of Christ. There is good reason to believe that none of the twelve
apostles held, during the life of our Lord, opinions which would be
regarded as orthodox concerning his person. They believed that he was a
great Prophet, a revealer of God; nay, they believed that he was the
Messiah, the long promised King, who was to set up his kingdom in this
world. Of this they had no doubt. This was the belief that Jesus himself
sought to fasten in their minds; and when he had drawn from Simon Peter
a confession of this faith he cried out, "Blessed art thou, Simon son of
John; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father
which is in heaven." It was this faith in him as Lord and Ruler of men,
as the Founder in this world of a kingdom of righteousness and peace, on
which, as he declared, his church should be builded. Such faith as this
these twelve men had. They would have found it difficult, probably, to
assent to the Nicene Creed or the Athanasian Creed; but they believed in
Jesus as Lord and King, and they believed every word of his Magna Charta
found in the Sermon on the Mount; and they were ready to do what they
could to establish that kingdom in this world. It is just here that the
faith of the church is lacking. It believes the Nicene Creed, but it
does not believe the Sermon on the Mount. It believes what men have said
about Christ; it does not believe what Christ himself said. It does not
accept the practical rule of life which he has laid down. It does not
believe that the Golden Rule is workable in modern life. It does not
believe that it is feasible to love our neighbors as ourselves. It does
not believe in the kingdom of heaven as a present possibility. It
expects that Christ will come, by and by, in person, with miraculous
power, to revolutionize society, and that after that it will be
practicable to follow the law of love, in all our human relations; but,
for the present, we must let the law of competition control all our
practical affairs.
Of course it is not often that the teachings of Christ are directly
controverted; they are generally ignored, or passed by, as "counsels of
perfection" which we are to admire rather than obey. But we sometimes
find arguments in which disbelief in the teachings of Jesus is
distinctly justified. In a late volume, one of the great leaders of the
German church elaborately contends that we cannot follow Jesus in his
social teachings. "Our attitude toward the world," says Herrmann,
"cannot be that of Jesus; even the purpose to will that it should be so
is stifled in the air that we breathe to-day. The state of affairs is
very clearly described by Naumann, who says with truth: 'Therefore we do
not seek Jesus' advice on points connected with the management of the
state and political economy.' But when he goes on to say: 'I give my
vote and I canvass for the fleet, not because I am a Christian, but
because I am a citizen, and because I have learned to renounce all hope
of finding fundamental questions of state determined in the Sermon on
the Mount,' we can detect a fallacy. He regards as painful renunciation
what ought, on the part of the Christian, to be a free, decisive, and
voluntary act."[19]
Naumann repudiates, rather regretfully, the counsels of Jesus about
economic and civil affairs, but Herrmann says that he does it
light-heartedly, because he has found out that these counsels are not
applicable to existing conditions.
It is evident that these counsels must be rationally applied,--the
spirit and not the letter of them is the essential thing; but what these
teachers mean is more than this. How far they have departed from the
spirit of the Sermon on the Mount is indicated by the words already
quoted. The reason why Naumann does not seek the advice of Jesus in
questions of public concern is that he is determined to give his vote
and influence for the German fleet; and Herrmann is following the same
impulse when he characterizes the call for the disarmament of the
nations as a "noble folly." It is evident that the reason why these
teachers feel that the way of Jesus is impracticable is that they are
fully committed to the ideas of German imperialism. To conceive that
nations could dispense with war is a "noble folly." And, for the same
reason, they conceive that any attempt to substitute coöperation for
competition in the industrial world would be disastrous to modern
society. The morality of strife outranks, in their judgment, the
morality of service and sacrifice. The law of Jesus may be permitted to
hold some subordinate place; it will be found useful in mitigating the
savagery of strife; but as the regulative principle of the industrial
order it is not to be considered.
The attempt of these German theologians to frame a philosophical
refutation of the Sermon on the Mount gives us something of a shock;
but, practically, this has been the attitude of the church in all the
generations. The hopeful sign is that it does now give us a shock to
have the doctrine badly stated.
