The Word Taught
It is supposed that Science is definite and that Religion is vague in its dogmas. This supposed difference has sometimes been the occasion of a taunt against the Christian faith in particular. It is said with no little truth that the heterodoxy of one dayis the orthodoxy of another. Yet this need not be any reproach. The fact would be the more remarkable if its application could be strictly limited to religion, whereas it applies equally to the whole line of civilization, and may therefore be only a fact because it is first a principle. We may not be dealing with an accident; we may be face to face with a law, and with a law so universal and so urgent as to be the very soul of civilization. If it is true of religion (and I am not prepared to doubt it) that the heterodoxy of yesterday is the orthodoxy of to-day, it is certainly true of science and philosophy that the knowledge of one century is the ignorance of the next. Civilization is a process of self-correction, yet civilization is inspired by one unchanging purpose. Religion may be perpetually changing its forms and re-adapting its appliances, yet its central truth is eternal and immutable. Prayers may vary, but worship is constant. It may be worth while, however, to examine the plea that there is more definiteness or certainty on the side of science than on the side of religion.
Where shall we find this definiteness? Is it to be found in the history of Medicine, taking that term in its largest meaning? An Egyptian king, as far back as the first Egyptian dynasty, is said to have written a work upon Anatomy. Where is it? Is that work consulted to-day? Hippocrates has a great name as a father of medicine and a founder of science, yet his biographer says that Hippocrates knew nothing of anatomy, and was absolutely ignorant of the relation which subsists between the vital parts of the human frame. Galen, the head of the Roman science of his day, laughed at all the medical sects and refused to join any of them, preferring the wisdom and the liberty of eclecticism. But is it possible that there are these medical sects? Surely all medical men, being men of science, are agreed? There are allopaths and homeopaths and hydropaths and electropaths and herbalists, but they all live together in happy and beneficent cooperation, because science is definite and majestic in its dogmas, and its believers have all things common, neither does any man say that aught he has is his own. They all say that saliva operates chemically upon certain constituents of food, but they all differ as to how this is done. One man, called Liebig, has published a “supposition” upon the point, and now that “supposition” has been recognized and tolerated by science we may infer that some of its dogmas are not hopelessly definite. All living things inspire the living air, and we are told that numerous chemical theories have attempted to explain how the oxygen is removed from it. Whether oxygen, after forming an acid, unites with the alkalies, or whether it attaches itself to the corpuscles of the fibrin, or unites with phosphorus or fatty matter, we are told that the chemists do not know, but by the time the next encyclopaedia is published something definite may have been found, and then the new dogma will laugh at the old one, until a newer dogma still arises to rebuke the pedantic merriment. Still, science would compassionately recognize religion if religion would only make up its mind to stand by a sworn affidavit. And philosophy, too, is partly under the ban of science because it will not definitely say whether consciousness resides in the brain or imbeds itself in the spinal marrow.
But perhaps it is along other lines that the severity of definite science is to be found. When Sir Isaac Newton said that white light consists of seven different colors, quite a civil war broke out, all the nobodies of Europe assailing Newton, and even the eminent Huygens ranged himself with the blind assailants, Newton said that in the case of light it was impossible to have refraction without dispersion, and vice versa; but Tyndall says that Newton was wrong, and Dolland proved it by an ingenious combination of his own. Aristotle and Descartes had elaborated a philosophy of Nature, but when Newton published his “Principia “Aristotle and Descartes were no more heard of, notwithstanding the definiteness of science. But John Hutchinson came along with another u Principia,” in which he displaced the vacuum of Newton by the plenum of Hutchinson, and to his own satisfaction demolished the Newtonian doctrine of gravitation. Hutchinson had so learned the Hebrew language as to be able to prove to his own mind that the Bible contains a complete and infallible system of natural history, and if we laugh at Hutchinson we laugh also at Parkhurst, the lexicographer, and at Dr. Home, Bishop of Norwich, for they were both Hutchinsonians until the bishop came back to the Newtonian standpoint simply to illustrate the possibility of a backslider’s conversion and to confirm the infallible certitude of science.
