There are dark and mysterious things in the Bible now, but when you begin to trust Christ your eyes will be opened, and the Bible will be a new book to you. It will become the Book of books to you. — MOODY.
While the works of once famous skeptics are left to rot on book shelves, every year sees the Bible translated into some new tongue, acquire a greater influence, and receive a wider circulation. — GUTHRIE.
I haven't found the first man who ever read the Bible from back to back carefully who remained an infidel. My friends, the Bible of our mothers and fathers is true. — MOODY.
In the waters of life, the Divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps; shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim. — HALL.
Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of diction; how contemptible they are, compared with the Scriptures! — J. J. ROUSSEAU.
If God is a reality, and the soul is a reality, and you are an immortal being, what are you doing with your Bible shut? — HERRICK JOHNSON.
There are over two hundred passages in the Old Testament which prophesied about Christ, and every one of them has come true. — MOODY.
Time can take nothing from the Bible. Like the sun, it is the same in its light and influence to man this day which it was ages ago. — CECIL.
The Bible is the most thought-suggesting book in the world. No other deals with such grand themes. — HERRICK JOHNSON.
No crisis has ever yet appeared when Christ's Word was not ready to take the van of human movement. — KER.
The Bible is a window in this prison-world through which we may look into eternity. — TIMOTHY DWIGHT.
One gem from that ocean is worth all the pebbles from earthly streams. — ROBERT McCHEYNE.
We count the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. — SIR ISAAC NEWTON.
Liberty without the Bible is either dead or delirious. — GUTHRIE.
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Monday, April 28, 2008
The Bible
What can botanists tell you of the Lily of the Valley? You must study this book for that. What can geologists tell you of the Rock of Ages, or mere astronomers about the Bright Morning Star? In those pages we find all knowledge unto salvation; here we read of the ruin of man by nature, redemption by the blood, and regeneration by the Holy Ghost. These three things run all through and through them. — MOODY.
Now, I am no prophet nor the son of a prophet, but one thing I can predict: That every one of our new converts who goes to studying his Bible, and loves this book above every other book, is sure to hold out. The world will have no charm for him; he will get the world under his feet, because in this book he will find something better than the world can give him. — MOODY.
Give the Bible the place in your families to which it is entitled; and then, through the unsearchable riches of Christ, many a household among you may hereafter realize that most blessed consummation, and appear a whole family in Heaven. — H. A. BOARDMAN.
Few books can stand three readings. But the word of God is solid; it will stand a thousand readings, and the man who has gone over it the most frequently and the most carefully is the surest of finding new wonders there. — HAMILTON.
It is the wonderful property of the Bible, though the authorship is spread over a long list of centuries, that it never withdraws any truth once advanced, and never adds new without giving fresh force to the old. — MELVILL.
The answer to the Shastas is India; the answer to Confucianism is China; the answer to the Koran is Turkey; the answer to the Bible is the Christian civilization of Protestant Europe and America. — WENDELL PHILLIPS.
Do you know a book that you are willing to put under your head for a pillow when you lie dying? Very well; that is the book you want to study while you are living. There is but one such book in the world. — JOSEPH COOK.
Now, I am no prophet nor the son of a prophet, but one thing I can predict: That every one of our new converts who goes to studying his Bible, and loves this book above every other book, is sure to hold out. The world will have no charm for him; he will get the world under his feet, because in this book he will find something better than the world can give him. — MOODY.
Give the Bible the place in your families to which it is entitled; and then, through the unsearchable riches of Christ, many a household among you may hereafter realize that most blessed consummation, and appear a whole family in Heaven. — H. A. BOARDMAN.
Few books can stand three readings. But the word of God is solid; it will stand a thousand readings, and the man who has gone over it the most frequently and the most carefully is the surest of finding new wonders there. — HAMILTON.
It is the wonderful property of the Bible, though the authorship is spread over a long list of centuries, that it never withdraws any truth once advanced, and never adds new without giving fresh force to the old. — MELVILL.
The answer to the Shastas is India; the answer to Confucianism is China; the answer to the Koran is Turkey; the answer to the Bible is the Christian civilization of Protestant Europe and America. — WENDELL PHILLIPS.
Do you know a book that you are willing to put under your head for a pillow when you lie dying? Very well; that is the book you want to study while you are living. There is but one such book in the world. — JOSEPH COOK.
Scholars and the Bible
The new movement for the study of the Bible, as the finest of English classics, introducing it into colleges and seminaries of the highest grade, is full of possibilities for Christian progress and development. The marvel is that Christian scholars should ever have permitted the heathen classics to outrank the psalms of David, the visions of Isaiah and the wonderful philosophy of the four Gospels. — FRANCES E. WILLARD.
Something That Was Not a Mistake
When the modern critics, in the church and out of it, are enlarging upon the "Mistakes of Moses" and upon the historical childishness of the Bible, they should not forget to tell us that there ran through the whole Bible period a something that was no mistake, a something whose history rises up before us as real as the earth itself and as beautiful as its four seasons, as magnificent as its June. That something was worship!
Theology came and went; the laws of Moses were passed and obeyed and repealed; fables were told and forgotten; Paul and Apollos differed; James and John were unlike but in worship all seemed to meet, and the Jacob who saw angels on the night-ladder is beautifully akin to St. John and Paul. All are wonderfully akin to our age, which sings the one hymn of the whole race, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." — SWING.
Theology came and went; the laws of Moses were passed and obeyed and repealed; fables were told and forgotten; Paul and Apollos differed; James and John were unlike but in worship all seemed to meet, and the Jacob who saw angels on the night-ladder is beautifully akin to St. John and Paul. All are wonderfully akin to our age, which sings the one hymn of the whole race, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." — SWING.
New Testament Better Than the Old
"Well, after all, is the New Testament brighter than the Old? Had not the Old Testament saints a grip of something tangible and real? Had not they an advantage that we have not? Oh, if there were only an Elijah living! If there were only an Elisha living today!"
