not conclude that it is our duty to treat with good will and loving
kindness authors who, not being supernaturally assisted, employ
the talents which God has given them, and which their own tireless
industry has cultivated to the highest point, to clothe the old
truths with the light of the wider and more real knowledge of the
universe and of human history, which the modern mind possesses? The
new times demand new men; the ancient faith, if it is to be held
vitally, must be commended with fresh vigor and defended with all
the arguments which the best philosophy, science, and literature
may suggest. Christ came to cast fire on earth, and what does He
desire but that it be kindled? _Currit verbum Dei_, says St. Paul;
and again: "Wo is me if I do not preach." He is debtor to all men.
On Mars Hill he speaks to the most enlightened minds of his day. He
is a reasoner as well as a preacher. He places the lines of a Greek
poet among his own inspired words. To this intellectual, moral,
and religious activity, heightened and intensified by supernatural
faith, we owe the spread of Christianity throughout the Gentile
world, more than to the zeal and labors of all the apostles. Is
it credible that if St. Thomas of Aquino were now alive he would
content himself with the philosophy and science of Aristotle,
who knows nothing either of creation or of providence, and whose
knowledge of nature, compared with our own, is as that of a child?
St. Ignatius of Loyola says that to occupy oneself with science, in
a pure and religious spirit, is more pleasing to God than practises
of penance, because it is more completely the work of the whole man.
Is not theology, like the other sciences, bound to accept facts? To
deny a fact is to stultify oneself. But how shall we know what is,
if we are ignorant of the world-wide efforts of men of learning and
intellectual power to get at the facts of the universe? The supreme
fact is life; and only that is true, in the best sense of the word,
which is favorable to life, to its growth, its joy, its strength,
its freedom, its permanence. Whatever dwarfs, whatever arrests,
whatever weakens life, is evil.
The great purpose of genuine education is not to store the memory
or to accustom to observances, but to strengthen man with his own
mind, to rouse him to higher self-activity, to vivify him, to give
him fresh faith, hope, and courage, to deepen the foundations of his
being, to cultivate his faculties, to give him a firmer grasp of
truth and a clearer view of things as they are. Whatever narrows,
whatever hardens, whatever enslaves is foreign to the purpose of
education. We should dread nothing so much as what undermines
spiritual energy; for unless man's highest powers are stimulated
and kept active, he falls into sensual indulgence, or becomes the
victim of a weak and skeptical temper, no longer able to believe
anything, or to hope for anything, or to love anything with all
his heart. This is the temper of decadent races, of perishing
civilizations, and of dying religions. Losing the power to believe
with vital faith in God and in the soul, men cling to the fantom
life of cheap and vulgar pleasures. They seek gold and position;
they trust to mechanical devices, to political schemes; they worship
the rising sun; their truth is what is popular, their good is what
makes for present success. Having no firm hold of the eternal and
infinite, they believe in human cunning, not in the might of divine
truth. They forget that all truth is orthodox, and that behind all
truth stand the veracity and the power of God, who makes Himself
known in the laws of science, as in the majesty of the everlasting
mountains and the starlit heavens. As a kind word spoken for the
love of God and man becomes religious, so a right spirit consecrates
human action in whatever sphere. "Whoever utters truth," says St.
Augustine, "utters it by the aid of him who is truth itself." A
devout and illumined spirit sees all things bound together in
harmony and beauty about the feet of the eternal Father. Knowledge
confirms faith, and faith impels to knowledge. Religion nourishes
morality, and morality strengthens and purifies religion. Art,
in reflecting some feeble rays of the infinite splendor, opens
vistas of the diviner life. Science in showing that order reigns
everywhere, even in the midst of seeming discord, that all things
are subject to law, gives us a clearer perception of God's infinite
wisdom and power. Material progress itself in making earthly things
subject to human knowledge and skill, fulfils the will of the
Creator who made all things for man.
