript, and in writing them out for the publisher I have omitted some illustrations and paragraphs more suited to direct appeal, and I have inserted many sentences here and there (chiefly quota- tions) which were not spoken. In large part, however, the forms of personal address have been retained with the feeling, so well expressed by another pastor in his preface, "that whatever the diction may lose in finish, might be compensated by those qualities which appear when a man in earnest concerning the real experiences of life reads the pages of his mind in direct speech with his fellows." I have been assured that these addresses were useful when delivered, and I cherish the hope that they may now render a service in book form. It may seem rather presumptuous for a man to attempt to deal with ten capital themes in theology within the limits of a single small volume. But these pages were not written for theologians, nor for students of metaphysics, for whom there are other books which will serve their ends as this one does not attempt to do. These pages were written for the busy people. The laymen in our cities have more to do and less time to read than had their grand- fathers. As a matter of fact, not many of them find opportunity to read such standard books as Liddon's or Gore's Bampton Lectures on "The Divinity of Our Lord"; or such works on the "Atonement" as Dale's or McLeod Campbell's; or such careful and scholarly dis- cussion of the authority of the Bible as that found in Professor Ladd's "Doctrine of Sacred Scripture." Thou- 10 PREFACE. sands of them are not familiar with the noble work done by Driver, Bruce, McGiffert, Fisher, Newman Smyth and other able writers in the International Theo- logical Library; or with such books as Fairbairn's "The Place of Christ in Modern Theology," or the "Outline of Christian Theology," by Dr. William Newton Clarke. The pastors of the churches are familiar with whole libraries of fresh and stimulating books, that owing to the stress of other matters upon their attention have not come into the hands of the majority of our laymen. There is also much good grain being harvested every month from the work done in theological reconstruction in the pages of the reviews. If we can take some of the results of our wider reading in doctrinal theology and bring them in straightforward, everyday language to the attention of the busy people in our churches, we shall render them a permanent service. The main teaching of these pages is not original with me or with any particular man or men. I have phrased it according to my habit and method, but the message is one that is being delivered widely in our Christian world. In such brief compass there must be a lack of that elaborate and thorough handling of august themes which one finds in truly theological books, but even though the twenty dollar gold pieces are converted into smaller and less valuable change, they may possibly attain a further usefulness in that they can be taken and used by busy men who make their purchases of doc- trinal reading in small quantities. In a time of transition and restatement like the pres- ent, no public teacher of religion can speak his mind frankly and briefly, leaving out those explanations and PREFACE. 11 qualifications that come in to modify or round out, and expect to carry the assent of all the company with him. But the richer and more helpful understanding of the great truths we live by will not come by halting silence or by timid distrust of fellow students with whom we may not quite keep step it will come rather as each Christian man, striving to do the will of God and to know the doctrine, gives out openly and honestly the best he has. CHAELES E. BEOWN. Oakland, California. June 25th, 1899. CONTENTS. Chapter. Page I. The Divinity of Jesus Christ 15 II. The Atonement 31 III. The Work of the Holy Spirit 53 IV. The Matter of Conversion 67 V. Salvation by Faith 81 VI. The Authority of the Bible 93 VII. The Philosophy of Prayer 117 VIII. The Christian Church 135 IX. The Hope of Immortality 151 X. The Last Judgment 167 (13) I. THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. In all our communities we find an increasing number of people who desire some kind of a working faith to live by, but who have broken with the traditional state- ments of doctrinal religion taught them in early life, and consequently they count themselves outside the pale of evangelical Christianity. Their quarrel is not with the ethics of Christianity these they approve, even where they do not personally practice them but with certain statements of dogma which they cannot honestly profess to accept. They do not attach themselves to the so-called "liberal churches," which, so far from drawing in all these people, are losing rather than gaining num- bers. They desire something fuller, richer and warmer than what is found in any type of ethical culture; and they really look to the great branches of the Church of Christ to speak to them, in the tongue and the mood wherein they live, a sure word of life. If our orthodox churches can recognize this multitude standing beyond the group of disciples to whom we already minis- ter, and meet them, interest them, and lead them to the point where they shall see the religion of Jesus as it is, we can render a splendid service. If we can restate in the language of present life, clearly, fearlessly, rationally, these great truths we live by, we may gather (15) 16 THE MAIN POINTS. to ourselves a great host of those who wait for a real and divine Gospel. It is that our church here may do its small part in that great work which confronts our evangelical faith that I have undertaken to utter some plain views of certain essential truths of the Christian life. It is natural to speak first of the Divinity of Jesus Christ. Christian life springs from personal trust in and personal loyalty to Christ. If it be said that our belief in God is more fundamental and would conse- quently 'be a more