Heresies and Heretics
Though my personal faith, as set out in the foregoing general indications of doctrine, is so intensely Evangelical, yet I have not been able to take a harsh view of speculative heresy in the case of certain honoured brethren whose minds have been more active and more aggressive than my own. Though I have entitled this chapter “Heresies and Heretics,” I think Ave cannot be too discriminating in our apjjlication of these terms of stigma and discredit. Protestantism as well as Popery may have its own infallibility. What self -deifying man is there who can say that he has seen all God’s truth, and that having seen it he can express the infinite sum in complete and final terms? What Church is there sufficiently omniscient to put down in words, which are themselves ever changing, the eternal and unchangeable
HIS truths of God? Congregationalists have no creed in the technical and official sense of that term: indeed, they expressly repudiate adhesion to jirescrihed formularies. I have never suhscribed a creed, and I never will. I would not subscribe a creed even of my own drawing up. Theology — in all its most living meanings — must be a personal inspiration if it is to be other than a burden to the mind; that is to say, the holder of it must have proved and tested it for himself, and must have solemnly felt that apart from it he would be without strength and hope in life. Though I would not sign a creed even if drawn up by my own hand, I am free to say that the following thoughts — purposely given in outline — have kept me at my work with a cheerful heart and constant hope amidst all the religious tumults of the time: —
1. Individual human life is too short for the solution of all mysteries. Such solution would, indeed, at once disennoble and disenchant the human mind. Mystery is as educational as Information.
2. The Bible proves its Own inspiration by its knowledge of human nature, its moral suhlimity, and its infinite anxiety for the good of mankind.
3. The moral sublimity of the Bible enables me to accept its spiritual mysteries. It is saved from superstition by righteousness. Its Moses necessitates its Christ.
4. The mystery of the Divine Trinity is brought within the region of credibility by the mystery of the tri-unity of every human being. The Trinity of God is a mystery beyond present words, yet with a most holy meaning to the inner and silent consciousness. Reverence must exclude or control controversy.
5. Jesus Christ did something for man which man could not do for himself: He claimed to do this; this claim is wrought into the very tissue and substance of His speech; — He was therefore, at least by so much, more than man. Being more than man, I find no term ^hich so fully and exactly represents Him to my mind lis as the term “God.” He is God to me. I might intellectually resent the mystery but for the moral sublimity of His character, ^hich protects its possiliility and its sanctity.
0. I do not understand the atonement. I humbly accept it because I deeply and unutterably need it. I have seen sin. My guilt and I have met face to face, and I have found in my own heart no answer to the tremendous charge. In the Cross I find what I need. I will not play the philosopher at the Cross. I will pray:
“This my hope and all my plea,
For me the Saviour rlied.”
7. I believe in the immortality of the soul. God created it immortal, but with the power of suicide because with the power of sinning. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” I do not know the meaning of the word “die” in this connection, — its awfulness makes explanation impossible. Intellectual conceit must be crucified when it asks questions which revelation has not answered.
S. I know of no thought or proposal or philosophy which covers so much ground, answers so many moral inquiries, and makes itself so immediately aA’ailahle by human necessity as the Christian faith. These doctrines are fruit trees. These doctrines admit of being spoken in all kinds of words, — words lit for little children, for ignorant minds, for high intelligence, for the weary and them that are ill at ease, and for those who dominate and lead in all the -walks of life.
9. I knoAV of nothing which can do human life so much real and lasting good as the religion of Jesus Christ; therefore I preach it with the energy of conviction, not unmingled, I trust, with the joy of experience. As a minister of Christ, I feel that the message with Avhicli I am entrusted is a message to the whole world, seasonable through all time, at home in all lands; an infinite message, which so grows upon the mind as to leave the impression that it can never be all delivered.
Spirit of the living God, let Thy love burn in me “until the day dawn and the shadows flee away.”
Within some such outline as this I have found rest and joy, and I heartily believe that it represents no inconsiderable section of what may now be known, in this grey sphere of time, of things inefPable and transcendental. This is not so much a creed as a faith. Much confusion has arisen in the Christian Church by the false supposition that “creed” and “faith” are the same thing. Creed can be expressed in terms — it needs no other help than a dictionary; but faith is a term which has hardly a place in the dictionary at all. Faith may be represented by eternity: creed by clocks and watches, almanacs and registers, and whatever else breaks up duration into measurable particles and pulses. Creed is weather, faith is climate; creed is geographical, faith is astronomical. Creed is a kind of mechanical power; faith is as the mystery and the almightiness of gravitation.