Thus science and art and progress all conspire with religion to
upbuild man's being and to mold him into ever-increasing likeness
to God. It is in religion, however, that the conquering might of
the spirit is best revealed, and this of itself is sufficient to
give it supremacy. It is not merely a world-view, a creed, and a
worship; but an original and historic manifestation in human life
of the primal power, which transforms and liberates. It is the
breaking through of the inner source of being, of God, who reveals
Himself to the lowly minded and the pure of heart, as the beginning
and end of all that exists; as the one eternal Absolute, in whom
and by whom and for whom all things are. The soul that is conscious
that religion rests upon this everlasting foundation is not troubled
by misgivings as to its truth or usefulness. It is God present in
the innermost part of our being; it is Christ working with the
almighty Father to redeem man from subjection to the transitory and
apparent, from the lust of the flesh, from greed for what ministers
to the senses alone. Thus it is an independent world, a kingdom in
itself, able to endure and to remain the same in the midst of an
order of things that is forever changing and passing away. Whatever
alteration may occur in the views of the intellectual, whatever
decay or transformation of political and social institutions may
take place, religion, the Catholic religion of Christ, shall abide,
still endowed, after the lapse of however many ages, with its
original freshness and vigor.
There was never yet genuine thinker, or poet, or artist whose work
may not be brought, if we are strong and clear-sighted enough,
to contribute to the cause of pure religion. The theologian, the
preacher, and the apologist who are ignorant of the best that has
been thought and said by the makers of the world's literature, can
not have the culture, the intellectual vigor, the openness and
pliability of mind, without which, short of miracle, it is not
possible rightly to commend divine truth to an enlightened age.
They whose vocation it is to be public teachers, to mold opinion,
and to direct thought, must have more knowledge, a wider outlook,
a firmer grasp of spiritual realities than those whom they seek to
enlighten and guide. The deepest truth seems shallow when uttered by
the frivolous; the holiest things seem to lose half their sacredness
when they are entrusted to the coarse and ignorant. It is not
enough that the minister of religion have a pure and loving heart,
and strong and disciplined mind: he must also have the breeding
and culture of a gentleman. Manners are not idle; they spring from
inner worth; they are the flower of high thinking and plain living.
Christ, it has been said, was the world's first gentleman, and
they who live and act in His spirit must be gentlemen. If we build
majestic temples, if we construct our altars of costly marbles,
if our sacred vessels and priestly vestments are made of gold and
silk and studded with precious stones, why shall not they who offer
sacrifice and who preach the gospel be required to be clean and
decorous, fair and gracious? If it is vanity to speak with ease and
elegance, to pronounce with correctness and distinctness, to read
with right intonation and emphasis, then must we not say that it is
vanity also to erect gorgeous edifices wherein to worship God, who,
as St. Paul says, may not be shut in houses made by human hands?
If the priest is to be educated at all, he must receive the most
thorough and complete education. He must trust wholly to grace,
or he must spare no pains whereby endowment may be developed into
faculty.
The young, who are the hope of the future, can be won and held only
by the highest ideals, in the light of which they may thrill with
hope and feel that it is a blest thing to be alive and active, to
fight the good fight and, if need be, to perish in a worthy cause.
To speak to them with contempt of what the nineteenth century has
done, of its science and literature, of its truer knowledge of the
past, its keener critical sense, its amazing progress in carrying
out the divine command that all things be made subject to man, of
the success with which it has battled against ignorance, poverty,
and disease, would be to fill them with contempt for ourselves, as
being men without understanding and without heart. We must indeed
warn against pride and conceit and halfness and dilettanteism,
against irreverence and knowingness; but it were a fatal mistake to
imagine that we can do aught but harm by seeking to inspire them
with a distrust of science and culture, or with a dread of the
influence of such things on religious faith. We of all men should be
able to walk with confidence in the paths of knowledge. Since we are
glad to receive money and to have the favor of men in high places to
assist us in our spiritual work, how shall we be willing to lack the
help of thoroughly disciplined and enlightened minds, to lack the
power of thought which is the most irresistible force God has given
to man? If we look upon theology as merely a system of crystallized
formulas, as a science which need take no cognizance of the general
culture of the age, content with presenting the old truths in
the old way, as merely a larger catechism, with a more detailed
exposition of definitions and refutations, we deprive it of power
to influence men who are all alive with thoughts urgent as the
growth of wings; who in the midst of problems which the new sciences
raise and accentuate, have grown confused and begin to doubt whether
human life shall not be emptied of its spiritual content. All
knowledges are related, as all bodies attract and help to hold one
another in place; and if we hope to commend and enforce revealed
truth with efficacious power, we must be prepared to do so in the
full blaze of the light which research and discovery have poured
upon nature and the history of man. If, in consequence, we find it
necessary to abandon positions which are no longer defensible, to
assume new attitudes in the face of new conditions, we must remember
that tho the Church is a divine institution, it is none the less
subject to the law which makes human things mutable, that tho truth
must remain the same, it is capable of receiving fresh illustration,
and that if it is to be life-giving, it must be wrought anew into
the constitution of each individual and of each age.
