The Fundamentals on Darwinism, the Cults and Personal Testimony
Volume 4 of The Fundamentals answers the ideas and movements that, in its writers' day, offered people something in place of the gospel. It takes on modern philosophy, Darwinism and evolution, socialism, the Millennial Dawn teaching of Charles T. Russell, Mormonism and Christian Science. Then it turns to the Christian life, with chapters on Satan, the Lord's day, prayer, money, the Scriptures and the return of Christ, and it ends with the personal testimonies of a famous surgeon, a London vicar, a missionary who had played cricket for England, and a New York lawyer. You can read Volume 4 free in TheWay Library.
Philosophy and the wisdom of this world
Philip Mauro opens the volume with Modern Philosophy, built on Colossians 2:8. He notes that Paul's warning there is the Bible's only mention of philosophy, and it is a warning:
In the foregoing passage occurs the only mention which the Scriptures make of philosophy. Nothing is more highly esteemed among men than philosophy.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter I
David James Burrell's The Knowledge of God walks down the roads people take to find God. Intuition, reason and the evidence of the senses all end in disappointment. The way God Himself opens is revelation, in Scripture and above all in the incarnation of His Son. Its first line sets the tone:
The man who does not know God has not begun to live.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter II
A. W. Pitzer's The Wisdom of This World lists everything the "wise men" of the day were asking the church to give up, one item after another, and shows that the real target was always the cross. H. M. Sydenstricker's The Science of Conversion argues that God's means of saving souls, His Word, His Spirit and prayer, work as surely as any law of nature.
Darwinism and evolution
Three essays deal with evolution. They are careful to say what they object to. George Frederick Wright, a geologist as well as a minister, begins The Passing of Evolution this way:
The word evolution is in itself innocent enough, and has a large range of legitimate use.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter VI
Creation itself, he says, shows orderly progress from lower forms to higher. What he opposes is the doctrine that leaves God out and hands mankind over to "a mechanical universe." He also separates Darwin's narrower theory of the origin of species from the sweeping philosophy that grew up around it. And he says the deeper danger lies with the philosophers:
The worst foes of Christianity are not physicists but metaphysicians. Hume is more dangerous than Darwin
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter VI
Henry H. Beach's The Decadence of Darwinism argues that the theory was losing ground in his day:
Failure to condition spontaneous generation by sterilized hay tea, and a chronic inability to discover the missing link, have shaken the popularity of Darwinism.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter V
His strongest concern is for children taught Darwinism in school as settled science. Evolutionism in the Pulpit, reprinted from a Presbyterian paper and signed only "an Occupant of the Pew," is a layman's protest against ministers who gave up parts of Scripture to fit the theory.
The Church and Socialism
Charles R. Erdman of Princeton writes on The Church and Socialism. He takes the movement seriously. He grants that it protests real wrongs that the church should also oppose, and he urges Christians to live out the social teachings of Christ more faithfully. But he rejects the idea that socialism is the same as Christianity, or that it can replace it:
Her supreme function is to secure, on the part of individuals, whole-hearted devotion and allegiance to Christ.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter VIII
Millennial Dawn, Mormonism and Christian Science
Three chapters examine religious movements the writers judged to be departures from the gospel.
Millennial Dawn. William G. Moorehead's Millennial Dawn: A Counterfeit of Christianity studies the six volumes of Charles T. Russell, published by the Watch Tower society of Brooklyn under the titles Millennial Dawn and later Studies in the Scriptures. Moorehead goes doctrine by doctrine, from Russell's denial that Christ's body was raised, to his dates for the Lord's return and the end of the age, to his teaching on the destiny of the wicked, and closes with a rule for reading the Bible:
Let the reader remember that imposition is not exposition, nor is eisegesis exegesis.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter IX
Mormonism. R. G. McNiece had been a pastor in Salt Lake City for many years, and he says so up front:
The writer has lived in Salt Lake City, the official headquarters of Mormonism, for over thirty years, and he has improved the opportunity to secure a complete understanding of the system.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter X
His chapter, Mormonism: Its Origin, Characteristics, and Doctrines, draws on the movement's own books, including the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price, to set out its history and teaching.