Descartes used to be regarded as a kind of idol, and to be ranked with Plato, Aristotle, and Bacon; yet it has been declared that “the majority of his physical speculations lie, and have long lain, in utter ruin,” and Professor Huxley says, “We have left Descartes himself some way behind us.” Descartes had a neat religion thus neatly expressed — “I think, therefore I am;” but Huxley strikes out the “therefore,” because, as he bluntly says, “it has no business there.” Huxley holds that the necessary outcome of Descartes’ views is Idealism, and there we might have found a moment’s peace but for the appearance of Descartes’ great successor, Kant, who brought in the doctrine of Critical Idealism, which, among other things, refuses, says Huxley, “to listen to the jargon of more recent days about the ’ absolute’ and all the other hypostatized adjectives.” Behold how these men of science and philosophy agree, and silence your religious contentions! Huxley contradicts Descartes’ theory of the motion of the blood, Roemer denied his theory that light is transmitted instantly through space, and Dolland, as we have seen, contradicted his view respecting refraction and dispersion. So much for the unanimity of science as opposed to the melancholy and bewildering divisions of religion! Perhaps, however, it is in Mathematics that Science is majestically and finally definite. Certainty is the very soul of an Axiom. For example, take one of Euclid’s very first definitions. A point is position without magnitude. How intuitively we perceive the infinite certitude and exquisite definiteness of this definition!
Yet I now solemnly deny that there is one word of truth in it. I distinctly affirm that position without magnitude is a contradiction in terms. Position is itself magnitude. It may not be magnitude that is measurable by a foot-rule, but it is still magnitude. Even a point takes up the place of some other point. Anything that excludes any other thing cannot be said to be without magnitude. And if one point is position without magnitude, what shall be said of two points? Ten times nothing is nothing, and ten times “without” is “without,” so what is true of the one point is true of the ten. It is certain that you cannot put two points in the same place. If you put one on the top of the other, it is still not in the same place. The magnitude is increased by height. Whatever is on the top of something else is higher than the thing on which it rests. I therefore deny the position of Euclid. And I must follow Euclid with equal denial when he says that a line is length without breadth. I say that length and breadth are inseparable. The breadth may not be measurable by a foot-rule, yet it is breadth nevertheless. And when Euciid tells me that things that are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, I call for qualification or explanation before I can admit it. The fact that A and B are equal to C makes A and B equal to one another is true enough so long as you are dealing with symbols, but in complex reasoning, in reasoning that affects human life, there are no naked symbols, so, having got rid of the symbols, you have got rid of the toy-axiom. A ton of coals and a ton of diamonds may be equal to a ton of feathers, but the one point of equality is in the word “ton,” or in the accident of mere weight, and after that the inequalities are glaring and innumerable, so much so as to render the one point practically valueless and contemptible. You will be expecting me to deny that one and one make two. That is exactly what I do deny. What is one? One what? And is “one” possible? Is solitariness possible? Does it not sometimes take two to make one? Is not “one” an assumption? Does it not assume the universe? Does it not assume totality? If we were talking the common language about common things, we need not go into these inquiries, but that is exactly what we are not talking; we are on a line of analysis which, like everything else in the universe, goes back to God.