Through a large part of the Christian era the teaching of Jesus with
respect to strife has been flouted by the church. The bitterest and most
wasteful wars have been religious wars. The disciples of the Prince of
Peace saw no incongruity in the settlement by the sword of such
questions as whether Jesus Christ was of the same substance as the
Father or of a similar substance; and whether the cup should be
administered to the laity in the Eucharist or only the bread. The Thirty
Years' war in Europe was a religious war. Roman Catholic theories still
maintain the right of the church to enforce its teachings by the sword.
All these facts show how far, through all its history, the church has
departed from the teaching of Jesus. When our German theologians set
themselves to prove that the Sermon on the Mount is no sufficient guide
for public affairs, they have the whole history of the church behind
them.
Nevertheless they might have noted that the drift, for the last few
centuries, has been in the direction of the teaching of Jesus. It is
hardly conceivable that Christian nations should go to war to-day for
the settlement of points of doctrine. Three hundred years ago the whole
church thought that necessary; to-day a very large part of the church
would think it horrible and monstrous. It is not very long ago that the
church believed in the settlement by force of disputes between
individuals. The wager of battle was supposed to be a proper and
Christian way of determining the guilt or innocence of an accused
person. To most of the great Christians of the fifteenth century the
proposition to dispense with that would have seemed a "noble folly,"
just as the proposition of general disarmament now seems to some
twentieth century Christians. But the church has learned that there are
better ways of settling personal quarrels than the wager of battle; and
it is likely to learn, after a while, that there are better ways of
settling international and industrial difficulties than the way of war.
The church is beginning to see that the way of Jesus is not, after all,
so impracticable as it has always been supposed to be; it is beginning
to discern the truth that the law of service is a stronger law than the
law of strife. One of these days we shall find the church of Jesus
taking its stand on the Golden Rule as the practical rule of everyday
life, and insisting upon the organization of the industrial and the
political order on the basis of good-will. When that day comes we shall
have a right to say that the church believes in Jesus Christ. When that
day comes it will be evident to all that the main cause of the church's
enfeeblement through all these centuries has been her unbelief. And we
shall marvel that it took her so long to find out what might there is in
meekness and what force in gentleness; and that it was so hard for her
to understand that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the
weakness of God stronger than men.
2. The second of the church's chronic infirmities has been orthodoxism.
Perhaps it was the recoil of her unbelief in Christ that sent her over
into the intellectual prostration of orthodoxism.
Orthodoxy is defined as correct belief. But when we ask what is correct
belief, orthodoxy answers: "That which is generally believed to be
correct." Its demand is, therefore, conformity to current opinion. It
assumes that essential truth has been sought out, registered and
certified once for all and finally: this you must believe, and you must
believe nothing other or more than this. Of course, then, belief must
be stereotyped and stationary. There can be no growth of doctrine; no
new light can break forth from God's holy word.
"Orthodoxy begins," says Phillips Brooks, "by setting a false standard
of life. It makes men aspire after soundness in the faith rather than
after richness in the truth.... It makes possible an easy transmission
of truth, but only by the deadening of truth, as a butcher freezes meat
in order to carry it across the sea. Orthodoxy discredits and
discourages inquiry, and has made the name of free thinker, which ought
to be a crown and glory, a stigma of disgrace. It puts men in the base
and demoralizing position in which they apologize for seeking new truth.
It is responsible for a large part of the defiant liberalism which not
merely disbelieves the orthodox dogma, but disbelieves it with a sense
of attempted wrong and of triumphant escape. It is orthodoxy and not
truth which has done the persecuting. The inquisitions and dungeons and
social ostracisms for opinion's sake belong to it."[20]
It is evident that when for loyalty to the truth is substituted loyalty
to a prescribed statement of truth, the entire moral order is
subverted. Truth for me is what justifies itself to my reason and
insight; to that my choices must conform; by that my conduct must be
guided. To accept statements to which my judgment does not assent, which
are repugnant to my reason, because others seek to impose them upon me,
is in the highest degree immoral. "Let every man be fully persuaded in
his own mind," is the apostolic maxim.