I have never been in favour of persecuting men for their religious and speculative eccentricities. But before holding any heretic in honour I must know a i>-oo(l deal about the personal character and integrity of the supposed heretic. I have no patience with men who make a kind of holiday and recreation of intellectual infidelity. I regard them as a kind of grim toy-makers — mercers and hucksters in indiarubber dogmas and rubrics. Their vanity can find recognition in no other direction than eccentricity and audacity, and, rather than not be notorious, they are willing to lay the axe at the root of many venerable trees. I take no serious notice of such mountebanks and selfadvertisers. It is altogether different with men of high integrity, broad culture, and sensitive conscience, the real seekers of the lost Sangreal. T would not, for example, have prosecuted a man like Dr. Robertson Smith, one of the finest scholars and one of the most reverent men to be found within the most attractive and progressive of modern Churches — the Free Church of Scotland. An awkward man, no doubt, possibly fitful and peevish in temper, perhaps abnormally nervous and excitable, yet a true child of God, and a sgholar without many equals. I have discriminatingly read his books with profitable interest, because of their intellectual richness, their lucid and vigorous English, and their reverent handling of things long regarded as sacred and unchangeable. As a Congregationalist, Dr. Robertson Smith would probably not have been libelled or prosecuted or otherwise specialised as an erratic thinker. This is true of Congregationalism. But Dr. Robertson Smith was not a Congregationalist; he was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, and as such he had given, in some valid and binding form, his assent and consent to certain theological dogmas. The Free Church of Scotland did not prosecute a person; it upheld and defended a creed. That is the point which is often overlooked in criticising the trials and persecutions, so-called, instituted by such organised bodies as Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, and Methodism. Organised bodies naturally have organised creeds. It would be a matter of infinite regret if men could be allowed to sign one creed and to preach another. This has been again and again pointed out in connection with the Church of England, and what is true of one Church is true of all Churches of the same kind. For my own part I do not believe in binding any man to a creed, though it is perfectly right to have a general understanding as to a common faith.
National morality requires that a creed should be capable of being grammatically construed. No man can have the liberty of non-committal who has voluntarily made himself part and parcel of a great common doctrine or institution. It is worse than absurd to charge the Free Church of Scotland, or any other organised Church, with narrow-mindedness or love of persecution simply because it feels called upon to defend its own standards and traditions. lay a man sign a promissory note to pay a hundred pounds and then claim his liberty to swear away his own signature? Commercial morality itself should suggest at least the propriety of religious consistency. Not even so great a scholar as Dr. Eobertson Smith was at liberty to set up his personal convictions against the Church to which he had officially given his signature. The Church would say, “No man can serve two masters: take your liberty, but do not charge us with the responsil)ility of sanctioning views which we cannot accept; be an Independent if you like, but leave Presbyterianism without any suspicion of falseness to its Own creeds.” A man cannot be both a Congregationalist and a Presbyterian. The man who has signed a creed does not stand on the same ground as the man who, for reasons of conscience, has distinctly refused to sign. The Free Church of Scotland does not attempt to prosecute me, simjily -because I have not given my signature to any creed which that Church is l)ound to uphold.
But is there no prosecution or persecution amongst Congregationalists? I am afraid to answer this interrogation in the negative. It is perfectly possible that the worst kind of prosecution or persecution may take place in Churches that are not organised. There is a persecution which is of the nature of boycott and ostracism and significant silence. Take, for example, the case of Edward White, who upheld consistently and most ably the doctrine of what was known as “Conditional Immortality.” Mr. White was orthodox of the orthodox on every other point of the Evangelical creed; but because he held the doctrine that the soul has no life but in Christ, no immortality but in faith, he was for many a long year subjected to the meanest kind of distrust and boycott. I have letters from him in which he says that no one could form any idea of the persecution to which he was subjected some five-and-thirty years ago. He was not allowed to enter any Congregational pulpit. He was laughed at and disowned, and yet before he died he was, without modifying a single opinion, Chairman of the Congregational Union of England and “Wales. In his work entitled “Life in Christ” he makes brief reference to his early sufferings in the cause of his peculiar dogma. In the preface he makes quotations from Dr. Isaac Watts which unequivocally prove that Watts and he held precisely the same doctrine as to the immortality of the soul. Mr. White then says:
“My reproduction of the same idea AA’as ncA’ertheless assailed on all sides as heresy, and the ineA-itable penalty for that offence in England has ensued in life-long ecclesiastical experience none the less painful because cheerfully endured in humble trust of the Highest approA’al.... It is incA-itable, then, I regret to acknowledge, that Caen in a tolerant age this work, if regarded at all, should incur at present in many quarters severe reprehension.”
When the tide began to tuvn and men began to offer public honours to him, Mr.