Is science discredited by such self-corrections as have been pointed out? On the contrary. They invest it with the only authority that is of real importance. They show it to be alive. At the same time they should teach it a wise charity and patience in relation to deeper inquiries. What is it that changes in the evolution of Christian thought? Only its forms, its embodiments, its apparatus. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, but his living Church advances into fuller light and acquires a larger language of sympathy and love. Christian teachers might add to their best influence by admitting that they are only growing in their knowledge of the Lord Jesus, and are but struggling with their first lessons. That, however, need not prevent them dwelling upon the “things which are assuredly believed “; on the contrary, it should drive them in that direction with fuller gratitude and confidence. A spiritual stammerer has no right to be in the pulpit. In the pulpit the speaker should say what he does know, know by love, know by experience, know by prayer, for only thus can he feed the flock of God. Indefiniteness is not greatness. Ignorance is not necessary humility. A preacher should always be able to fall back upon his own experience. This was the strength of the Apostle Paul. He related the story of his life; he pointed out where he was and wrhat he was when the “marvelous light” struck him blind; he dwelt upon the wondrous interview with the unseen but pleading Christ; he showed how he came out of the great agony into the greater joy; and men who listened were made to feel that they had not only to answer an argument but to disbelieve and reject a man. There must be no indefiniteness about character. The heterodoxy must never be moral. Where intellect shades its eyes, where eloquence interrupts its fluency, character must erect its standard and boldly illustrate the miracle of grace.
Christian hearers themselves need a hint or two upon this matter of definiteness in pulpit teaching. They must realize that Christian truth is not a set of names and phrases which must be heard in every sermon if the sermon is to be considered orthodox. They must learn, too, that all those favorite names and phrases may be there, and the spirit of the gospel be utterly absent. There is an evangelical spirit as surely as there is an evangelical doctrine. The evangelical doctrine without the evangelical spirit is the ghastliest of skeletons. Who can preach about Gethsemane twice in the same day? Who can measure the rest that should follow a true recital of the story of Calvary? To speak rightly of the cross is to be on it. Yet we may speak of the whole duty of life in the spirit of the cross. What is called common morality would thus be raised to its. proper level. We should then discourse of secularism in the holiest temper. We should exalt reason until she prayed at the right altar. We should denounce crime with the wrath of Christ’s love. It has often been pointed out that Christ’s own Sermon on the Mount is not what would be now considered evangelical. Nor is it, probably, if we look at words only. But what is its spirit? This is the highest of all illustrations of the point that a sermon is not to be judged by its words only. The remarkable thing about the Sermon on the Mount is that Christian preachers have often endeavored to explain it away, not by rough attack or blunt denial, but by the kind of compliment which has removed its supreme doctrines from the rank of practicableness. Thus they have always made it ideal, transcendental, poetry to be admired rather than prose to be obeyed. In this way they have taken out of the Sermon this very virtue of definiteness. They have turned it into a kind of ethical rainbow, quite lovely and wonderful, a very miracle of color and delicacy, but so wraith-like or spectral as to be practically useless. This will, of course, be largely denied, yet it will remain a fact that the sects and persons most zealously resolved to carry out the letter of the Sermon have been sneered at or pitied as fanatical and eccentric. If any man should be tempted to wonder whether the Sermon on the Mount is definitely evangelical, let him try to reduce its precepts to practice, and he will soon cry out in despair, “Lord, save me, or I perish.”
Not only has Definiteness been called for, but Simplicity has also been demanded almost with vehemence. Why this demand for simplicity? It is never demanded in science. The want of it would seem, in the estimation of those who know least about it, to be the crowning proof that at last we have reached a high point of civilization. My submission is that there are no simple propositions in Christian doctrine. I advance upon this, and submit that what looks like the simplest Christian proposition is more profoundly mysterious than any proposition or canon in science. Take a proposition in Analytical Geometry:
“If a circle be described about
the axis major, then ordinates to
the ellipse and the circle to the
same abscissa, have to one another the proportion of the axis
minor to the axis major.”
To the non-mathematical mind this is an accumulation of mysteries. Is there in Christian doctrine an abstruser proposition? I answer, Yes. If called upon to produce that proposition, I would instantly
quote —
“GOD IS LOVE.”