appropriate starting place, I reply that the God whom we worship, serve and trust, is the God revealed in Jesus Christ. It is "God in Christ" with whom we have to do. For this reason, therefore, and because all theists agree in their belief in the Al- mighty and Moral Being whom we call God, I begin with that which is at once fundamental and distinctive in evangelical Christianity. The question as to the divinity of Christ is no mere question of historical criticism to determine the rank of one who died long ago. It is not a speculative ques- tion of dogmatic theology to be determined and then laid carefully on a high shelf. It is a question of present and significant fact. The frank inquiry of Canon Lid- don must confront us all: "Where is Jesus Christ now? And what is He?" We know well what He was when He walked in Galilee and helped the sick, the ignorant and the sinful, but what can He do now? "Does He reign only by virtue of a mighty tradition of human thought and feeling in His favor, which creates and sup- ports his imaginary throne? Is He at this moment a really living being? And if living is He a human ghost THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 17 flitting we know not where in the unseen world, and Himself awaiting an award at the hands of the Ever- lasting? Is He present personally as a living power in this our world? Has He any certain relations to you? Does He think of you, care for you, act upon you? Can you approach Him now, cling to Him, receive from Him mighty aid, not as an act of imagination, but as a sub- stantial fact?" 1 Is there available for us today that same powerful, loving help with which men and women in Galilee became so familiar nineteen hundred years ago? Surely no inquiry could be more practical or fruitful than this. It may be well to remember too that this question is not propounded to us by the schoolmen or by the abstract theologians. The same Lord who in ethics told us to do unto others as we would that others should do unto us, laid it upon his followers to define their estimate of Him. "Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am, and whom do ye say that I am?" He gra- ciously blessed them when they returned an answer He could approve. Jesus has joined doctrinal and practical Christianity together and men can never successfully put them asunder. I know the impatience that many people feel at the mention of the word "doctrine," but it is usually with some caricature of doctrine rather than with the real thing. When a certain church taught that if a man is baptized, belongs to the church, goes to communion at least once a year and dies, he will be eternally blessed, but that when another man, so far as we can see of similar spirit and life, dies, he will be eternally tormented because he lacked these ecclesias- tical relations and experiences, we can readily under- i Liddon. "Bampton Lectures," p. 36. The Main Points. 2 18 THE MAIN POINTS. stand the popular impatience with doctrines. If the acceptance or non-acceptance of certain opinions touch- ing matters still open to discussion are held to be saving or damning in their results, such doctrinal claims will be shunned. Doctrines to command the respect and al- legiance of thoughtful people must be based on moral realities. A good man is a good man however it came about. Eighteousness is righteousness whatever be the part, great, or small or none, that ecclesiastical obser- vances may have had in producing it. Character is character whether it stand with full confidence in all the catholic creeds, or with the uncertainty of reverent in- quiry. All this is manifestly true, just as a loaf of bread is a loaf of bread and feeds hunger, whether the maker and the eater speak English and understand chemistry or speak some pagan dialect and are innocent of all modern science. If men therefore are reverent, clean, kind, just, and useful, we are not to build doc- trines of baptism or of justifications by opinion, in a way to ignore these moral facts. But because doctrine and life have certain discoverable affinities, and because other things being equal, sound doctrine is a mighty aid to sound living, Jesus taught theology as well as ethics. And high up among his sayings we find strong answers given to enable men to decide upon the rank and claims of the Son of Man. The Congregational churches in common with all evangelical Christians hold that Jesus was divine. We believe that He was both truly human and truly divine, the union of two natures in one personal life. Our rea- sons for holding this view are many, too many for any- thing like an adequate statement within the limits of THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 19 this chapter. The fact that He wrought miracles is significant but not conclusive, for the Scriptures tell us that miracles were also wrought by human beings. The fact of His resurrection from the dead ought to be con- sidered, but the Scriptures also tell us that ordinary human beings were sometimes called back from death into life by the power of God. The mental supremacy of Him who "spake as never man spake" has been urged. No one has ever addressed the moral needs of men so unerringly, so effectively, as He. But mere pre- eminence as a moral teacher would not be sufficient ground for affirming His divinity. Shakespeare was pre-eminent, and the level of his plays has never been approached by any other writer of English, yet Shake- speare was only a man. The testimony of the contemporaries of Jeeus has weight. Thomas fell down before Him worshiping Him, "My Lord and my God." The other apostles used similar language indicating their faith in the absolute deity of Him who had become their Savior. But we are told that these men were carried away by their en- thusiasm and applied titles to Christ which they had no right to apply; that they used the word "God" in a careless, popular sense rather than with exact scien- tific or theological strictness. It is indeed true that Jesus once referred to this popular but unexact use of the word "God." He said to the Pharisees, "Is it not written in your law, I said, 'Ye are gods?' If He called them gods to whom the word of God came, say ye of Him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, 'Thou blasphemest because I said I am the Son of God?' '' So none of these considerations seem to be entirely convincing to many minds. 