Ah, my friends, we are living, after all, under a greater dispensation. Elisha was compelled to say: "The Lord hath hid it from me." He had to confess limitation; and, says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, these great prophets, these great priests, these great mediators of a by-gone age, were not suffered to continue by reason of death. Out of that he works the argument which I am seeking to apply now to you — the greater blessing that has come to us in our heavenly, although invisible, Prophet and Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I read this about Elisha — "the Lord hath not told it me" — I feel inclined to say to him: "Good-bye, Elisha. Great and all as you are, you will not serve my turn. Great and all as you are, I need one, after all, from whom nothing is hid — from whom nothing can be hid. Goodbye, Elisha. You are a wonderful man. You could do wonderful things; but I can bid you good-bye without a tear. I can bear to see you disappear from the stage of time, because He has come from whom nothing is hid; who is mightier than all Elijahs and Elishas and prophets put together." "Consider the Apostle and Priest of our profession."
Think of Him who stands, it may be, unknown, unperceived today in the midst of this assembly; for mole-eyed men and women, groping down in the earth, do not see Him and do not know Him. The Lord of Life and Glory, Jesus Christ, stands with us; and When we see Him, even Elisha's glory begins to dim and fade away. — McNEILL.
Ah, my friends, we are living, after all, under a greater dispensation. Elisha was compelled to say: "The Lord hath hid it from me." He had to confess limitation; and, says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, these great prophets, these great priests, these great mediators of a by-gone age, were not suffered to continue by reason of death. Out of that he works the argument which I am seeking to apply now to you — the greater blessing that has come to us in our heavenly, although invisible, Prophet and Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I read this about Elisha — "the Lord hath not told it me" — I feel inclined to say to him: "Good-bye, Elisha. Great and all as you are, you will not serve my turn. Great and all as you are, I need one, after all, from whom nothing is hid — from whom nothing can be hid. Goodbye, Elisha. You are a wonderful man. You could do wonderful things; but I can bid you good-bye without a tear. I can bear to see you disappear from the stage of time, because He has come from whom nothing is hid; who is mightier than all Elijahs and Elishas and prophets put together." "Consider the Apostle and Priest of our profession."
Think of Him who stands, it may be, unknown, unperceived today in the midst of this assembly; for mole-eyed men and women, groping down in the earth, do not see Him and do not know Him. The Lord of Life and Glory, Jesus Christ, stands with us; and When we see Him, even Elisha's glory begins to dim and fade away. — McNEILL.
The Bible a Westminster Abbey
Heroism is indeed the beautiful in the soul. It is the old image of God coming to the surface again, as when, in scraping off a dingy wall in Florence, the workmen came upon the portrait of Dante. Often there come men who throw aside the rags of self, the tattered vestments of beggars, and let out the image of God within.
Into no institution of man, into no philosophy, into no school of art, has there entered such a band of heroes as is seen filing down into this book of God. It seems perfectly wonderful that each page of the Christian's book should have been composed by one of these children of heroism. The Bible is a Westminster Abbey, where none but the great sleep. — SWING.
Into no institution of man, into no philosophy, into no school of art, has there entered such a band of heroes as is seen filing down into this book of God. It seems perfectly wonderful that each page of the Christian's book should have been composed by one of these children of heroism. The Bible is a Westminster Abbey, where none but the great sleep. — SWING.
The Four Gospels
Why was this Gospel told four times over? A good story is none the worse, perhaps, for being twice told; but it is a great deal the worse for being three times told, while it is often utterly mangled and murdered the fourth time. You know what a risk is run by this repetition. Have not critics in all ages said: "Yet that is what spoils it; that is where we get hold of it and tear it to pieces? If it had only been told once, a very large amount of critical strife and contention would have been removed; but in telling it four times, a great many discrepancies arise, and so we are able to cast doubt upon the whole thing."
Now, I think it was told four times because it was told every time by the best story-teller that ever tried it. John wanted to write a composition upon this key-note — the essential Godhead and Divinity of that Man from Nazareth. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made ..... And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory." Not that John believed this more, and others less, but that was a side of Jesus that fascinated John. "I handled God; here is the head that leaned upon the bosom of Omnipotence." And like every true musician, he ends on the key-note with which he started: "These things are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, ye might have life through His name." — McNEILL.
Now, I think it was told four times because it was told every time by the best story-teller that ever tried it. John wanted to write a composition upon this key-note — the essential Godhead and Divinity of that Man from Nazareth. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made ..... And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory." Not that John believed this more, and others less, but that was a side of Jesus that fascinated John. "I handled God; here is the head that leaned upon the bosom of Omnipotence." And like every true musician, he ends on the key-note with which he started: "These things are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, ye might have life through His name." — McNEILL.
The Book of Job
I propose to say something of the nature of this extraordinary book — a book of which it is to say little to call it unequaled of its kind, and which will one day, perhaps, when it is allowed to stand on its own merits, be seen towering up alone, far away above all the poetry of the world. How it found its way into the canon, smiting as it does through and through the most deeply seated Jewish prejudices, is the chief difficulty about it now; to be explained only by a traditional acceptance among the sacred books, dating back from the old times of the national greatness, when the minds of the people were hewn in a larger type than was to be found among the Pharisees of the great synagogue. But its authorship, its date, and its history are alike a mystery to us. It existed at the time when the canon was composed, and this is all that we know beyond what we can gather out of the language and contents of the poem itself. — FROUDE.
The Bible a Chart
We sail upon an ocean whose farther bounds are far beyond our sight. The Bible gives every soul a course to sail by.
Follow this course, it says, and you will reach harbor; follow any other, and you will come to shipwreck. But what that harbor is, and what possibilities of rescue at the last from shipwreck there may be, it tells not. The wise father neither promises nor threatens. He leaves His children to understand that obedience brings happiness; disobedience, suffering. God governs His children as a wise father, and to all our questionings — "What pay for doing right?" "What penalty for doing wrong?" — keeps a silence that is more eloquent than speech.