Christian Science. Maurice E. Wilson's Eddyism, Commonly Called "Christian Science" quotes Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health at length and sums up its core idea:
Its fundamental principle is that sin and sickness have no real existence. They may be banished by a process of thought.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter XI
Wilson's point is that a gospel which denies sin has no need of a Saviour.
Satan, the Lord's day and Paul
Jessie Penn-Lewis, the only woman among the writers in this volume, writes on Satan and His Kingdom: his origin, his work, and his wiles against believers. Her answer to all of it is the cross:
The preaching of the Cross is therefore the supreme need in this day of contact with the supernatural forces of the unseen world
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter XIII
Daniel Hoffman Martin's Why Save the Lord's Day? pleads for keeping Sunday holy against the drift toward treating it as any other day. E. J. Stobo's The Apologetic Value of Paul's Epistles uses the four letters that even the critics accepted as Paul's, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians, to show how early and how high the church's view of Christ was.
Prayer, money and the Scriptures
Arthur T. Pierson contributes three chapters. Divine Efficacy of Prayer calls the church to intercession and ends with a hope for the new century:
God grant that the twentieth may be forever historically memorable as the century of intercessors.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter XVI
The Proof of the Living God tells how George Müller cared for thousands of orphans in Bristol for decades by prayer alone, without asking anyone for money, and offers it as evidence that God answers prayer. Our Lord's Teachings About Money teaches stewardship: we are not owners but trustees of what God gives.
A. C. Dixon, the first editor of the series, writes on The Scriptures, and George F. Pentecost on What the Bible Contains for the Believer. Charles R. Erdman returns with The Coming of Christ, which he calls "a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith." He holds firmly to the personal return of Christ and asks for charity on the details where careful believers differ.
The personal testimonies
The volume closes with what may be the most readable chapters in the whole set. E. Y. Mullins, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, introduces them with The Testimony of Christian Experience, arguing that a changed life is real evidence, as real as anything in the laboratory.
Howard A. Kelly, one of the founding professors of medicine at Johns Hopkins, gives a scientist's testimony. He explains why he believes the Bible and says:
I believe in it because it reveals a religion adapted to all classes and races, and it is intellectual suicide knowing it not to believe it.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter XXIV
H. W. Webb-Peploe, a London vicar and Keswick speaker, tells in his testimony how God dealt with him through his parents, through two humble witnesses, and through a bad fall at Cambridge that laid him up for years.
C. T. Studd, the England cricketer who became a missionary to China, India and Africa, tells his story in plain words. He grew up religious but did not know Christ:
I knew a little about Him, as I may know a little about President Taft, but I did not know Him.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter XXVI
He tells how his father was converted under D. L. Moody, how he himself came to Christ, and how in China he gave away his inheritance.
Philip Mauro, the New York patent lawyer who opened the volume, closes it with his own conversion:
I came to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ on May 24th, 1903, being then in my forty-fifth year.
The Fundamentals, Vol. 4, Chapter XXVII
Two chapters not included
Volume 4 originally had two more chapters: XII, "Modern Spiritualism Briefly Tested by Scripture," by Algernon J. Pollock, and XXI, "The Hope of the Church," by John McNicol. TheWay Library leaves them out for now because both writers died after 1955, so the essays are still under copyright in the United Kingdom. The full contents explains the gap in the numbering.
Reading Volume 4
If you read only one chapter of Volume 4, make it one of the testimonies; Studd's takes ten minutes. Wright's The Passing of Evolution is the clearest of the evolution essays, and Pierson's chapter on Müller is a lift to anyone's prayer life. For the story of how the books came to be, see What Are The Fundamentals? The earlier volumes are covered in The Fundamentals on Higher Criticism, The Fundamentals on the Deity of Christ and The Fundamentals on Sin, Salvation and Missions.
Volume 4 is free to read in TheWay Library.