20 THE MAIN POINTS. I come therefore at once to what lawyers would term "the best evidence" the testimony of Jesus concerning Himself. He knew. He gives us every indication of heing sincere and honest. He betrays no evidence of a desire to boast or to use excited or extravagant language. His Hebrew nature would have shrunk from the blas- phemy involved in applying to Himself divine titles, in accepting divine worship, and in assuming divine pre- rogatives, if He had been but one of us standing here in the presence of the Omnipotent One who shall render judgment for the utterance of every idle word. Now what account had He to give of himself? He claimed to be sinless. When ordinary men assume to teach their fellow men, they instinctively accompany their strongest moral appeals with some reference to their own sense of unworthiness. You speedily turn away from any pulpit in which you do not hear ever and anon the tones of personal confession. You feel that if a man is not clear and honest enough to see the need of moral betterment in himself as he preaches of sub- lime duties, he is not fit to be your moral leader. This explains a certain habit of moral teachers all through the ages. Paul near the close of his devoted life still cries, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." The saintly John writes, "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." James says, "Confess your faults one to another and pray for one another that ye may be healed." And Peter's humble word of confession is, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, oh Lord." These moral leaders of the world confess their sense THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 21 of guilt and go forward for prayers. But with Jesus there is never any acknowledgment of fault. There is no recorded prayer for personal forgiveness. He taught His human followers to pray "Forgive us our trespasses/' but for Himself He never looked heavenward to say "Forgive Me My trespass/' because He admits none. On the contrary He says boldly, "The Father hath not left Me alone, for I do always those things that please Him." He challenged his enemies, "Which one of you convicteth Me of sin?" How wickedly false would all this sound on the lips of a mere man needing to con- fess his faults with Peter, James and John, and with us all. The claim of moral perfection either affirms something more than mere humanity or it blots and disfigures the sincerity of a perfect Man. The assertion of his own central importance, too, throws light upon his self-estimate. Bighiminded hu- man leaders and teachers point away from themselves to Christ or to G-od. Jesus came into the world to "shew us the Father," but He also invited attention and allegiance to Himself in a way that would have been absurd and sinful had He been but a man of un- usual intelligence and extraordinary purity of life. Listen! "If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink." "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." When people turned away, He shook His head sadly, saying, "Ye will not come to Me, that ye may have life." He looked out into the future, dim and vague, to the wisest and best of men and announced confidently, "In my Father's house are many mansions; I go to prepare a place for you." He announced Himself as the Universal Judge of Mankind 22 THE MAIN POINTS. and said the Son of Man would come and sit upon the throne of His glory and gather all nations before Him! How impossible to adjust these claims wifh. any humanitarian theory of His person! How we shrink from placing them on lips that are not divine. Remember his confident use of the "Capital I," of which men in proportion to their goodness and wisdom grow chary. "I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me." "I am the bread of life; he that eateth this bread shall live for- ever." "I am the light of the world; he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness." "I am the true vine the life-tree of regenerate humanity apart from Me ye can do nothing." "I am the resurrection and the life; whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." "I am the door; by me if any man enter in he shall be saved." What extravagant and awful egotism it would be for any mere man to thus exalt himself. Try to put such words on the lips of any great moral leader, Paul, Luther, Francis of Assisi, Wesley, Phillips Brooks they will not stay. The mute lips refuse them be- cause they know their own humanity. No sane man would ever say, "Apart from Me ye can do nothing." No honest man could say, "No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." The dilemma, either He was divine or according to these reported utterances, He was not a sane, sincere, good man, is old and has been criticised, but its force remains. Jesus also associated Himself as no mere man could, with God the Father. He told men in the same breath to trust God and trust Himself, "ye believe in God, believe also in Me." He commanded them to pray in TEE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 23 His name "If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it." He ranked the honors paid to Him on a level with honor paid to. God "All men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father." He declared Himself to be the full, unimpaired revelation of the In- visible God "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." He associated Himself with God in the work of salvation "If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him and "We will come and make Our abode