The Bible contains no clear revelation respecting the nature of either eternal life or eternal death. It discloses nothing to curiosity. We can gather from its intimations some probable conclusions; but every kind of dogmatism respecting the eternal future is unscriptural. — LYMAN ABBOTT.
Follow this course, it says, and you will reach harbor; follow any other, and you will come to shipwreck. But what that harbor is, and what possibilities of rescue at the last from shipwreck there may be, it tells not. The wise father neither promises nor threatens. He leaves His children to understand that obedience brings happiness; disobedience, suffering. God governs His children as a wise father, and to all our questionings — "What pay for doing right?" "What penalty for doing wrong?" — keeps a silence that is more eloquent than speech.
The Bible contains no clear revelation respecting the nature of either eternal life or eternal death. It discloses nothing to curiosity. We can gather from its intimations some probable conclusions; but every kind of dogmatism respecting the eternal future is unscriptural. — LYMAN ABBOTT.
Importance of Studying the Bible
One thing I have noticed in studying the Word of God, and that is, when a man is filled with the Spirit he deals largely with the Word of God; whereas, the man who is filled with his own ideas refers rarely to the Word of God.
He gets along without it, and you seldom see it mentioned in his discourses. A great many use it only as a text-book. They get their text from the Bible, and go on without any further allusion to it; they ignore it. But when a man is filled with the Word, as Stephen was, he can not help speaking Scripture. You will find that Moses was constantly repeating the commandments. You will find, too, that Joshua, when he came across the Jordan with his people, stood with them while the law of the Lord was read to them; and you will find all through Scripture the men of God dealing much with His Word. Why, you will find Christ constantly referring to them, and saying: "Thus saith the Scriptures."
Now, as old Dr. Bonar of Glasgow said: "The Lord didn't tell Joshua how to use the sword, but He told him how he should meditate on the Lord day and night, and then he would have good success." When we find a man meditating on the words of God, my friends, that man is full of boldness and is successful. And the reason why we have so little success in our teaching is because we know so little of the Word of God. You must know it and have it in your heart. — MOODY.
He gets along without it, and you seldom see it mentioned in his discourses. A great many use it only as a text-book. They get their text from the Bible, and go on without any further allusion to it; they ignore it. But when a man is filled with the Word, as Stephen was, he can not help speaking Scripture. You will find that Moses was constantly repeating the commandments. You will find, too, that Joshua, when he came across the Jordan with his people, stood with them while the law of the Lord was read to them; and you will find all through Scripture the men of God dealing much with His Word. Why, you will find Christ constantly referring to them, and saying: "Thus saith the Scriptures."
Now, as old Dr. Bonar of Glasgow said: "The Lord didn't tell Joshua how to use the sword, but He told him how he should meditate on the Lord day and night, and then he would have good success." When we find a man meditating on the words of God, my friends, that man is full of boldness and is successful. And the reason why we have so little success in our teaching is because we know so little of the Word of God. You must know it and have it in your heart. — MOODY.
Morality of the Bible
The morality of the Bible goes down to every root and fiber of life. In offering a salutation, in opening a door, in uttering a wish, in writing a letter, in using titles of deference, in every possible exercise of human thought and power, the moral element is present.
Phebe was to be received by the Christians at Rome "as becometh saints." A New Testament injunction is: "Be courteous." Charity itself is courteous, graceful, savored with the highest degree of refinement, and expressive of the completest reach of dignity. We have passed from the letter to the spirit; God has put within us a clean heart, so that we are no longer true, or kind, or noble, merely because of a literal direction which is guarded by solemn penalties, but because the Holy Ghost has sanctified us, made our hearts his dwelling place. Our prayer should continually be: "Create in me a clean heart, O God." — JOSEPH PARKER.
Phebe was to be received by the Christians at Rome "as becometh saints." A New Testament injunction is: "Be courteous." Charity itself is courteous, graceful, savored with the highest degree of refinement, and expressive of the completest reach of dignity. We have passed from the letter to the spirit; God has put within us a clean heart, so that we are no longer true, or kind, or noble, merely because of a literal direction which is guarded by solemn penalties, but because the Holy Ghost has sanctified us, made our hearts his dwelling place. Our prayer should continually be: "Create in me a clean heart, O God." — JOSEPH PARKER.
Humaneness of the Bible
Who can undervalue a Bible which speaks in a tone like this? The proverb, "Every man must take care of himself," has no place in the Book of God.
We must take care of one another. "Whoso hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" We hold our knowledge for the benefit of the ignorant; we are trustees of our strength that we may save the weak from oppression.
It is a coward's trick to close the eyes whilst wrong is being done, in order that we may not see it.
Christianity means nothing if it does not mean the unity of the human race, the common rights of humanity. — JOSEPH PARKER.
We must take care of one another. "Whoso hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" We hold our knowledge for the benefit of the ignorant; we are trustees of our strength that we may save the weak from oppression.
It is a coward's trick to close the eyes whilst wrong is being done, in order that we may not see it.
Christianity means nothing if it does not mean the unity of the human race, the common rights of humanity. — JOSEPH PARKER.
One Way to Study the Bible
A favorite way to study the Bible with me is, first, to take up one expression, and run through the different places where they are found. Take the "I ams" of John: "I am the bread of life"; "I am the water of life"; "I am the way, the truth and the life"; "I am the resurrection"; "I am all, and in all."
God gives to His children a blank, and on it they can write whatever they most want, and He will fill the bill. And then the promises. A Scotchman found out thirty-one thousand distinct promises in the Word of God. There is not a despondent soul but God has a promise just to suit him. — MOODY.
God gives to His children a blank, and on it they can write whatever they most want, and He will fill the bill. And then the promises. A Scotchman found out thirty-one thousand distinct promises in the Word of God. There is not a despondent soul but God has a promise just to suit him. — MOODY.