Every honest man wants to know what is true, and seeks to have his
character and his conduct conform to the truth. But orthodoxy insists
that he shall limit his acceptance to fixed and definite statements
prepared for him by others. Freedom of investigation is denied him. The
limits are set, beyond which his thought must not range. If there is
truth outside of the boundaries of orthodoxy, he must not reach out
after it; if he does, he shall suffer the consequences.
For there always is a penalty for heresy. Those who diverge from the
orthodox standards are always exposed to some measure of censure or
discredit. In former days the stake or the gallows was the penalty. John
Huss and Michael Servetus, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were put to
death on the demand of orthodoxy. It was not because they were not
lovers and seekers of truth; it was because they declined to assent to
the statements which authority sought to impose on them. Orthodoxy has
found a great variety of methods of enforcing its demand; in recent
times it does not often resort to physical coercion, but it never fails
to use some kind of pressure. Those to whom orthodoxy is dearer than
truth have ways of their own, even now, of making uncomfortable those to
whom truth is dearer than orthodoxy. Thus it is that the progress of
truth has been greatly impeded. "Ye shall know the truth," said Jesus,
"and the truth shall make you free." "Ye shall know," says orthodoxism,
"only the truth that has been prescribed and ticketed by authority; ye
shall be taught what is orthodox, and orthodoxy shall keep you safe and
sound." The entire attitude of the mind is changed, under this demand.
It is no longer that of free inquiry, of open-minded search for truth;
it is that of passive assent, of unreasoned submission to authority.
Just to the extent to which orthodoxism succeeds in forcing its demand
is progress rendered impossible. There have always been brave men to
whom truth was dearer than orthodoxy, and to them we owe all the gains
the church has made. "The lower orders of the church's workers, the mere
runners of her machinery," says Bishop Brooks, "have always been strictly
and scrupulously orthodox; while all the church's noblest servants, they
who have opened to her new heavens of vision and new domains of
work,--Paul, Origen, Tertullian, Dante, Abélard, Luther, Milton,
Coleridge, Maurice, Swedenborg, Martineau,--have again and again been
persecuted for being what they truly were--unorthodox."[21]
The temper of coercion, physical or moral, which is an essential element
in orthodoxism, always produces, in those who do not submit to it, the
temper of resentment and rebellion, which largely characterizes what is
known as liberalism. Those who are thus flung off into opposition are in
no mood to examine fairly the truth that there is in orthodoxy. Their
mental attitude is apt to be quite as unfavorable to the discovery of
the truth as that of the other party. Between those who affirm, with
the threat of the withdrawal of fellowship, and those who deny, with the
sense of injury and oppression, the truth has a poor chance for itself
in this world. The enfeeblement of the church, in all the generations,
has been largely due to this cause.
What orthodoxism produces when it has free course and is glorified, may
be seen in the Greek church. More than any other branch of the Christian
church the Greek church has put the emphasis upon orthodoxy. The natural
and inevitable result has been that that church has destroyed itself and
the nation whose life it has dominated and blighted. It is the Greek
church that has led Russia to its doom. And it is orthodoxism that has
made the Greek church a blind leader of the blind, and has plunged
nation and church into the ditch together.
Truth, not orthodoxy, is the sovereign mistress of the human intellect.
What I must know, for my salvation, is not what everybody says, but what
is true. There is old truth--truth that has nourished the lives of men
in many generations; let me cling to that and feed my soul upon it.
There is new truth--some fuller outshining of the great revelation of
God, in nature or in human nature; let me hail that light and walk in
it.
It is often useful for me to know what others have believed and now
believe. Not to be influenced by the consenting voices of the great and
good of the past would be childish egotism. But it is always needful
that my mind should be open to new truth and that I should be free to
seek it. Orthodoxism restricts this right and disparages this privilege,
and in doing this it has greatly weakened the Christian church.
Several other sources of weakness must be treated much more briefly.