with him." Who is this that thus couples his name with that of God and says, "We!" His final com- mission was, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth; go ye therefore into all the world and baptize men into the name of God and into My name and into the name of the Holy Ghost." We have heard extrava- gant boasts made by men as to the extent of earthly power assumed; we have heard the foolish utterance re- garding the latest of the Hohenzollerns when German soldiers were sent out with the high-sounding charge that they were to preach "the gospel of His Majesty's sacred person" in lands beyond the seas. But we have never heard a man claiming all power in heaven and on earth and sending his followers to baptize believers with a formula where the divine name and his own name stood together and equal. Therefore the sum of the testi- mony that Jesus gave concerning Himself, coupled with the historical fact of His resurrection from the dead, seem sufficient to establish us in the faith that He was the Son of God. I can understand the position of men who frankly reject the Bible record, admitting that the Scriptures teach that Jesus was divine, but refusing to take it upon 24 THE MAIN POINTS. that authority. I am puzzled, however, to see how men accepting the authority of Scripture hold that Jesus was a mere man. By. "authority," as I shall have occasion to say later, I do not mean that every word is infallibly true; I mean authoritative in the sense that on capital questions we are left with the right and not with the wrong conclusions. The question as to what Jesus was is a capital question. Is it right to worship Jesus Christ as He is worshiped in the over- whelming majority of Christian churches? Is it right to pray in His name? Can He bestow upon men the gift of eternal life? Is it right to look to Him in the hour of death for that absolute help which can come only from a divine source ? The Scriptures surely teach us that it is, and it is therefore difficult to see how any one can hold to the authority of Scripture at all and yet fail to recognize that Jesus is divine in the same sense that the Father is. The churches that take any other position are not making progress. The statistics for 1898 show that all the evangelical denominations in the United States, save that one foreign sect called Mennonites, gained in the number of their churches. One denomination alone made a gain of two thousand churches. In 189? the Unitarians reported 454 as their total number of churches in the United States; in 1898, only 453. The Universalists report a clear loss of 62 churches for the year. The Unitarian denomination has many people of intelligence, culture and social position. They are characterized by generous activity in charitable work. Their churches offer a wide hospitality in both belief and conduct there is no dogmatic barrier or Puritan THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 25 strictness to keep people out. And yet, somehow, they do not grow. There is certainly nothing discourteous or unfraternal in quoting some of their own words, taken from a recent number of the "Pacific Unitarian": "Two curious spectacles the world sees today; an orthodoxy holding fast to its discredited dogmas and profoundly in earnest, and a liberalism intellectually secure but without depth of moral convictions and half indifferent to the claims of personal religion. What the outcome is to be is already indicated. The world ap- proves our position and forsakes our altars. The intel- ligence of the age goes the way of liberal thought, and the devotion of the age goes the way of orthodox life." "One man is born to be a consistent Presbyterian. His inheritance predisposes him in that direction. His make- up is on that pattern. His surroundings confirm and strengthen his tendency. He hears nothing else, or he refuses to hear anything else. He feels safe in it. He is happy in it as happy as can be expected under the circumstances. He belongs there. He would be out of place anywhere else. He is a zealous and earnest man. He supports his church to his full ability. He sends as large a fraction of a missionary to convert the heathen as he justly ought to do. He leads a pious life, and tries to be just to his fellow-man." "Compare this man with a lukewarm Unitarian who is intellectually undeniably his superior, who has had every advantage of culture, who has heard all his life the noblest appeals to lofty idealism, who knows his duty and realizes his responsibility, and yet is indifferent or unfaithful. He is respectable, discouragingly respect- able, but he is selfish and utterly lacking in enthusiasm. 26 THE MAIN POINTS. He is devoted to no cause. He makes no sacrifices. He takes a pew in his church if he happens to like the min- ister, perhaps giving it up for six months when he goes to the country. He is quite satisfied with himself, and for the rest of the world he seems not to care. He sneers at such fanatics as Salvationists, heing more impressed with their bad taste than their unselfish efforts to raise the fallen. If you question him, you will find that he holds very enlightened views. He is up to date in the apprehension of Truth, but he has absolutely no con- ception of religion. It is no part of his life. It fur- nishes no motive power." But what is the real reason for this self-confessed impotence of Unitarian belief as compared with vital evangelical faith? Why does this man's "up to date apprehension of truth" seem to "furnish no motive power"? Why does "the world forsake their altars"? Why does "the devotion of the world go the way of the orthodox"? There must be some fundamental rea- son for all this. The verdict of history and the wide consensus of Christian men are facts of great significance for, as Abraham Lincoln used to say, "You can fool a part of the people all the time, and you can fool all the people part of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time." These sects that