Heroes of the Bible
The heroes of the Bible make up such a group of pearls as never before in history were strung upon one string. Christianity is the only queen that ever wore such a collection of gems. But she wears them right along, and has thus been unapproachable for thousands of years. And she will remain matchless in the quality of soul that lay beneath her thought.
It does not seem possible that earth can ever reproduce a St. Paul or a St. John. And now, when to these beings you have added just one more, whom I need not so much as name, a being who emptied an ocean of love and hope upon the world, and who has transformed the earth, making it roll out of darkness into light, you will conclude that here in the Christian records mighty souls have passed in a strange vision before us. Here are tremendous foundations — broad, deep, vast.
And as though man might come some day in the vanity of the subsequent centuries and mock at the impulse or character of these men, they all died heroic deaths, that the feeble critics of the nineteenth century might feel their own littleness when they should behold the thrilling ending of these lives. Paul was put to death in Rome. John was tortured and sent to die an exile. James was hurled from a battlement in Jerusalem and crushed to death. Simon Zelotes was put to death in Persia, where also Jude was tortured to the death. Matthew was slain by a mob in Abyssinia. Thomas was killed in Coromandel. Philip was hanged upon a pillar in Hierapolis. Andrew was crucified at Patraca, and James the Less in Asia.
As for the one Name towering above all, He was crucified on Mount Calvary between two thieves. Into such holy hearts did God pour the truths, the hopes, the joys and sorrows of our religion. — SWING.
It does not seem possible that earth can ever reproduce a St. Paul or a St. John. And now, when to these beings you have added just one more, whom I need not so much as name, a being who emptied an ocean of love and hope upon the world, and who has transformed the earth, making it roll out of darkness into light, you will conclude that here in the Christian records mighty souls have passed in a strange vision before us. Here are tremendous foundations — broad, deep, vast.
And as though man might come some day in the vanity of the subsequent centuries and mock at the impulse or character of these men, they all died heroic deaths, that the feeble critics of the nineteenth century might feel their own littleness when they should behold the thrilling ending of these lives. Paul was put to death in Rome. John was tortured and sent to die an exile. James was hurled from a battlement in Jerusalem and crushed to death. Simon Zelotes was put to death in Persia, where also Jude was tortured to the death. Matthew was slain by a mob in Abyssinia. Thomas was killed in Coromandel. Philip was hanged upon a pillar in Hierapolis. Andrew was crucified at Patraca, and James the Less in Asia.
As for the one Name towering above all, He was crucified on Mount Calvary between two thieves. Into such holy hearts did God pour the truths, the hopes, the joys and sorrows of our religion. — SWING.
Friday, April 25, 2008
The Future of Religion
1916
By H. Symonds, D. D.
God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. — John iv. 4.
I. If we should ask this question "What is the most characteristic and significant difference between the modern and the old way of looking at religion and Christ in particular in its varied manifestations?" I think the answer would be something like this: In the past men thought of religion as some kind of completed system and order of things. A scheme or plan completely fashioned and framed, perfect from the start, handed to men, and by one generation to be transmitted to another unchanged, unimpaired, complete.
It was of course admitted that this ideal had never been realized. From the beginning there were disputes, controversies, heresies, schisms. Nevertheless the conception of religion as a completed scheme was adhered to. The watchword was this: That is true, and that is to be regarded as orthodox and Christian which has been held "everywhere, at all times, and by every one." This conception, mark, was not only the conception of the Catholic, but also of the Protestant. The Protestant thought the Catholic had been false to the principle; that he had introduced many new things. Hence he said we must go back to the New Testament and begin all over again. The fundamental error of the reformers — an error, however, which in their time was unavoidable — was the supposition that the New Testament must contain a complete system of belief of organization of worship. Only find that, they said (and they believed with enthusiasm that it could be found), and all Christians will unite. But alas! — we know how false were these hopes. It might have been supposed that if the New Testament did contain such a scheme, then at all events the true Scriptural organization of the church would have been discoverable.
But it was not. As you know, three different forms of ministry were discovered, each defended as divine and necessary, and with equal learning and logic — the Episcopal theory, the Presbyterian theory, and the Congregational theory.
That was the old way of looking at Christ — a way which has not yet died out, although it is so perfectly clear that something is wrong with it.
The new way of looking at Christianity is to regard it, not as a completed system of belief, worship, or organization, but rather as in the beginning the revelation of a life — the life of Christ in whom was gathered up all that was truest and best in the long preparation of the Old Testament. Behind the actual visible life of Christ was the Spirit and mind of Christ, by which one means the desires, the mo[tives of Christ; it] is this Spirit of Christ that is important. We can not imitate Him in His daily life of act, but we can seek after the motive or the Spirit in which He lived and worked. So, then, to-day we think of Christ not as having given a creed, or a government, or a system of worship, but as having lived in the world His life, and as having bequeathed to the world His Spirit.
But this Spirit comes into conflict with the spirit of the world, the spirit of what we call the natural man. It is not realized all at once; it is not even understood all at once. And so we think of Christianity as something progressively realized as the ages roll on. And as we look at so-called Christian nations, as we contemplate the selfishness, the corruption, the inequalities, the oppressions that still exist, we awake to the fact that even yet Christianity is not perfectly understood, that, e. g., what Christ meant by loving our neighbor as ourselves is not comprehended as yet by any class of society.
Again, although Christianity is primarily and fundamentally a spirit, the Spirit of Christ, yet we know that pure Spirit does not and can not be in this world. We ourselves are body and spirit. We can not express ourselves except by means of our bodies. So the Spirit of Christianity took to itself a body, and that body we call the church. Naturally those who became Christians asked many questions about Christianity. Out of those questions of necessity there came a creed. Naturally those who became Christians sought to give outward expression of their devotion to and adoration of Christ. Hence sprang up, and was gradually systematized, Christian worship. Naturally those who were Christian brethren gave outward expression to their fellowship and unity, and out of that desire sprang the organization of the church. Thus the church did not begin — no society ever did — with a system imposed upon men from without, but it began with the Spirit of Christ, and out of that Spirit came the church with its creed, worship, organization.