Compared with that proposition, all the profundities and polysyllables of science are the shallowest vulgarities. They appeal to but one section of the mind. They leave the heart, the will, the conscience, and the spiritual imagination untouched. They can be interpreted by a hired schoolmaster. They are intellectual recreations. Yet, “God is love” is one of the propositions which is often commented on as the very flower and perfection of simplicity! Nevertheless we have in those three little syllables a doctrine that goes back to eternity, that unites and interprets the whole evolution and tragedy of experience, that invests the Godhead with personality, and that discovers the foundations of the eternal throne. “God is love” is the inclusive proposition — it is the encyclopaedia of doctrine; it is the secret of the universe. Creation is there, and providence, and redemption. That legend blooms in every flower and glows in every star; and it is working its way through all sin and pain and tears, and will work until in a sanctified humanity and a reconciled universe it interprets and crowns the purpose of the cross.
I am not aware that the word “simple” is ever applied in the New Testament to the preaching or the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is a remarkable fact. Let me be regarded as speaking with extreme caution when I say that I cannot recall an instance in which the hearers of Jesus Christ exclaimed, “How simple!” Does the word “simple” ever occur in an intellectual sense in the New Testament? Yet to-day the cry is, “The simple gospel! Preach the simple gospel! Give us the simple gospel! Trust to the simple gospel!” If Christ never used the term, and if the apostles never used the term, would it not be wise to inquire whether it is proper for us to use it? “The simplicity that is in Christ” is an expression which Paul uses in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, but it has no reference to the intellectual character of the gospel; it is, rather, a moral term equal to “singleness of affection,” a characteristic of “a chaste virgin” — a heart intense and undivided. That Jesus Christ never used the term “simple” may be inferred from the popular remarks which were made upon his preaching, such as these:
The people were astonished at
his doctrine (Matt. vii. 28).
They were all amazed, and questioned among themselves....
What new doctrine is this?
(Mark i. 27. ) Never man spake
like this man (John vii. 46).
They were astonished, and said,
Whence hath this man this
wisdom? (Matt. xiii. 54.) All
that heard him were astonished
(Luke ii. 47). They were astonished at his doctrine, for his word
was with power (Luke iv. 32).
There is nothing here about simplicity. There is nothing about “the simple gospel.” It is supposed that “only believe” is the simplest of all exercises. “Only” does not mean “simply” in the sense that the act is one of ease. Belief is the supreme miracle. It is a condition of birth. It is the Mount of Transfiguration. It is the glorious act of going over from self to God. The obvious danger connected with the popular view of simplicity is that what is so very superficial in meaning may become equally superficial in practice. Men may thus in a sense play with their religion; they can effect compromises; they can adopt expedients; they can modify convictions; in a word, they can have a form of godliness without the power thereof. This kind of simplicity is to be dreaded. All sorts of tares and poison-seeds may be sown in such a bog, some of which may come to fruitage. Better, infinitely better, hold that Jesus Christ is the revelation of God, that he came down from the bosom of the Father, that he is the incarnate mystery of eternity, and the Eternal Firstborn, in whom all life lives and all glory shines. Infinitely better, because when these sublime mysteries enter the heart and involve the mind in their holy splendors, they uplift the whole being and elevate human character by cleansing and ennobling the motives out of which it proceeds.
Yet we need not dispense with the word “simple,” or ‘’simplicity.” It is a very significant word when opposed to complex or complexity. Simplicity may be represented as a cloth or web unfolded or without folds; whereas complexity is as a cloth folded, and folded again, and again folded. Or take the various translations of aTiXor/]? given in the New Testament. It is rendered simplicity (Rom. xii. 8), singleness of your heart (Eph. vi. 5), and a form of it is translated as a single eye, in Matthew and in Luke. The reference is, as just said, to singleness of affection, a heart with one love, a life with one aim. Of that kind of simplicity we cannot have too much, for it means that amidst the conflicts, doubts, questionings, and wonders which accompany all vital education the loyalty of the heart to the glorious Saviour is steadfast and incorruptible. Such simplicity, singleness of aim, and definiteness of love must ever be held to be a luminous commentary upon the gospel itself, which is thus shown to be opposed to all tortuousness of mind, all ambiguity of speech, all crookedness of purpose, all doubleness and wavering of will. If that is what is meant by the simplicity of the gospel, then let it be magnified and illustrated on every hand.