deny the divinity of Christ have been in the world since the second century, and this verdict of history, substan- tially one throughout, means much. Men of the Uni- tarian Church see in Christ a matchless teacher of morals and religion, an example of the highest moral beauty, but they do not find in Him the Life-Giver. They do not come to Him as one able to cleanse the THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 27 heart and renew the total life. The form, the theory and the pattern of godliness are not the sorest need of our modern world; most. men know what is right and good; it is "the power of godliness," that the human heart craves. It is that divine something which renews the springs of feeling and action; that invigorates the enfeebled will and makes it strong to do the will of God that is most in demand. Napoleon Bonaparte was not celebrated as a theo- logian, but his wide experience made him a judge of men, and he could estimate forces that would work lasting results. Near the close of his life at St. Helena he was reviewing the events of his own career and commenting upon the great men of history. "Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?" he said one day. No answer was given and he continued: "Well, then, I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I myself have founded great empires, but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded his empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for him. I think I understand some- thing of human nature, and I tell you that all these were men and I am a man; none else is like Him; Jesus Christ is more than man. I have inspired multi- tudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they would have died for me, but to do this it was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, of my words, of my voice. Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man toward the Unseen that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space. This it is that proves to me convincingly the divinity of Jesus Christ." __ 28 THE MAIN POINTS. To hold that this one personal life could be both human and divine raises speculative difficulties. But the world is full of mysteries, moral and otherwise. The doctrine of the Trinity opens up questions for which I have searched the books in vain to find a satisfactory answer. All the little easy cut and dried efforts at com- plete explanation fail, as they must, from the nature of the case. Our minds are not built on a scale to thor- oughly grasp the "Great mystery of godliness," when "God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." The mode of God's unmanifested existence even is too high for us; we cannot attain unto it in our thought. But we are already bearing the burden of many unexplained mys- teries. How states of mind register themselves on the body in health or in disease; how thought transference at long distances takes place beyond the possibility of denial; how the phenomena of hypnotism, suggestion and all the strange facts recorded by Societies for Psy- chical Eesearch are produced we can give no adequate account. Therefore inasmuch as the moral character of Christ seems to be involved in the acceptance or rejec- tion of his divinity, "it is easier," as Liddon says, "fr a good man to believe that in a world where we are encom- passed by mysteries, where man's own being itself is a consummate mystery, the Moral Author of the wonders around him should for great moral purposes have taken to Himself a created form, than that the one human life which realizes the idea of humanity, the one Man who is at once perfect strength and perfect tenderness, the one Pattern of our race in whom its virtues are com- THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 29 bined and its vices eliminated, should have been guilty when speaking of Himself of an arrogance, of a self- seeking, and of an insincerity, which if admitted must justly degrade him far below the moral level of millions among his unhonored worshipers." But I desire to ask in speaking of these doctrines, what bearing does all this have on the needs of common life? All beliefs are as means to an end and the end is right conduct. "The natural terminus of all experiences, bodily and mental, is action." Your time and mine would be in large measure wasted did we come here for ten Sunday evenings, study great questions, decide that our positions were sound and right, that it gives us great satisfaction to be orthodox while others are not, and then go away without any additional help for nobler living. Professor James' contention that there is no difference which does not make a difference is valid. "There can be no difference in abstract truth which does not express itself in a difference of concrete fact and of conduct consequent upon the fact." Unless the claim that Jesus is divine makes some difference upon conduct, it is purely a speculative claim and it is scarcely worth our while to make it. For me the practical helpfulness of this truth of Christ's divinity lies just here. The central fact in the Christian religion is Christ. To be a Christian is to wear His name, to trust absolutely in Him, to follow Him, to do the will of God as He reveals it and by the aid He lends. In dealing with Him then as the heart and center of our religion, are we dealing with one on our own level, purer, wiser, finer, but a fellow mortal, or are we coming into personal relations with the total 30 THE MAIN POINTS. helpfulness of the Omnipotent God, to which Jesus re- ferred when He said, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth/' "To deny divinity to Christ is to relegate all divinity whatsoever to the far-off, shad- owy realm of metaphysical inquiry." On the other hand, to recognize in Jesus of Nazareth, whom we know so well through authentic history, the Son of God, the Savior of Mankind, is to receive a pledge of the absolute and unutterable help of God in bearing all burdens, in meeting