And these, too, developed, grew, changed with changing times and circumstances. Let me give one example, taken from that department of Christianity supposed to be least variable — the department of creed. If you asked of a young student of divinity this question, "When was the Nicene Creed composed?" he would probably say: "In the year 325, at the Council of Nicea, from which it takes its name." And yet that would be about as misleading an answer as could be given. The Nicene Creed was never composed; it grew. And it was more than three hundred years in the growing. The Council of Nicea had something to do with it, but very much less than is generally supposed. It existed almost in the form in which it left the council, before the council met, and it was further developed during fifty years subsequent to the meeting of that council.
Let me then sum up this part of our subject by saying that the old thought and conception of the New Testament was that it came into the world as completed creed, worship, and organization. The new thought of it is that it is first a spirit, but a spirit which takes to itself by degrees an outward form. It develops, it grows, it is modified here and there by changing circumstance. And is not this new conception of a development more in accord with our Savior's own teaching? The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which indeed is less than all seeds, but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becometh a tree.
II If these things are so, then you perceive at once that the subject we are considering is of very practical importance, for we may expect still further modification, growth, development. Only dead things never change. Living things are subject to continual change, the constant adaptation to an ever-changing environment. And so there is nothing we should dread as much as standing still, nothing so fatal as changelessness. The institution which can not adapt itself to new environment is doomed.
In the future, then, we may expect that less stress will be placed upon creed and upon the particular forms of worship, and a great deal more stress will be placed upon life, and especially the spirit of a man's life. In other words, religion will become more spiritual and less formal. Right opinion will count less than unselfishness. To give $100,000 for foreign missions will count less than justice and righteousness. The lust of money will be accounted a worse thing than staying away from church. And in in all respects religion will be getting back to Christ, — to that Christ who said God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth; to that Christ who said that to love our fellow man — not to exploit him — was a commandment that ranked with the love of God; to that Christ who said, "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, but do not the things that I say?"
Are we then — some of you may be asking yourselves — are we then to suppose that church worship and doctrine are going to disappear altogether? Some there are who think so. But these we may safely say are wrong. They have reacted too violently against the excessive value placed in the past upon church-going and orthodoxy. I think this point is of sufficient importance to dwell upon for a moment or two.
Did it ever occur to you that in the Old Testament church creed was almost non-existent? "Hear, O Israel the Lord our God is one Lord" sums up the Hebrew creed. But worship or ritual was everything. The details of worship were laid down with the utmost rigor. Every sacrifice had to be offered in exactly the right way, the ritual was carefully prescribed, and to vary from it was an offense scarcely thinkable. In other words, religion was cultus or ritual.
Christianity began without ritual or definite creed. But when it spread among a highly intellectual and philosophical people like the Greeks, it naturally developed doctrine or theory, and doctrine and theory hardened into dogma. In other words, religion ceased to be primarily right cultus or right ritual and became right doctrine. And we may freely admit that this was a step in advance.
But what I want you to notice is that because the religion of doctrine replaced the religion of ritual, it did not follow that ritual disappeared altogether. It still remained, and occupied a very important tho not the first place. And just so, altho I can not conceive it possible that right thinking or doctrine will ever again occupy the place it has in the past, yet it seems certain from many considerations that both doctrine and worship must have a permanent place in the Christian church. Only just as to-day we do not stigmatize because he offers extemporaneous prayer, or preaches in a black gown or a black coat, or per contra prefers a surplice and the Book of Common Prayer, so neither shall we in the future inquire too particularly into the exact opinions of any one upon predestination or original sin, or the relations of the divine and human in Christ, or the double procession of the Holy Ghost. All of them are for some of us important as well as interesting questions; but because men differ from one another about them, they will no longer stigmatize each other as heretics. We shall rather judge of soundness by Christ's test: "He that heareth these saying of mine and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man that built his house upon a rock." In one word we say this: "The religion of the spirit is the religion of liberty."
III. Our next point is this: The religion of the future, because it will be the religion of the Spirit, will seek more earnestly and more thoroughly than has ever been done before to embody itself in act and deed. They that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in reality; must translate spirit into visible good, just as you translate thought into spoken or written word. Neither the religion of cultus nor the religion of dogma is of necessity moral. Morality may be and, we may most thankfully admit, has been superadded to them, but morality is not of this essence. But morality, being conformity to the laws of man's relationship to God, his fellow man, and himself, must be of the very essence of the religion of the Spirit.
The religion of the Spirit will seek most earnestly to establish right relations between men. It will not rest satisfied with merely negatively morality, "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not commit adultery." But it will seek after positive justice, positive mercy. It will be altruistic. It will refuse to be happy while any part of the social organism is compelled to live in unsanitary conditions, is condemned to a life of ceaseless grinding toil, has no vocations that are wholesome and elevating.
The prime virtue of the religion of dogma is assent.
But the prime virtue of the religion of the Spirit is love.
We shall call no man atheist who loves his fellow man. But no matter what he professes to be, we shall regard him as atheist who does not love his fellow man. "For he that loveth not his brother man whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" The religion of the Spirit will greatly prefer a Charles Darwin to a Charles II.
The religion of the Spirit will bring to an end the long conflict between science and theology. Theology will frankly admit that science has earnestly and purely sought after truth, and endeavored to translate truth into action. But all truth is of God. Science in its reverence for law, in its faith that this is an intelligible universe, is truly and deeply religious. It is the ally, not the enemy, of the religion in spirit and truth.
The religion of the Spirit will bring to an end divisions of Christendom. We shall see that variety of worship and thought is consistent with the Unity of the Spirit. Truly it will perceive that all variety that springs out of an honest and sincere mind and heart enriches religion, adds to its strength and its beauty, just as the one energy of the universe unfolds and manifests itself in endless forms of entrancing beauty.