Is it possible to look on the great, eager, yearning, doubting,
and suffering life of man, and not to feel infinite desire to be
of help? Can we believe in our inmost being that we have the words
of eternal life, and not be roused as by a voice from heaven from
our indifference and somnolence, from our easy contentment with
formal education and half knowledge? We do not need new devotions
and new shrines, but a new spirit, newness of life, a revivification
of faith, hope and love, fresh courage and will to lay hold on the
sources of power, that we may compel all knowledge and science to
do homage to Christ, and to serve in the noblest way all God's
children. We must be resolved to labor to see not only things as
they are, but ourselves, too, as we are. Where self-criticism is
lacking, whether in individuals or in social aggregates, decay
and degeneracy inevitably set in. If there are true and wholesome
developments of life and doctrine, there is also a false and morbid
evolution, against which we must be ever watchful. Ceaseless
vigilance is not the price of liberty alone, it is the price we must
pay for all spiritual good; and how shall we be ever vigilant if we
are forbidden to criticize ourselves and the environment by which
our life is nourished and protected. As walking is a continuous
falling and rising, so all progress is an upward movement through
error and failure toward truth and victory. As the decay of races,
the ruin of civilizations, the downfall of states are seen in the
end to be helpful to the progress of mankind, since they do not
perish, wholly, but contribute something of their vital substance
to those that follow; so the history of human thought shows that
while systems rise and pass away, even the errors of sincere and
original minds, associated as they are with truth, aid in some way
the general advancement of knowledge and culture. All things work
together for those who love God. Action may not be dissociated
from thought, nor thought from action. Doubt is overcome, not by
abstracting and arguing, but by doing the thing which is given us to
do. The intellect is not the center and soul of life; and knowing
is not the whole of being. Faith is not a conclusion from a line
of reasoning. We can not bind our destiny to the conquests of the
mind. We have power to think, but our chief business is to act; and
therefore we must forever and forever fall back on faith, hope, and
love, and on the conduct they inspire, or we shall be driven forth
into the regions of mere speculation, into a dreary world of empty
forms.
MACARTHUR
CHRIST--THE QUESTION OF THE CENTURIES
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Robert Stuart MacArthur was born at Dalesville, Quebec, in 1841,
and graduated from the Rochester Theological Seminary in 1870. He
has been pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, New York, continuously
since 1870. From the very first he began to attract attention as
pastor and preacher, and the success which has attended his ministry
has been phenomenal. During his ministry his church has given for
benevolent and missionary enterprises more than two million dollars.
MACARTHUR
Born in 1841
CHRIST--THE QUESTION OF THE CENTURIES
What think ye of Christ.--Matt. xxii., 42.
The ideal man has not yet been discovered. Humboldt, who traveled
far, saw much and felt more, recorded in his diary this sentence,
"The finest fruit earth holds up to its maker is a man." It is here
implied that this finest fruit is the ideal man. But Humboldt did
not affirm that he had ever found this man. The ideal man has not
yet been discovered among those who were mere men. No one of our
noblest men was a spotless sun; no one reached sinless perfection.
From all our loftiest specimens of manhood I turn dissatisfied to
Jesus Christ, and in Him I find the ideal becomes actual, the dream
real, and the hope fruition. What Mount Tabor is, rising abruptly
in its unique symmetry and beauty from the northeastern arm of
the plain of Esdraelon, that Jesus Christ is, rising in insulated
grandeur and spotless perfection above the plain reached by the
noblest men of all the centuries.