3. Sectarianism is not the least among them. To a large degree it is the
product of orthodoxism. Men who venture to think for themselves are
driven forth from the fold of the faithful and compelled to organize in
separate groups. Sometimes they are not driven out, they go out and slam
the doors behind them. The seceders often claim a superior orthodoxy;
their separation from the fold is an act of judgment on those they leave
behind. The responsibility for these divisions sometimes rests more
heavily on those who go out, and sometimes on those who stay in. On the
one side or the other, often on both sides, pride of opinion is a main
procuring cause. Sometimes men go out because they desire to hold fast
in peace the truth which they have found, and sometimes they are thrust
out because they will not permit those who are within to hold fast in
peace the truth which is their inheritance.
The ambition of leadership also figures largely. Men who are not able to
control the church to which they belong are often tempted to lead away a
faction in which they may be more conspicuous. Satan, according to the
Miltonic mythology, was the founder of the first sect; and his
philosophy was that it was better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
The leaders of many of the sects have had a similar inspiration.
It would not be true to say that all schisms have sprung from
selfishness: they have often originated in a larger vision of the truth,
and their testimony, which has cost them many sacrifices, has enlarged
the thought and enriched the life of the whole church.
It must, however, be admitted that selfishness, in the forms of ambition
and pride of opinion, has had more to do with the multiplication of
sects than love of the truth or loyalty to the Master. The existence of
such numbers of organizations, differing from one another only in the
most trivial particulars, cannot be reconciled with the plain principles
of Christian morality. There is no justification, in reason or
conscience, for the existence of so many sorts and kinds and classes of
Christian disciples. Even if we could admit the wisdom of the larger
divisions, what excuse can be offered for the endless subdivisions? What
possible need can there be for thirteen different kinds of Baptists, and
twelve kinds of Mennonites, and eleven kinds of Presbyterians, and
seventeen kinds of Methodists, and twenty-three kinds of Lutherans?
Could any rational man maintain that these multitudinous variations on a
single string represent distinctions that are useful?
The rivalries and competitions which these sectarian divisions promote
are the scandal and the curse of Christendom. The sectarian procedure
habitually and brazenly sets aside the Golden Rule and pushes partisan
interest, with very slight regard for fairness or equity. Churches are
all the while doing to other churches what they would not like to have
other churches do to them. "Every church for itself, and the angels
take the hindmost," is the sectarian motto. The competition which exists
in the ecclesiastical realm is almost always cutthroat competition; it
destroys property and crowds out rivals with merciless purpose.
No argument should he needed to show that the existence of such a spirit
and tendency in the church must cripple its power and impede its growth.
The sect spirit is the antithesis of the Christian spirit; the sectarian
propaganda is an attack upon the fundamental principle of Christianity,
which is unity through love. The superior loyalty of every true
Christian is due to the kingdom of God. "Seek first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness!" What makes a man a sectarian is the fact that he
loves his sect more than the kingdom of God, and is willing that the
kingdom of God should suffer loss in order that his sect may make a
gain. Sectarians are doing this very thing, all over the land, every
day.
How great have been the injuries suffered by the Christian church
through the existence of this antichristian spirit of sect it would be
difficult to estimate. How alien it is to the spirit of Jesus Christ
one does not need to point out. It is simply amazing that the followers
of him who prayed, in his last prayer, that his disciples might all be
one, in order that the world might believe in his divine commission,
should imagine that they can be pleasing Christ while they persist in
these childish divisions.
Some sense of the shame and sin of sectarianism has, of late years, been
getting possession of the mind of the church, and the tendencies toward
unity are stronger now than the tendencies toward division. Splits and
secessions are rare in these times; movements toward unity are
multiplying. All this is hopeful, but many generations of toil and
sacrifice will be required to recover for the church the ground she has
lost by the ravages of sectarianism.
4. Only one more cause of the enfeeblement of the church can be
mentioned here; that is her too close reliance upon the principles and
forces of the material realm. She too often forgets whence her help must
come; she is too willing to go down to Egypt for her allies instead of
trusting in the Lord of Hosts. She cannot always understand that she is
safer and stronger when she puts her entire reliance on moral and
spiritual forces; when she refuses to sacrifice truth for the revenues
of the rich or the friendship of the strong.