Two principles will underlie this new unity, this transformed catholic church. The principle of liberty, which will give variety, richness, and beauty — the centrifugal force of the spiritual world; and the spirit of love, which will bind together into one communion and fellowship all the varieties of worships and believers. Love is the centripetal force of the spiritual world.
IV. And in this religion of the Spirit, what is to be the place of worship and doctrine?
Worship! What is it? Is it the groveling of man before a Deity who longs for flattery? Is it the attempt to bribe a Deity with forms and ceremonies? The prophets Isaiah and Micah answered that question long since.
Shall we not say that it is the going out of the infinite part of ourselves in adoration and love to the infinite source of all things? Shall we not seek by worship to be purified from low thinking, and to be inspired to high thinking? Shall we not hope to gain from it an infinite desire to be holy, desires and longings which shall he translated into deeds on every day of the week? Perchance to those worshiping thus in spirit there shall be revealed, as once many hundred of years ago there was revealed to a youth, a student, the Lord, high and mighty sitting upon His throne, and they shall hear, as He heard, the seraphim crying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the fulness of the whole earth is the glory of Jehovah! And out of that vision may there come, as there came to Isaiah, the call to live for infinite ends — to do the will of God among men on earth. Worship is no worship that does not lead to action.
And doctrine? Doctrine will continue just as worship will continue; only it will not be dogma, opinions to which men are compelled to assent, whether they understand them or not. Doctrine is the presentation of what the thinker, the student, the teacher, believes to be true; and believing it to be true and beautiful, will yet only ask men to accept so far as they themselves perceive it to be true and beautiful. We shall no more seek to compel men to be orthodox than we now compel them to worship in this way or that way, or than we seek to compel a man to love his neighbor as himself.
Christianity may have long to live in human society before it attains to its ideal; but we are not therefore of despair. This religion of Spirit and of truth, which I have so inadequately sought to set forth, is already in the world. There is no reason why we should be despond or pessimistic. Optimism is to some extent, no doubt, a matter of temperament. Yet I think the optimist can give good reason for the hope and faith that are in him — the faith that we are living in a truth-loving and liberty-loving age. And truth and liberty are of the essence of that God who is a Spirit. Looking back twenty-five years it is not difficult to detect a growing reverence for the religious side of human experience, so that the beautiful aspiration of one of the poet prophets of the nineteenth century is even now being fulfilled.
"Let knowledge grow more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell,
That mind and heart, according
May make one music as before."
—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 12, 1916, p. 5.
Note: The phrase in brackets I supplied, since a few words were missing in the original newspaper.
By H. Symonds, D. D.
God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. — John iv. 4.
I. If we should ask this question "What is the most characteristic and significant difference between the modern and the old way of looking at religion and Christ in particular in its varied manifestations?" I think the answer would be something like this: In the past men thought of religion as some kind of completed system and order of things. A scheme or plan completely fashioned and framed, perfect from the start, handed to men, and by one generation to be transmitted to another unchanged, unimpaired, complete.
It was of course admitted that this ideal had never been realized. From the beginning there were disputes, controversies, heresies, schisms. Nevertheless the conception of religion as a completed scheme was adhered to. The watchword was this: That is true, and that is to be regarded as orthodox and Christian which has been held "everywhere, at all times, and by every one." This conception, mark, was not only the conception of the Catholic, but also of the Protestant. The Protestant thought the Catholic had been false to the principle; that he had introduced many new things. Hence he said we must go back to the New Testament and begin all over again. The fundamental error of the reformers — an error, however, which in their time was unavoidable — was the supposition that the New Testament must contain a complete system of belief of organization of worship. Only find that, they said (and they believed with enthusiasm that it could be found), and all Christians will unite. But alas! — we know how false were these hopes. It might have been supposed that if the New Testament did contain such a scheme, then at all events the true Scriptural organization of the church would have been discoverable.
But it was not. As you know, three different forms of ministry were discovered, each defended as divine and necessary, and with equal learning and logic — the Episcopal theory, the Presbyterian theory, and the Congregational theory.
That was the old way of looking at Christ — a way which has not yet died out, although it is so perfectly clear that something is wrong with it.
The new way of looking at Christianity is to regard it, not as a completed system of belief, worship, or organization, but rather as in the beginning the revelation of a life — the life of Christ in whom was gathered up all that was truest and best in the long preparation of the Old Testament. Behind the actual visible life of Christ was the Spirit and mind of Christ, by which one means the desires, the mo[tives of Christ; it] is this Spirit of Christ that is important. We can not imitate Him in His daily life of act, but we can seek after the motive or the Spirit in which He lived and worked. So, then, to-day we think of Christ not as having given a creed, or a government, or a system of worship, but as having lived in the world His life, and as having bequeathed to the world His Spirit.
But this Spirit comes into conflict with the spirit of the world, the spirit of what we call the natural man. It is not realized all at once; it is not even understood all at once. And so we think of Christianity as something progressively realized as the ages roll on. And as we look at so-called Christian nations, as we contemplate the selfishness, the corruption, the inequalities, the oppressions that still exist, we awake to the fact that even yet Christianity is not perfectly understood, that, e. g., what Christ meant by loving our neighbor as ourselves is not comprehended as yet by any class of society.
Again, although Christianity is primarily and fundamentally a spirit, the Spirit of Christ, yet we know that pure Spirit does not and can not be in this world. We ourselves are body and spirit. We can not express ourselves except by means of our bodies. So the Spirit of Christianity took to itself a body, and that body we call the church. Naturally those who became Christians asked many questions about Christianity. Out of those questions of necessity there came a creed. Naturally those who became Christians sought to give outward expression of their devotion to and adoration of Christ. Hence sprang up, and was gradually systematized, Christian worship. Naturally those who were Christian brethren gave outward expression to their fellowship and unity, and out of that desire sprang the organization of the church. Thus the church did not begin — no society ever did — with a system imposed upon men from without, but it began with the Spirit of Christ, and out of that Spirit came the church with its creed, worship, organization.