What Mount Blanc as the king of the Alps is, lifting its crystal
domes and towers 15,781 feet above the level of the Mediterranean
Sea, compared with the other snow-clad and cloud-kissed mountains
of the Alps, that Jesus Christ is compared with the loftiest men
who have risen as mountain heights above their fellows through all
the ages. What the Himalaya range, the most elevated and stupendous
mountain system on the globe, sweeping across historic lands as far
as from New York to Chicago and back to New York, and rising so high
that the superb Matterhorn, if lifted bodily and placed upon the
Jungfrau, would not reach the glittering Himalaya heights, that and
more Jesus Christ is to the long line of men who have risen highest
in mortal grandeur in the history of the human race. Jesus Christ
is the pearl and crown of humanity; He is the loftiest specimen
of manhood the race has produced; he is the fullest manifestation
of divinity God has given the world; He is the effulgence of
God's glory, and the very image of His substance. He rises in
unapproachable glory, not only above men, but also above saints
and seraphs, and above angels and archangels. Gazing upon Him, we
can exclaim with inexpressible enthusiasm and unutterable ecstasy,
"_Ecce Homo!_" and with the same breadth and with equal truth we can
also reverently exclaim, "_Ecce Deus!_"
The setting of this text is instructively suggestive. For some
time in His discussion with the Pharisees, our Lord had been acting
on the defensive. Both Sadducees and Pharisees had been asking Him
questions. His answers put the Sadducees to silence, and their
confusion greatly gratified the Pharisees. It is now their turn to
experience similar confusion from the celerity and dexterity of His
replies. Never was there so skilful a debater as Jesus Christ. He
was masterful in His clarity of thought, simplicity of speech, and
purity of motive.
In the case before us, He passes from the defensive to the
offensive, and he convicts Scribes and Pharisees of entertaining
false views of the Messiah. They had disputed His claims as a
spiritual Messiah, and He now shows the irreconcilable contradiction
between their views of Him as a mere worldly Messiah, and the
teaching of their own prophetic Scriptures. They were silenced and
even stunned by His rapid, aggressive, and unanswerable attack.
We are significantly told that "no man was able to answer him a
word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more
questions."
It must, doubtless, be admitted that there are men in every
community, who have no definite convictions regarding Jesus Christ.
It seems almost incredible that in a community of culture and
Christianity men and women should be found who have not reached
definite conclusions regarding the person and character of Christ.
I put then the question with the _utmost_ directness, "What think
ye of Christ?" This is the broadest, deepest, and loftiest question
ever put to the human race. This is the question of all the ages.
This question virtually engaged the thought of Abraham; it evoked
a response from Moses; and it stirred the deepest emotions and
loftiest praise of David, as he swept his lyre and sang his immortal
songs....
In this congregation there are no hearers unwilling to admit that
Jesus Christ is at least a great historic character. They frankly
admit that He was born at Bethlehem, brought up at Nazareth, and
crucified at Jerusalem. They are entirely correct in the outward
features of His earthly career, but they have comparatively little
conception of the spiritual significance of His wonderful life and
His vicarious death.
They think of the historical elements of His Wonderful life as
they would think of those of Buddha, Zoroaster, or Mohammed. Their
conception of His earthly life has no power over the development of
their own lives, except as a mere character of history. They fail to
see that His was a unique life, and that it was lived on earth by
Him, that it might be lived in some measure over again on earth by
us. They fail to see that He became the Son of man, that we might
become the sons of God. They do not learn that He revealed the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man that we should sweetly
experience the one and constantly illustrate the other. The historic
Christ has no more power over the practical lives of some, than the
traditional heroes of classic legend. Virtually for them there is
no Christ or God. Practically for them there is no historic Christ.
Until the historic Christ is translated into a personal Savior and
Master, controlling our acts, our words, and our thoughts by His
matchless example, His unique personality, and His spiritual purity,
there is for us no historic Christ worthy the name.
There are those who think of the Christ as a dreamy, sentimental,
and poetic character. They are charmed by the commendable
characteristics of His remarkable life. They refer to Him in terms
of soothing speech and of dreamy affection. There is an element of
poesy in all their conceptions of the divine-human Christ. They
think of Him in language which the robust Chalmers called, in his
lofty scorn, "nursery endearments." They are ready to adopt the
language of the renowned French theologian, eminent Orientalist, and
brilliant rhetorician, Renan, when he speaks of the Christ of God
as the "sweet Galilean." Such epithets must be utterly unwelcome to
Christ. If He be not more than man, then He is less than man. If He
be not worthy of our loftiest devotion, He is certainly worthy of
our severest reprehension. In a word, if He be not God, He is not a
good man.