But who is sufficient for these things as an ambassador of Christ? Who can, who dare, accept the responsibility of representing such definiteness and such simplicity? Perhaps we may be enabled to indicate an answer by studying a proposition which has been strongly stated thus:
“Every living preacher must receive his message in a communication direct from God, and the constant purpose of his life must be to receive it uncorrupted, and to deliver it without addition or subtraction.”
Unless I am permitted to define and qualify the proposition I must not only reject it, but do all in my power to guard others from accepting it. Understood in one way — no doubt the way which was clearly before the author’s mind — it may have the effect of bringing the preacher’s soul under a most holy discipline, and may be specially useful in discouraging the invention of personal idols; on the other hand, it may create and foster and justify the very evils it was intended to put down. If the proposition is self-complete, it is wrong; if it is to be read in the light of certain strong and even vital assumptions, it may be right. Regarded as self-complete, it puts the individual preacher into a position of exaggeration. It ignores the Bible entirely. It overlooks the fact that there is a common revelation — an open vision — a definite message already written and intended to be brought within the knowledge of “every creature.” The world is not waiting for some holy man to climb the hill of God and bring down a new commandment or beatitude. We have the living Word — we know the heavenly will — we have been with Jesus and have learned of him; we have this treasure in earthen vessels. There need never be any uncertainty about the divinity of our message. We ourselves need to be constantly strengthened, inspired, and enlightened; we must live and move and have our being in God; along the line of individual discipline our duty is obvious and imperative; but as to our Message, is it not written for us and handed to us as a sacred trust?
Regarded as self-contained, the proposition would seem to create a species of sacerdotalism. It might be regarded as equivalent to this:
Every living preacher receives
his message in a communication direct from God, and as a
faithful messenger he delivers it
without addition or subtraction.
What are the people to do in the presence of such a man? Is he less than a priest, a divinely elected channel of at least a particular kind or quality of grace? Is he not removed from the ranks of brotherhood and set upon an official pedestal? And of what avail is it, except as increasing the irony of the situation, that he abjure gown and bands and stole and chasuble, if in a layman’s garb he. claim what is hardly distinguishable from a priestly function? The clothes do not make the priest. I am not prepared to believe that God gives direct communications to every living preacher in any sense that puts the living preacher into a category of his own; my belief is that God communicates with his Church — “ye are God’s clergy;” that he “sends a plentiful rain upon his inheritance,” and that no humble soul is denied a sight of the open vision.
If the position of the preacher is thus made in a sense sacerdotal, notwithstanding disclaimers, what shall be said of the position of the Bible? If preachers are preaching direct communications from God, if the word of the Lord comes as certainly as it once came, are we to understand that the Bible is a local book, a limited message, an ancient story, an exhausted revelation? The author of the proposition would reply in a vehement negative, but even a vehement negative might not cover the ground. It is most unprofitable to lay down a huge proposition and then to cut it away term by term. Better far, for practical purposes, to reason to a conclusion, to carry forward all the vital assumptions, to clear the ground step by step, and then to announce the grand total of the process. In the degree in which I have done this in the conduct of my own argument, I feel entitled to say that the Bible is to me the contemporary of all ages, a revelation at once ancient and modern, the living Word which abideth forever, and my conviction is that every humble reader of the everlasting record is encouraged to pray, “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law; yea, open thou mine understanding, that I may understand the scriptures.” I would go even farther, and would resolutely test every sermon by the Bible, rather than test the Bible by the sermon, by whomsoever preached. Jesus I know and Paul I know, but I do not know any man who sets them aside. Having listened to the discourse of the truest and wisest preacher, I would reserve the right to search the Scriptures daily, that I might know whether I had been listening to the word of man or to the Word of God.