And these, too, developed, grew, changed with changing times and circumstances. Let me give one example, taken from that department of Christianity supposed to be least variable — the department of creed. If you asked of a young student of divinity this question, "When was the Nicene Creed composed?" he would probably say: "In the year 325, at the Council of Nicea, from which it takes its name." And yet that would be about as misleading an answer as could be given. The Nicene Creed was never composed; it grew. And it was more than three hundred years in the growing. The Council of Nicea had something to do with it, but very much less than is generally supposed. It existed almost in the form in which it left the council, before the council met, and it was further developed during fifty years subsequent to the meeting of that council.
Let me then sum up this part of our subject by saying that the old thought and conception of the New Testament was that it came into the world as completed creed, worship, and organization. The new thought of it is that it is first a spirit, but a spirit which takes to itself by degrees an outward form. It develops, it grows, it is modified here and there by changing circumstance. And is not this new conception of a development more in accord with our Savior's own teaching? The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which indeed is less than all seeds, but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becometh a tree.
II If these things are so, then you perceive at once that the subject we are considering is of very practical importance, for we may expect still further modification, growth, development. Only dead things never change. Living things are subject to continual change, the constant adaptation to an ever-changing environment. And so there is nothing we should dread as much as standing still, nothing so fatal as changelessness. The institution which can not adapt itself to new environment is doomed.
In the future, then, we may expect that less stress will be placed upon creed and upon the particular forms of worship, and a great deal more stress will be placed upon life, and especially the spirit of a man's life. In other words, religion will become more spiritual and less formal. Right opinion will count less than unselfishness. To give $100,000 for foreign missions will count less than justice and righteousness. The lust of money will be accounted a worse thing than staying away from church. And in in all respects religion will be getting back to Christ, — to that Christ who said God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth; to that Christ who said that to love our fellow man — not to exploit him — was a commandment that ranked with the love of God; to that Christ who said, "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, but do not the things that I say?"
Are we then — some of you may be asking yourselves — are we then to suppose that church worship and doctrine are going to disappear altogether? Some there are who think so. But these we may safely say are wrong. They have reacted too violently against the excessive value placed in the past upon church-going and orthodoxy. I think this point is of sufficient importance to dwell upon for a moment or two.
Did it ever occur to you that in the Old Testament church creed was almost non-existent? "Hear, O Israel the Lord our God is one Lord" sums up the Hebrew creed. But worship or ritual was everything. The details of worship were laid down with the utmost rigor. Every sacrifice had to be offered in exactly the right way, the ritual was carefully prescribed, and to vary from it was an offense scarcely thinkable. In other words, religion was cultus or ritual.
Christianity began without ritual or definite creed. But when it spread among a highly intellectual and philosophical people like the Greeks, it naturally developed doctrine or theory, and doctrine and theory hardened into dogma. In other words, religion ceased to be primarily right cultus or right ritual and became right doctrine. And we may freely admit that this was a step in advance.
But what I want you to notice is that because the religion of doctrine replaced the religion of ritual, it did not follow that ritual disappeared altogether. It still remained, and occupied a very important tho not the first place. And just so, altho I can not conceive it possible that right thinking or doctrine will ever again occupy the place it has in the past, yet it seems certain from many considerations that both doctrine and worship must have a permanent place in the Christian church. Only just as to-day we do not stigmatize because he offers extemporaneous prayer, or preaches in a black gown or a black coat, or per contra prefers a surplice and the Book of Common Prayer, so neither shall we in the future inquire too particularly into the exact opinions of any one upon predestination or original sin, or the relations of the divine and human in Christ, or the double procession of the Holy Ghost. All of them are for some of us important as well as interesting questions; but because men differ from one another about them, they will no longer stigmatize each other as heretics. We shall rather judge of soundness by Christ's test: "He that heareth these saying of mine and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man that built his house upon a rock." In one word we say this: "The religion of the spirit is the religion of liberty."
III. Our next point is this: The religion of the future, because it will be the religion of the Spirit, will seek more earnestly and more thoroughly than has ever been done before to embody itself in act and deed. They that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in reality; must translate spirit into visible good, just as you translate thought into spoken or written word. Neither the religion of cultus nor the religion of dogma is of necessity moral. Morality may be and, we may most thankfully admit, has been superadded to them, but morality is not of this essence. But morality, being conformity to the laws of man's relationship to God, his fellow man, and himself, must be of the very essence of the religion of the Spirit.
The religion of the Spirit will seek most earnestly to establish right relations between men. It will not rest satisfied with merely negatively morality, "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not commit adultery." But it will seek after positive justice, positive mercy. It will be altruistic. It will refuse to be happy while any part of the social organism is compelled to live in unsanitary conditions, is condemned to a life of ceaseless grinding toil, has no vocations that are wholesome and elevating.
The prime virtue of the religion of dogma is assent.
But the prime virtue of the religion of the Spirit is love.
We shall call no man atheist who loves his fellow man. But no matter what he professes to be, we shall regard him as atheist who does not love his fellow man. "For he that loveth not his brother man whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" The religion of the Spirit will greatly prefer a Charles Darwin to a Charles II.
The religion of the Spirit will bring to an end the long conflict between science and theology. Theology will frankly admit that science has earnestly and purely sought after truth, and endeavored to translate truth into action. But all truth is of God. Science in its reverence for law, in its faith that this is an intelligible universe, is truly and deeply religious. It is the ally, not the enemy, of the religion in spirit and truth.
The religion of the Spirit will bring to an end divisions of Christendom. We shall see that variety of worship and thought is consistent with the Unity of the Spirit. Truly it will perceive that all variety that springs out of an honest and sincere mind and heart enriches religion, adds to its strength and its beauty, just as the one energy of the universe unfolds and manifests itself in endless forms of entrancing beauty.