all temptations, in solving all human problems. To "know Christ" is to come into living relations with that Inexhaustible Help. He mediates to us nothing less than "the power of God unto salvation/' And the moral vigor, the confident assurance, the unquenchable hope begotten of this firm faith is well voiced in those words of the Apostle, "He that spared not His own Son but freely delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things/' II. THE ATONEMENT. The President of an American University once gave an account of a certain Bible Class which was com- posed of a large number of intelligent, serious and culti- vated people. They studied passage after passage in the Scriptures until they came to the one where these words stand, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all ac- ceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." It seemed such a fundamental statement that earnest discussion arose. How did He do it? What was Has method in saving them? In order to give the careful consideration which such a vital theme de- manded, four persons were appointed from the class to present papers on four successive Sundays, interpreting that verse. The four appointed comprised a Judge of the Supreme Court, an ex-Governor of the Common- wealth, a Professor of Ethics from the University, and an unusually gifted woman. The paper presented by the Judge was to this effect: The law of God reads, "The wages of sin is death." Men have broken the law and consequently stand condemned to eternal death without remedy. The justice of G-od is such that it can suffer no violation of the law without meting out the appropriate penalty. The enormity of sin is such that God would require an infinite satisfac- (31) 32 THE MAIN POINTS. tion before He could release the sinner. But before sentence is actually executed, Christ the Son of God comes in and as a substitute voluntarily endures upon the cross the penalty due to men for their sins and thus purchases their pardon. Therefore, when guilty men accept this arrangement and take advantage of what He has done for them, they are forgiven. This interpre- tation proceeds upon the analogies of the civil law and you recognize it as the satisfaction theory of the atone- ment. The ex-Governor began by a criticism upon the pre- ceding paper. Under such a scheme, God's forgive- ness would not be extended to men as an act of grace, but purely as an act of justice. The Scriptures no- where teach that salvation is purchased or in any way obtained from God by Christ, but that it is given in and with Christ, by God himself. It comes to us by the grace of God and not as a result of purchase. And fur- thermore, good men would not desire to take advantage of such an irregular proceeding, nor would there come to them moral edification from standing as consenting witnesses to such a commercial arrangement. He of- fered instead the following interpretation: God is ever as ready to forgive sinners as Christ was to die for them. There is no more mercy in Christ than in God and no stricter justice in the Father than in the Son. But if God were to freely forgive men simply upon condition of their penitence, without their suffering penalty or any one suffering it for them, the majesty of God's government would be weakened. His administration would be despised and its restraining, moral force destroyed. The demand for an atonement THE ATONEMENT. 33 lies not in the strict justice of God, but in the exigencies of His moral government. Therefore, not as the pay- ment of a price or a penalty as an equivalent to purchase man's release, but to show how God hates sin, to up- hold the majesty of God's government for administrative ends, and to make forgiveness consistent with the main- tenance of a righteous order, Christ suffered the penalty of our wrongdoing on the cross. This explanation, cast in the forms of criminal law, is the governmental theory of the atonement. The Professor urged that both the above views were wrong. There could be no transfer of guilt or of merit from one to another, he maintained; to make such claim is to pass over into the realm of Eomanist belief, where the merits of saints are imputed to sinful souls making their tardy way through purgatory. Guilt is personal and merit is personal; to talk of imputing either is eth- ical shuffling. Moreover, the same sin cannot be both punished and forgiven. If Christ suffered the penalty due to our transgressions, then the possibility of forgive- ness is excluded we are free as a matter of justice. And the claim that Christ suffered to show the majesty of God's government fared no better. Does it reveal majesty in a government, he asked, to punish the inno- cent instead of the guilty, even though the innocent should consent? Would it impress horse thieves, for our State to catch an innocent man now and then and im- pute to him the guilt of horse stealing and then hang him to show the offenders how the State hates their crime and how its majestic justice must be satisfied by some victim, innocent or guilty? Even though some in- nocent man with a mistaken sense of what would be for The Main Points. 