Carlyle described materialism as a "gospel of dirt"; we might
fittingly describe this sweet and silly sentimentalism as a "gospel
of gush." Only as we bow down at Christ's feet, and worship Him as
the divine-human Man, can we give Him the honor which He merits and
demands. Then we can employ and sanctify the loftiest poetry in
chanting His praise, the noblest art in limning His person, and the
profoundest logic in urging His claims upon men as the divine-human
Savior. There are many who are willing to admit and who earnestly
affirm that Jesus Christ is the ideal man of the human race. They
are ready to declare that it was a glorious thing that man was
originally made like God, and that it was a still more condescending
thing that God was made like man. The Christ was indeed the ideal
man of the human race. He was the great exemplar, the perfect model,
the sublime original to be imitated by all true men and women. In
Him, and in Him only, the plant of humanity blossomed and bloomed
into a perfect flower.
But how can we account for the perfection of His humanity, if
we deny the reality of His divinity? We ought, as students of
literature and life, to account for Jesus the Christ. We strive to
account for Socrates and Plato, for David and Isaiah, for Paul and
Luther, for Washington and Gladstone, for Lincoln and McKinley.
Are we not under the strongest possible obligations to account
for Jesus Christ? Men say that Jesus Christ was good, but that He
was not God. Out of their own mouths these men convict themselves
of inconsistency in their locutions and illogicality in their
reasonings. If Jesus Christ be not God, He is not good. He is either
an unpardonable egotist, or a hopeless lunatic, or he is the Christ
of God, and God over all, blest forever more. He claimed to be
God, and if His claim be not true, how can he be good? The stream
of His life flowed through the human race on a higher level, and
rose to a vastly higher point, than any other stream known to human
history or divine revelation. How shall we account for the height
to which that stream rose? Water can never rise higher than its
source. If that source were simply human, how can we account for the
superhuman height which it reached? If we admit the account given in
the gospels of His virgin birth and divine origin, all His life is
easily explicable.
But if we deny His unique origin, we can not logically account for
His unique life. A life began as was never another life, we might
expect to see continue as no other life continued. A naturally
skeptical man finds it easier to admit the account of Christ's
remarkable birth than to attempt to explain His remarkable life
if He deny the remarkable birth. The unicity of His birth we would
naturally expect to eventuate in the unicity of His life. His life
can not be explained on any principle of heredity. We readily admit
the royal element in His blood, altho the fortunes of His family had
fallen before His birth; but no law of heredity will account for
the physical attractiveness, the mental superiority, and the moral
purity of Jesus, the Christ. Neither will environment account for
His marvelous career and character. What was there in the peasant
conditions of His family life to produce the uniqueness of His
manhood? Neither will education account for the Christ. He was never
in school, in the technical sense of that term, altho He doubtless
studied in the village synagog; and yet He rose above all the
limitations, traditions, and bigotries by which He was surrounded.
It is doubtful if He ever sat at the feet of the greatest rabbis of
the time. It is certain that He never studied at the feet of the
philosophers of Greece and Rome, nor of the dreamy Orient. He never
traveled, except possibly barely across the confines of Palestine,
a country about the size of the State of New Hampshire. How came
He to emancipate Himself from the sectarianism and sectionalism of
His country and century? How came He to be the contemporary of all
the ages? How came He to utter in the Sermon on the Mount truths
which socially and religiously the foremost thinkers of to-day can
barely understand, and dare not fully apply to the solution of the
problems of the hour? No mere human thinker has ever approached the
Sermon on the Mount. But in pure spirituality of thought, our Lord
surpassed it in His last address to His disciples. This address
bears the ineffaceable marks of His supreme divinity and absolute
deity. O, ye critics, I ask you as a problem of literature and life
to account for Jesus the Christ. I ask no favors for Him. It is you
that need the favors, if you oppose the Christ. I demand for Him
simple justice. "What think ye of the Christ?"