Two principles will underlie this new unity, this transformed catholic church. The principle of liberty, which will give variety, richness, and beauty — the centrifugal force of the spiritual world; and the spirit of love, which will bind together into one communion and fellowship all the varieties of worships and believers. Love is the centripetal force of the spiritual world.
IV. And in this religion of the Spirit, what is to be the place of worship and doctrine?
Worship! What is it? Is it the groveling of man before a Deity who longs for flattery? Is it the attempt to bribe a Deity with forms and ceremonies? The prophets Isaiah and Micah answered that question long since.
Shall we not say that it is the going out of the infinite part of ourselves in adoration and love to the infinite source of all things? Shall we not seek by worship to be purified from low thinking, and to be inspired to high thinking? Shall we not hope to gain from it an infinite desire to be holy, desires and longings which shall he translated into deeds on every day of the week? Perchance to those worshiping thus in spirit there shall be revealed, as once many hundred of years ago there was revealed to a youth, a student, the Lord, high and mighty sitting upon His throne, and they shall hear, as He heard, the seraphim crying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the fulness of the whole earth is the glory of Jehovah! And out of that vision may there come, as there came to Isaiah, the call to live for infinite ends — to do the will of God among men on earth. Worship is no worship that does not lead to action.
And doctrine? Doctrine will continue just as worship will continue; only it will not be dogma, opinions to which men are compelled to assent, whether they understand them or not. Doctrine is the presentation of what the thinker, the student, the teacher, believes to be true; and believing it to be true and beautiful, will yet only ask men to accept so far as they themselves perceive it to be true and beautiful. We shall no more seek to compel men to be orthodox than we now compel them to worship in this way or that way, or than we seek to compel a man to love his neighbor as himself.
Christianity may have long to live in human society before it attains to its ideal; but we are not therefore of despair. This religion of Spirit and of truth, which I have so inadequately sought to set forth, is already in the world. There is no reason why we should be despond or pessimistic. Optimism is to some extent, no doubt, a matter of temperament. Yet I think the optimist can give good reason for the hope and faith that are in him — the faith that we are living in a truth-loving and liberty-loving age. And truth and liberty are of the essence of that God who is a Spirit. Looking back twenty-five years it is not difficult to detect a growing reverence for the religious side of human experience, so that the beautiful aspiration of one of the poet prophets of the nineteenth century is even now being fulfilled.
"Let knowledge grow more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell,
That mind and heart, according
May make one music as before."
—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 12, 1916, p. 5.
Note: The phrase in brackets I supplied, since a few words were missing in the original newspaper.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Believing Confidence in God's Word
Believing does not come by trying. If a person were to make a statement of something that happened this day I should not tell him that I would try to believe him. If I believed in the truthfulness of the man who told the incident to me, and who said he saw it, I should accept the statement at once. If I did not think him a true man I should, of course, disbelieve him; but there would be no trying in the matter. Now, when God declares there is salvation in Christ Jesus I must either believe Him at once or make Him a liar. – SPURGEON.
The Peace of the Believer
The believer's peace is like a river for continuance. Look at it, rising as a little brook among the mosses of the lone green hill; by and by it leaps as a rugged cataract; anon it flows along that fair valley where the red deer wanders, and the child loves to play. With hum of pleasant music the brook turns the village mill. Hearken to its changeful tune as it ripples over its pebbly bed, or leaps adown the wheel, or sports in eddies where the trees bend down their branches to kiss the current. Anon the streamlet has become a river, and bears upon its flood full many a craft. Then its bosom swells, bridges with noble arches span it, and, grown vaster still, it becomes an estuary, broad enough to be an arm of old Father Ocean, pouring its water-floods into the mighty main. The river abides the lapse of ages; it is no evanescent morning cloud or transient rain-flood, but in all its stages it is permanent.
"Men may come, and men may go,
But I flow on for ever."
Evermore, throughout all generations, the river speedeth to its destined place. Such is the peace of the Christian. He has always reason for comfort. He has not a consolation like a swollen torrent which is dried up under the hot sun of adversity, but peace is his rightful possession at all times. Do you inquire for the Thames? You shall find it flowing in its own bed in the thick black night, as well as in the clear bright day. — SPURGEON.
"Men may come, and men may go,
But I flow on for ever."
Evermore, throughout all generations, the river speedeth to its destined place. Such is the peace of the Christian. He has always reason for comfort. He has not a consolation like a swollen torrent which is dried up under the hot sun of adversity, but peace is his rightful possession at all times. Do you inquire for the Thames? You shall find it flowing in its own bed in the thick black night, as well as in the clear bright day. — SPURGEON.
The Assurance of God's Word
Now, I find a great many people who want some evidence that they have accepted the Son of God. My friends, if you want any evidence, take God's word for it. You can't find better evidence than that. You know that when the Angel Gabriel came down and told Zachariah he should have a son he wanted a further token than the angel's word. He asked Gabriel for it, and he answered: "I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Lord." He had never been doubted, and he thundered out this to Zachariah. But he wanted a further token, and Gabriel said: "You shall have a token; you shall be dumb till your son shall be given you."—MOODY.
The Assurance of Christ
"But," a man said to me, " no one has come back, and we don't know what is in the future. It is all dark, and how can we be sure?" Thank God, Christ came down from Heaven; and I would rather have Him, coming as He does right from the bosom of the Father, than any one else. We can rely on what Christ says, and He says: "He that believeth on Me shall not perish, but have everlasting life." Not that we are going to have it when we die, but right here today. — MOODY.
The Superiority of Christian Faith
With the results of Christianity before him and in him, the Christian may confidently say to all his foes: "If a lie can do all this, then a lie is better than all your truth; for your truth does not pretend to do it. And if our lie is better in every possible legitimate result than your truth, then your truth is proven to be a lie, and our lie is the truth." Of all short methods with infidelity, this is the shortest. — J. G. HOLLAND.
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