3 34 THE MAIN POINTS. the good of the State should consent to be hung, such a spectacle would tend to bring a blot upon the State in the. eyes of both the evil and. the good. The Professor therefore claimed that Christ simply came into the world to teach, to live, to heal and to bless. He came knowing that He would be put to death in the midst of His holy, beneficent work. He died to show us that the divine love stops at nothing. Calvary is a revela- tion in time, of the length and breadth and height and depth of that love of God which passeth knowledge. If anything will melt the hearts of guilty men, surely the sight of Christ, dying upon the cross for them as the climax and crown of His saving life, must melt them. This naturally is the moral influence theory of the atonement. These first three theories cover the ground of a cer- tain section of traditional theology. You have heard them all and pondered them, but somehow you were not quite convinced. The satisfaction idea, dollar for dol- lar, so much suffering endured by Christ to purchase so much forgiveness and mercy for us, does not seem quite like the atmosphere of the New Testament. The mani- fest injustice of it did not commend to you such ethical bargaining: you shrank from pressing forward to avail yourself of such a scheme. If Christ the Son, whose sense of justice equals that of the Father, could love us while we were yet sinners enough to die for us, surely God the Father, who is one with the Son in character, loves us enough to forgive us without any suffering of penalty by an innocent victim. And the second the- ory seems to represent God as bound hand and foot by the needs of His own government. He desires to forgive THE ATONEMENT. 35 sinful men when they turn to Him in penitence, but fears for the majesty of His administration. But does the makeshift named tend to save that majesty? Does it not load it with a further burden grievous to be borne? Moreover, the sufferings of Christ are nowhere referred to in the Scriptures as having been in any sense a "punishment." And the moral influence theory does not meet and explain the many texts of Scripture that instantly occur to you. The authors of the New Testa- ment certainly saw in the death of Christ something more than the sufferings of a martyr or the exhibition of God's pleading mercy. All the views advanced some- how seem unsatisfactory. We may be sure that in Christ's work of reconcilia- tion there were "no fictions or unrealities, no transac- tions that were not expressive of eternal verity. Christ was not regarded by God as anything that He was not nor are men in the relation to Christ viewed as anything but what they are. There is no unreal changing of places or imputation to any one of character that does not belong to him." 1 On the one hand these tradi- tional interpretations ignore certain moral realities and on the other they fail to explain certain passages of Scripture. The doctrine of atonement must be stated so that both conscience and reason will respond; men will not accept something because they are told it is the "plan of salvation" if it is irrational or absurd; if it ignores moral facts, or brings an apparent disagree- ment between the character of the Father and that of the Son; nor will they rest in any view of sheer rational- ism that fails to interpret the body of Scripture bearing upon this fundamental question. i Clark, "Outline of Christian Theology," p. 333. 36 THE MAIN POINTS. In discussing the atonement, it is always well to dis- tinguish between the fact and the human theories about the fact. However we may try to explain it, "the atone- ment is the work of God's love in its bearing upon man's sin." The great fact is that God so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son, and the Son so loved us as to die for us. There is no dispute about that. But when we come to theorize upon what effect His death had as between Him and the Father or as be- tween Him and the moral laws of the universe, we land ourselves, in difficulty. A man could live a worthy Christian life, however, on the great fact that God so loved the world as to give His Son, even though he had no theological theory at all regarding the atone- ment. "Life eludes definition and analysis, and grows according to its own laws. While scholars were beating out the articles of the Creed of Chalcedon, all through the world in serene unconsciousness humble spirits were following Jesus in the realization of fatherhood and brotherhood. While the reformed divines by every de- vice known to logic were packing words with sover- eignty, reprobation and expiation, millions who never heard of a logical process were yielding to the mastery of Jesus and learning at first hand that He is the Way and the Truth and the Life." 1 We must bear in mind too that the Scriptures uni- formly represent Christ not as reconciling an angry God to us, but as reconciling us to God. The Scriptures show "God willing and men unwilling. Eeconciliation is pro- posed between two parties, of whom one has a heart for it and the other has little or none. Hence, just as we should expect if one party was willing and the other l Amory H. Bradford, "The Growing Revelation," p. 234. THE ATONEMENT. 37 was not, we find the willing taking the initiative. God Himself has given Christ to be a propitiation and a God who will Himself provide a propitiation has no need of one in the sense which the word has ordinarily borne." 1 The Scriptures bear uniform testimony to this view of the matter. "God was in Christ recon- ciling the world unto Himself." "If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by His life." "If any man be in Christ he is a new crea- ture; old things are passed away; behold all things are become new, and all things are of God who hath recon- ciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ." "We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the atonement." This atonement, accord- ing to the Century Dictionary the "at-one-ment," is that which makes us at-one with God. The word atone- ment is only used once in the New Testament, and the Greek word there translated atonement is elsewhere translated "reconciliation." In the three passages quoted above, the word for "reconcile" or "reconcilia- tion" is the same word which for some reason is trans- lated atonement in this single passage. If we were to make the translation uniform throughout, we should find that God "hath given to us the ministry of atone- ment." We should find Paul urging a certain Corin- thian woman to be "'atoned to her husband" that is, restored to loyalty and affection toward him. This throws light upon what Paul had in mind when he spoke of "atonement" or "reconciliation." It was the restoration of a personal relation and fellowship which had been interrupted by wrongdoing. 