White wrote to me that he could now only he amused with the approbation which had been withheld so long and which had arrived too late. It is not necessary to say whether Mr. White was right or wrong in his conception of a certain doctrine, it is enough to point out that what is called “heresy” can be basely and cruelly persecuted even by bodies Avliich make it a boast that they have no formal creeds. Prosecutions instituted by organised Churches must at all events be conducted in the light of day, and in a spirit of Christian honour; but persecutions in non-organised Churches may be conducted without those restraints and guarantees which are supplied by wellwatched organisations. I know of nothing more pitiable in the history of the Christian Church than that men should learn nothing by the persecution and intolerance of earlier ages. Perhaps there is no object of observation more despicable than the attempts which have been made by non-organised Churches to extemporise creeds to meet unlooked-for and pressing emergencies. I remember an illustration in connection with the Congregational Union of England and Wales. Some members of that Union organised a “Conference” in which there was to be a great deal of freedom and allowance in the adoption and expression of theological opinion. A kind of panic in the Congregational Union followed the institution and action of that Conference. Without following that panic in all its eccentric and foolish development, it will be enough for me to indicate the part that was taken by the brilliant Chairman of the year, the Rev. James BaldAvin Brown. Few finer men than Mr. Brown have adorned modern Congregationalism. His intellectual virility, his moral dauntlessness, his heroic self-sacrifice marked him out as one of the true leaders of his Church — a Church which once ignored or despised him. Though Mr. Brown was the Chairman of the year, he could not honestly pass by the excitement of the times without paying special attention to it in his official address. Technically it may be questionable whether the Chairman should have touched upon a keenly disputed ([uestion, but BaldAvin Brown was never the man to be limited by technicalities when his conscience was thoroughly excited. He denounced the panic. He called for charity. In a word, he was himself. Then came the criticism of those who had a resolution to move in favour of the orthodoxy of the Congregational Union. Many speeches were delivered. Notably there was a speech by a man of singular spiritual excellence and ministerial efficiency, in which the speaker suggested, in the kindest and most conciliatory spirit, that it was well that a few “guidejiosts” should be erected in mountainous districts, and especially when there was “a little mist about.” The figure of the mountain and mist was hailed with delight by the excited Union; that poetical metaphor was thought, indeed, to settle the matter for ever. There have always been people who have believed in “mists” and “posts,” and such people had a high time of it during that memorable noise. The Union clapped and cheered and shouted, and the speaker sat down amidst the customary “loud and long-continued applause.” But the unlucky figure was exposed in Mr. Brown’s brilliant autumnal address. Never was more splendid reply given to an obvious misuse of pretty but worthless metaphor. “Yes,” said Mr. Brown, in effect, “it is perfectly true where the roads are difiicult and where there is mist in the air that posts may be of some use, but we must admit that the importance of the posts is infinitely reduced when instead of their aid Ave enjoy the companionship and the protection of a Living Guide.” Mr. Brown held that the Holy Spirit was the Living Guide of the
Church, the promised Guide, the only sufficient Guide, and he contended that where the Holy Spirit was present we can well dispense with wooden posts. That was an overpowering reply. It lifted the whole question to a new level, and recalled the fainting faith of many to the grand fact that not to mechanical “posts,” but to living spiritualities was the redeemed Church indebted for comfort and light and guidance. I have carefully considered the pertinence and value of many retorts, and I am free to say that I do not at this moment recall a single instance in which a retort was more direct, more pathetic, and more complete. In his first address Mr. Brown exclaimed, even whilst the Union wa,s applauding him, “You know well that thirty years ago not a man of you would have exchanged pulpits with me.” Anglicanism and Presbyterianism and Methodism may therefore comfort themselves with the reflection that the spirit of persecution and bitterest hostility is not restrained or extinguished by the mere absence of a written creed.
Chronologically the case of Thomas Toke Lynch should have come earlier, though spiritually it is in its right place as folloMdng the case of the Rev. Baldwin Brown. Thomas Toke Lynch was the author of some of the most heautif 111 hymns in the English language. But he was suspected of heresy! The editor of a puhlic-house newspaper discovered that Thomas Toke Lynch was not Evangelical! How peculiar are some of the instruments which the Devil selects for his work! That a puhlic-house paper should become the organ of Evangelical Dissent was one of the finest feats ever accomplished by his Satanic majesty! Of what importance was the word of a Lynch compared with the word of a now -forgotten editor of the poorest trash that was ever issued from the daily press of London! Then followed another editor, whose unwise excesses and most ridiculous mistakes acquired momentary importance from the fact that he conducted “a religious newspaper.” Erederick William Ilobertson, of Brighton, made some severe remarks about the religious journalism of his day, every one of which might have been repeated with emphasis in the case of the religious assailant of Thomas Lynch. The Congregational Union never offered Lynch an honour. Eew, if any, were the pulpits which Mr. Lynch was invited to occupy. Lynch was a heretic, and that was the explanation of everything! Yet who coukl pray like Mr. Lynch? Whose hymns were equal to his in verbal beauty, in pathetic quaintness, in subtle music? But Lynch was a heretic! The editor of a public-house newspaper said so! But fortunately for Lynch, as I have already said, this religious editor described “The Eclipse of Faith” — a most powerful defence of Christianity — as “another dart from the quiver of the enemy.” These were thy keepers, oh trembling Orthodoxy! — these the men who held sundry metal “keys,” — these the Peters who had burglariously attached to their flimsy girdles imitation “keys” that would open nothing but the bottomless pit! Let us have faith in Providence and in the outworking of all God’s numerous and intricate plans. To-day Lynch is honoured, and his assailants are forgotten or despised. That which is true and good cannot be put down. It may be misunderstood, undervalued, sneered at, and proscribed, but inasmuch as the life of Christ is in it, the “third day” — the day on which God ever shatters the enemy like a potter’s vessel — will witness its resurrection, and will witness also the rout and the confusion of self-appointed
A PEEACHEE’S LIFE
guardians of technical and artificial orthodoxy. In many a public trouble my life’s wisest and dearest counsellor has told me, — I quote her own eloquent words, — that “destiny is stronger than intrigue.”