The church is probably suffering more from this cause at this day than
she has ever suffered in any former period. She lives in the midst of
the abounding marvels of the materialistic civilization; she sees how
much is accomplished through the use of material forces; and the spirit
of the time gets into her brain and blood, and she begins to think that
money and the things that money can buy are the most essential
conditions of her growth and usefulness. Therefore she makes such
friendships and adopts such policies as will bring to her the revenues
she thinks she must have for the prosecution of her work. And thus her
vision is dimmed for the truth she needs to see, and her arm is weakened
for the work she has to do.
No influence so insidious as this, and none so fatal, has ever assailed
the Christian church. She is passing through her greatest temptation. It
is Mammon who has taken her up into an exceeding high mountain and
shown her the kingdoms she wants to conquer and the glory she hopes to
win, and is saying to her: "All these things will I give thee, if thou
wilt fall down and worship me!" May God grant her the grace to answer
"Get thee behind me, Satan; I hear the voice of one who said: Thou shall
worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."
That the church has suffered serious injury and enfeeblement from the
causes we have considered,--from her lack of faith, from her subjection
to orthodoxism, from the ravages of sectarianism, from her entanglements
with Mammon, no one can deny. But that these evils are tending to
increase is not evident. There is reason rather to hope that they are
all on the wane, unless it be the last.
That the church is far from being in perfect spiritual condition we will
all admit. But that she is growing worse rather than better we need not
believe. Most of these maladies are of long standing, but they are less
acute now than once they were, and there is better hope of recovery.
Above all, we may say that the church knows to-day what ails her better
than she ever knew before, and that she may therefore more
intelligently proceed to apply the needful remedies.
What kind of treatment is called for will be the subject of the next
discussion.
VI
The Coming Reformation
It would be instructive to study the attempts which the church has made,
in past generations, to escape from the evil conditions into which she
has fallen. For she has been convicted more than once of her sins of
omission, of the perversion of her powers, and the misuse of her
opportunities, and has bestirred herself to cast off the yokes that were
oppressing her, and the bands that were impeding her progress. It cannot
be said that she has ever yet become fully conscious of her radical
defect. She has never quite clearly discovered that her enfeeblement and
failure are primarily due to the fact that she has been neglecting her
real business in the world, or making it a secondary concern. When she
gets that truth fully before her mind, and that conviction upon her
conscience, we may hope for better things.
There was, however, one epoch in her history when she came very near
making this discovery. That was the period of the Reformation in the
sixteenth century. What happened then is full of interest for us in
these days; it throws a flood of light on the problems with which we are
dealing.
We have been taught by the historians of the Reformation to think of
that event as mainly a theological crisis, as an intellectual revolt
against certain doctrines imposed by the church upon the faithful, or a
rebellion against the stringency of ecclesiastical discipline. That
issues of this nature were deeply involved in it is true; but these were
by no means the only causes of that uprising. It was largely a social
and economic movement. It was, in its inception, less a reaction against
bad theology than a revolt against unchristian social conditions. What
weighed most heavily on the people who started the uprising that we call
the Reformation was not theological error and confusion, it was their
poverty, their servitude, the miseries and wrongs of their daily life.
They knew something of the Christ of Nazareth, and they could not
believe that he meant to leave them in that condition, and therefore
they began to have a dim sense of the truth that the church which bore
his name was misrepresenting him, and needed to be reformed. This was
the source of the movement known as the Reformation. It was, therefore,
a sharp reminder to the church that she had wholly forgotten her main
business in the world.
One of the latest of the histories of the Reformation, that of Dr.
Thomas M. Lindsay, brings this truth into clear light. His chapter on
"Social Conditions" gives us a vivid sketch of the economic and social
forces which were operating at the end of the fifteenth and the
beginning of the sixteenth century.
It was the time of transition from the old system of home production and
home markets to the era of world-wide commerce. Under the old system,
industry had been largely regulated by guilds, and there was a fair
measure of equality; while trade, though not extensive, was regulated by
civic leagues.