1 Clark, "Christian Theology," pp. 324-335. 38 TEE MAIN POINTS. Independent of any theory, the Scriptures certainly teach that whatever barriers there were between a holy God and sinful men, they are all cleared away when we turn from our sins and become personal believers in Jesus Christ. But if there were barriers on God's part which demanded the death of an innocent victim before forgiveness could be extended to the penitent, Jesus does not seem to know about them. Men were invited by Him to come directly to the Father in penitent faith, and ask for forgiveness; and according to His common speech they were forgiven, not because some penalty had been paid or satisfaction made, to which their at- tention was directed as the ground on which to hope for pardon they were forgiven because they came in peni- tence and faith. The publican went up to the temple and prayed, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Peni- tence, confession, faith that God would forgive and he went down to his house "justified," according to the account of Christ, without any reference to a present or prospective ground of forgiveness, to be purchased only by the blood of the innocent. It was a fatal omis- sion in the parable unless penitent and believing men are always forgiven, simply because their Father desires to forgive them. The woman who was a sinner was forgiven, and the ground is stated by our Lord "be- cause she loved much" loved Him enough to fall down, before Him in penitent confession and faith. He taught us to pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we for- give them that trespass against us"; "For," He said, "if ye forgive men their trespasses your heavenly Father will also forgive you your trespasses." The genuine- ness of our penitence and the new attitude of faith THE ATONEMENT. 39 toward God would be indicated by our forgiving spirit toward others; and this penitence and faith were made the sole conditions of forgiveness. The thief on the cross prayed, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." He had already said, "We are suf- fering justly for our deeds, but he has done nothing amiss." Eepentance, confession, faith again and Je- sus forgave him, assuring him an entrance into the king- dom. It was a singular omission that He made no ref- erence to the connection of His sufferings there with the possibilities of forgiveness, if those sufferings con- stituted in His mind the sole ground of forgiveness. In a word, Jesus taught that the method of divine forgiveness found its prototype in the method of human forgiveness. "Forgive as we forgive," was His direc- tion as to the confidence in which we should pray. "If ye then being evil know how to forgive men their tres 1 - passes when they turn to you in open acknowledgment of fault, in penitence, and with confidence in you, how much more will your Heavenly Father forgive you when you turn to Him in the same way." This was the uniform teaching of Jesus and His unfailing habit with burdened penitent souls. Did He omit the very corner stone of the Gospel in teaching that the willing mercy of God is the sole and sufficient ground for human for- giveness? He had not died, it is true, but He knew that He was to die; He had spoken repeatedly of the de- cease He was to accomplish at Jerusalem. It would be impossible to suppose that His confident offers of mercy were upon a ground that in a few months would be rendered a false and unsafe one by His death upon the Cross. 40 THE MAIN POINTS. After wandering through elaborate theories and in- tricate reasonings about commercial exchanges and ju- dicial experiments, about imputation of guilt and of merit where they do not rightly belong, we find it refreshing to turn to the four Gospels and to the origi- nal Christianity of Jesus Christ. We cannot help say- ing, how little He seemed to know of all these elabora- tions and how far from their intricacy were His plain statements about forgiveness and mercy. If any man should come back from the far country of wrongdoing and stand before the Father, saying, "I have sinned against heaven and before Thee/' he was forgiven on the spot without reference to his knowledge of or con- fidence in a vague something lying back that made it possible for a Father to forgive His penitent child. The very words "reconciliation," atonement/' "pro- pitiation," "justification," never occur in the four Gos- pels at all. The great Teacher who spake as never man spake, lived His whole life, delivered His entire mes- sage, and finished the work which the Father had given Him to do, without ever finding it necessary or appro- priate to use one of them. It cannot be that the theo- ries with which these terms are bound up are such mat- ters of life and death, if He never emploved the terms at all. The great forgiving love of God, unpurchased by any- body, unhindered by any governmental embarrassments, leaping the barriers that human sin interposes, has been ever seeking the lost that it might bring them sal- vation. We have obscured it by our clever theories. We have dimmed its light by an unwarranted use of cer- tain expressions in the Epistles. These expressions THE ATONEMENT. 41 were natural to Jewish men, trained in an ecclesiastical system where the offering of bloody sacrifices bore a prominent part. Jesus, however, transcended the na- tional traits of His people and the special cult and habit of mind prevailing in the Jewish Church. There- fore, when we turn to His utterances we find no words that would interpose objections to the free, unpurchased forgiving mercy of God, or furnish support for theories of substitution and governmental expediency. The claim has been urged that all the references to the blood of bulls and of goats in the Old Testament are to be carried forward and made applicable to the death of Christ. But the choicest spirits of the Old Testa- ment knew the mind of God sufficiently to see that God forgave men then, not on account o